In The Saddle with Anita Marsh: Worrying times as our veteran pony falls ill

My daughter has a fabulous relationship with her and you may remember in the past they were out and about competing and in our local pony club.

Mara still jumps at home and is exercised three times a week, but we no longer compete her out.

She’s so fit for her age that it was a shock to find her in the morning super quiet, without her usual whinny over the stable door.

I popped her breakfast in her stable and she went to eat it, whilst I was busy feeding my other two horses.

When I went back to collect the feed bowls I saw Mara hadn’t eaten all of her breakfast. This never happens. She seemed super quiet too.

I thought I’d leave her in whilst I turned out my other two horses, and check on her afterwards. After going into her stable and checking on her I wasn’t happy with how she was. She just seemed very quiet.

I couldn’t put my finger on it. I could see she wasn’t herself, but she wasn’t sweating up or kicking at her tummy. She just seemed off it.

At the age of 21, I figured it was best to call the vets out. It’s not worth me trying to guess what’s wrong when nothing obvious stood out, apart from her being quiet.

She hadn’t eaten all of her haylage, which sounds vague but she’s the type of greedy pony that scoffs everything you put in front of her.

With this in mind we put an emergency call into the Equine Veterinary Centre, our brilliant equine vets based out in Doncaster and it wasn’t long before vet Damien Cain arrived.

Damien was absolutely fantastic. He could see she was quiet, but like me - there wasn’t anything else ‘obvious’ to see.

He’s a greatly experienced vet and one I’ve met before years ago so I knew I was in safe hands.

The first thing he did was take her temperature. This came in super high at 40 degrees. A huge red flag. The normal temperature for a horse or pony sits around 37.5 degrees, so this meant she had a fever.

His calm demeanour and experienced skill set meant that within a few moments he had tubed our pony with electrolytes and injected her with antibiotics and pain relief. Due to her temperature being so high we didn’t need to sedate her to.

The tubing of electrolytes was literally a case of feeding a tube directly into her throat to get the fluids straight into her. He did this quickly, carefully and with great skill so as not to panic Mara. It’s in instances like this that you really know you have a great vet team around you.

Damien took bloods and showed me how to correctly take a horse’s temperature. I’d never had to do this, and have been lucky to avoid ill horses. We needed to get her temperature down fast. So every few hours I needed to check her and message Damien.

We were able to give her a pick of grass and walk her out for a bit too, depending on how her temperature was going.

We were pleased to see that by the following morning Mara was back to her usual chatty self, eating, drinking and getting bargy by the stable door to go out. Her temperature was spot on 37.5 too. It felt like we were over the worse part.

Damien kept in touch and contacted us with her blood results. They just ran a little high in her liver, so despite Mara being back to normal in herself, we needed to double check the results in a couple of weeks time.

We organised Millie Smiles, a lovely young vet from the practice, to come and retake her bloods. Millie arrived and I explained to her that Mara isn’t good with injections usually. The last time we’d done this she was quiet with fever but normally she panics and tries to run away.

Millie was excellent. She talked softly to Mara and went to take the bloods, but Mara wasn’t happy so our vet suggested we twitch her to help keep her calm.

Nose twitches are used to help calm horses by releasing endorphins into the body. It’s a natural way which avoids the use of drugs. If you imagine a piece of soft rope, in a loop, on a handle - that’s what it looks like.

By putting this pressure onto the horse’s upper lip it stimulates the nerves to cause the endorphin release. Most horses appears to enter a trance-like state and stand still. Mara was much calmer and Millie could draw the blood.

Millie has been qualified now for a couple of years and has a keen interest in equine health. With experience in competing horses in addition to looking after them, we couldn’t have asked for more from a vet.

She’s got a great bedside manner too with horses and Mara clearly liked her. She was lovely to speak to and, as promised, she called me a few days later with the results.

Millie explained that Mars’s liver enzymes had been raised in the first blood count, possibly indicating liver damage, but the second results were great and had returned to normal. This indicated it was an infection, which was good news.

Mara was given the all clear from her infection and was good to go back to her riding duties. Whilst we don’t know what caused it exactly, we are pleased she’s back on form. For a minute there I’d been worried - but with the great vet team around us we felt confident we were in the best hands.

Thanks to the Equine Veterinary Team, in particular Damien and Millie and whilst you are both lovely - I do hope we don’t need you again!

If you’d like to follow my horsey adventures then please follow me on Facebook at In The Saddle - Anita Marsh.