Repeat

We have visitors (Pandover and a mate) this weekend so there won't be much news. Current weather forecast is that we will be soaked on Sunday at the event and the hope is that it will rain enough tomorrow to get it cancelled, rather than having a a miserable day getting soaked to the skin in the middle of a field !

I will repeat what I found out about Zippy and the exercise cough last night on Google for people who don't catch up on the comments. The symptoms are spot on - food regurgitation down the nose and a choke-type cough when tired.

"I've just done some Googling and I think that Zip has dorsal displacement of the soft palate (DDSP). The research I have done suggests that there are a number of solutions, surgical and otherwise, but none of them are successful more than 60% of the time. However, the good news is that he is almost certain to grow out of it, because older horses don't suffer from it. It is related to young horses with incomplete immune systems picking up respiratory tract viruses as part of growing up. If that's the case, the more he mixes with Jazz when he's been out, and the sooner he gets out and about himself and meets horses carrying viruses , the quicker he will grow out of it."

So I am 2 out of 2 with horses that don't breath properly, for opposite reasons! Both would have passed a vet. Zippy because he wouldn't have really worked for the vetting, being unbroken. And also because the vet wouldn't have seen him eating. And Jazz, irritatingly, because he did not have the problem when I tried him out. Ran Arbel had him galloped for me and he was only feet away and I heard nothing. Laryngeal hemiplegia can happen at any time and it's very common in a big horse, and I just struck unlucky with his timing!

I think he's wonderful though, and the noise he makes doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother him. It gets less as he gets fitter and with his weight he was never going to be the fastest horse in the world anyway. He's got the biggest character and that will do :-) There is a very big digger in his field at the moment waiting to be taken away. This morning after he had eaten he went out in the field and ran his nose all over it - and I mean all over it, touching it everywhere with his nose as if he was kissing it :-) He does that quite a lot to things he doesn't know, it's very sweet.

C.