Surgery!

Chinook was a champion and loaded right into the trailer to head to school. Although nervous at first, once he arrived he was right at home and happily waited in a stall (without even any other horses around) until we were able to look at him. He loved my classmate Camille, who is on the surgery service and took his case, though he wasn't as thrilled about our surgical resident for some reason. He was a good boy, though, and they quickly had him sedated so they could a full exam.

Well, it didn't take them long to decide that he indeed had a bad infection and that it was in the spermatic cord (called a scirrhous cord). The thing is, the treatment is to surgically resect the infected cord, and so I had little option but to send him into the OR. Within a short time, they had placed an IV catheter and were preparing him for general anesthesia. He took it all in stride and behaved so well! I couldn't have been prouder of my little "mutt" horse.

The procedure took about an hour and they removed several inches of tissue. He woke up from anesthesia wonderfully (something that doesn't always happen with horses), and he spent one night in the hospital like a big boy. Then he loaded right back up into the trailer and now he's back at home and taking it easy in the smaller pen area with Gabby. He's still a bit swollen, but I think we are finally over the worst! I am glad that one of our residents convinced me to bring him in, because if this had gone on any longer he would have had an infection in his abdomen, which would have been much, much worse. Hopefully this is the end of our troubles and by $1000 castration!

Another visit to the OSU VTH

So, tomorrow morning Chinook will be headed back to the OSU Large Animal Veterinary Teaching Hospital (my current place of residence, shall we say) to be seen by the surgery service for the pus coming out of his incision. It is now much "better" than it was before, but still clearly infected and obviously out of my control. This will be his first big trailer trip all alone.


Let's hope this little devil child behaves himself!! In other news, the weather has been really awesome recently (clear, nice and cold, a little foggy, but dry). I have been able to feed the horses outside for over a week now, and I was able to snap this cool photo in the fog the other night around 8 pm.


I will update soon with highlights of our trip to school!

Chinook at 7 months!

Not much to report here, but I just thought I'd post this really cute picture of Chinook begging for food tonight. We are still doing much of the same around here--just waiting to in the next month or so figure out where we're all going to end up after I graduate in June. So far it's looking like things are wide open, and we may quite well be trailering the ponies several thousand miles. More adventures to come!!!