Sniper's Founder Scare

In the land of horse-ownership, one of the most feared things is seeing your normally ‘healthy as a horse’ pony show up lame one day. For me it starts with a phone call from the barn owner. As the cell rings at a weird time and I see it’s her on the caller ID, my heart sinks and I fear the worse. You’d think one eventually gets used to it, but I have not yet.
This was the situation five weeks ago with Snipes. The barn owner (BO) called me at 8:30 am while I was on my way to work, early for once. The phone call was something like “you need to get to the barn now and take care of this”. So to the barn I went. My horse was sore on both his front feet and every horse owner knows about the dreaded founder.

What is founder? In layman’s terms, it is an affliction horses sometimes get when they are fed too much rich carbohydrates. Vets are not 100% sure of the entire founder process as it can come on with relatively little warning and is not a guaranteed affliction. Horses who get into a bag feed overnight and gorge themselves in their goodies can subsequently founder, or horses who are on too rich of grass pasture without proper acclimation, horses who are obese, ones who have leg injuries, and ponies can all be prone to founder. Once a horse founders it has a higher chance of foundering again and again if not carefully watched.

The process of founder generally starts with a horse exhibiting soreness in both front feet. Chronic cases eventually lead to degeneration of the bones inside the hoof, permanent lameness, and often times severe discomfort for the horse. In managed, milder cases, the horse is useable, but must always be watched like a hawk for relapses.

So imagine my concern when the BO called to say Snipes was lame on both fronts and possibly rocking his weight off his feet and was “walking on eggshells” (another founder sign). We’d been watching the boy closely because the pastures were so rich this spring and he gains weight quickly (frankly, my beloved horse is a pig when it comes to food!). Last year we had a founder scare and ended up putting his ass in a grazing muzzle to limit his caloric intake during the day (there’s some evidence that the sugars are higher in grass during the day and less so at night). We hadn’t yet put him in the muzzle this spring, but were monitoring him closely nonetheless.

So that first morning, I stood in the rain with a cold water hose and watered his legs and feet for 20 minutes. I went back that afternoon armed with buckets and ice and iced both feet for 20 minutes each – keeping the inflammation down is key with founder. However, there was a chance that he wasn’t actually foundering, but that when I got his hooves trimmed two days prior, we just cut his hooves too short and he was just ‘quicked’ – like when you cut a fingernail too close to the bed. We all kept our fingers crossed. The BO gave him some pain relievers and kept an eye on him.

After two days, it appeared he was getting better, which with founder, would have not been the case. After a week he was just about normal and the following week I was back to riding him. It was NOT founder!! Thank goodness!

Whoops, I’m sorry, Sniper – I hope I don’t have Jon trim your hooves too short again! However, his butt was still put in a muzzle for a week and he now lives in the paddock with the least amount of grass so we can get the weight back off him. Damn – right after winter he was in great weight – he literally gained it in weeks.