Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Yes, that’s Dr. Dave Bostwick, our small animal internal medicine specialist in Missoula, working on something that is decidedly not a small animal — our blind mare Lena.  Our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, had asked Dave if he would do echocardiograms on two horses today, Lena and a 2-year old colt with a heart murmur who belonged to another client.  Dave has a state-of-the-art color Doppler ultrasound machine that is ideal for doing echocardiograms, and it can "penetrate" even the deep chest of a horse and provide excellent images of the heart.  Dave graciously agreed to do the diagnostics, and he brought his equipment over to Erin’s clinic this morning.

Lena has been having periodic episodes of pitting edema, in which fluid builds up under the skin.  There are many potential causes of edema, from viruses to heart problems and many other things, and it can be difficult to isolate the specific trigger.  Lena’s most recent case was just three weeks ago, when a 2-inch thick layer of edema built up on her abdomen.  Erin had us treat her with steroid therapy, and by today, her edema was gone again.  But I was concerned that there could be something wrong with her heart, since her blood work looks good, she is otherwise healthy and had never appeared sick. 

Erin believed a virus was a much more probable cause of Lena’s edema, and she thought it unlikely Lena’s heart could be causing it.  But she also knew how worried we were by Lena’s repeated episodes.  Given our spate of unpleasant medical surprises and deaths so far this year, we are a bit on edge and, quite honestly, expecting the worst.  She wanted to put my mind at ease by ruling out the heart problem I was most concerned about.

What did the echocardiogram reveal?  Lena has a beautiful heart, just like the rest of her.  Everything was normal.  Whew.

After Dave finished, Erin went nose-to-nose with Lena.  With a mischievous grin, Erin said to Lena, "Now, are you going to tell your Dad that I told you so?"

Turning to me, Erin asked, "So, what are you going to post on the blog tonight?"

I said, "Well, I’m … um … I’m going to confess that you were right and I was, um, wrong on this heart thing."

Of course, I have never minded being so wrong — I’m happy to know our Lena has a healthy heart!

Now I can go back to worrying about viruses.  Oh, well.  C’est la vie.