Home Again, Home Again

Why hello! I touched back on Maryland soil last evening, after a delay of a few hours due to snow in Colorado. Boy did I miss my animals! My cats were thankful for my return, as was (of course) my lab. The chickens and my horse were fairly indifferent... Someone was feeding them, so they were happy! :)

I had a wonderful time in Colorado, revisiting many of my favorite places and hiking through a few county and state parks close to my Dad's house. We also headed up to Estes Park, CO and went for a short trail ride ( more about this in a bit). We got some bowling in, some card playing, and a lot of good quality time with my father and stepmother. I put in some of my favorite pictures below!

Since most of my life is fairly boring, I normally highlight most of the vet-related stuff and leave out the other bits, though this will soon change as I will be returning to school in a week (wow that flew...), and will have much less vet-related things to do. I actually just realized this on Thursday and scrambled to order my books and get stuff in order. I will be working on finalizing the pre-vet schedule for this semester in the upcoming week, which is always fun. And by fun I mean generally a day for my OCD self to go to town. I love schedules. And spreadsheets. :)

I got a double bulls-eye playing darts... purely by accident.

A view of the rockies from our drive up to Estes Park

Me and Sugar, the mare I was given to ride.

One of the beautiful elk we saw sleeping in Estes Park.

Anyway, back to the trail ride...Let me paint the scene for you. I have ridden in CO many times, but never here, as it was one of the few places open in Winter. So we drive up, and first of all, can't find the proper driveway for the place. Then, when we finally do, we drive through a lot of really old, pretty run-down buildings. Still kind of nice but... interesting. Once we get through the cabins and the lodge, we find the ranch part of the place. It's actually much nicer than the rest of the buildings... there were a lot of horses out in the paddock, but they all looked well-fed and groomed, and the barn was immaculate. The front office was filled with smoke and smoking older women. We checked in, and there were no liability papers to sign, or any papers for that matter, which seemed bizarre to me. Even when my friends come to ride, I make them sign a liability release.

We headed back outside, where the wranglers began to bring out horses and tack them up. There were ten going out for an hour through the mountains, and we composed four of those. Not too bad of a group. Their tack looked nice, and the horses were well-behaved. We checked out their longhorn and brama calves, petted some of the horses, and chased after the indoor, litterbox trained pot-bellied pig to get some pictures. We then leaned back to wait for the other guests to get there. I noticed one of the horses acting pretty restless, and then he started to lay down, still being tied to the hitching post. Well I wasn't about to let him ruin someone's saddle, so I hollered at him, and one of the wranglers who was a bit closer advanced toward him, at which point the horse jumped back to it's feet.

Strange, I thought. Most of the horses at the trail-riding places are used to their work and hardly notice the tack or the riders. So I kept watching him while the wrangler went to grab another horse. He appeared restless, and was tugging on his tie. I then noticed him starting to lift one of his back legs as if to kick at his belly. Little alarm bells went off in my head and I mentioned to Jared that it looked like the horse was colicky to me. He of course told me to keep my nose out of it- it wasn't my horse and I wasn't a vet. Luckily, the wrangler came to the same conclusion I did. He untacked the horse and tied him up, then called some of the other wranglers to come help out with the guest horses. He walked the horse and listened to it's belly. His body language got continually more stressed, and the wranglers attitudes began to plummet. The main wrangler, after seeing, I guess, that I got paired up with the most advanced rider horse, or maybe overhearing my comments, or seeing my troubled glances, came up and discreetly told me that they had recently lost 2 horses to sand colic, and he feared for this one. I asked if he had a vet close by, and he indicated that one was very close to the ranch.

From pieces of information dropped by the various wranglers, I gathered that they thought something to do with the hay they had been giving was causing the problem, and that they had been giving mineral supplements since the first horse had gone down. The hay they were currently feeding looked to be very green alfalfa. The colicky horse continued to get very bad, very fast. He began trying to lay down any chance he could get, despite the walking, trotting and circles that the main wrangler was getting him to do. The main problem began when he handed the horse off to a younger wrangler (about 16), who appeared to have no idea what to do with the horse. Not only did she let him get down and roll at least twice, she also just let go of the lead at one point when he started tugging and let the horse run away and then roll, and then later her own horse got away and ran around. It was terribly frustrating for me to watch this occur and be able to do nothing about it. They needed a vet and needed one fast, and I unfortunately, am not there yet. I do not have the knowledge, the experience or the authority to help, to give advice, or to work on the horse. All I could do was stand there and watch the horse deteriorate. Someone eventually gave him banamine paste and an injection of something, and they took him into the stall, and then took us out on the trail.

Because of the emergency, we got out half an hour late... but instead of giving us the full hour, they rushed us back after about 20 minutes on the trail. No one was in a mood to complain, especially not the other 6 members of the trail ride who had little to no horse experience and were quite wigged out by the scene that had unraveled in front of them. My mount was nice and responsive. I even got a few trot steps in, and made her wander off the trail a few times. I enjoyed the beauty of the short ride, and the companionship of my family, though a large part of me wanted to be in that stall seeing what they were doing. When we returned, one of the wranglers informed me that they could no longer get the horse up at all, and that they suspected he also had pneumonia on top of the colic. I left feeling a bit heavy-hearted, but also reminded once again of why I want to be a vet. I don't want to be standing on the sidelines, with my hands itching to help, feeling empty of knowledge. I know I won't be able to save them all, or even to have the ability to, but I want to have the knowledge and the opportunity to try.

~Melissa