Hooray! He is MINE!

[contesstant]

Bumblebee, I beg to differ and don't advise anyone to go against what vets tell you to do in the case of colic. If someone is walking their horse that long then they clearly aren't doing enough to stabilize the horse to begin with. The walking is done until either the banamine kicks in and the impaction is oiled out, or it is determined the horse is in a critical state and needs surgery. That determination needs to be made within a couple hours. Letting the horse roll goes against every vet I've ever known in the 35 years I have owned horses.

That being said, Serafina, it IS harder as a parent but you just can't let your mind go there. I did lose a horse 2 years ago--he was my dream horse, my mom bred him, talk about devastating, and he was only 5. (It wasn't colic, BTW, but a complicated medical procedure that he did not tolerate.) I just don't let myself go there mentally with my daughter or my horse. I'd be in a constant state of panic attacks if I did that!

I'm gearing up to show my boy at the Arabian U.S. Nationals next week, BTW :D We had a super successful summer on the show circuit here with lots of championships, so I decided I had to give a national title a shot!

 

[Serafina]

WOOO! Good luck Contesstant! Let us know how that goes - this must be really exciting!

Barn owner was in a mood to talk about the earlier event this morning - said that she's only had 2 horses put down for colic in 25 years of running barns. They discovered when they opened him up in surgery that he seemed to have had an earlier colic that no one knew about and had caused part of his gut to die off, and this was a follow-on to that. She said 15 feet of his intestines were destroyed because of all this. She also said that this horse had been losing weight recently, and agreed that the weather swings might have played a part. I'm feeling better about it all now, thanks to some calming words here, thanks to some more time spent with my horse (who is obviously not lost his appetite, little piggy!). The information that this is a rare occurrence in this barn (not the colic, but the super-bad fatal colic) also helped.

Now for some amusement value: this morning, I got to clean my first sheath! Yay! YUCK! He had a bean the size of my big toe. Barn owner said it was the biggest bean she had every seen, and proposed taking a picture of it and putting it up on the web. As soon as I realized that what she was describing I ought to feel was a lot...smaller...than what I was feeling, I got her to extract it. YUCK! Fortunately, he stood quietly (mostly) for all of it, and seemed to forget all of it after I produced a couple of carrots.

 

[altagirl]

Bumblebee, I beg to differ and don't advise anyone to go against what vets tell you to do in the case of colic. If someone is walking their horse that long then they clearly aren't doing enough to stabilize the horse to begin with. The walking is done until either the banamine kicks in and the impaction is oiled out, or it is determined the horse is in a critical state and needs surgery. That determination needs to be made within a couple hours. Letting the horse roll goes against every vet I've ever known in the 35 years I have owned horses.

I'm obviously not an expert on this at all, but this whole discussion made me curious (it seems like rolling is pretty natural for horses, so kind of odd in my mind that it would be so dangerous for them if it's their natural reaction) and this link basically agrees with bumblebee's post. I'm not saying anyone should argue with your vet (and I didn't get the impression bumblebee was suggesting doing that either), but, apparently there is not a total consensus on this.

https://theequinist.blogspot.com/2011/08/colic-quiz-test-your-knowledge-about.html

 

[Serafina]

The barn had a potluck party for students and boarders + families tonight. My friend came to meet Huey, and we got some good pictures!

https://notyourfathersaccountingprof.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/new-pictures-from-the-barn/