Christmas and the First Horse Sickness

       Hello friends! It has been a while since I last posted here. We have been very busy preparing for the Christmas season. If you are like my family, the beginning of December is quite busy between decorating the house for Christmas, preparing advent, making Christmas cookies, learning Christmas songs, and all things generally Christmas-related. However, if you are like my family, you also know that sometimes, December in Texas doesn't really feel like Christmas at all. In case you have never lived in Texas, here is a quick (really quick) summary of Texas weather. Now that we are all on the same page, you can understand why I was galloping my buckskin horse out in the still-faintly green field of waving grass in- short sleeves- just a few days ago. There was a clean, cold breeze whipping through my hair, and I leaned forward as Chico broke into a canter. The sun was shining brightly, and the sky was virtually cloudless. I pulled Chico to a stop, and together, me and my sister trotted the horses up to their pasture, where they had fresh hay and water, and we untacked them and let them off to graze.

       I didn't go back out to the horse pasture until late that night, when I had to put up the chickens, ducks, and geese (who share a pasture with the horses). The temperature had dropped sharply since the warm afternoon, and I was in a hurry to finish putting up the poultry. However, geese are (by nature) perverse and ducks are (by nature) willing to copy whatever the geese do, so it took me a little while to herd them all into the coop. 

       Finally, after shepherding all the poultry into the coop, I started walking back up to the house. On the way up, I saw my sister's horse, Stormy, laying on the ground. He was rolling around, and sort of rubbing his stomach against the hay. I laughed. Often, after a heavy ride, horses like to get the feel of the saddle off of their backs by rolling on the ground. I kept on walking, but something didn't feel right. Something was bugging me. All of the sudden, I heard a strange noise. It sounded like a cat's meow, but I checked, and there were no cats around. Confused, I tried to laugh it off. It was dark, I was tired, and my mind was probably just making things up. Then, I heard the noise again. Turning around, I realized that Stormy was making the noise. All of the sudden, I had a sick feeling in my stomach. 

       Running inside, I quickly grabbed my laptop and researched "symptoms of horse colic". Though I had never seen it happen, I knew enough about colic to suspect something. Sure enough, all of the signs pointed to it. 

       I found my horse teacher's number, and managed to call her. Johnny Taylor and Darla Smith run the Winnsboro Rodeo, and they know a thing or two about horses. Ms. Darla confirmed my worry, and assured me that even though it was 7:00 PM and pitch black outside, she would drive fifteen minutes to our house and do whatever it would take to help us get our horse healthy again.
       It turns out, Stormy had colic, one of the most common diseases contracted by horses. Sometimes, when horses are switching over from grass to hay, they eat too much hay, and it gets lodged in their GI track. They can experience severe pain, and other worse symptoms if the GI track is not relaxed so that they can pass the solids through their system. This is only one of the many types of colic that horses can get.
       With the help of our teacher, we gave Stormy a shot to relax his muscles and GI track. Then, we fed him a small amount of food soaked in water to help loosen the obstruction. We also put a salt block out to encourage him to drink more water. Thankfully, after just a few hours, Stormy passed the solids blocking his system, and was back to normal.
       This was our first experience with a sick horse, so you can imagine that I was pretty scared! Thankfully, Stormy is doing much better, and I think that if he ever gets colic again, we will know what to do.