Week 7 at SVEC

            I just finished my seventh week at Saginaw Valley Equine Clinic after being gone for two weeks on a RAVS trip.  RAVS (Rural Area Veterinary Service) is a branch of the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association and their Veterinarians and Vet techs along with many Vet, Vet tech, and Vet student volunteers travel to underserved areas to provide care to dogs and cats.  We traveled to the Pine Ridge and Lower Brule Indian Reservations in South Dakota and provided spay/neuter/and vaccines to nearly a thousand animals.  It was a very rewarding, yet exhausting experience.

            A day after I got home, it was back to work and things have been staying very busy around the clinic.  We had one horse come in on emergency that had been in a trailer accident after a car tried to cut in front of them.  Luckily the trailer didn’t flip but the horse was banged around quite a bit.  He is definitely body sore, but no fractures, and has some neurological deficits, mainly dragging his toes when he walks.  We are treating him with Vitamin E and Dexamethasone to help reduce the inflammation and heal the nerves. 

            We also had a colic come in to the clinic on Saturday who had not defecated since Thursday but had continued to eat.  He was surprisingly bright but was straining to defecate and uncomfortable.  He had an impaction in his rectum and we were able to break it up with a soapy water enema (a very large enema!).  Since he had continued to eat, his impaction likely involves a large portion of his intestines, and not just his rectum.  We put him on IV fluids to rehydrate him as he hasn’t been drinking and doing lots of hand walking to get things moving.  He is continuing to pass larger and larger piles of manure and is well on his road to recovery.  I have only ever heard of impactions in “tight” spaces in the intestines, such as the pelvic flexure, but not in the rectum.  After doing a little reading on it, it is thought that small colon impactions are actually associated with Salmonella, so we have him in isolation and are taking all the necessary precautions just in case he does have it.  Hopefully, things keep on moving and we can get him home soon!