Pony woes
Sigh.
Having managed to entirely get rid of the last lot of pinworm, GB's started scratching his bum again in the last couple of days.... Presumably, he has a favourite scratching post somewhere in the field, and managed to reinfect himself with it.
More worryingly, he's lost about 20kg in the last couple of months. I did think that he'd lost weight because he'd had that time off work, but now that I've done another measurement and looked at the trend (I have a nifty little graph on my phone that I use to keep track of it), it's still going on so that can't be the only thing. He's been a bit pathetic over the last few days, too.
So, today I got the vet to come and look at him. The vet wandered up the yard, got pointed in the right direction, came up to the stable and said "Oh, it's grumpy that I'm here to see!"
The current working hypothesis is that, as well as the pinworm, which doesn't really do anything but give them an itchy bum, being back, he's also picked up encysted redworm, which tends to cause weight loss and lethargy.
(In discussing it with the yard owner later, she pointed out that he didn't get the usual wormer - which covers redworm - last time around, because he'd just had the pinworm specific - which may not.)
(He's likely to be very susceptible to worms, both because he's such and old man and because he spent the last decade in a pretty much worm-free environment, so he's got no resistance.)
So, plan is that there's a poo sample going off to the lab for an egg count, and hopefully it will be positive for redworm, which we can treat at the same time as the pinworm. If the count is clear, it's probably time for blood tests and such, which I'm sure will be delightful (even today, GB slammed the vet into the wall in revenge for using a stethoscope on him. I dread to think what drawing blood would be like). The vet's also going to send over a bottle of magic potion that I can put on his bum to actually kill the eggs (have to wonder why the previous vet didn't give me some of that, but there we go).
On the plus side, we did have a very good lesson. We kept it slow, and by the end of it I was getting a really lovely walk out of him. That's more impressive than it sounds, as he has an incredibly pathetic walk normally.
Last Friday, I got a last-minute spare ticket to see Scenes From An Execution. It's a very strange play. We missed the first ten minutes due to too much chatting over dinner, which probably didn't help, but I'm not sure by how much.
This entry was originally posted at http://flick.dreamwidth.org/871480.html, where it has
comment(s). Add comments here or there, if you feel like it.
Having managed to entirely get rid of the last lot of pinworm, GB's started scratching his bum again in the last couple of days.... Presumably, he has a favourite scratching post somewhere in the field, and managed to reinfect himself with it.
More worryingly, he's lost about 20kg in the last couple of months. I did think that he'd lost weight because he'd had that time off work, but now that I've done another measurement and looked at the trend (I have a nifty little graph on my phone that I use to keep track of it), it's still going on so that can't be the only thing. He's been a bit pathetic over the last few days, too.
So, today I got the vet to come and look at him. The vet wandered up the yard, got pointed in the right direction, came up to the stable and said "Oh, it's grumpy that I'm here to see!"
The current working hypothesis is that, as well as the pinworm, which doesn't really do anything but give them an itchy bum, being back, he's also picked up encysted redworm, which tends to cause weight loss and lethargy.
(In discussing it with the yard owner later, she pointed out that he didn't get the usual wormer - which covers redworm - last time around, because he'd just had the pinworm specific - which may not.)
(He's likely to be very susceptible to worms, both because he's such and old man and because he spent the last decade in a pretty much worm-free environment, so he's got no resistance.)
So, plan is that there's a poo sample going off to the lab for an egg count, and hopefully it will be positive for redworm, which we can treat at the same time as the pinworm. If the count is clear, it's probably time for blood tests and such, which I'm sure will be delightful (even today, GB slammed the vet into the wall in revenge for using a stethoscope on him. I dread to think what drawing blood would be like). The vet's also going to send over a bottle of magic potion that I can put on his bum to actually kill the eggs (have to wonder why the previous vet didn't give me some of that, but there we go).
On the plus side, we did have a very good lesson. We kept it slow, and by the end of it I was getting a really lovely walk out of him. That's more impressive than it sounds, as he has an incredibly pathetic walk normally.
Last Friday, I got a last-minute spare ticket to see Scenes From An Execution. It's a very strange play. We missed the first ten minutes due to too much chatting over dinner, which probably didn't help, but I'm not sure by how much.
This entry was originally posted at http://flick.dreamwidth.org/871480.html, where it has
comment(s). Add comments here or there, if you feel like it.