Wednesday, April 02, 2008

He's doing okay. They did a bunch of tests, everything looks good except that he didn't quite get enough colostrum. It's borderline though, and they don't want to give him plasma yet. His small intestine and organs looked good in the ultrasound, but they can't see the large intestine. She couldn't feel an obstruction when she felt around manually. They're staying the night there for observation. He wasn't showing any of the pain symptoms while I was there, but she said that's pretty normal, they get interested in their new environment and it takes a while for them to notice the pain again. Oh, and his umbilicus didn't feel like it had closed off completely, but didn't seem infected at all.

I was supremely impressed with miss Bella. She's only known humans for just over 6 months. I haven't taken her anywhere. This horse has trailer loaded only once before without a loading chute. She loaded into a strange trailer with her baby behind her, no problem. He followed her right in. She hauled in to town on crappy roads and didn't step on her baby. They unloaded just fine after she got a look around. (Why are people always in a hurry to make them get out, not let them take 30 seconds to look? Offers of "Do you want me to get in there and get her out?" Nope, just let her look...) Baby followed her into the hospital, with a slight pause (on her part) at the door. He went on the scale (89 pounds) and then they went past a scary garbage can and into a nice bright stall. There were 3-4 people in there messing with the baby, plus me and my sister. Talk about a crash course in being handled by more than one person at once! This horse is barely halter broke, has never been on any outings, has only been handled by me, AND has a baby at her side being messed with. She was a DREAM. She was a bit scared of the ultrasound machine, but got over that pretty quickly once she'd investigated it, then watched the screen like any mom would. Wow, I am so impressed with her!

The baby - he hated his exams, but other than that he nursed and slept and peed. And shot an enema back out with no poop. He was a good little mama follower, didn't need to be led or restrained at all on the way in. I hope he doesn't learn to hate people after all this abuse...

Hopefully I'll get a call saying he's fine and go pick them up in the morning. My gut tells me there is something wrong, but I'm really hoping my gut is wrong.

1 comment:

Christy said...

I'm very glad to hear that he has a fighting chance. I worried all night. Poop, Wee Man, poop!!