The woes of getting old

Our gray horse, Jasper, has been dropping lots of weight lately.  I'd estimate about 100 lbs. since we got home from Arizona.  Despite our feeding him extra hay, grain, and beet pulp his rib cage is still showing.

We don't really know how old Jasper is.  According to the lady we bought him from he should be about 25 years old, the same as Doc, the buckskin.  However, Jasper appears older than Doc so he might be upwards of 28 or 29.  Whatever age he is, we knew it was time to get him to the vet to have a look at his teeth and overall wellbeing.  I made an appointment and we loaded them up for the 45 minute drive.  (Our vet prefers our old gentlemen come into their office so they can be placed in the stocks when they're tranquilized so they don't fall over.)

First up was Jasper.  It took four injections of tranquilizer to get him to sleep (Doc only took two).  Then the vet went to work on his mouth with the grinder.  This is called floating the teeth and it's the process of removing all the sharp points on the upper and lower cheek teeth.  When horses grind their food it causes their teeth to wear unevenly causing points and hooks that can be quite painful and can be a cause of them dropping feed and weight.

While Jasper was still sleeping the doctor gloved up to do a cleaning on his sheath.  Nasty, I know, but it's necessary for a male horse to have this done annually.  This year it was especially good because the doc found a melanoma in that area that is about the size of the tip of my little finger.   Gray horses are genetically prone to melanomas.  I try to inspect him regularly for growths, but never in that area so if I hadn't asked for that procedure we wouldn't have known about it.

Next up was Doc.  He's the one that easily goes to sleep after one injection of tranquilizer.  But he started waking up right before she was done and he still needed his privates cleaned so he got another dose.

The second shot really did him in.  Here he is enjoying his drugs while we wait for him to wake up enough to load into the trailer.  You can't have a wobbly horse in the trailer who might fall over.  He has no front incisors so his tongue is always hanging out.

The vet told us about a drug that has been used on horses that has shown good outcomes for gray horses with melanomas.  The drug, cimetidine, is actually a prescription antihistamine.  I came home and read the study and although it was a small group of test subjects, 2/3rd of the horses had their tumors shrink after several months of treatment and the remaining 1/3rd didn't have any further growth.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The six bottles pictured above is a one month supply of the drug.  

He gets six pills at a time, three times per day for the next three to six months.  Yes, that's 18 pills per day.

It's a good thing we're retired and are home most of the time.  She also wants us to start feeding him soaked hay pellets and senior grain three times a day to get some weight back on.  Of course all Irv can see is $$$$, but I believe if you take on the responsibility of a pet you're obligated to do the best for them during their time on earth.  

We've never had to do long term meds for a horse before.  Typically we mix the dose with grape jelly (which they love) and force feed it into their mouth.  Doing this three times a day for up to six months will be quite time consuming though so I tried to think of an easier solution.

I went to the magic of Google and found that they make pill pockets for horses and Amazon sells them.  The only problem is that they are quite pricey and we're going to need a big supply of them.  So then I looked up recipes to make my own.  They actually look quite yummy...oats, flax seed, brown sugar, bran,  molasses, applesauce, carrots, etc.  All the stuff horses love.

They may not be the perfect solution though because six pills make a lot of powder and horses have a great sense of smell.  Maybe we'll have to split it between two cookies so it's not so powdery.  I'm trying a couple different options that will hopefully make it as easy as possible to get these meds down his throat without us having to catch him and force that syringe into his mouth.

The things you do for your animals.💓💓💓