The Shine

EDITED TO ADD: I went around and looked at 7 of the red horses that live at the farm I was at this morning. ALL of them have that weird yucky retained hair! Most of the bays were largely shed out, but several of the greys had retained hair too. It HAS to be something environmental.

It is no secret that I pride myself on the freakish level of shine that my horses have.

I mean come on. That is some SHINE right there. That is intense.

But unfortunately, and very suddenly, O has lost her freakish shine. She is now kind of a normal horse shine, which to me is a) completely unacceptable and b) indicative that something is wrong. She also has quite a lot of hairs doing that wonky curl/fishhook thing, which is alarming. Usually that is a sign of either parasites or a copper deficiency. Since her vit/min supplement should in theory have the copper covered, we are probably looking at something else.

I have some theories on what it might be.

1) We had some WEIRD weather this spring. 

O's winter coat looked great - I recently talked about how shiny and gleaming she was. She started to shed out in March, and in theory should be long done by now, but she is not. She is hanging on to a lot of curling, yucky old hairs that are standing up and giving her more of the crushed velvet appearance rather than the sleek summer appearance that I would have expected by now. After she had started to shed out, we had a few hard freezes and cold days (after having lots of 90 degree days in a row), and she was left shivering and shell-shocked a few times. This possibly should have freaked her system out and caused her coat to retain... maybe? Hard to say. She is definitely still shedding, slowly but surely, so her coat is by no means fully shed out. Underneath it, I see lots of gleam, but there is a lot of crud still hanging on.

2) The mares are completely off alfalfa for the first time in a long time.

Last year, all through the year, the mares got a 1/2 flake to full flake of alfalfa before meals, along with their freechoice grass hay. They were all gorgeous and shiny. In the late fall, our usual supply of timothy ran out, and we instead got bales that were timothy/alfalfa. They were SUPER full of alfalfa, so much so that we stopped giving actual straight alfalfa. We fed that for awhile, and then our supplier ran out of it again, as well as regular timothy. We actually had to switch to a completely different supplier altogether, and the horses are now on (and have been on) straight timothy with no alfalfa at all. The alfalfa really gives them that extra bloom, and is a bonus to feed right before workouts, so I'll definitely be putting both the girls back on it as per their usual (1/2 flake to full flake before mealtimes, in addition to freechoice timothy).

3) Parasite problems.

When P came back I did a fecal and deworming before she even set foot on the property. She had a small worm load, and she was dewormed again and cleared. O was dewormed as well at the same time, but I haven't done a recent fecal on her. She very well could have picked up any leftover parasites that P had shed. (That typical 'fishhook' type curl that some of her hairs have always makes me think of parasites.) We'll do a fecal and see what we have going on for sure.

4) She has had on and off tummy issues throughout the winter. 

After her first LD when she wasn't quite gastrically right, I went into gut health overkill with her. She had that certain personality that invites an ulcery system, so I'm really, REALLY careful with what I give her and what I do with her. While I think I have everything covered in every different direction, she very well could have some leaky gut issues that are affecting her nutrient uptake. I don't *think* so, but it could be. It is something to keep in the back of my mind for sure.

We'll get it figured out. It's always something, isn't it? HORSES!

Comparisons and Improvements

For comparison's sake...

O on the lunge in June:

And O today:

Holy moley. She is one big beefy muscular girl! No flab on this momma, she's rippling muscle all over. She had a GREAT work on the lunge today... the canter is looking really great for her. She's really counterbent in that above picture, but I altered the lines some after I took the picture and straightened her out. We did a lot of work on insisting she canter at a reasonable pace, and that when she transitions downward from the canter, we slow it down into a normal trot instead of a Standardbred zoomy trot. She's a quick study and she picks up things very quickly, although sometimes she has a battle in her brain about whether or not she agrees with the idea - you can tell by her expression in the canter picture that she's not sure that a nice slow canter is really the speed she'd like to be going. 

