Always Dreaming

Treve · Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:54 pm

winstarfarm We are excited to share that @kentuckyderby Champ ALWAYS DREAMING will race on in 2018! He was found to have stomach ulcers after the Travers Stakes, and was recently cleared of the ulcers by veterinarians after treatment and a month of being turned out at Our training center.
#winstarfarm #kyderby #champion #alwaysdreaming

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaUwzt1nDTc ... instarfarm

Starine · Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:02 pm

More on the ulcers:

http://www.drf.com/news/kentucky-derby- ... -race-2018

Somnambulist · Mon Oct 16, 2017 9:30 pm

Xanax should just be in the air.

BaroqueAgain1 · Mon Oct 16, 2017 9:48 pm

Why not. It's already in our water...along with hundreds of other drugs.

Somnambulist · Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:03 pm

BaroqueAgain1 wrote:Why not. It's already in our water...along with hundreds of other drugs.

I can tell you honestly I would sleep a lot better if it was actually in our water. If this were 100 years ago I would have died giving birth to a child I didn't want. Life could be worse. Water hasn't killed me yet.

Horses get stressed just like people. Maybe he needs some lavender essential oil and yoga. Works for me.

Northport · Mon Oct 16, 2017 11:08 pm

I mean, if he was already on Gastroguard, then they knew he has ulcers before the Travers... that and 99% of race horses in training and 90% of domestic horses have ulcers. But a bad case can make a horse downright miserable. Glad they got it cleared up... but as soon as he gets back into training I can't see the ulcers staying at bay.

Either way, nice to hear that he will be racing in 2018.

katmandu · Tue Oct 17, 2017 2:41 am

He needs his own personal hand grazer for 3-4 hours/day to give those stomach acids something to do. . . .that's why they're there. Zenyatta had one.

Rick1323 · Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:56 am

An older horse is always welcome, especially if it is the Derby winner.....

Treve · Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:45 am

Northport wrote:I mean, if he was already on Gastroguard, then they knew he has ulcers before the Travers... that and 99% of race horses in training and 90% of domestic horses have ulcers. But a bad case can make a horse downright miserable. Glad they got it cleared up... but as soon as he gets back into training I can't see the ulcers staying at bay.

Either way, nice to hear that he will be racing in 2018.

It sounds that the Gastroguard is used by Todd as a preventive on all his horses so they wouldn't necessarily have known he had ulcers prior or how bad they were before he was actually examined.
But I wonder if the draw reins pre-Derby contributed to his anxiety and stress rising considering he started non-performing right after the Derby. I gotta wonder how long he was living with this bad a case of ulcers.

Somnambulist · Tue Oct 17, 2017 9:27 am

Northport wrote:Either way, nice to hear that he will be racing in 2018.

I agree!

serenassong · Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:59 am

It is indeed. That pic of his stomach was awful- he must have been so uncomfortable.

Tessablue · Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:30 pm

Treve wrote: It sounds that the Gastroguard is used by Todd as a preventive on all his horses so they wouldn't necessarily have known he had ulcers prior or how bad they were before he was actually examined.
But I wonder if the draw reins pre-Derby contributed to his anxiety and stress rising considering he started non-performing right after the Derby. I gotta wonder how long he was living with this bad a case of ulcers.

My thought went to the draw reins as well. They aren't typically used for long and he ran like a sore, unhappy horse in the Preakness. Really hate to question trainers, however.

Sincerely glad to hear that he'll be back next year- I certainly wasn't expecting it. I still think he has a world of talent and would love to see him show it as an older horse.

Treve · Tue Oct 17, 2017 1:27 pm

Yeah I'm not questioning Todd's decision to use them, at some point there's an element of training that is trial and error.

I'm also glad he'll get some R&R and have a chance to prove he wasn't just Nyquist round 2.

katmandu · Tue Oct 17, 2017 1:59 pm

Relative to draw reins and ulcers, you may be switching cause and effect. . . when horses' behavior suddenly changes, they're usually trying to tell you something. . . putting a gorilla (with all apologies to Mr. Bush) with draw reins on his back may not have been the answer. . . .

Treve · Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:33 pm

katmandu wrote:Relative to draw reins and ulcers, you may be switching cause and effect. . . when horses' behavior suddenly changes, they're usually trying to tell you something. . . putting a gorilla (with all apologies to Mr. Bush) with draw reins on his back may not have been the answer. . . .

His behaviour didn't change though as far as I remember, people were saying he was always hard to hold back and keep in hand when training/working but he was getting stronger and stronger. I don't know to what extent this is true though.

Miss Woodford · Tue Oct 17, 2017 5:16 pm

katmandu wrote:Relative to draw reins and ulcers, you may be switching cause and effect. . . when horses' behavior suddenly changes, they're usually trying to tell you something. . . putting a gorilla (with all apologies to Mr. Bush) with draw reins on his back may not have been the answer. . . .

We know that "stress causes ulcers" is a myth for humans and I'm sure it is overblown in horses as well. Diet plays the biggest role - feeding a horse a grain-heavy diet while confined to a stall 23 hours a day is a recipe for digestive issues of all sorts. And that kind of lifestyle (vs hanging out in a pasture all the time) is correlated to having a lot of stress put on them.

Somnambulist · Tue Oct 17, 2017 5:22 pm

NSAID usage is not at all responsible?

katmandu · Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:15 pm

Miss Woodford wrote:
katmandu wrote:Relative to draw reins and ulcers, you may be switching cause and effect. . . when horses' behavior suddenly changes, they're usually trying to tell you something. . . putting a gorilla (with all apologies to Mr. Bush) with draw reins on his back may not have been the answer. . . .
We know that "stress causes ulcers" is a myth for humans and I'm sure it is overblown in horses as well. Diet plays the biggest role - feeding a horse a grain-heavy diet while confined to a stall 23 hours a day is a recipe for digestive issues of all sorts. And that kind of lifestyle (vs hanging out in a pasture all the time) is correlated to having a lot of stress put on them.

My point was that draw reins may have been the result of his ulcer driven behavior. . . . he became explosive and uncontrollable on the track so they tied his nose to his chest. . . . Makes it virtually impossible for a horse to get his hind end under him in order to "launch". It's also known that exercise can cause the most concentrated stomach acid from the lowest part of the stomach to be pushed up into the upper area where ulcers develop. Ouch. Given that ~90% of performance horses have ulcers, he was hardly in the minority. NSAIDs are also well associated with ulcers, as noted. But I wasn't addressing the "why" of the ulcers, only his behavior. And it's all speculative anyway.

It would be very cool if he regains his promise, and goes on as a 4 year old.

Tessablue · Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:22 pm

Stress isn't going to cause an ulcer, but I'm sure it can increase a horse's symptoms or susceptibility and it's been found that common stressful activities like trailering are associated with ulcer formation (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16178400). Also it looks like horses with ulcers have zero to minimal Helicobacter in their digestive tracts (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26809803) which is really interesting! So I'd say reasons are still pretty unknown, but at least there appears to be an effort to look into it.

I totally hear the point about how the ulcers could have caused his behavior before the Derby- usually I do think of rank horses as unhappy, but he looked to me like a very forward, enthusiastic horse in those pre-Derby gallops. Doesn't mean he wasn't sick though. I just hope all this hasn't soured him on racing.

BaroqueAgain1 · Wed Oct 18, 2017 12:18 am

Also it looks like horses with ulcers have zero to minimal Helicobacter in their digestive tracts...

Would it be helpful to add a probiotic targeting that lack to the horse's supplement regimen?