This morning I drove a full trailer-load — three blind horses and one mule — to our equine vet clinic in Missoula, Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital. Two of the horses, Rocky and Shasta, needed surgery to remove painful eyes. The third blind horse, recent arrival Bo, needed dental work. And the mule, our lovable old Roy, needed his arthritic joints injected again with steroids. (He does not play in Major League Baseball so this is okay.)
In the photo above, Shasta has been anesthetized and we’ve lifted him up off the ground with the ceiling-mounted hoist. Our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, is in the back in the green shirt; with her are vet techs Tiffany on the left, Courtney in the center and Amanda on the right, holding the controls for the hoist.
In this next shot they’ve raised the hydraulic surgery table that sits in the floor. Once the operation is over, they lower the table, with the horse still on it, back into the floor. Thus the horse is lying on the ground when he starts waking up from anesthesia:
Here Shasta is being lowered onto the table. Erin and team are pulling him back towards them so he’s square on the table. (Notice I’m not helping, just taking photos.) We’ve already added the head rest, and next will come the leg rests:
Now Erin is clipping the area around the eye she’s going to remove, while Courtney is setting up the equipment to monitor his vital signs during the surgery:
And then Erin starts her surgery. Before I knew it, she was finished, the operating table was retracted into the floor, and Shasta was starting to wake up. I think the entire process took roughly 30 minutes or so:
If that was the main event — Erin will do Rocky’s eye surgery tomorrow — these next photos show what else went on. Another of the vets at the clinic, Dr. Doug Reedy, stepped in to float Bo’s teeth. One of the things we really like about this clinic is that there are five vets on staff, so whatever needs to get done will get done. Thus Doug took care of Bo while Erin worked on Roy. And Bo needed serious dental work, that’s for sure. It had been a long time, if ever, since he had any dental care. Doug said Bo had hooks on his teeth that were among the worst he’d seen:
We had last injected Roy’s stiff, arthritic joints back in August, and he was due to get some more steroids in him. It made a remarkable difference for him the first time, and we’re delighted the treatment lasted as long as it did. So here’s Erin injecting his hock. Yes, that mule does have a head, it’s just out of view!
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