I am SO happy to report that her behavior has done a 180 since giving her the extra tummy support. I feel very fortunate that I know this horse well enough to know when something isn't quite right with her, and to act on it quickly. She doesn't hide anything, she was more or less screaming that something wasn't right - walking away and sulking in the corner of her pen whenever I showed up was a pretty clear "go away leave me alone I don't feel great." That was really abnormal for her. Today, after 2 days of her yummy tummy, she was practically crawling over the fence to get to me. She was on top of me when I picked out their pen, she put her head in my arms when we were grooming, and she left her haybag to come insist that I hold her head and rub her nosey while I was leaning up against the fence chatting with S (an unsolicited move on her part... I wasn't paying attention and suddenly she was there, going excuse me it's time to pay attention to me now.) She is inhaling her food and licking the bucket clean, and wolfing down all the hay in sight. 

I may be neurotic about gastric health, but it pays off. I think back to Metro when he was showing similar symptoms (this was a decade ago now, holy crap!!), and how I wrote his behavior off as being a jerk, his sheath needed to be cleaned, he didn't like his bit, I was sitting crooked, he needed groundwork. Turns out, he had kicking raging ulcers and I had no idea even though all the symptoms were staring me in the face (big hay belly and ribs, lots of little colics, random acting out behaviors under saddle). If I had known then what I know now, things would have been very different. And if I knew now only what I had known then, I'm sure O would already be in a total downward spiral of ulcery doom, and god knows she would be SERIOUSLY hateful with actual ulcers. 

Symptoms as vague as "well she doesn't want much to do with me when I show up" don't readily lend themselves to looking like an actual problem. If I were less neurotic and weird I probably would have just chalked it up to her being cranky and in heat. That said, I'm a pretty firm believer that they're always trying to tell us all sorts of things if we'd just take the time to listen to them... in this case I'm glad I stopped and thought about it a little more. 

Guts

Well that was a vague title.

I don't think O has been quite right in the gastric department. I think this was stirring a bit before the last ride - she has started to be a little weird about catching, like when you show up she turns and goes to the far corner of her pen, which basically means "go away leave me alone." I had thought this was because S had been doing a lot of the feeding, and she and S do not remotely get along, but I'm wondering if it wasn't something else instead. S doctored her some when she got bit by the dog last month, and I'm under the impression she gave her a lot of bute and dex in the process. She may have been (and may still be) teetering on the edge of a gastric problem following that. Normally she is very friendly and walks up to you in the pen, you don't usually have to go get her yourself.

She's not ever really been a ravenous hoover. She cleans all of her grain meals up, but she wastes quite a lot of hay, and if there is a speck of dirt on her hay, she spits it out and refuses to finish it. She has to be really hungry in order to eat the hay that she has decided doesn't taste good enough. I always give them fresh clean hay in their nets every day (and part of why it is netted is because if she puts her feet on her hay, she won't eat it!), but if they don't finish what is in a bag, sometimes I make them clean it up and MAN that makes her angry. She will just sniff the hay and then stand there and glare at me. If she is REALLY pathetic, she'll walk around nickering at me like she's just STARVING, and how CRUEL I am for letting her STARVE, that hay that is 1 day old is POISON. The horses I've had in the past that got hay meals instead of 24/7 hay have always been just RAVENOUS whenever they were fed, ulcers or not, because they knew that was all they were getting and they better snarf it up. My current horses know there will always be hay there, no matter what, so they are content to eat some, then mill around, then eat some, then take a nap, then eat some. (This actually is very stressful for me... every time they are not eating, I am freaking out. They are FINE but it still freaks me out!)

She's been a bit ehh about eating this past week. She is eating, but she is also just standing around a lot not eating. It's probably just me being super paranoid about it, but I think she's been a little dull this week too. Time to get aggressive, just in case.

