Kurt lunges himself on Dec. 20, 2020

Kurt trotting on the lunge line on Feb. 3, 2021

Post reviewed on Nov. 26, 2022

A practical and effective treatment for laminitis now exists, according to my longtime laminitic horse Kurt, who turned 25 in 2021 and is dancing around like a 2-year-old.

The treatment is Laminil IM, an intramuscular injection of Laminil, a mast cell stabilizer designed to prevent the release of inflammatory mediators that can lead to a range of problems.

The idea is to treat the horse systemically and stop laminitis from the inside out.

Don’t wince at the thought of giving injections into the muscle.

I was that person for years, unnecessarily.

In July, I gave Laminil IM a try, because I knew it made sense on paper.

Kurt has completely changed over the past six months.

He can walk, trot and canter (see the videos at the top of this post).

He’s off painkillers.

And I hadn’t realized how much he seemed to have brain fog over the past 11 years until it went away.

He’s very alert and interested in life again. At 25!

In fact, he’s been a bit too high. My attempts to lead him around often turn into me scolding him to behave like a trained horse.

He is trained. But he hasn’t been ridden or asked to do anything since 2002.

And he wants to play.

As for Kurt’s brother, Robin Hood, the bay gelding discussed on this site for years, I lost him in August 2018 at age 22 due to a very large splenic mass. That was a very sad time for us.

Thankfully, Kurt is fine with living alone.

Many people thought I should put down Kurt when Robin Hood died, given the damage to Kurt’s feet and body.

I’ve run this next photo before, but Kurt was a refined pony in 2001. His body condition in later life reveals how much his immune system has been damaged.

I never thought he could feel this good again.

Laminil IM requires seconds of effort on my part every few days, not hours and hours of drudgery that my six laminitis horses endured over two decades with almost no results.

I believe that the trigger that created laminitis in my horses remains on my farm, and Laminil IM is overcoming it in Kurt.

And for the first time since 1998, when all the laminitis started at my farm, I can answer the question: Can a chronically laminitic horse recover?

Yes.

Why no posts since 2018?

Three years have passed since I have posted anything on my horses.
Some people have emailed me and asked why.

I’m never going to write about a treatment working or not working without letting months pass to see what happens.

In my last post in January 2018, I wrote about being sure that Laminil Cream was working in treating my horses’ laminitic hooves.

The improvement was obvious. The heat disappeared, and the pounding pulses went away or were reduced to barely detectable.

But, as time went on, I was faced with the fact that the rest of the horses’ body remained compromised.

I was tamping down laminitis bouts in the hoof but not fixing the cause.

I was never going to win the war against laminitis that way, but I would say that Laminil Cream is an excellent adjunct therapy as part of a more comprehensive approach. And I’ve heard from others that it’s fabulous for weak hooves of non-laminitic horses; farriers have been amazed at the improvement in those hooves.

Comprehensive approach

Willowcroft Pharm CEO Dr. John Kelly, PhD, has been working on coming up with a more comprehensive approach to laminitis.

Since Laminil Cream was launched in 2017, Dr. Kelly has listened to all of the feedback from horse owners as they used the cream, as well as vets that have used Laminil Perfusion, and he has studied a seemingly impossible amount of research on mast cells at the same time.

Much of that research has been on mast cells’ role in a range of human diseases, because use of mast cell stabilizers in human disease is an exploding field.

I am not qualified to explain how it all ties together. He will do that one day.

But, he used all this knowledge to come up with a better way to give Laminil to the horse.

For me, a self-described average horse owner, Laminil IM is practical and effective.

And it works!

This video is of Kurt walking on Jan. 23.