Butterscotch has been with SAFE for just over a week. She is settling in, eating well and has been very gentle to handle. Below are her initial medical assessments and week one photos.
Butterscotch is approximately 28–32 years old, a grade mare. She is 15.2hh and weighs 1005 pounds. She has melanomas on several areas of her body, which is not surprising for an older grey horse with dark skin. None of them seem to be causing any problems at this time but we will be monitoring them. She has been diagnosed with PPID (Cushing’s Disease) and just started Prascend. We will recheck her ACTH in a month. She is very itchy all over, and is healing from a skin infection that was noted while at the animal control facility. Her skin infection was thought to be PPID related. Her hooves are long and chipped. Butterscotch got a dental and vaccines prior to her arrival at SAFE. She had a significant wave mouth at that time and had one loose extracted.
Dr. Renner was out to see Butterscotch on 10/16 to assess her severe itching. It appears as though the skin infection that she had before has healed, and her current itchiness is more allergen-related. It does not appear to be bug bite hypersensitivity since it’s not presenting in the typical spots. He recommended a few different products to put her on to help control her symptoms, so we have started those and we’ll see if she improves.
If she continues to be itchy and it becomes a quality of life issue, we can consider putting her on prednisolone. That would be a last resort though because long-term use of steroids is not recommended in horses that have Cushing’s disease due to a risk of laminitis.