She'll have a few days off while she gets dosed with aloe/bentonite/marshmallow root/slippery elm mixed in with hay pellets - a sort of 'yummy tummy' meal that she'll get additional to her regular meals. If that helps, yay and we can progress on from there. If that doesn't help, she gets more aggressive treatments with Omeprazole/Ranitidine. If THAT doesn't help, then I need to take a Xanax and stop assuming my horse has a gut problem. She inhaled her tummy meal today and her regular grain meal as well, was very perky when grooming, and then wasn't really too interested in hay again afterwards (which isn't really unusual). She ate a fair amount, but then wandered off to be alone. Tre must have been REALLY HUNGRY because normally she is O's shadow and never leaves her side:

See what I mean? TINA EAT YOUR FOOD.

I'd rather nip this thing in the bud before it ever actually becomes a problem - because this horse will be a DEMON HELLCHILD if she ever actually gets burning ulcers - so she'll have off for however long she needs to get herself back together. It's a delicate balance... she's a hellchild when she's not getting enough work too, so here's hoping this sorts itself out within short order.

Aside from that, I have a very small cute Texas Warmblood to play with!

Geez she is cute. I kind of can't believe nobody has snatched her up yet - if she were a hand taller she'd be gone already. Some days I am all about selling and moving her on, and some days (like today) I really would like to keep her because of how insanely adorable and talented she is. 

I am still brooding over my yearly goals. I suppose there's no *real* rush to get them up... and it's also very hard to solidify then when you're not really sure of what you actually want. Some days I want to get back to trying to event O, some days I don't. Some days I want to sell Tre (and SHOULD sell her), some days I want to keep her and event. 

It really all boils down to cash. Life is expensive. Starting and running a business is expensive. Feeding horses is expensive. Showing horses is extra expensive. Looking into the future and wondering if you'll really ever be able to afford your first house is depressing. Wondering if you should just elope instead of have a wedding because it is too expensive is depressing. Firmly telling yourself you need to sell your cute little future eventer because that's what you bought her for is depressing.
Being a responsible adult is hard. Where do you make the 'right' fiscally responsible choices, and where do you allow yourself a little leeway to have some fun? 

Tre-inwreck

Good lord. Poor Tre. This little mare can't seem to catch a break.

I did something EXTREMELY STUPID a few days ago, and I am seriously regretting it now. When I first brought Tre home 3 weeks ago, she smelled gross and was slow to eat her food. Part of it was her being picky, but I assumed that she probably had some underlying gastric issues as well. (When horses stand in stalls all the time and are only fed two grain and hay meals a day, they get ulcers. They just do.)

I got her transitioned and to the point where she was snarfing up all her food and supplements, and was gaining weight and doing great. (Our feeding program is centered completely around gastric health, so the more healing supplements she gets into her, the better.) S handed me two dewormers for the girls about three weeks ago, and I hesitated to give Tre one given the fact that she was teetering on the edge of having gastric issues. She finally was eating really well and gaining weigh, so I decided to go ahead and give it a few days ago. What I should have done was to get a fecal and then have a baseline to go off of before just blindly deworming. WHY didn't I do that? How stupid am I? I felt pressured into deworming her right now with the product I was given, and so therefore I did it.

It sent her spiraling into an ulcery tailspin. The next morning, she only ate about half of her food. That evening, she barely ate anything. Yesterday was the same story, except she ate even less in the morning. I dosed her with Ulcergard, and by the evening she ate about 3/4 of her dinner, but picked around the supplements and fat pellets and mostly just stuck to the hay pellets. This morning, she wouldn't eat hardly anything at all, not even hay, and I dosed her with Ulcergard again as well as a few syringes full of aloe. I left her in the small pen with hay and the rest of her breakfast, and it took her about four hours but she did manage to eat everything in her bucket. I'm thinking she may have sneakily spit out some of the Ulcergard though, because this evening she wouldn't eat anything at all... not even plain hay pellets. I got her to pick at some alfalfa, and I gave her another dose of Ulcergard, but I could barely even get her to eat hay. She just stood there looking miserably off into the distance.

Why. WHY did I deworm her. WHY did I do that. WHAT was I thinking.

Hopefully with Ulcergard and a total system reset (no work, no grain, just hay and Ulcergard), I will be able to chill her system out. As a person who has random ulcer flare-ups for no reason, I know all too well just how bad they hurt and how much they suck. Mine are well-controlled with targeted ranitidine, and have been gone for several months now, thankfully... hopefully I can get hers under control soon too. I have a giant tub of ranitidine in my car, so I might be sharing with her for a little while!

Living outside 24/7 with a friend and with free-choice hay is one of the very best things you can do for a horse's gastric system... it really does help just letting them live and eat the way they were designed to. 

Either way, it just sucks, for the both for of us.

Tomorrow, miss O and I trailer out to our first little endurance ride!! I'm feeling completely unprepared, mostly because I've never done this before and don't really know what to expect. It's a whole new sport for me.... the first time is always a bit scary! I REALLY need to stop writing RIGHT NOW and get to bed, or else I will be super exhausted tomorrow.... I can't wait to write about it!

Black Beauty and Ginger

(One of my friends made the comment that O and Tre reminded her of Ginger and Black Beauty.
Oh man. They DO, don't they? Even down to the part about Black Beauty's knees and Ginger's mental issues. Who knew.)




On Wednesday, Future Hubs and I made the journey down to Austin to pick up Tre. It is NOT my usual policy to take on a horse sight unseen, but given all of the circumstances it was worth taking a chance on. I had all of the rads and a currently sound horse in front of me - and a place for her to go be a happy broodie if she doesn't stay sound - so it was worth taking a chance on. While she was smaller than I had originally anticipated (just so feminine and delicate!), she was very gentle and sweet, and was happy to let us pull her out of her stall, brush her off, put a cooler and boots on her for the trailer, and stay standing quietly in the crossties. She loaded onto my trailer fine.... aaaaand then she totally lost it. My shipping halter is too big for her, and she popped out of it a few seconds after shutting the escape door - we had to use a regular halter instead. The bouncing and pawing began as we pulled down the driveway, and she banged up a STORM for the next half-hour. We stopped for gas and left the truck parked for about 10 minutes while we ran in for some food, and we could actually see the trailer bouncing up and down from inside the store.




Thankfully, by the time we ordered our food and made it back out to the truck, she had totally quieted down. She had also completely pulled down all of her boots, so I ended up just taking them off and leaving her legs naked. She was silent the rest of the way home, thankfully.

She unloaded quietly and was pretty at peace with her surroundings. She has been in a stall for a large part of the past two years (common with show horses) and been fed spaced out meals (also common with stalled horses), so the way our setup is probably looked like heaven. 24/7 high quality slow-fed hay, 24/7 turnout, a friend to live with, no shoes and no hard grains... what more could a horse ask for? Make no mistake, my animals are athletes and they work very hard for a living, but letting them live like horses is the best thing I ever did for them. I'm *sure* the day is coming when someone will get hurt or sick, but I have not had one issue with lameness, sickness, colic, or anything else since I switched from stalling and babying my horses to letting them be who they are. To me this isn't about being a weird hippie natural horsewoman... it's about common sense. A horse is a horse... so let it be a horse. Simple as that.


Tre was super excited to be outside.... O was not quite as amused. I was not sure who would come out on top, but after some back and forth squabbling O firmly asserted herself as the alpha mare. FIRMLY. It has taken a few days, but they have finally gone from O not letting Tre anywhere near her to eating off of the same haybag... finally. They thankfully do not seem to have taken too much interest in being too good of friends, something which I hope will not change. I would rather not have two screaming attached maniacs if I can help it!

O let her eat some of the hay in the shed, after she had already pooped on it, of course.

And then they were finally friends.... and Tre let Kali know that she was NOT welcome at all!

She is going to be VERY pretty once she gets muscled up. VERY pretty!

