Today our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor of Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Missoula, came out to do fall vaccinations. In this photo she's about to give blind Bo his wormer. It's a funny thing how horses can suddenly grow an extra 8 to 10 inches of neck when they realize they're about to be wormed. Medically there's no explanation for it, but we've seen it happen enough times to know it's a true equine phenomenon.
Alayne is holding blind Rosie, who has been Bo's pasture mate this year. Sadly, back in the spring we had to euthanize the love of Bo's life, little old Guadalupe, who no longer had any teeth left to eat with. Even with plenty of equine senior grain we couldn't keep weight on her, and we decided to let her go. Bo is now as devoted to Rosie as we was to Guadalupe, so it was a very good match.
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In other veterinary news, our small animal vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, called this morning with the necropsy results on Teddy. The pathology report indicates that he died from a heart attack, with evidence of other blood clots in his kidneys and lungs as well as the fatal blockage in his heart. The pattern suggests he suffered from a "shower" of blood clots that cascaded through his body. The pathologist could not pinpoint where the clotting originated. Brenda said that in humans, this kind of massive heart attack is called a "widowmaker." I asked Brenda if we had managed to get Teddy to the hospital sooner, whether they could have done something to prevent it. She said that given the symptoms he was having — the labored breathing — they would have put him on oxygen, started him on IV fluids, and the heart attack still would have occurred. Even if they had known he was beginning to throw off clots — and there was simply no way to know that, she said — they couldn't have stopped the clotting process once it was underway. She said, "in short, there just wasn't anything you or we could have done to keep this from happening." Brenda said it's likely his diabetes contributed to it, but we'll never know what triggered the clotting episode.
We are having Teddy's body cremated and will have his ashes back at the ranch in a couple of weeks. At least we know what happened, and this gives us some closure.
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Amazing — now we're No. 1!
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