What vet clinics did the colic care/ surgery?
I hope your mare pulls through…
She is at Mississippi State, and they’ve been good about discussing what I want/can afford. Holy crap this vet bill is mind boggling. I am trying not to get my hopes up, because it seems like every time we get good news she goes downhill again, but she’s had a good 24 hours or so. Her attitude is almost normal and she has a voracious appetite. Her blood work is also trending the right direction.
She’s making life a bit more difficult on the vets/students now that she’s happily untying their gowns, taking the manure fork out of their hands, throwing her buckets all over the stall, trying to drag the foot wash station into the stall, trying to eat the ice they’re packing her feet with (precautionary at this point, her feet are cool and digital pulses fine at the moment), and generally just sticking her nose everywhere it doesn’t belong but my god it is good to see her playful.
Other complications could develop, the endotoxemia could flare up again, but hopefully this positive trend continues.
Cautiously optimistic here. I think the worst is over…
So glad to hear. The ice boots are important. If she developes sore feel, don’t take her home until she is completely normal, lameness wise.
Continued jingles!
Any word on how the mare is doing?
Did they find any enteroliths or was this something else entirely? Hope she pulled through, condolences if she left us. Still interested to know if they were the cause.
Sorry for the delay in updating, the good news is the delay was due to me being busy taking care of her! She came home on Friday and is so far continuing to be her rockstar self. The mass of students who swarmed her as we were leaving to pet her and tell her goodbye was a pretty good indication of her attitude in the hospital. :lol:
She is on antibiotics because her incision looked a little inflamed, but all scans indicated that everything deeper in the belly/intestines/lungs is looking good. We’ll see how it’s doing when we go back to get her staples out later this week.
It was not an enterolith (which always seemed unlikely) but a feed impaction. What has me concerned is that we don’t know what caused the impaction. There is nothing in her environment that would make you think she’d be prone to colic and there was no sudden change in diet. I’ve had her about a year and to my knowledge she’s never colicked before. About the only thing I can think is that maybe she wasn’t drinking as much in the pasture at night as I thought she was, which I suppose could have slowed down her motility for several nights…she was drinking, urinating, and defecating a normal amount during the day when she was stalled, however. The water was off for a couple weeks to fix a leak so I wasn’t able to scrub their pasture water as often as I normally do, but I skimmed it daily and it appeared to be going down at a normal rate, so I just don’t know. Horses are horses and I know sometimes things just happen, but I wish we had a better idea what caused it.
When she was showing first signs, did you have any severe weather, or dramatic weather changes? It may be hard to remember back to them with all the stress. But it is very easy for a horse to get a bit behind on hydration.
I am in Colorado, and it is quite dry all year round, so I give my horses electrolytes year round, with our vets’ blessings. My colic-prone gelding also made good use of his Himalayan salt block, and preferred that over the red mineral blocks. Some people also give table salt daily to encourage drinking. Maybe check with your vet to see if you can do anything to be proactive.
Glad she is home and you are busy!! 
No weather changes, obviously getting warmer as we move toward summer but no big swings. She did work on her mineral block quite a bit, and usually drank more than my gelding. She’s honestly the last horse at the barn I would’ve expected to colic. We’ve added salt to her grain 2x a day to be proactive and in addition to her clean water she has access to what I call “crack tea”. In this case a handful of grain at the bottom of a bucket filled with water.
Thanks again for the kind thoughts!
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I have only heard of using Coca Cola vía stomach tube, I can’t imagine it could be given IV! Maybe I am misreading your post.
It may help in breaking up a feed mat in the stomach, or help dissipate an impaction further along. I hope some of our vets could explain how they use it, and its presumed method of action. I have always kept a 2L bottle in my tack locker, since I learned of its use.
@Jexa , I am very glad to read your updates.
Great news. I bet it had something to do with your water leak and things not as the usual during that time. It will probably never happen again
