If you’re a regular, or you’re looking through our pictures, you often see Noddy is wearing various masks.
While these are generally known as fly masks or fly veils, it’s not flies that cause him to be wearing it.
Noddy suffers from a condition called Uveitis.
Uveitis is an eye condition affecting horses that involves inflammation of the uveal tract around the eye. This condition can lead to pain, discomfort, and potentially vision impairment or blindness if left untreated, so we have to take it seriously.
What causes it? Well, there are several causes of uveitis in horses, ranging from infectious agents to immune-mediated diseases, trauma, metabolic disorders, neoplastic diseases, and idiopathic (unknown) causes. Bacterial infections, such as Leptospirosis, viral infections like Equine Herpes Virus, and fungal infections, such as Aspergillus, are some examples of infectious agents that can lead to uveitis. Immune-mediated diseases include Equine Recurrent Uveitis (ERU), a chronic and painful condition, and systemic autoimmune diseases.
What is it in Noddy’s case? We don’t know. It is suspected, though, that it’s the ERU that is mentioned above.
Symptoms of uveitis in horses can vary but generally involve pain and discomfort, redness and inflammation of the eye, excessive tearing, light sensitivity, a cloudy or discolored appearance of the eye, constricted pupils, and vision impairment. In Noddy, it’s constantly sticky, runny eyes, which is not very nice for him.
Even though he has had medications off and on, the number one treatment is to reduce the UV rays from the sun that enter his eyes.
So, we have obtained for him a special mask that cuts down 70% of the UV light entering his eyes, and that’s the grey one you see him wearing a lot. He’s supposed to wear it 24 hours a day during summer and take it off at night during winter. We’ve got a 90% one on order. Sometimes he wears an ordinary one because he’s rolled in the mud and gummed up his good one!
Noddy is a very happy horse who loves people (which is why he’s great for equine therapy) and his eye condition doesn’t seem to worry him much, though he will rub his eyes from time to time. Masking him is part of the long-term care he needs to make sure it does not get any worse.
Incidentally, if we put a mask on Astro, noddy will pull it off with his teeth! It seems he likes being unique, and he certainly is.