What could the following three situations all have in common?

• You return home from a horse show after a disappointing weekend. Your elite performance horse, usually high in the ribbons, did not place well. He occasionally looks at his sides and appears uncomfortable.

• You have a young, excitable filly that was recently weaned. A normally robust and outgoing foal, she is now standing in her stall, uninterested in either interacting with humans or eating her grain.

• Your mature gelding that lives on lush pasture recently went through a mild bout of laminitis. He's always been a stoic fellow and rarely shows when he's in pain. Now, his hair coat is dull, and he seems to be "depressed."

What might be surprising to some is that while these clinical signs could point to a number of problems, all three of these horses could be diagnosed with the same condition: equine gastric ulcer syndrome