A Horse Sickness

Well, Texas and I had had a fun Saturday night this weekend.

No, we didn't go out dancing.

No, we didn't go catch a movie.

No, we didn't have friends over to hang out.

Yes, we got to walk Romeo around for 3 hours hoping he wasn't going to require a trip to the ATM, aka the vet.

When Texas and I went to feed the horses as we were headed down to our house to grill out some burgers, Texas noticed Romeo was not his usual chipper, @$$hole self (really really) when eating his grain. Typically, Romeo could knock a person over when eating his grain because he's such a pig. Not Saturday night. Romeo had dull eyes, ate his grain painfully slow, and then decided to lay down instead of eat his hay.

Big, big red flag when a horse does not want to eat food put in front of them.

Along with laying down, turning his head back towards his belly, he was also pawing the ground and awkwardly stretching his front legs out. Those body cues along with not eating or drinking are signs of colic, a horse owner's enemy.

My mom and I are no strangers to colic as I had a high strung barrel horse in high school that had about 25 episodes of colic in the course of a year and  a half. She almost died. We decided to sell her to the vet after too much heartache, financial loss, and the inability to remain sane when leaving her alone unsupervised at home.

Even though colic is a long lost friend of ours, we were not expecting to see ol' man Romeo show signs of it the other night. I, of course, though the worst. The melanomas have finally started to kill him inside. I wouldn't have thought that initially, but Romeo was also shaking his head and rubbing his melanoma encased eye on the fence. I thought, Oh no, it really is happening this fast.

Luckily, or not, it was not the melanoma, we think. Romeo was definitely colicking and after some medicine from the barn fridge, he started to perk up within minutes. We think the cause of him getting sick may be a combination of the rainy weather which makes him not want to drink water and the oat hay we just switched the horses over to last week. Oat hay is a major factor in horses that colic.

Romeo is all better now, but as previous encounters have proven, he's very much prone to get sick again. After 7 years of owning Mr. Easy Keeper Romeo (besides his whole cancer deal..), I thought he was invincible. Guess I was wrong.

Miss Jade was all worried and confused the other night when we had taken Romeo out of his pasture. She just hung her head over the fence and kept her eyes locked on him. 

Here's to having healthy animals!