Rolling Dog Farm Blog

We just discovered that little blind Brynn, who came to the sanctuary last weekend when she was one-week old, has major medical problems aside from her blindness.

We noticed when she arrived that she peed a lot, but the folks who brought her assured us this was normal for her, and we knew that foals in general urinated more than adult horses.  We also noticed her neck seemed very short and stubby, although we were told that Arabian foals typically looked like this.  Still, by Friday we noticed Brynn had urine scalds on her hindquarters.  I called our equine vet in Missoula, Dr. Bill Brown.  To summarize a lengthy conversation, Bill basically said, "Uh oh.  Let’s get her in."

Bill already had a full day, so I planned to meet him at the clinic at 5:30 p.m. Friday evening.  I loaded Brynn and her momma in the trailer late in the afternoon and drove them in to see Bill.  It wasn’t long before the bad news started coming.

Right away Bill could tell Brynn’s frequent urination wasn’t natural at all.  In fact, she most likely has an ‘ectopic ureter,’ which means the kidney is bypassing the bladder altogether and is dumping urine straight into the urethra.  There’s no pooling of urine in the bladder, hence the constant dripping and squirting.  We don’t know without running further diagnostics (endoscopy and dye tests) whether only one kidney is doing this or both, but judging from the amount of urine coming out, I suspect it’s both.

Listening to her heart, Bill detected a severe heart murmur, either Grade 4 or 5 (with 5 being the worst).  Bill could actually feel the murmur with his hand on Brynn’s ribcage.  That’s how bad it is. 

We then did a urinalysis and ran a blood panel, and learned two new things.  Brynn has what is known as "failure of passive transfer," in which she didn’t get enough basic antibodies from her mother.  Specifically, her immunoglobulin antibody (IgG) levels are way too low.  This makes her predisposed to infections.  The blood panel also showed that her liver values are screwed up, so there is something going on with that critical organ, too.

And then there’s her neck.  We took X-rays, which showed Brynn has malformations in her vertebrae at the top of spine.  Parts of the vertebrae appeared to have fractured into fragments in certain places.  Bill looked at them and said, "I can’t explain why it looks that way."

Yikes.

What do we do now?  Well, we don’t give up on a two-week old little life because nature dealt her a really bad set of cards.  We’re going to do an echocardiogram of her heart to pinpoint the cause of the murmur.  We’re going to give her a plasma infusion to boost her core antibody levels.  And we’ll consult with a specialist about the ectopic ureter problem, which may be fixable with surgery.

However, the heart murmur could rule her out as a candidate for surgery because she may not be able to tolerate the anesthesia.  If so, that means all we can do is keep applying vaseline to her rear end to prevent the urine scalding.  Bill says that another foal he saw with a similar heart murmur lived about one year before dying of complications. 

There’s nothing we can do about her vertebral malformations except wait and see what happens as she grows.  Bill’s concerned she could become a ‘wobbler.’  Only time will tell.

At this point we don’t even know how much any of this would cost, except for the plasma infusion, which is about $450.  If her life expectancy is only a year, of course we’ll have to decide not only what we can afford but what’s reasonable to do.  We could be facing some very difficult decisions ahead.

Meanwhile, this baby girl has no idea she has this long list of medical problems.  She’s perky, happy, vigorous, and has a real zest for life.  She’s also a very affectionate and loving little thing.  We had several volunteers and groups of visitors here this weekend, and they all fell in love with Brynn. 

We’ve had other animals who defied the odds, and we can only hope that Brynn will, too.  Please keep this tiny creature in your thoughts.