Everyone's fav. sprinter.........

C

Colin Phillips

At the Start
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Dec 22, 2003
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......isn't well, story from the RP site :

Pawan misses Bunbury after illness scare​


Tony Smurthwaite ​


TRAINER and rider Ann Stokell said she feared for the life of her favourite horse Pawan as she ruled him out of a shot at the £100,000 Ladbrokes Bunbury Cup on Friday.

Pawan and Stokell have developed a cult following after Coral offered odds on the pair not winning a race in 2008, a feat they achieved last time out when successful for the first time in 33 runs together since August 2006.

Stokell said this morning: "Unfortunately we won't be able to run him as he had a bellyache last night which got worse and which ended up with us at the vets at 2.30am this morning. We thought he might need surgery and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried what might happen.


"We took him to Warwick racecourse on Wednesday on our way to Newmarket and by the time he got therehe had the bellyache. I walked him round for two hours without it really getting any better. After the drugs and things we tried I had the vet out and we were up most of the night. I haven't got a clue what caused it but we had one with the same symptomsthe night before but he improved after 40 minutes.

"The most important thing is that the horse is okay and the vet rang at 6.30 this morning to say that surgery hadn't been required, and that the horse was standing and eating hay."

Pawan and Stokell have teamed up in 107 races, seven of them as winners.
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Shads, or anyone, what would be the syptoms that you would see when a horse has the bellyache?
 
I can only imagine she means colic when she says "the bellyache" ~ symptoms, aside from obvious discomfort, tend to be trying to get down (making to lie down and then rising again continually) and occasionally biting at the abdomen. Usually you would try to keep a colicy horse moving and possibly give it castor oil to get things moving internally.
 
You would see the horses restless, as rory said, getting up and down, and they do look at their bellys and sort kick ´em as well, as if to kick away the pain. They do sweat heavily as well, and if you are familiar with your horse you can see the pain in their eyes as well. She def. described a colic, as thats basicly was bellyache is, one way or the other.
 
rorydelargy said:
Usually you would try to keep a colicy horse moving and possibly give it castor oil to get things moving internally.
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Oof!!!! Where are the QI bells and whistles when one wants them?! :p ;)

It is old thinking to keep a horse moving when it has colic - the days of leading them around for hours in the middle of the night in the rain to stop them from getting down (anyone remember one of Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers books?!) are in the past now. The obvious theory behind walking them is to stop them rolling, and thrashing, thus stop them possibly twisting a gut during said thrashings - which is actually pretty damn difficult to do, even for a horse! It is now thought best to leave them to lie down and rest - and although castor oil is an old remedy traditionally used for colic it is only any use if there is a blockage, when it may dislodge it so the animal can pass it out. However it is now known that a colic is not restricted to a blockage - in fact a "colic" covers a myriad of intestinal problems. A colic is, basically, a bellyache (for want of a better word) which can be caused by all sorts. It can be simple wind, a blockage, a reaction to something eaten or ingested, a twisted gut, a rupture in the intestine, and so on and so forth. Buscopan is the medication of choice generally in a colic case - it settles the stomach mainly by relaxing taut muscles I'm sure. I think it's similar to the drugs I was given when I had a serious case of gastro enteritis once (I forget the name) which were supposed to smooth out the stomach muscles and relax them, thus stopping them from cramping.

As Rory and Crazyhorse have said, the symptoms may be sweating, biting at the belly, general restlessness especially when allied with lots of lying down then getting up or rolling, general listlessness, lack of appetite, a loud rumbling belly (my poor l'il boy gets that quite a lot - he got quite colicky a few times before he went out ot grass), an inability to pass droppings, amongst others. Certain types are more prone to colic than others, these include nervous/anxious/fragile types, windsuckers and crib-biters and those that wolf down their food without thinking about it.
 
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Colic claimed my 2 most favourite horses - my first racehorse, Maitreya and also Kahlua Bear. I was advised to operate with Maitreya and so 2 ops, £6k and a dead horse later swore I would never put a horse through that again. Yes some do survive but they often end up with lesions on the gut which causes further bouts of colic in later life. Sadly I visited Teds breeders recently and they lost his mother this year to colic shortly before she was due to foal and the foal too - all in all it sounded like a complete cock-up by the vets - 4 months on and they are still devastated by the whole event.
If I won the lottery it is the one area of veterinary research I would contribute to. There are so many different causes and types. Funnily enough I was always of the "Don't walk" them camp after being advised by my father a retired vet but we have had success in getting rid of compaction colics by light to moderate exercise including lungeing so I would treat each case as individual.
Its the one problem with a horse I dread getting.
 
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