From: Susan
Hello Jessica,
My gelding has a situation that no one I've talked with yet, including my vet, has heard of. He appears to be incontinent. He is a 26 yo QH, in excellent health (and looks fantastic), on pasture 24/7 except when the weather is extreme. He is pastured with one other gelding and a mare and of the three he is the boss.
Exactly 2 weeks after the grazing season began this spring, he started "leaking" urine--sometimes drips, sometimes a stream, sometimes just standing there grazing , sometimes when he moved some would leak out. One day he was fine, the next he was leaking, and it has continued through to now.
The vet was out and checked his sheath which he said was surprisingly *very* clean. Apparently the horse has no pain there either. The vet said my options were to try to collect some sample urine (impossible I'd say!) or, tranq and catheterize the horse to collect urine and check for an infection. I'm not keen on that idea if I don't have to. Once I have seen the horse stretch and urinate normally since he started this condition, but the stream was kind of weak. ( Of the 5 years I've had him, I've seen this horse urinate about 4 times--he is *very* private!!!)
Once a week I am washing and drying his hind legs and slathering them with Desitin to ward off scald from the urine. This of course would be a problem come winter, so I hope to find some solutions before then. At any rate it seems like incontinence/muscle weakness, or even perhaps some blockage??--that is not harmful but certainly inconvenient. But the fact of it's sudden appearance, and the age of my dear gelding concerns me that it might be something more.
Thank you very much for any input, and thank you *very* much for your sensible and informative "Horse Sense" newsletter!
=) Susan
This is definitely a medical question requiring help from qualified medical professionals! All I can do is suggest some "usual suspects" in cases of urinary incontinence, and perhaps these thoughts will give you a starting point from which to have a good discussion with your own vet or with a specialist.
The reason your vet found your horse's sheath to be "surprisingly clean" is that a dirty sheath is always the very first suspected cause when a gelding of any age begins to dribble urine. A dirty sheath shows bad management - but it's an easy "fix".
The next suspected cause is a bladder infection, which is why your vet wanted to be able to test your horse's urine. Infections can be fought very effectively with antibiotics, but in order to do that, it's important to know which bacterium is responsible for the infection - and that's what a test can tell you.
If the horse's sheath is clean and there is no bladder infection, then the vet will probably suspect a blockage in the urinary tract (urethral obstruction) or in the bladder itself. There are different sorts of obstructions - they are not all tumours - and as far as I know, there are ways to use lasers to go after at least some types of obstructions.
Other possibilities include muscle weakness or muscle failure in the area around the bladder - there are specific muscles that allow the horse to "push" the flow of urine, and if those fail, the urine will tend to dribble instead of coming through in a forceful stream.
There are some more remote possibilities as well, and you may want to mention those when you talk to the vet, just in case...
Diabetes isn't unheard of in older horses. It's usually manifested by excessive urine flow, not so much by dribbling, but it's still worth mentioning. There's also an ataxic syndrome that can affect horses that graze pastures containing sorghum or hybrid sudan grass. What's in your pasture? Ask the vet about equine sorghum cystitis syndrome - it generally involves urine-dribbling and the scalding of the area inside the horse's hind legs. You may want to walk the pasture and check for those grasses - or ask your county extension agent to come out and help identify them. The only other possibility that comes to my mind is a rare one - every now and then, a horse with rhinopneumonitis can develop rhinomyelitis as a result of the rhinopneumonitis virus getting into the spinal canal, and that can result in some loss of motor control in the hindquarters, including control over urination.
Do have a talk with your vet and get a referral for your horse if necessary. If there's no infection or obstruction, check your pasture! In any event, if your horse is developing a blockage, you don't want him to reach the point at which urination will become impossible. THAT will be very painful - and possibly fatal if it isn't discovered quickly. Right now, the dribble may not bother him, and you're acting to prevent the scalding, but you need to know what is going on. Infections can be cleared up, some blockages can be removed - but without an accurate diagnosis, you won't be able to start an appropriate treatment.
Good luck, and please let me know what happens.
Jessica
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