Of course, as of right now, she has no muscle at all. She is pretty darn SCRAWNY compared to big beefy O! I expect her weight to fluctuate a little bit - after all, walking around 24/7 when you were mostly in a stall before is in and of itself a HUGE increase in exercise. Having 24/7 netted forage is a huge help for getting weight on a horse, so that's at least a start... but she really, really is not a fan of our 'grainfoods.' We feed hay pellets, a pelleted fat supplement, and supplements. Since Tre was on straight Senior before (AKA candy), she is not particularly fond of switching over to the new regime (AKA raw veggies with no dressing). She ESPECIALLY does not like any of the new supplements, and also doesn't like the food to be wetted (harder to pick out the good bits, so instead she mushes all the parts she doesn't like into a glob in the bottom of the bucket and then ignoring the rest). I need to get her eating as I need her to gain some weight, but seeing as she has been living in a stall and was being fed meals, the likelihood of gastric issues is extremely high. She also smells not quite right to me... just sort of chemically and acrid. I'm hypersensitive to that smell, so I'm sure it would go unnoticed if she was with anyone else. She doesn't act like an ulcery horse in any way (except for being picky about her supplements, but that is probably just that she doesn't like them!), but the sooner I can get her fully transitioned the better. Being outside with a friend with hay all the time is huge for helping any gastric issues, no matter how small, so that is half the battle right there. 

She is currently sound, very very sound in fact! She looks even better in person than she did in videos. I pulled her shoes yesterday and was pleased to see her instantly moving better, stomping around on rocks like a champ. All four feet are somewhat contracted, which isn't surprising given her exercise level, but I expect them to beef up within short order. She was very happy after her trim and went running around like a wild thing. Surely she thinks she has died and gone to heaven here!

Her rehab schedule has started with a week of handwalking, walking her over elevated poles and up and down hills to help give her hind end a head start before I get on. She thinks this is great fun and has been very agreeable and easy to handle. (She is fresh though... there is occasional leaping and rearing/striking out like a frisky colt!) She is not very fond of the Theraplate yet (scary vibrating monster) but I at least have her standing still on it at a low setting for a few minutes. On Wednesday, I will get on her and start tackwalking!

Nom nom...

Hills and poles!

Learning to tie... she's a smart girl. Well, mostly. (I did teach her to pony on Friday... there was a lot of rearing and flailing until she figured out exactly what was going on.)


More updates on O shortly!

Some More Comparisons!

O-Ren, not quite 4 weeks with me:

P-mare last February (2012), and P-mare this April:

Immy last March (2012), and Immy this April:

There was a long discussion on Facebook about why she was so unhealthy last year (check out her crappy body condition and her ripply feet!) but was still covered in shiny dapples, and is way way healthier this year but doesn't have a single dapple... I assumed it was because of possible ongoing gastric issues (she gets cowpats at the drop of a hat and stresses so easily, despite the one million things I've done for her - at this point we're thinking she may have permanent intestinal scarring from years of stress/parasites/poor diet), but someone mentioned that pregnancy hormones can do that too, and sure enough, some Google-sleuthing confirmed that for me. She's clearly a LOT healthier this year regardless.

Also, check out the changes in her feet, from flat, flared and ripples to well-connected and strong:

Just goes to show that sweet feed is JUNK FEED! It is my personal opinion that there is NEVER any reason to feed sweet feed to horses, EVER! 

At Mother Nature's Mercy

Aaah, on days like today, I long for the good old days. You know, the ones where no matter what facility you boarded at, no matter how expensive or cheap, you ALWAYS had an indoor? Boarding facilities that wanted to do any sort of regular year-long business in the Great White North had to have them - without an indoor, nobody can ride when it snows! And since it snows up there from October to April, well.... everybody had them! (Or well, all the placed I boarded at had them! Even the super cheap ones!) 

