It was shortly after 5 p.m. today when I noticed blind Tonto wasn’t eating his evening grain. Uh oh. In the several years we’ve had Tonto, I have never seen him not eat. Then, before I could even say "colic," he sank to his knees in the corral. And with that, my heart sank too. I knew he was colicking. We got him up, listened to his heart rate (fast) and took his temperature (normal). I gave him a dose of Banamine, an anti-inflammatory.
But even as we worked on him, Tonto got worse. He tried kicking at his belly. He finally just lay down and rolled over on his side. I called our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor at Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Missoula. She told me to load him up and bring him in, and said she’d go for a run with her dogs while I made the hour-plus drive to the clinic with the horse trailer.
Erin was waiting when I finally arrived with Tonto. First she did a general exam, then a rectal to see what what was going on internally with his intestines. In the photo above, Erin has inserted a tube through Tonto’s nose and then down into his stomach. She pumped water in, then siphoned out the contents of his stomach. Also in the photo is vet tech Janet L., who helped Erin with the procedures.
In this photo Erin is preparing a catheter so Tonto can have IV fluids throughout the night. The blue cloth over his face served as a "snort ‘n sneeze" shield so we wouldn’t get sprayed by Tonto while Erin was pumping the water into his stomach. He was hanging his head low because he’d been sedated for all of this.
We led him out of the horse stock, put him into a stall, and hooked up the IV fluids. It’s too soon to say how serious a case of colic he has; we’ll have a much better idea tomorrow.
(Click on photos for larger image.)
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