The mystery of stinky Dude

Dude's had a little personal problem over the last couple months or so ... a smell. It's kind of strange. I noticed it, but didn't think too much about it until our barn manager mentioned it. It's the usual horsey smell but a little mustier (I say) or sweeter (our barn manager says). It's like when people eat a lot of garlic, like the scent is coming out of his pores.

When the vet was out for the fall shots a week or so ago, I mentioned it to her. She sniffed him, but said she couldn't really determine what it was I was talking about. So the smell wasn't at all obvious to her, which I found kind of odd. She checked his teeth and filed down some points, so was really all over his mouth, and didn't find anything out of the ordinary in there that would be causing a smell.

She also cleaned his sheath. He's definitely on the 2x/year plan for that now; he needed the fall cleaning.

So with him basically all cleaned up, I started thinking more about what he's taking in.

In terms of what he eats, for most of the summer he was in a paddock with not much grass at all. Changes over the last several months included the addition of a vitamin E/selenium supplement (at the suggestion of our vet) and a new joint supplement.

To investigate the possibility that the smell was being caused by the joint supplement, I emailed our supplement company, HorseTech, to see if they had any record of the supplement he's on, HylaSport OTC, producing a smell. It seemed to me that the smell started about the same time that he transitioned to this supplement from another one of their products. It seemed like kind of a long shot, as the ingredients are not  that different from the other supplement, and our vet said she hadn't ever heard of the ingredients producing a smell in horses.

A customer service representative from HorseTech called me. She had no previous records of such a thing happening, and was pretty intrigued by the situation. We had a little chat about the circumstances so they could establish a record, and at their request I followed up with the lot number of the supplement and said I would keep them posted on any developments.

I took him off the vitamin E/selenium supplement a couple weeks ago to see if that would make a difference. I figured it probably takes a few weeks to get out of his system. Today at the barn I didn't think he smelled as strong, but I'm kind of starting to feel a little crazy about the whole situation,and not really trusting my nose anymore. Dude probably wonders why I'm always sniffing him.

I've googled ("odor from horse" "musty scent from horse" etc etc) to try and find similar situations, with no luck. Right now I'm weighing option A) - taking him off the HylaSport to see if the smell goes away or option B) - doing the vet-suggested metabolic work-up to see what that shows. I hate to take him off the HylaSport because he's responded really well to it in terms of joint support. And I hate to do the metabolic because I don't want to spend the money ... and he appears to be perfectly fine. Debating. Sniffing.. Driving myself crazy.