# Question on breathing issues as well as Downs syndrome in horses/dwarves??



## Lisa-Ruff N Tuff Minis (Nov 16, 2007)

Hi John ,

As most know I did have a dwarf born at our farm .. she was not only a dwarf but born very premature so her lasting as long as she did was nothing short of a miracle.

We lost her and it happened pretty quick she was just over a year old and had some raspy breathing one morning. We did have a virus running thru here so I thought that was it but within a couple of hours she could barely breath. We got to vet where they pulled blood and it was literally almost black.. they x-rayed her and found ( I will try to get this right) that her soft palete basically due to the shape of her head grew to the point that it was covering her trachea and was choking her. We had to put her down.

I know a couple others on the forum who have had dwarfs would write that they were having breathing issues that seemed to come on suddenly and had to be put down for the same thing.

Is this something that is a more common then not cause of death in dwarves I have also found and I am sure some are going to misunderstand me but the dwarves that I have known in person had a much different personality then other horses the only way I can describe it but they are almost like children with downs syndrome in personality- is this a normal or something that you have found to be consistent in dwarfs or is there such a thing as a horse form of downs syndrome that could be a common link in dwarves


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## Arion Mgmt (Nov 19, 2007)

Lisa,

Something like that is seen in human dwarfs with certain types of dwarfism. ACH has the Magnum Foramen problem in humans, which causes breathing problems in the human dwarfs and can cause death if not surgically corrected.

This breathing problem I have seen as a common characteristic in certain Mini dwarf types. Dwarf horses do have personalities that sometimes are unusual but I think a lot of that stems from the way they are cared for, by meaning having a lot of human only interaction, therefore learning body language skills of humans, etc versus horses because they are not usually with alot of horses. I will say I have seen some dwarfs that were mostly kept with other small minis and did not have that much human contact and about the same as the other normal horses and the dwarf was very horse not human in its actions and personality.

As for Downs Syndrome, that in humans is caused by trisomy 21 of the human 21 chromosome. The 21 chromosome of the horse does not carry the same information and I do not know of a specific trisomy 21 in the horse that was documented as even alive or functional, I would have to look that up. Horses have a different number of chromosomes than the human with the genes being on different chromosomes you are dealing with apples and oranges.

John


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