Helpless in Texas

Well the week started out pretty well, but we didn’t have the best ending. On Thursday morning I put faith out in her round pen and did our normal routine. Everything was normal. By noon everything was usual as well. But around 4:30 when I went to go get Faith and put her up for the night. I noticed she was laying down which was pretty usual for her, but then I noticed that when she got up she was looking pretty under the weather, I wasn’t worried but concerned, so I checked her gums. Checking their gums is like seeing if dogs nose is wet and cold, a good over all wellness, you want their gums pink enough so if you put your thumb on them you could see a brief white mark, and wet. I immediately noticed her gums were dry which was not a good sign, and her gums were pale. I listened to her stomached to see if I could hair anything. I couldn’t which was another red flag, no noise means no movements. I started to think I was dealing with a colic. Colic is basically a really bad stomach ache. It is very painful for horses and can die from it. It is usually caused by maybe bad feed, a drastic feed change, or eating sand. But colic could really be caused by almost anything, sometimes you just never know how it happened. When you have a colicing horse the first thing you want to do is walking, just keep on walking. If you walk them around their systems start moving and pushed out whatever caused the colic. We gave her 10mL of Banameine threw the vain. Banameine is basically a pain killer, something to make them more comfortable. I walked her around for about and hour. But she kept wanting to lay down. You don’t want them to lay down because they aren’t moving things threw, and if they roll they could twist an intestine or flip it over to the other side. In other words its really bad. As time went on her symptoms got worse. She started curling her upper lip which is another way of saying she is uncomfortable, she was also camping out. Camping out is when they stretch out their legs to try to get comfortable. Eventually she stopped trying to lay down so we put her in her stall. We tried giving her a bran mash, its kind of like an oatmeal I guess. Its something to cleanse them and clean them out. She did eat it but would not eat hay and didn’t drink. But we figured she was stable enough to leave her for the night. We had the girls check on her threw the night and we checked her around 8:00pm. She wasn’t laying down but wasn’t really doing much of anything. Just standing there. She didn’t look herself and was obviously unhappy. The next morning we got a call from Paula, one of the girls who live on the ranch. She said she was trying to lay down and looking at her stomach. Looking at their stomach is like a way saying ouch that hurts. We rushed over and called a vet. As we were walking her around she would just drop to the ground. We would stand her up and kept walking. We had to take off her sheet while walking because if we stopped she would try to lay down. The vet arrived and gave her 8mL of Banameine. He checked her heart rate which was normal, this was a good sign that nothing in her was twisted or flipped. Then he had to pump mineral oil into her. Mineral oil is another trick to clean them out. He took a tube and put it up her nose down into her throat. He pumped about two gallons into her. He decided she was fine and left. We kept her walking and noticed after about hour she was still getting worse. She was constantly trying to lay down, curling her lip, capping out, looking at her stomach, swishing her tail, she was just one really unhappy horse. We then tried taking her on a trailer ride. Some people say this helps because for horse being on trailers and being bounced around can make them poop. So we went around the ranch and by the end of it she had pooped once, but it wasn’t enough. She kept getting worse. The fact that it had been 24 hours and she had not drunken anything and was still colicing was really starting to worry us. We jus kept walking and thought about calling a hospital. They said to give her another shot of Banameine and to call in 2 hours. We did so and she was still no better. I was sitting on a hay bail feeling helpless when I heard it. To me it was the most beautiful noise in the world. I had to second guess myself. It was a stomach gurgle. I put my ear to her stomach and listened. I could hear gurgles, grumbles, and squirrgles. A smile cam upon my face. It was another step in the right direction. But I knew she was far from better and still needed professional help. We loaded her up on the trailer but we had to be careful that she couldn’t lay down in the trailer. Luckily the Banameine was still in effect. We got her in the trailer and to the hospital. We offloaded her brought her inside. There were 5stalls in an L shape to the right. To the left were three slots. The vet tech pointed me to the second slot. The doctor did a rectal on her (put his hand up her but to feel around and see if there is anything to come out and feel and twists) he didn’t feel anything irregular. He took blood work and tested for acid reflects. To do that he put a tube up her nose again and see if anything came out the tube. Luckily nothing came out so anything being twisted or flipped was out of the question. The fact that the colic had gone on for a full day was a bit concerning so we thought it may be something different. The blood work came back telling us she was anemic (weak or skinny) they said this could be from the stress, but also that she had low protein. Now we started thinking she may have some ulcers. An ulcer can appear from stress, this would make sense since she had been placed into a new environment, new routine, really new everything. This could be why she was acting so uncomfortable. The fact that she hasn’t drank in a day made them nervous as well. They kept her over night and had her on fluids via IV and started her on an ulcer guard. We knew she was in good hands so called it a night. The next morning I got a call from the clinic, they said she was up, eating, drinking, pooping, and seemed a lot more comfortable. Since she recovered so quickly the took ulcers out of the question and decided it was a really bad colic. They said they wanted to keep an eye on her just in case and we could pick her up in the morning. I was so relieved. Having a horse who was like part of the family being so ill and unhappy was just heartbreaking. I was so scared and felt so helpless. Mainly because with colic you can only do so much but its up to the horse to do the rest. Hearing that she was ok was such a stress relief. The next morning we picked her up and was happy to see her bright beautiful normal face. Se was so happy to see us come threw the door. I could only imagine how scary it is to be in such a state and have to trust the people around you to take care of you who you don’t even know. Especially with horses trust is very big to them. Having her home and seeing her be her normal self just put a smile on my face.