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My husband bought me Rio, my gorgeous Connemara, for my 30th birthday.   I had him all of three months before my daughter, who was 8 at the time, stole him and took him to pony club camp.  He was a fantastic all rounder and he looked after her brilliantly.
We had been seeing lots of shocking stories about Sycamore Poisoning back in the early days and made a note of any trees that were near by. There was no evidence of any seeds in our paddocks, the trees were quite far away so we carried on as usual. You always think it won’t happen to my ponies and those trees have always been there so why is it now a problem.

One day Rio just wasn’t right.  He was 8yrs old at the time. There was nothing I could put my finger on, he just wasn’t right. So I watched him, pulled up a chair and sat in his paddock.  Within five minutes he was presenting colic symptoms and lay down. We assumed colic and called the vet.  We got him up and tried to walk him. The Vet came and at this point it was an hour after I first noticed something was odd.

The vet said we could wait and see or take him to the Royal Veterinary College in South Mimms.   Typically our lorry was in for its MOT. That was the longest drive of my life in a friends lorry.  He kept going down in the back and we just got there as quickly as we could. We are now at 3 hours since his first symptoms. It was all hands on deck and when he was off the lorry he kept falling over. It took every person there to hold him up and get him into the examination room. You sit and wait for news.  When they told us it wasn’t colic, it was sycamore poisoning I thought that’s it game over and asked to say goodbye to my boy. We hadn’t heard of anyone whose horses had ever survived it. He made it through the night and the next few days were a blur.  Every time the phone rang I thought that’ll be it, he’s gone downhill or he’s left me but thankfully that call never came.

The vets said they can only believe as we were so quick we saved him it. Rio came home four days later and made a fully recovery.  He went on to do RAF Halton Sponsored Ride, pony club and after we sadly out grew him his new family’s did dressage and BSJA. We were one of the lucky ones.

Our hearts go out to those who weren’t as fortunate as us.