Yep, that describes the whole house tonight, especially me. I got up this morning, threw some chili in the crockpot for dinner, and went out to feed, as Dad had already taken off to go get his paychecks, and noticed one of our horses looked like he’d be laying down all night….had snow and mud and grass caked on both of his sides…was TOTALLY drenched, except for the underside of his throat. Now, if you don’t know much about horses, this may not strike you as strange…a horse laying down…but to me, knowing it had been snowing at least a good portion of the night, off and on, this was the first sign that something was not quite right. The second thing that caught my attention was his lack of enthusiasm when I put feed out for them. He’s normally very energetic about eating it, and he wasn’t this morning. I let our other horse, my mare, finish off his feed, and put hay out for them, and broke their water open and stepped outside the fence and stood there watching him for a few minutes. He went over as if to eat hay, and promptly laid down. NOT a good sign, but okay….I stood there a few minutes more, and he got up and turned around and laid down again….DEFINITELY not a good sign. I came back into the house, knowing I couldn’t do much by myself, and knowing that, as long as he kept getting up, that was a good sign. Dad called a little while later to see if we needed anything else from town, and I told him about our horse problem. He came home, and we went out and observed him. My first thought was that he had foundered somehow, but while Dad was on the phone with the vet center, the thought of colic came to mind. Colic is basically a belly ache, for what can be any NUMBER of reasons with a horse, and the thing that you HAVE to do is keep the horse on it’s feet, as much as possible, and make sure they are drinking, attempting to eat at least a little, and that their innards are still working. The MAIN thing is to keep them on their feet, though. The more they lay down, the less desire they have to get up, and the more they lay over on their side completely, the more chance they have of their intestines becoming twisted. NOT a good situation, as you can probably imagine. Anyway, the vet center came upon the colic diagnosis too, and suggested a medicine to help. So we called my Sister, got her out of bed, and told her what was going on. She said she’d be out pretty soon, with the medicine. While we were waiting for her, Dad and I went out and got a halter on Chief, the horse with the belly ache, and Dad walked him around the pasture for awhile. While Dad was doing that, his boss called wanting to know what was wrong with his truck, and wanted Dad to call him back. So, after a few minutes, I went back outside to let Dad know his boss had called, and I was going to relieve him and walk Chief for a little while while he took care of truck business. Instead, Dad took the lead rope off of the halter, and let Chief go to see what he would do, and we both came in the house. Dad made the phone call to the boss, and it was decided that his truck is going to the shop, so Dad had to go get a couple of things out of his truck. Knowing that he was going to have to go out to the truck, I called the guy that we got a couple of bales of hay from (the hay story is a WHOLE other story!!!) last week, and asked if we could get a couple of more from him. Dad took off to the truck and to get hay, and I waited and watched for my Sister with the medicine and prayed. Chief was up and down…up and down….by the time my Sister got here though, he was staying completely down on his side longer, and wasn’t getting up as much….NOT a good sign, in my book. Sooooooo, after going out several times and making him get up in hopes that he would stay up on his feet until Dad got back, I finally decided that we needed to try to go ahead and get hands on him and get a lead rope on him and walk him for a while. AND get the medicine into him. Well, he didn’t want caught again, so he’d walk away from me. I figured that, as long as he kept moving at a slow pace, that would work almost as well as having the lead rope on him. I finally got hands on him JUST before Dad got home. I didn’t have a lead rope or anything, and then the next thing I know is that Dad is coming out, with the lead rope. We get the rope back on the halter, and the medicine went in him like a dream. He didn’t even have the chance to spit any of it out!!! And then Dad decided we were going to walk around our little town. Now keep in mind, it’s about 25 degrees, and snowing, and the wind is blowing RIGHT out of the North. NOT the best day for a walk, but you gotta do what you gotta do, so for a walk we went!!!! We made two “circles” of our little town, which translates into probably 2 miles or so, and then we came back to the pasture. I don’t know how long it took us, but it was AWHILE for as cool and snowy as it was!!! Anyway, after our second “lap”, we brought the horses back to the pasture and turned them loose, leaving the halter on Chief in case we needed it later. He immediately went over and started eating just a LITTLE bit of hay, but at least he had more enthusiasm than he’d had before!!! He has stayed on his feet of his own accord, so we figure that he’s on the road to recovery!!! A little tender loving care from people who know what they are doing, and ALOT of prayer did the trick!!! All in all, it’s been a LONG day, though, but at least we can say that we DO have victory to speak of and that our horse is FINE!!!
Other than that, not much going on here today….animals take the first priority when one of them is sick or hurt, after ourselves, of course.
More later….stay warm, folks….
