Bragging-I sure am!!! (Long)

[steve robinson <irobi@gilanet.com>]

Hi All,
I just wanted to share with everyone what I feel is a great 
accomplishment for both my horse and myself.
First off all I need to give you a brief history on this mare because 
that is what makes it so special. For the last six months she has been 
colicking every month. It would be so emotional to walk out and find her 
down again. At one point she was down for three days and was not 
responding to anything. The vet had done everything that he could 
possibly do for her. She wouldn't get up, she wouldn't eat, she wasn't 
drinking and hadn't pooped. For three days!! So on the third day we had 
decided that it was time to put her down. The vet told me that he had 
never seen a horse down this long with this type of colic survive and if 
she did it would be a first. We had the funeral crew here, the backhoe 
was digging her grave as I sat down on the ground with her and said our 
goodbyes.--She was scheduled to be put down at noon and five minutes 
before the vet got here, something happened. She got up, took a walk up 
to the water trough, got a loooong drink, pooped and started grazing. I 
was amazed.
The vet showed up to do his dirty deed, and I told him I couldn't put 
her down because she seemed so full of life all of a sudden. He wasn't 
impressed. He didn't have much hope for her. It has been an emotional 
rollercoaster ever since. This particular incident happened in 
June. Every morning I wonder how I am going to find her, down on the 
ground or actually standing on all fours. And it is still going on with 
her but we now think that it is ovary related. It was a drag trying to 
condition her for a ride and half the time I couldn't get her up to 
ride. 

There was a ride last weekend that I really wanted to do, and it was a 
relatively tough ride and there were concerns about whether we should 
even do it or not. Not by our vet. He gave us the okay.
I never gave up hope on her because I knew she'd come through for me. We 
ended up doing the ride (even though it was just LD-25miles) but to us 
it was as big of an accomplishment as a 50/100 miler would have been, 
and not only did we finish first, but we got RESERVE BEST CONDITION. 
Bragging-yep, yep, yep. I couldn't be prouder of her. And we are very 
new to the sport, this was just our second ride ever.

Iris Robinson
SW Region
P.S. We have now concluded that it is her ovaries that has caused this 
chronic colic for her and it appears that surgery is the answer to 
eliminating this problem.


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