Sunday, April 25, 2010

Managing a Drunken Dinosaur... or Lilly's Journey to Recovery

I went to pick up Lilly from Doc Sue's on Saturday morning. It took me a few minutes to carefully back the trailer up her driveway, then gather my things and get out... as soon as I got out I wished I'd been in a hurry! Here's poor Doc Sue propped up on the top rail of a pipe pen, trying to reach a bag of IV fluids over the barn rafter, while using her other foot to nudge a drugged up sorrel and keep him from falling over and pulling out the IV! I took ahold of the lead rope-- the poor two-year-old was one of Doc Sue's own horses, and he was in bad shape. He was in a lot of pain, and hadn't passed anything since the night before. Doc Sue said, "You got here just in time! When I saw him this morning I thought, should I just go get the .38? But I decided with enough drugs I'd try tackling it myself. You can see how well that's going."

We spent about an hour pushing fluids, but no change. The only signs he showed of recovery were simply signs of waking up, at which point he'd receive another dose of drugs and go back to sleep. Doc Sue decided she'd go change Lilly's dressing while I kept an eye on the little boy.

Lilly has been at the vet now for over a week. For a 2,000 lb Percheron, she's taking all this doctoring pretty well! But she is obviously getting tired of it. She doesn't want to let Doc Sue have her foot, and she certainly doesn't want to take any more medicine. Poor Doc Sue, she is really ginger about getting in there and insisting Lilly behave. I am sure I am only so confident because I've never really been hurt, but I felt really lame standing there holding the lead rope of a snoring, overgrown yearling while here the vet struggled with my own mare.

Finally, after about twenty minutes, another patient showed up! "I'm just here to pick up some drugs," she said, looking at me warily. I passed her the lead rope, and went to relieve Doc Sue. I wrestled Lilly's big foot into a diaper to keep it clean. Then Doc Sue and I led the big mare off to my trailer, leaving New Patient wearing a confused look and trying not to let the sleeping horse bonk his nose on the corral fence. So it goes: the constant adventure of horse-ownership!

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