Not Even Surprised Anymore

 What would 2020 be without a colic scare? Because at this point I've accepted that anything can and will happen.

 

From my vet's office on bringing back horses from wildfire smoke

 So last Thursday we got thunderstorms. We desperately needed the rain, and it helped clear out the wildfire smoke so we can start rehabbing, but we also got a shit ton of thunder and lightning. Like almost nonstop for close to an hour around 1am on Friday morning. It also rained off and on for most of Friday. At TCF the ponies were still turned out and we brought them in Friday night around 5. Peebs was tucked into his stall with freshly cleaned and filled water buckets, hay, and his hay pellet grain.

A's mom called me around 9:30 Saturday morning saying she had turned Peebs back out at 8 with his hay and grain in his paddock but he hadn't eaten anything and was down. Peebs is a vacuum and him not eating is a big sign. I ran out to the barn, gave him banamine, called my vet, and brought him back inside so we could monitor him a little better.  When I brought him in, I noticed his water buckets were still full. He hadn't had anything to drink from 5pm Friday night to 8am Saturday morning when he drank from the paddock trough. We were obviously dealing with some dehydration and impaction. 

Vet gave me the ok to hand walk/graze him and offer small amounts of soaked hay. Peebs did eat and around 2:30 passed some normal looking poop. But around 6:30 he went down again. At first I wasn't too worried since it looked like he took a 20min power nap, but then he sat up, started biting at his stomach and rolled twice. Called vet again and was told to take him into the hospital. As I was hooking up the trailer, he did pass a little more manure but I had already called and told the hospital we were coming, so off we went. 

Once again, I had to hand him off to a tech and sit in my truck waiting to hear from the vet. About an hour and a half later the vet walked out to talk to me. Back in May the vet called me from inside the hospital to talk about Peebs, so this time I was sure he had died and she didn't want to deliver the news over the phone. But it turns out this vet has much better bedside truckside manners than the one we saw in May. Peebs wasn't showing any symptoms, his vitals and blood work were all normal, and she couldn't feel anything other than some soft manure on the rectal exam. Most likely, the poop he passed right before heading off to the hospital was the impaction. They did tube him with some water and Epsom salts and they did want to keep him overnight to observe him. I was more than fine with that, since I probably would have been sleeping in the tack room if I took him back to barn.

Getting sprung from the joint

They called me at 10 on Sunday  morning to report that Peebs had passed a bunch of manure during the night, and was happily eating hay. Their protocol is to keep them for 24hrs for observation so I could pick him up between 6-7 that night. Peebs was very happy when they walked him out of the hospital and jumped right into the trailer to go home. I turned him back out in his paddock since I didn't want to chance him not drinking if he was inside. He ate dinner Sunday night and both meals yesterday completely normally so *knock wood* he's in the clear. We do have an appointment Friday for his fall shots and I'm going to ask my vet to do a quick basic exam on him just for my sanity.