Corona Colic

Last week, Mae gifted us with a gas colic.  For non-horsey people, the C word is one of the most dreaded in the horse world.  My trainer has had two horses die from colic this spring and if you remember, Mae almost died from it when we first got her four years ago.  But back to the story, one of the barn hands was doing late evening rounds and noticed that Mae was distressed and laying on her side in her stall.  He immediately called my trainer, who then called us and we rushed to the barn (luckily only five minutes away).  When we arrived, my trainer had already pulled Mae out of her stall, where she had been lying down and sweating, hosed her off, and piled ice packs on her back.  Her husband was hand walking her around the barn and we showed up just in time to hold her still while she got an injection of banamine.  We took her into one of the small arenas where there was more light and air flow, and she walked next to Bryan, cooling off and did not seem to want to lie down and roll (a good sign).  You could tell that her stomach was distended, but she seemed to be feeling better as the minutes ticked by.

That day, the morning was very cool and in the afternoon, we had a thunderstorm storm blow through, which turned the weather super muggy, humid, and hot.  The horses were fed their dinner at 4 pm and she was fine at that time and ate almost all of her food.  As best we guessed, she likely ate or drank too fast and overheated.

After pulling her out of the arena, we hosed her off again in the wash racks.  Typically she'll poop in the wash racks, so when she didn't, we called our vet.  He lives over an hour away and recommended sedating her.  If she got worse in the meantime, he would leave home and head toward us.  She got 4 ccs of tranq and immediately got very drowsy.  We put her back in her stall (after pulling out the remnants of her dinner) and she seemed to perk right back up again and started hunting for hay scraps in her shavings as if nothing was wrong.  Her stomach was gurgling on both sides but still no poop.

Not in distress, focused on eating

Since she had cooled down and wasn't showing signs of discomfort, we told the vet that we would continue to watch her but didn't need him to come out.  After another hour or so, she peed and seemed to be 100% back to normal, trying to con us into feeding her treats and stealing hay from her stall mate.  We called it a night around 10:30 pm and felt confident that she'd be feeling much better in the morning. 

My trainer went back to check on her the next morning at 5 am and said she had pooped overnight (success!).  Just to be safe, she wasn't fed again until that evening but she had evacuated her bowels enough throughout the day that we felt comfortable that whatever blockage she might have had had passed.  I have never received so many text message pictures of horse poop (and been so happy about it) in my life.  Leave it to Mae to inject some excitement into our lives, particularly when we need it the least!