Herbalist Michaela Ritter of SamoVila Specialised Herbal Therapy tells us about a poorly Oldenburg mare whose owner asked for help when she arrived back at the yard in a dreadful state. This blog originally appeared on the SamoVila website and we are pleased to be able to reproduce it here.
Wonderstar, or Starlet for short, is an year-old Oldenburg mare. She was home-bred and has been with her owner from birth. Not always the easiest horse to handle, putting it politely, but deep down she has a loving heart. In November her owner decided to send Starlet away to a professional horse trainer in order to further, her education. So Starlet went away and the owner received regular updates, giving her the impression that all was going well.
At the beginning of March , the owner was told that Starlet was ready to be ridden. She had lost all muscle tissue and her spine was so protruding that it was impossible to even think she could have taken a saddle, let alone a rider.
Starlet was weak and depressed, and it soon became apparent she had a cough. She was told that nothing out of the ordinary was found and therefore no action was taken at the time. And this is where I came in. She had been given Ventipulmin but this had not made any change and Starlet was now coughing blood as well as mucous. Her owner was reaching the point of considering having to put her to sleep. I went to see Starlet on Starlet was so thin that her hipbones and every single rib were protruding.
She had literally no muscle tissue and appeared very weak. Her neck was thin and the thyroid gland was swollen to the size of a goose egg. The skin on all four fetlocks was red, raw and inflamed and was scaling off. She had thick green and yellow mucous coming from both her nostrils, her breathing was laboured and visibly going through the abdomen. Starlet had a very dry and deep sitting cough and when she coughed it shook up her whole body โ it went through her like a violent wave, ending with the expulsion of lumps of thick yellow and green, pus-like mucus.
