Projectile Diarrhea

The last two weeks have been busy busy busy!  The ramping up of show season has brought a lot of lame horses into the clinic.  We are constantly doing lameness exams, taking radiographs, ultra-sounding tendons, and injecting joints with a combination of steroids and hylauronic acid.  With these long days my life has basically become eat, sleep, work, and repeat.  

Now about that projectile diarrhea... When you are doing equine reproduction work everyday and  assisting with trans-rectal ultrasounds you are bound to get pooped on sooner rather than later right? Unfortunately, it only took two weeks for me to get covered in it...yuck!  We were ultra-sounding mares like we do every morning to check for ovulation, but this time when Dr. Rapson pulled her arm out of the mare's rectum, diarrhea came flying out with it and covered us.  I now bring an extra pair of clothes to work every day.  Lesson learned.

This past week we had two foals come in with umbilical hernias that had to be fixed surgically.  The great thing about being at Saginaw Valley is that they include you in the whole process from handling the colts pre-medication, to helping safely lay them down once they are anesthetized, and get them into the surgical suite.  Which, by the way, we use a huge crane to lift the horses from the padded recovery room where we place the foals under anesthesia to the surgical suite where the actual operation is performed. 

Unfortunately, not every case that comes into the clinic has a happy ending.  Late last week an adorable one month old foal came into the clinic with a badly fractured third metacarpal bone.  His mom had accidentally stepped on him a week prior.  The first veterinarian who examined him only put a cast on it.  Take a look at the radiograph below...that fracture won't heal with just a cast, that fracture needed surgery.  Not to get too graphic, but the foals leg was essentially dangling and you could see it move when he put even the slightest bit of weight on it. 

Not only have I been learning veterinary medicine, but I have also been gaining valuable experience in horse handling.  Yes I have been around horses since I could walk and have had two of my own, but with the large volume of horses we see here I have gotten a lot of exposure working with the difficult, crazy horses that we need to make stand completely still to work on.  It's honestly the little tips and tricks you pick up that make the difference.  I personally have not had a lot of experience handling foals coming into this experience but 3 weeks in and I'm already feeling confident handling even the most difficult of foals. 

Well here's to another week and hopefully I can keep the poop off me!