Awww, just reading this now. (((Hugs)))) to you and Bear. I nursed my senior through upper and lower incisor removal. Not fun! I’m sure you will do okay, but yes, it’s stressful, so if you can get some help and moral support close to home, that can help out more than money.
Hoping the OP will be back with an update, and that it’s a good one…
I hope to read a happy update when LHU is able to check in. 
Yes, happy update (mostly).
Da Bear is home. 
and he is very perky In fact, I tried to take him for walkies and he just about tore my arm off, so we came back. Tomorrow I will turn him out in his pen.
He is not eating, but I am hopeful he will once he settles in. He was getting fed every 3 hours (8x/day). That ain’t gonna happen here. I am doing 6x feedings; he will just have to starve between 11pm and 6am.:winkgrin:
The bad part is all the care he needs, and the oogie-ness of his open incision. It goes through to his mouth, so when he eats or salivates, food or saliva or puss drips down from it. :o Ewwwwwwwwww.
Good Luck to you, this sounds like pretty good start to the healing process, I can imagine he is in pain, more jingles sent.
I guess it’s a good thing it happened in the winter, at least you don’t have the flies to deal with.
Here’s hoping for uneventful days for you in the next few weeks … give hugs and extra apple sauce to Bear for us!
Very few things are more disgusting than dealing with pussy, draining mouth wounds. Especially when he starts eating and you get that fun gruel of festering food, pus, saliva, and snot. :lol:
So glad he is happy at home. Continued jingles!
LH where are you? Your freak show sounds like a dream come true to me and I would love to give you a hand!
^^^^some people are amazing. Necessary, but yuck.
I’m sure I speak for all of us to thank you for keeping us updated. So often we get invested in a thread and the OP disappears and we are left wondering how it ended.
[QUOTE=Laurierace;7991377]
LH where are you? Your freak show sounds like a dream come true to me and I would love to give you a hand![/QUOTE]
Laurierace, I am in Southern Pines, NC
COME ON DOWN!
This morning's meds only took 1 hour and 10 minutes. I know I can get it down under an hour if I really try. :)
I am having a problem though. Several times a day he gets a total of 25 pills each time. I am grinding them into a powder and then combining them with applesauce. However, Bear no longer closes his mouth all the way, so even though I syringe the meds in and hold up his head really quickly, he still drools out about 25% . Should I give 25% more pills to account for the drool?
I am going to get some Caro syrup, but I worry that I cannot be as fast with the syringe if the mixture is thicker.
I have one of those monster syringes and I have cut the tip off to get the meds into his mouth more quickly. What else can I do? Thx.did you cut the whole end off? not just the tip?
[QUOTE=Lord Helpus;7991792]
Laurierace, I am in Southern Pines, NC
COME ON DOWN!
This morning's meds only took 1 hour and 10 minutes. I know I can get it down under an hour if I really try. :)
I am having a problem though. Several times a day he gets a total of 25 pills each time. I am grinding them into a powder and then combining them with applesauce. However, Bear no longer closes his mouth all the way, so even though I syringe the meds in and hold up his head really quickly, he still drools out about 25% . Should I give 25% more pills to account for the drool?
I am going to get some Caro syrup, but I worry that I cannot be as fast with the syringe if the mixture is thicker.
I have one of those monster syringes and I have cut the tip off to get the meds into his mouth more quickly. What else can I do? Thx.[/QUOTE]
I use to have a trainer who gave bute by crushing it up and then making a THICK, sticky paste by adding molasses. She would mix it all up in a bowl and then take a looooong handled wooden spoon and smear scoopfulls of the paste way up onto the back of the tongue. It was genius. You could get every bit of the paste into any horse, so leaking, no spitting, no waste. Maybe worth a try?If I add Gatorade fruit punch powder to a few handsfull of hay pellets (soaked and soft) and then a cup or two of water, my horses gobble up ANY medicine in their feed pan. I don’t even crush the pills. I even worm them this way.
Are you flushing his mouth with a dilute iodine solution? When Bud had his broken jaw and abscess, the Mississippi vet school had me doing that.
Might one of those Easy Wormer Gadgets help? They come with a syringe.
Any of these suggestions sound very difficult to manage if you are taking care not to do damage to a not yet stable jaw. (How can you ‘hold up his head’ without disturbing it?) If he’s eating well, placing meds in a small quantity of feed that he would volunteer to eat seems like a good solution, with the bulk of a feeding given to him once the meds are ingested.
LH, something like this might be useful
http://www.jefferspet.com/products/sharpvet-feeding-syringes
Thanks for the replies.
Yes, I have cut the entire tip off. That is how I have always done it. Should I not have? I can get more syringes.
He cannot eat any hay, no matter how soft and no matter how well it is soaked. I got a sample of that alfalfa chaff and soaked it, but it still might require chewing. But I did put his 2 gams of Bute (using orange flavored powdered Bute) into his pellet soup. He drank all the water and ate a little of the pellet gruel, but I guess I did not give him enough time to eat (1 hour). Problem is, if I give him more time, it gets too close to his next meal 3 hours after the prior meal.
I am thinking that I will eliminate the 9am feeding and only do 6am, 12 noon, 4:30 pm and 10pm. If I do 3 qts at each meal he might finish up better.
[QUOTE=Lord Helpus;7991992]
Yes, I have cut the entire tip off. That is how I have always done it. Should I not have? I can get more syringes.[/QUOTE]
yes, cut the whole thing off back to the body of the syringe so you have the maximum width of the body of the syringe and that plunger just comes flying through.
Instead of a syringe, use a turkey baster. First dissolve the pills, all of them, in a ssmall amt of water as possible. Then mix with apple juice, or juice an apple in your blender. Not so thick (although you can use molasses if you cannot get Bear to swallow the apple juice.)
Using a turkey baster lets you get the baster further inside the side of the mouth towards the throat.
Although well it might be better if the mixture is added to molasses so that it won’t just come right out of his mouth. But do dissolve the pills first in water. It makes it so much easier to mix the pills with whatever you are using to make the meds more palatable.
The vet (the resident) actually called today to ask how he was doing. They either loved him up there or they are extremely worried about him.
She said that they allow for the “huck-tooey” factor when figuring dosages.
And that a dosing syringe with metal on the end is not something she wants in his mouth.
But she is letting me feed him some very well soaked alfalfa chaff. Which is good because I can give it to him outside and he can eat it slowly while the other horses eat hay in their fields.
Right now he has a 2" long string of puss hanging from his jaw. Shall I take a picture of it? :winkgrin:
