SARAH: "I have an older horse--
20 plus--" She's not going to go into specifics, just
like I didn't want to before.
You know, it's fine.
It's not a mare. "and he has recently started choking.
He is now considered a chronic choker.
I have had to get him tubed twice by the vet--"
that's a bummer-- "and now we have
to soak his feed in half a bucket of water.
We think it is due to him just getting too excited
about his food--" which I can understand,
we've all been there--
"my vet recommended soaking his food or taking him off grain.
Grain is the only thing he chokes on.
Do you have any other ways of dealing with it?
And can you explain why it's easier for a horse
to choke after they've done it once already?"
DR LYDIA GRAY: Let's back up a little bit and talk
about what choke is.
SARAH: Yeah, because it sounds like he'd recently
started choking, feels like-- well
don't submit a question on the internet,
choking sounds like an emergency.
And so the difference between choke and choking
is an important one.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And choking people and choking horses.
SARAH: Yeah.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
So, when you think about a person choking,
you think airway and Heimlich maneuver, an emergency,
and like two or three minutes right?
SARAH: Yeah, you're supposed to do this.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
The international symbol.
It's a little bit different on horses,
we're talking about choke in the esophagus.
So, it's an esophageal obstruction.
Still an emergency, but not like minutes.
So, she did right in calling her vet
and they put a nasogastric tube down and lavaged with water.
Water helps everything, it turns out.
So, it's unfortunate.
It is common in the older horse.
So, she said 20 plus.
And horses tend to choke on grain when they eat too fast.
Hay, if they don't have good teeth anymore
and they can't chew it into smaller pieces and swallow it,
they swallow big pieces and then it backs up.
If they don't have enough water in their diet.
So, there's a couple of reasons-- but it's hay,
it's pasture, and it's a grain or that kind of feed stuff.
I brought a prop today.
SARAH: Oh, I was wondering what this was for.
DR LYDIA GRAY: She said her horse gets
excited about eating, and mine does too.
And so--
SARAH: Oh, Newman.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
What I did was--
I don't know if this--
I'm a little afraid to tilt it, and it's quite heavy.
So this is some grain in here, and these are actually
bocce balls, because they're heavy,
they're round and smooth, and they make the horse slow down
to eat the yummy grain.
And he has to move these around a little bit.
My horse has become very, very good.
He can get every little pebble, he just
knows to move these around.
But he can't come in here with an open mouth and wolf it down,
and that's when you run the risk of choke,
because you wolf down too much at once,
you don't wet it with saliva, and then the esophagus--
which, the tube from the mouth of the stomach--
gets backed up.
SARAH: Lots of tube talk today.
[LAUGHING]
DR LYDIA GRAY: Lots of tube talk.
So, the vet did right.
You give sedatives, maybe muscle relaxants,
to let the esophagus open up and let it pass,
and you lavage with water in the stomach tube.
Sometimes you do have to go to surgery if it's bad.
I was sorry to hear that he's done it more than once,
and so now he's a chronic choker.
And the reason you become sort of prone to this is--
especially if it lasts too long, you could have some damage
to the issue of esophagus.
You either create ulcers in the lining, or strictures.
So there's a narrower place, and now, every time he eats,
the food is going to back up right there.
So that's a problem.
And it's why choking is an emergency,
because you want it resolved as quickly as possible so that you
don't have ulcers and strictures and chronic choking.
So, we got this.
Soaking, wetting-- soaking better than wetting-- the hay.
Pasture-- for some horses, becomes not a thing they can do
anymore, because every time they eat grass--
SARAH: Especially if they're unsupervised out
in the pasture, that's tough.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Maybe a muzzle, so it slows down
the rate of intake.
Could be helpful.
I always like the small hole hay nets or the slow feed hay bags,
because it slows down the rate of intake.
Anything you can do to slow their eating
and to soften their eating; to wet it,
to encourage them to drink with the SmartSalt pellets--
those are all things that you can do
to help the horse that chokes.
SARAH: OK.
Well, Evelyn, we wish you luck with your senior.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.