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  Discussion on Dehydration
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Member:
dmcall

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009 - 7:13 pm:

I am at wits end. We have race horses and they can't seem to finish. I take blood and it shows they are dehydrated which is probably why they can't finish. I have tried electrolytes and do have them drinking better but they still aren't right. They blow after minimal exercise. One blood count did show a liver infection. Anybody have any thoughts?
Member:
vickiann

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009 - 7:31 pm:

Dolly -- Have you read Dr. O's articles about administering electrolytes?
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009 - 7:39 pm:

Hello Dolly,
What type racing are we talking about and how many horses suffer from this? Can you tell us what your blood results are and be sure to let us know which are post or pre-race samples?
DrO
Member:
3chip

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009 - 8:17 pm:

Quarter Horse racing and Thoroughbred racing are two different animals of course. Fast twitch vs slow twitch muscles. The sprinter needs sprint training while the thoroughbreds will benefit more from endurance type training (Interval training techniques). The Thoroughbreds would be more prone to dehydration which can be caused by many things but on the surface it is usually conditioning. Do you have a trainer or are you doing the training yourself?
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 11, 2009 - 9:26 pm:

Hi Dolly,

If I remember correctly you have Standardbreds. I do too. Any relation to Corey Callahan?

As for the dehydration problem, I find that my horses will not drink salty electrolytes concoctions in their water. They will tolerate sweet electrolyte concoctions, but what they like most is Molasses, so after I train and race that's what they get in their water. I do not put it in their water every day, so they look at it as a treat and this allows them to have clean fresh water in front of them at all other times. I also put about a tablespoon in their feed at night and I also put water in their pelleted feed, they love it. I do not add anything to their pellets, no bran etc. and they are fed at least three times a day. ( I feed Purina Ultium).

I do not consider their training to be excessive. They jog or tow 4-5 miles a day, train double headers once a week, not very fast but quick last 1/8's on the last trip and they race once a week or whenever they get in. I try to keep my horses as relaxed as possible, so they do not sweat much except when they train.

My bloodwork has come back perfect on both horses.

Can you describe your feed and training routine?

I have found over the years that horses that blow excessively after being worked are either in pain ( for a variety of reasons), are being stressed and/ or have a fitness problem due to overtraining or undertraining.

Rachelle
Member:
dmcall

Posted on Saturday, Mar 14, 2009 - 10:05 pm:

Dr.O - We have standardbreds. Quite a few have been having this problem. Mostly mares but a few geldings. Blood is usually drawn the day after they race.
Member:
dmcall

Posted on Saturday, Mar 14, 2009 - 10:18 pm:

Hi Rachelle - Yes, we do have standardbreds and Corey is my son.
We feed a sweet feed with a little bulp in it. Feed 3 times a day. They get timothy hay. We put electrolytes in the feed along with some other vitamins.
Just got blood back on the one horse that we have been having a lot of problems with (of course he is one of the best in the barn) and this is the best that his blood has been. But when we jog him - he is still blowing too hard for what is being done. We have tried hooking him, leading him and putting him in the equisizer and he should not be blowing like that. I don't believe he is a lame horse, we had him scoped & nothing there, had him stomach scoped - perfect. Eats pretty good and drinks pretty good. Out of condition - maybe for racing as we haven't been doing much with him - but not for jogging a few miles. Since his blood came back so good, I guess we are just going to keep jogging him and see what happens.
We bought some molasses and are going to give that a whirl so we can try to keep his numbers good.
The blood work on the mare we are having problems with shows something going on with the liver. Any ideas for that?
Wouldn't it be nice if they could talk? Well, maybe not.
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Sunday, Mar 15, 2009 - 7:19 am:

Dolly,

I have experienced the liver problem with one of my mares. For 1 1/2 years we tried everything to get her numbers down to normal. I tried everything from Milk thistle and Liver Flush from Omega Alpha and doses of B vitamins, we treated her with several different types of antibiotics and did a bile analysis blood test( came back normal)the numbers did go down but never went back to normal.

My vet suggested as a final thing before we were going to do a liver biopsy. This was to change her feed to a high fat and low protein diet. This is what worked. The vet said to give the diet 6 weeks to work, I took blood after 3 weeks and her liver enzymes were normal for the first time in a year and a half. Exercise and everything else were the same.

I originally put her on Vintage Performance ( Blue Seal extruded feed) and Horsemans edge HF ( Purina sweet feed) which had her at 11% fat and 11% protein. I do not like to feed sweetfeed, so I switched to Ultium( Purina) approx. the same fat and protein. This seemed to work fine as well.

As she progressed with this feed change, I noticed not only her liver enzymes, but her other numbers (SGOT, CPK etc.) were staying more and more in the normal range.

The price on the Ultium is rather high at 19.99 a #50 bag, but I feed much less and my need for extra supplements has diminished greatly. I only supplement with Garlic and OCD pellets.

BTW, Corey is a great driver, My husband and I watch him drive at Dover all the time.

Take care and I hope all your horses recover.
Rachelle
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Sunday, Mar 15, 2009 - 8:44 am:

Dolly since it seems you have moved on past the dehydration issue to a liver issue I want you to review Diseases of Horses » Colic, Diarrhea, GI Tract » Mouth, Esophagus, and Liver » Liver Disease and Failure. Again knowing what tests were run and what the results were (including the units_ and the lab normals might allow us to comment further.

