With all the talk right now about treating horses at
endurance rides, and overriding horses, I was thinking this might be relevant.
I am the caretaker on a private hobby farm. The owner has five horses, I
have two. They all live happily together in a 5 acre pasture with no
grass currently, and unlimited hay. We try to keep round rolls in
there. Last night about 6 pm, I took my dogs for a walk, and on the way
out fed carrots to all seven horses over the fence. Everyone was happy and
healthy. When we came back from our walk 30 minutes later, everyone was still
happy and healthy and it was starting to rain. I went in, took care of the
dogs, and came out to feed. I walked over to the pasture, and Blaze, the
6 year old Kentucky Mountain Horse was rolling and rolling and rolling. I
grabbed his halter and went to go get him. He was violently colicky,
throwing himself down, kicking, biting his side, bucking, pawing, etc. I
got him up, yelled at my husband to call the vet and his owner in that order
and started walking. I managed to get banamine into him, but it didn’t
help a thing. We walked him for two hours in a bad thunder storm.
The vet arrived about 9 pm, drugged the heck out of him…which
didn’t help the pain at all… and palpated him. Yup, he had a
twist. That is possibly the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, and if
no one minds, I don’t care to do it again. The decision was made to
send him to the vet school for surgery, so we had to find a gooseneck trailer
to haul him in. The vet was afraid with as violent as he was that he’d
hurt us in a bumper pull by causing it to jackknife. So, we called one of
my friends who said we could borrow her truck and trailer, and were about to
load him up about midnight, when he threw himself down and rolled again, and
actually untwisted himself. He went down, rolled a couple of times, and
laid there and groaned for a couple of minutes. We couldn’t get him
to stand back up. After about 10 minutes of pulling and beating and coercion,
he stood up, lifted his tail and farted. Then he wanted to eat
grass. We all just stared, including the vet. She immediately palpated
him again, and the twist had resolved itself.
Blaze is fine this morning, if a bit cranky that he can’t be out with the
others eating hay, and only got bran mash for breakfast. But I think he’s
going to be just fine. It just goes to show you though, this horse is
ridden on a 1.5 hour walking trail ride maybe once a week. It started
raining last night, and he rolled. And then he twisted. Anything
can happen at home in a pasture. Or at a ride. I personally won’t
ever hesitate to have my horse treated, regardless of if it is at home in the
pasture or tied to a tree in ridecamp. If he needs, he needs it, and I
don’t care what anyone thinks about me.
