What's Up Wednesday

 

Phew. These weeks, I'm telling you! I met with the surgeon on Monday and just need a very small procedure that will only limit me for a couple of weeks. And honestly, it doesn't even limit me that much other than picking things up over ten lbs. They said I could ride and exercise and whatever else pretty much the next day. I haven't scheduled just yet since I won't be able to clean stalls though. I need to square away my worker situation first. But now that I know it's not a very big deal, I can actually get to work on finding a new worker. I put an ad out on Facebook yesterday and had a better response than last time. I included my local community groups in addition to the local horsey groups, and that seems to have been the big difference. There is one lady who was interested in last time that is coming to interview on Tuesday. I also spoke with a gentleman who is very interested but is out of state for a couple of weeks. So this is promising! Of course, I've learned not to get my hopes up, and not to get too excited since so far everything has blown up on me. But fingers crossed we're on the road to better days! I was really worried about moving Al while he's recovering so I'm relieved that I likely don't need to do that. 

As for the horses... I had grand plans last week of getting Eros and Shiny back on a more regular exercise schedule. I've been getting on them regularly, but the workload has been... light. Of course, I forgot that I had scheduled shots and teeth so that derailed my plan a little. They ended up having Wednesday off since everyone was asleep for most of the daylight hours. Even Al as he needed sedation to get his staples out. Thursday we had easy rides since I could tell they were feeling it a little from their vaccines. Then rain Friday so off again... We had some nice weekend rides, but again, they were of the lighter intensity version. I'm still trying to figure out my timing with the shorter days. Maybe this will be our week! Though I think another rainy Friday ahead. Seems to be the weather pattern we're in these days.

But let's talk about Al for a bit. My vet appointment Wednesday brought some new information to me about what happened with Al's colic. Guys. It's actually a pretty big deal that this didn't kill him. I had understood that he was close to his stomach rupturing, but what I didn't understand was that him refluxing out of his nose as he was is not normal for horses. (I mean none of this was normal, obviously, but you know what I mean.) The fact that he was refluxing out of his nose is what kept him from rupturing until doc tubed him. So thank goodness that was happening. But in most horses, that can't happen. As we all know, the esophagus in a horse is a one way street. The sphincter between the stomach and esophagus is really tight, but Al's tummy was so full that it was forcing the reflux out his nose. Thank goodness he's never been a normal boy! 

But that was only the first reason he's lucky to be here. Next is the location of the blockage. His was just barely out of the stomach, which is why he was still passing so much manure. Why this is especially dangerous is two-fold. First, even when the horse is opened up on the operating table, that area is not visible to the surgeon. Our vet had to actually feel it with her fingers, and then had to hope she could manipulate it further down the small intestine. Because if she couldn't do that, he would not have survived. They cannot resect the intestine so close to the stomach. Thankfully, she was able to. Not only that, but she massaged that thing through 75 feed of small intestine. Amazing. 

So yeah. Al is one lucky boy. We still don't know exactly why this happened or what the obstruction was comprised of. It's possible he ate something he shouldn't have. I am wondering if he night have eaten some vet wrap. I use it to wrap the sides of the handles on his water buckets, and he had removed it in a near time frame to when this happened. I didn't find it in the stall. But when I saw that the vet wrap was missing, it was the day after my worker had done stalls, so I just figured she had picked it up. Now I wonder if he ate it. I'll never know though. I'm kind of hoping that was the thing as it would mean it was a fluke one off situation. But anyway, I'm just so glad he's still here and doing so well. He's really handling things well so far. Unless it's particularly windy, he's behaving nicely for his walks and grazing. Not wild in his little turnout. Hopefully that continues! He graduates to the slightly bigger turnout on Saturday, so we'll see how that goes. 

That's about it from here. I'm hoping to be back to more boring content going forward! How was your weekend? Do anything fun with your horses?