I have a 2yo going through it right now. He was fine as a weanling and suddenly developed ataxia one day, before I owned him. He may have had a traumatic injury like falling over in the pasture, or it may have just been genetic, who knows.
At first, they didn't know what was wrong with him. They went through all of the EPM tests, etc., and finally concluded that he was a wobbler. One thing you can do is turn them in a tight circle. A wobbler cannot cross over his hind legs and disengage the hindquarters. He will always scoot the near leg next to the far leg, then move the far leg out, etc. Also, if you grab his tail, he cannot lift it normally. It will usually curl up and fall over to one side. If you have someone walk him off, and you walk next to his tail and pull it toward you, he will not be able to stabilize himself, but rather will sort of collapse toward you. These are definitive tests for the wobbler.
So the people that bred my foal kept him at a farm that had heard of a protocol for young wobblers, less than one year of age. When researching this later, I specifically read that it will not work on horses over one year of age. It involved trying to keep the horse from growing. The idea is that if you keep him from growing, the vertebral space for the spinal cord might expand enough to stop pinching the spinal cord. He was sequestered in a confined area. They purposefully fed him the poorest quality grass hay only, absolutely no alfalfa. He had supplements of Vitamin B and selenium, and gave him OCD pellets. They had him on this protocol for months. Apparently his condition stabilized from God-awful, but he never recovered. They decided to give up on him, and offered him to me as a pet because he was out of a mare I raced that I had bought back from them. I agreed to take him, and he was shipped up on a van.
The farm had warned me several times that he would not look good because of the protocol he was on. I was still pretty unprepared for how awful he would be. The now-yearling unloaded out of that van looking utterly wasted. As a long yearling, he looked like the size of a weanling. His neck was thin and reedy, his stomach bulged with a hay belly but his ribs showed, and he had a tremendous case of rain rot all over him because of his poor skin condition. I suppose that this is how you would expect a juvenile horse to look after a year on a zero protein diet, but there seemed little excuse for the rainrot to me. No matter what condition his coat was in, they could have used a little Fungisan on him.
I brought him home and looked him over. He could walk fairly well, but definitely swung his hind legs out in an arc as he walked. His ears were always flopped down as if he didn't feel good. He failed all of the above wobbler tests.
I felt so sorry for this poor little guy. I know that it was a medical protocol for his own good, but I decided that it was no way to live. If he had to look like that to live, better to feed him up and euthanize him when he de-stabilizes. so I just started feeding him. He got two flakes of alfalfa and two flakes of oat hay a day. I started out giving him the OCD pellets, but discontinued those after a couple of weeks. I gave him regular Farnam Vita-Plus vitamins and a little grain, nothing else. I treated his rain rot. He filled out pretty quickly. I segregated him from the other horses but gave him a 36x60 paddock to roam.
He started looking better, and I was relieved that the wobbling got no worse. I figured he could just be a pet. About six months went by, and one day I noticed that his ears weren't flopped down any more. He looked alert and happy. I noticed him walk away from me, and he wasn't swinging his hind legs out in an arc anymore. I went over and forced him to turn in a tight circle, and sure enough, he could cross over just a little bit. Only one step, and then he was awkward on the second step, but man, it was progress! His tail still flopped over when I raised it.
Since then, he seems to be improving quite a lot. His ears are always up, he can cross over all the time, but a little awkwardly. He doesn't drag his hind legs when he trots. I can pull on his tail and he can stabilize himself. He has always been asexual, no colt behavior at all. Now he is starting to drop out and get a little more interested in nearby mares. He was a May foal, and is not yet a full two. I'm starting to consider that he might be able to go at least for saddle training, and then who knows?
I'm not sure whether I would recommend this protocol. It was no way to live. But if you have a weanling still and could harden your heart and do it for a while, perhaps what is needed is to do what I did: take him off of it before you see his wobbles get better. My own vet didn't believe in it, and I've read several pieces of literature that said it absolutely won't work over 1 year of age. So I think that's why my colt was ripe to get off of it.
There is a surgery that you can do. My vet has had three clients do it, and all three clients were cured. It is the same surgery Seattle Slew had, the Bagby basket surgery. It would be expensive, but I've read literature that said that horses could be "athletic" after it. Still, I think the prognosis for racing would be very poor.
Good luck!
_________________ "When I am on my deathbed, I imagine I will say, 'Thank God I did that'" - Arthur Hancock, on buying back Gato del Sol from Europe after Exceller was killed in a slaughterhouse in Sweden.
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