Horsey Scare!

On Monday of this week, Chad called me and told me that Goldie was not getting up. Goldie is Jessie's horse who is her "dream horse" - a Palomino! He said he could get her up but she would go back down and for any non-horsey people, that is not a good sign for horses! He called me several times with updates and I was on the phone with vet and a few friends of ours getting advice. I also called my Mom to head that way to help Chad since he works from home and needed to be "working". He also didn't want to leave to go get Shelby from Kindergarten. I finally couldn't take it anymore and asked to leave work. I picked up Shelby and my Mom headed to the Hitchin' Post Stables to get the medicine that the vet said we needed. I made it to the house a little before her and headed out to see about Goldie. It was not good! When Mom arrived we gave her the medicine and kept her up walking. All speculations were that Goldie was colicing. An hour after giving her the medicine she was acting very sleepy and almost drunk. Spoke with the vet again and concluded with needing to keep a close eye on her and use a little salt on the tongue to encourage her to drink. She went down again one more time but then gradually improved over the remainder of the afternoon. We put her under the "almost finished" stalls and used our round pen panels to make an enclosure. There she would stay dry from the approaching rain. The other horses were staying close by and it seemed as though they knew something was going on. We were trying to keep the severity of this from Jessie. She was supposed to have lessons and when Courtney arrived she asked if Goldie was colicing? Jessie's radar went up because she knew colicing is what killed her friend's horse last year. We were going to do lessons on Sparkle but she was feeling way too frisky for Jessie to ride. We used the lesson time to talk with Courtney about where Jessie is and what she needs to be working on as well as Courtney rode Sparkle. Courtney really liked Sparkle and told Jessie that Sparkle would be her barrel horse if she gets to that point. I stood close to Goldie's temporary stall and kept an eye on her. Throughout the evening I kept tabs on Goldie and when we fed the other horses, she was very vocal with us that she was there too and obviously wanted feed. She couldn't have any yet, Dr's orders. But it was a good sign that she was whinnying to us. I was instructed to give her a half dose of the Banamine at bedtime and so I did (in the rain and mud!). As I went to sleep, I asked God for peace of mind through the night about Goldie. I didn't wake again until 4 a.m and got up a little later and headed out to check on her. She craned her neck over the top of the stall and whinnied at me. That was the best sound I could have ever heard!!! As I log this, she is doing great and we are all happy we made it thru this scare. But we only made it thru with the help of a few great friends, each other, our vet and lots of prayer!