And Then There Was One

 On Tuesday night I arrived at the barn just before 7pm and went out to catch Cisco for a ride. He was lying down, which immediately put me on alert as I've never seen him lie down at that time of day. He got up and walked to me as he normally would, but stood with his nose on the ground for a moment before walking away from me to go and lie down again.

I ran to the barn for the banamine.

It seemed to do it's job and about 40 minutes later Cisco was his normal, obnoxious, wanting to put his nose on everything self.

Within the next hour, he started pawing. That is one of his tells that he isn't feeling very well.

I took him back to the arena in the hopes that he would poop, and he did oblige with a very small poop of normal consistency. He kept pawing though.

We went back to the barn and I tied him up to scrape some hair from him.

He didn't grab the rope after I tied him as he always does.

He got progressively more restless, pawing and moving around. I put him in a stall so that I could call the vet at about 9:50pm.

And I messaged a friend that I was worried.

The vet was finishing another colic call about 20 minutes away. Cisco was very restless in the stall so we walked the aisle, with him choosing a marching speed.

About 2 minutes before the vet arrived at 10:25, Cisco pooped. Yay! It was an OK size and consistency. I got my hopes up that he would just need to be tubed and all would be good.

After checking vitals and listening to gut sounds (that were present) the vet did a rectal. And quite quickly said that he was worried for my critter.

Ultrasound showed a 6 cm thickening of one part of intestine, with a 7 cm distortion (distention? My brain is fried) of another part in front of it. He said I'm going to ask you a question that you'll have to think seriously about, I said surgery is not an option. He said intestinal surgery, if everything went well, could easily run 15 thousand.

He said we could hospitalize him and treat medically, but suspected that we would still be making a decision by morning. I asked how realistic Cisco's chance would be with this option and he said he's only seen 2 or 3 pull through.

By 11:30, it was done.

Cisco, C-Man, C-Dawg, Turdle, Buddy.

We were just getting to the good stuff.