Racelle's history seems more consistent with muscle disease than liver disease as the solution of a high fat diet would not be appropriate for liver disorders.
DrO
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Sunday, Mar 15, 2009 - 5:51 pm:

Dr.O,

It was the high GGT number that my vet associated with the liver problem. The lab range was 0-37, my mares GGT was 121, the vet said this was the highest GGT he had seen on a horse ever. I have normal ranges for her in full work where her GGT was 17 ( very normal) and this was the number that she returned too after the change in feed. This seemed to be a very chronic problem with no simple resolution, until we changed the feed.

This mare did have some muscle enzyme issues but those numbers were never higher than high normal or low high and had more to do with the type of work she was doing and what training level she was at.

I sometimes use the following site to check the meanings of my blood results. It is a very good explanation of the different types of results one gets on a blood report.

I have been able to catch things very early in the disease process because I knew what was "normal' for my horses. I had resting bloods and working bloods and in some cases day before race bloods just to make sure everything was ok.

https://www.gateway.net.au/~mcvc/index.html

In Dolly's case, tho I do not know for sure, I expect it was her horse's GGT reading that alerted the vet to the liver problem, not sure we can yet call it a disease.

Just my thoughts
Rachelle
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Monday, Mar 16, 2009 - 8:31 am:

Assuming your diagnosis correct Rachelle how do you account for the fat appearing to help? Fats are known more more their ability to damage a liver than help it and our contraindicated in liver disease do to the stress it puts on the liver for processing, for more on this see the article on Hepatic Lipidosis.

You are correct when you say elevated GGT is specific for the liver and more precisely the biliary system of the liver. It is interesting to note in your case that the SGOT (now referred to as AST) another sensitive indicator of liver insult, was normal.

I don't pretend to know what was going on with your horse Rachelle but my purpose here is to illustrate the common mistake of over-interpreting serum levels of the chemistries we often run on horses. I suspect you are right that Dolly has had liver problems diagnosed from some chemistry value and that is exactly what I want to address with the take home message that if lab results support the clinical findings the significance can be quite high and may even help with the severity of the disease but as a general way to go about diagnosing diseases it can be a loose cannon.
DrO
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Monday, Mar 16, 2009 - 12:21 pm:

Dr. O,

Ok, this may be far-fetched and I may be reaching a bit, but in this mares case I believe that the higher fat diet allowed her to gain weight, allowed her to use fat and not muscle for her energy and at the same time build her muscle mass correctly for her body ( She's a big mare).

I also believe that the high GGT numbers were indicative of the way her body flushed out the toxins created due to normal muscle breakdown during heavy training. In other words, I think she had a chronic tying up problem, but no real clinical symptoms. Once the muscle breakdown cycle returned to normal so did her liver enzymes.

I have had mares that tie up have AST(SGOT) numbers in the 20,000 range. This mare very rarely went above 1000 and quickly DrOpped. I spoke to a few vets about this and they told me these types of numbers were normal after a hard work and I was getting overly concerned over nothing.

In this mare, not saying this would be the case for all horses having the same types of problems controlling the muscle breakdown with the higher fat diet also led to less toxicity for her system and her liver and that's why her GGT numbers came down and stabilized.

Rachelle
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Monday, Mar 16, 2009 - 11:52 pm:

Though I do think you might have something with some sort of myopathy responsive to high fat diets muscle wasting is not a cause of elevated muscle enzymes that I am aware of. From the information available it is not certain why the GGT was high.
DrO
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Tuesday, Mar 17, 2009 - 3:46 pm:

Dr. O,

What does cause elevated muscle enzymes? Because if we know that then this may help Dolly's horses too which are suffering from tying up.

I think there are too many reasons and not enough information to make a correlation to either why horses tie up and why a horse's performance would be affected when their GGT numbers are high, but I think somehow they are both related.

As far as muscle wasting, I am not sure that is exactly what it was, somehow I think it was the byproducts of the normal muscle building cycle where some muscle tissue is destroyed in order to make the muscle stronger. In this mare's case that cycle only worked properly with a high fat diet. Sort of reminds me of the movie Lorenzo's Oil.

Any way, here's hoping Dolly's horses get better.
Thank you for your comments
Rachelle
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Wednesday, Mar 18, 2009 - 8:25 am:

You will find a description of muscle enzymes and causes for the rise at Diseases of Horses » Lameness » Muscle & Tendon Diseases » Rhabdomyolysis: Tying Up, Shivers, PSSM, EPSM.
DrO
New Member:
remount

Posted on Wednesday, Jul 22, 2009 - 10:39 am:

Dr. Oglesby,

I have a 13yr old T.B. that has suddenly refused to drink water. He normally will drink from bucket and automatic. I turned off the auto to monitor intake, but it was only a few inches in the last 48 hrs. His grain was cut and replaced with a very soupy mash with electrolytes and the hay is being soaked, all at the direction of the vet. Blood came back possibly pointing to viral.
SMZ's am/pm 5 days now and 30,000 ml of plasmalyte to date, also on a blood-fluid-muscle supplement w/creatine. Symptoms started 8 days ago and has progressed to current.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Remount
Member:
sodmonst

Posted on Wednesday, Jul 22, 2009 - 10:52 pm:

Hey, what about Dolly's concern?
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