Not so here in Texas. In Texas, indoor arenas do not exist, except for the few rare ones at the super chintzy horse parks in the area. There are quite a number of covered arenas, that is true... but these are relatively rare, and exclusive. (And you have to trailer to them to use them.) It simply doesn't precipitate enough here to warrant building them for the most part. 95% of the time, this obviously isn't a problem. However, on occasions, we might have TWO WHOLE DAYS OF RAIN IN A ROW, rendering everything a completely useless muddy mess. An entire day's worth of a chilly, soaking rain makes for a very grumpy and miserably cold me, and there is little to nothing that I can do with the girls on a day like today. Sure, they could come in the barn for a grooming... but as soon as I manage to get most of the slimy mud off of them, they are going to go right back out and roll in it again! I don't miss having my horses in stalls... but I do miss them being clean on days like today. I miss being able to show up at the barn in a downpour and be able to walk into the nice dry aisleways, pull my horse out of their nice dry stall, and go ride in the nice dry indoor arena. Now that they live outside, and I don't have any place to play inside (barring the barn aisle)... days like today are a wash.

If it were this time next year, I quite imagine I would man up, put my rain slicker and waterproof quarter sheet on, and take Immy for a conditioning hack down the road in the drizzle. (I did this many a time with Gogo!) Obviously, we're quite a long way away from that still! I'm feeling exceptionally grumpy about not being able to get in more rides on her... it has been a mess of a week, and it is only getting muddier and messier.

As a general recap, even though I've touched on it in the last few posts: 

After our first ride last Sunday, I wanted to give her Monday and Tuesday off, and get back on her Wednesday. That all changed when she got scared half to death in the pasture by the other people at the facility, and I had trouble catching her for two days. The new plan was to catch her and love on her Wednesday (I couldn't even touch her on Tuesday), catch her and groom/lunge in a halter on Thursday, catch her and lunge/grounddrive with bridle and surcingle Friday, and get on her Saturday and Sunday. That all went according to plan, except for the fact that she had the Big Bolt accident to deal with on Thursday - I felt that a day off was warranted after being pushed to that limit and being able to come back appropriately from it. Sunday, of course, was the frantic last-second move from the old facility to the new one, and I also felt that it would be in all of our best interested to just get out smoothly, with as little stress as possible. That ride got nixed as well.

That brings us to yesterday. While both girls settled in very well, and went straight away to their hay munching, moving to a new place is definitely stressful, and I decided to lunge her first before seeing whether or not she could tolerate trying for her second ride on only their second day at the new place. Sure glad I did that - Immy and P were obnoxious for each other while Immy was in the barn, and a lot of wiggling/screaming/pooing ensured. The quality of her poos were pretty poor yesterday, but the mare are switching back over from the barfy coastal (who am I kidding, all coastal is barfy, what was I thinking with trying to put them on that garbage?) to the tim and orchard again, so that could be it. Or she could be burnt up with ulcers from the stress at the other facility... both are probably likely. 

I took Immy out to the roundpen to let her stretch her legs. She was full of the zooms, and it was NOT helped by the fact that P went absolutely bonkers when she saw her sister trotting around - she put on a show that would make any National Finals Rodeo horse jealous. Her bucks, squeals, leaps, and high-speed laps around the pen (which is within sight of the roundpen) had Immy on edge, but she held it together and listened to all my transition requests (even if I had to ask twice, or sometimes more than that for downwards transitions! What can I say, the mare has a lot of GO versus WHOA.) 

After our lunging session was over, I decided that it was in her best interested to NOT get on for a second ride. She was just a bit too up and fresh to really consider it. We did, however, decided to go play with some of the cavalletis that were laying around in the field - she walked over all of them like a champ! She even walked over three walk poles spaced together in a row, although she admittedly had to stop and look at them first. When she decided they were not of any concern, she walked smartly over them, lifting her legs like a little ballerina. That's my girl!

