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Albert our three year old shire gelding was turned out in a nine acre field with his three pals. Our house overlooks the fields so out of habit you just take a mental note of who’s where and what they’re all up to.

The morning of 28th October 2022 I noticed Albert wasn’t grazing with the others, I thought he’s probably in the dip, I just couldn’t see him. About an hour passed still no sign, I walked over the field there he was, stood still at the back all on his own. I shouted him, his ears pricked but he would not move. I rang my partner he rushed home, rang the vet, grabbed a head collar. After a lot of pushing and shoving we managed to get him into a stable. I got him a bucket of water, he took a sip, grabbed him some hay he started to eat but then chocked.

Vet arrived, she was a bit baffled by his presentation. He had a temperature, low gut noise. She tried to clear the choke, couldn’t manage it. We monitored him for a couple of hours, he was no better. She then referred him to Leahurst.

Arrived at Leahurst gave them all the information they needed to no. They took him for examination did blood tests etc. The vet came to us with the results and said it’s not good news, it’s Atypical Myopathy. He explained due to the size of him and his muscle mass the toxin had taken hold making him incredibly sore. His kidneys had already started to fail, they extracted nine litres of urine off him because he’d lost the ability to wee. Albert was the fifth horse to be admitted to Leahurst that day with Atypical Myopathy.

The vet explained the treatment plan but quickly went on to tell us that he would only give him a 25% chance of survival after treatment. He said due to his size and the amount of fluid he would need and the intensive care he would need, it would cost £1500 a day and he would probably need fluid therapy for two to three weeks. This just was not feasible for us and I couldn’t see him suffer any longer so sadly Albert was put to sleep.

Side note, I did their water the night before and all of them cantered over and seemed perfectly fine. Also, my grandfather in law had grazed horses on this land for over 80years and never had an issue. It just happened to take one of our best horses, we had such big plans for him and was so excited about his future and it’s just been taken away.