“CALLIE’S ON STEROIDS”
COB CROSS CALLIE was six years old when Sue Hayes bought her. Sue says it wasn’t long before Callie developed symptoms that would become a lifelong battle to manage. “The winter after I bought Callie, she caught a bad virus from a new horse brought onto the yard. Even though she got over the virus, she became sensitive to the barn environment and couldn’t be kept in the vicinity of other horses on straw or being fed dry hay. “I found somewhere she could live outside with a field shelter. She was fine for a couple of months but towards summer she showed signs of SPAOPD. In winter, her symptoms disappeared. “The following year, I moved her to a different pasture and her symptoms returned in the middle of May, but this time it was quite severe. She was scoped and our vet was keen to get a chest x-ray done as he was convinced that there was another reason for its severity. The chest x-ray showed lung scarring, but nothing more sinister. “We decided that we should start her on oral steroids (prednisolone) after a very unsuccessful attempt to administer inhalers via an aeromask. “Callie is 19 this year and has been on oral steroids from the age of eight. Her symptoms start in mid-May and I usually start her on 60x5mg prednisolone a day, going up in increments of 10 to 100 per day by the end of May. “From autumn, she’s symptom free. Even though I can’t ride her at all in spring and summer, we go hacking in the colder months and she could go for miles – you’d never know there was a problem.”