Peterson and Smith Weeks 2-3

Days 10-15

This has been a difficult transition for me, going from days to working night shift for my first time. We work from 6pm-6am every night, doing all of the treatments in all of the barns with the technician and intern. The first night was really exciting, as a mare that was presented to us earlier in the day for suspected colic was 10 days overdue with her foal. Throughout the night we kept a close eye on her, and around 11:30pm I hear “We’re having a baby!!” from down the aisle while I was starting 12am treatments. Everything stopped for the next hour or so while we watched the mare bring an adorable filly into the world (if you haven’t caught on yet, there are lots of foals at Peterson and Smith..this one being #101 of the year). After we all got over the adorableness of watching the foal get up, walk and nurse for her first time, the night went on as planned. 

The remainder of my time on night shift was mainly doing routine treatments. We are extremely busy at night and usually run around the whole time! Two foals in Annex had to be treated every two hours which always kept us busy. My favorite skill that I learned this week was how to check a foal for reflux!

Day 16

Today was my off day and time to figure out how to transition back to day shift from a week of nights!

Days 17-22

The week started off with an emergency eye appointment. An SPL catheter was placed and we treated the horse for the rest of the week. A few other emergencies that we saw were a swollen hock in a foal, a heat stroke foal, and a mare with colitis. We saw another emergency eye appointment later in the week. Dr. Brooks came by on Wednesday again where they had 11 eye appointments lined up for the day. I asked why there were so many ulcers and eye issues in Florida – most of them were attributed to the sand. Apparently a lot of these ulcers are of a fungal nature, which was an interesting fun fact to learn!

My favorite memory of the week was watching an orphan foal learn to love her new nurse mare! They gave the mare Lutalyse and Oxytocin to simulate the birthing process, then brought the foal in and allowed her to nurse. Even before the foal got to the stall, the nurse mare was nickering for the foal. She immediately took to the foal and it was really cool to witness! I had the honor of sitting at their stall watching for any abnormal activity in case the foal needed to be removed from the mare. Luckily, they got along just fine and were able to go home the next day.