Buster's Day(s) at University

Buster went to WSU to have his upper airway scoped today to check why he has trouble breathing when going uphill, and we have an answer and a solution! It was not at all what I thought it was, which would have been a hard fix.  He has a big cyst blocking his airway! It was kinda shocking. I'm surprised he can breathe as well as he does. It also causes him to get some food in his trachea where it shouldn't be, and I bet that's why he doesn't bray. If he tried he'd suck that thing right down his throat!

This whole big round bit shouldn't be there:

That wee hole in the triangle is part of his airway peeking out:

Bits of food where food shouldn't be:

So, the plan is to sedate him and kind of lasso the cyst with an electo-cautery tool and remove it. They showed me a video of a similar surgery and it was very quick and clean and looked like no problem at all. Of course there will be some irritation in his throat, and there are always risks with surgery. But he should be SO much more comfortable afterwards.

They will do the surgery tomorrow. It was so, so hard to leave him at the hospital. I hated it. Juniper gave me a look that made me feel even worse when I got home.

He was such a good boy for everyone at WSU. They always have at least 3 vets and 3 students working on each case, so it gets a little crowded, and they did an ECG as well as the endoscopy, so there was equipment rolling around. Also, they asked him to hike around on a hill with an assistant to try to reproduce the breathing noise. I really enjoyed watching him cheerfully work for other people.  I even saddled him up and tried riding. He looked like he was having fun! He thought the black asphalt was a little weird, but only in one specific spot. He was great for everything. No sedation at any point. What a guy. Gosh, I hope he doesn't mind being there for a few days. Maybe he'll enjoy making new friends. I'm sure everyone will love him!

The senior doctor on the case is a mule man, and he's owned some nice mammoth donkeys in his time, so it was nice to talk shop a bit.  I had seen his daughters showing mules at Mule Mania last summer.  He mentioned that there are a LOT more donkeys at Montana Mule Days the following weekend, so I'll have to go to that this coming year.  Fun stuff to look forward to! 

It was also kind of fun to give the doctors there something they don't see very often.  As long as it's not so weird they don't know what to do with it.  Two of the doctors hadn't seen this before, and the senior doctor had seen some on the epiglottis, but not often on the soft palate like this.  Probably never in a donkey.  Most American donkeys would probably go through life not working, never showing signs of distress, self-regulating their work/play to their air supply.

I hope everything continues to go this well for the whole duration of this little journey...  I wasn't expecting to get an answer, and if I did, I was expecting it to be something we couldn't treat.  What a great thing to see on that screen.  Buster will be a normal donkey!