This afternoon we headed out to see the horse that had colicked two nights ago. He is an older Morgan, and true to Doc''s intuition, he was just fine. Two poops (filled with mineral oil residue) had come out on their own, and a continuance of Banamine and hand-grazing was recommended.
Our next stop was at a farm down the road that I have done some farm-sitting work for when I was younger (about 4 or 5 years ago). One horse that I had worked closely with rehabbing when I was about 13 was there, and I was very glad to see him. When the owner had hired me on to change his wrap, groom him, clean his stall and hand-walk him every day, his back leg had been a mess, and the owner had told me he would probably not be rideable for years. Well, I suppose it has been years, but the big, gorgeous Warmblood is now jumping like a champ, and the owner of the barn ( a very prestigious hunter-jumper trainer), thinks this horse will be the next big thing. He still has the same sweet disposition that he had when I had spent some time with him, and I would give an arm and a leg to ride him (though I know that will never happen!). We floated his teeth.
The second horse we looked at there was having issues bending to the left and keeping the left lead. Doc noticed some tightness above the croup, and that the horse was less muscled on the left side of the neck than the right. He instructed me to take the horse out and hand-jog it in the field next to the barn, along the fence. So I jogged it, the stallion that they have came running, the horse got pretty excited but still behaved. We jogged up and down so Doc could look at it's movements. I spun her in tight circles to observe the placement of feet and to see if EPM was an issue (horses will practically fall over if they have it). She tripped on her feet a lot and seemed to have some issue with it. The final task was for me to hand-jog her while holding her head up high. She became a trippy mess.
And then the fun began... She braked, I slid on the wet grass, went down on one knee briefly, got back up, she started rearing, and I saw the two HUGE horse flies that were bugging her- one on her face and one on her back. So I try to get them off, she is freaking out, Doc instructs me to try to get her back inside the barn- she is bucking and rearing and trying in a panic to bolt, and all 135 lbs of me are dangling on the end of the lead rope trying to calm her down and get her under control. Well after a few moments of thinking this horse was going to inadvertently kill me, I got her into the barn, whacked the flies off and that was the end of that. I, panting and red-faced, patted the now very-chill horse while trying to exude a calm that-happens-to-me-everyday attitude. Pretty sure it didn't work... Anyway, based on what he saw, Doc thought it to be either Wobbler's syndrome (where the vertebrae slip in and out- it is genetic and hereditary), Lyme's disease, or EPM. The owner didn't want to test for Lyme's at the moment, as he thought Wobbler's was more likely as apparently her mother and sister had had similar issues. We then did a routine float on her teeth, though she had extremely sharp teeth and ulcers in her mouth from them. Due to her teeth problems, she had been having riding issues and even had a blister on one side of her mouth from the bit. This is common when people don't realize their horse's teeth need to be floated, or personally decide that it isn't worth it. It can, unfortunately, ruin a good horse and cause a lot of problems.
Doc and I had some good talks driving around today, and he told me that in a lot of ways I reminded him of himself at my age- both in life experiences, attitude and personality. I hope that means one day I will be as good of a vet as he is!
Tomorrow is my last day riding along with him for the Summer- amazing how fast the weeks flew by. I will certainly miss getting my vet fix, as well as Doc and Ms. S. themselves. I really hope I can work something out during the semester this year with one of the local small animal hospitals so I can keep building my hours and seeing some sides of vet med other than equine (not that I don't love equine, just that I would love to see what other things are in relation). We shall see!
~Melissa~
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