Of utmost concern to me right now is her belly. With a skittery, nervous personality like she has, it is safe to say that I will always be fighting The Good Fight against ulcers with this mare. It is probably best to just always assume that she has them, and to be constantly treating or supplementing proactively. If I don't do that, it is almost guaranteed that her GI system will be fried within no time. As I mentioned earlier, her poops were not so great yesterday - but then again, they are switching over to the other kind of hay, so this could also be a contributing factor. The other worrisome thing she did was this: the girls each get 1/2 a flake of alfalfa, now being added slowly back into their diet along with the tim and orchard. A bit of alfalfa is good for tummies - all that calcium acts as a good buffer! - and Immy realized I had tossed it out as she was about halfway done with her grain. She made a beeline over to it, and I caught her and tied her up so she could finish her grain (P will eat it if she doesn't!). Well, she had none of that - not when her tasty alfalfa was waiting. She wouldn't eat another bite. I did get her finish her breakfast at dinnertime though, which was good.

However, this morning she did the same thing - I markedly left the alfalfa out of the haypile so that she wouldn't be tempted to go searching for it while she had her grain in front of her, but she still only ate about 1/2 of her grain before stopping and refusing to eat another bite. She snuffled it around for awhile, but showed no interest in finishing. Possible scenario: the girls get alfalfa and timothy hay pellets as their "grain" (to mix their supplements with), but I was lucky enough to score some alfalfa/timothy mixed pellets made by the same company. (Which is nice... fewer bags, same thing!) That was the first morning the new hay pellets had been mixed in with the rest of her food... perhaps she didn't like them. Or, she was anticipating her alfalfa and wanted nothing to do with her yucky supplements. Or, she is burnt up with ulcers. 

It is hard to say. But as I said before, I'm just going to go with the idea that I need to be very proactive and keep supplementing and treating constantly for ulcers.

What I currently do for healthy tummy management for Imogen:

1) Live outside 24/7 with a shelter and a bestie (Pangea)

2) As much good-quality grass hay as I can possibly give (they do waste a fair bit of it... might look into building another slow feeder!)

3) Small amount of supplemental alfalfa twice a day (for buffering calcium)

4) NO hard grains, just alfalfa/tim hay pellets and Healthy Glo fat supplement to mix in with other supplements and herbs

5) High quality probiotic

6) Aloe juice with every meal

7) Slippery elm bark and marshmallow root with every meal (just started a few weeks ago, possibly has not taken effect yet)
8) Chamomile and SmartCalm - we'll see if they work or not, so far nothing!

Things I could do or look into:

1) Omeprazole, ranitidine, sucralfate, or the like - various hits and misses with these, they don't always work but sometimes they can be a miracle... but the ulcers almost always come back when you stop treatment UNLESS you supplement with other things, or change your horse's living/feeding arrangements. The main function of many of these drugs (not sucralfate) is to inhibit the proton pumps that excrete acid into the stomach. The problem with this? Horses need acid to digest their food! Improperly digested starches and sugars can make their way into the hindgut, which can lead to a whole 'nother barrel of apples: acidosis, hindgut ulceration, leaky gut syndrome (which can lead ultimately to laminitis!), and more. Yes, they do work, but you can end up healing stomach ulcers and creating colonic ulcers in the process! Better to try and work synergistically with the horse to make everything work harmoniously rather than throw a drug at it, in my humble opinion. 

2) Pumpkin seeds - full of nitric oxide. I hear great things about these!

3) Dried cabbage - sounds nasty but they are high in L-glutamine, which heals the lining of the stomach.

4) Papaya juice - I used Natural Plan Stomach Soother for my old greyhound and it worked great!

5) Before EVERY workout, give alfalfa and/or a few cups of hay pellets mixed with her slippery elm, marshmallow root, aloe, and any of the aforementioned things should I add them in... while she has hay in front of her all the time, I can't guarantee that she has been munching directly before I arrive.... she might be working on an empty belly, which is no good at all!

6) Oat flour - for more Betas Glucan and hindgut health (it is what make SUCCEED so good, but without the $$$$$$!)

Readers, what do YOU do for proactively keeping your ulcer-prone horse's hindgut healthy? Share away!

The girls not enjoying the rain:

Aaah, that's better!

And yes, I did go fix Immy's sliding blanket after I took the picture! ;)