The Ice Chronicles: Quick and Dirty

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Quick because that's all I have time for. Can someone get me more hours in this day, please? And dirty because . . . well, look at the poor guy. Needs a bath desperately.

And again, fair warning: Don't read this with dinner, and don't read if issues of the equine digestive process will skeeve you out too much.

We took the cath out his neck ourselves over the weekend; jeez, but that sucker was long. He had his last dose of antibiotics yesterday. If the diarrhea doesn't resolve pretty fast, he'll have to go back on them (abrasion and inflammation of this magnitude causes colitis), but we're going to try it for now and hope he heals fast enough to avoid a third go-round with them.

Today, the only remaining medication (v. supplements, of which he has several) is Banamine. We've been syringing him with the injectable form, but since it's liquid, I decided to see whether we could avoid traumatizing him this morning and simply added it to his grain mixture. It worked. 

For those keeping track, what that means is that in the morning, he gets a small amount of grain mixed with some molasses and water, a good dose of probiotics, and extremely generous helpings of powdered flaxseed and powdered psyllium (in other words, the new-ish, water-soluble version of generic Metamucil), all mixed together, with a decent dose of aloe juice and the Banamine.  The point of all of this is to continue to stimulate peristalsis in his intestinal tract, keep everything moving and doing in so in the proper direction, and also grab onto as much sand from the impaction as possible along the way, carrying it on out. The Banamine is to prevent the build-up of endotoxins that can cause infections and sepsis, and the aloe juice is to heal the intestinal abrasions from the sand particles.

He's drinking plenty of water now, which is good. He has his appetite back, apparently in full, which is also good. He now expects to be let out to graze at will (not happenin'), and puts his head over the bars and gaze longingly at the fields. He also gives me the stink-eye a dozen times a day when I don't drop everything rightthatsecond to take him back out again.

Yeah, he's feeling better. 

Now, about those extra hours in the day . . . .