Another Divna Update

The vet came back today to remove Divna's sutures and check out the healing process. He removed the sutures, but found that it was still a bit too open in one spot, so he had to put 3 back in. We also have to start back up with antibiotics. It is sort of like two steps forward and one step back. Here we are as I am about to administer the antibiotic (I load it into an empty bute dispenser).

H said she his healing nicely, though, so that is good news. No riding yet, and he comes back in another week to re-assess.

The saga continues.....

Here is the injury as it stands now.

Divna Update

The vet was here today to assess Divna's healing. It is good news -- he said everything looks good, and it is coming along just fine. (Whew!!! Sigh Of Relief!!)

He took out the drainage tube, and irrigated the wound with sterile saline solution. He left some more solution with us so we can irrigate it over the next couple of days.

No riding for at least 10 more days.

I am really happy to have this positive progress report!

Thanks to everyone who has given me moral support through this situation. I got some nice comments on the previous post, and my Cowgirl Friends, Dolly and DeeDee came by last night to visit Divna. All of this really means a lot to me! Bless all of you......

More Problems for Divna

I feel SO BAD for my poor horse! She has been through so much.....she has had 2 foals, had moon blindness for years, lost her eye to glaucoma (which required three surgeries and days and days in the hospital), has colicked twice (once just recently), got caught up in a wire fence (also recently) and now she has an injury!


She is such a sweet horse.....so easy to ride, so precious to be around. It just breaks my heart that things seem to keep happening to her. She is 14 years old, so I guess in reality she has been really healthy and has had relatively few problems -- I am aware that it could be MUCH worse. Some horses live with chronic conditions and illnesses (like that poor horse we tried to help Christmas weekend). But she is my horse, and I love her. Anything she goes through that hurts her, hurts me as well.


Just after New Year's Day, I noticed Divna had a cut on her right leg, up high near where the leg meets the body, on the backside of the leg. It did not seem to be bothering her -- she walked normally, and did not mind or even seem to notice that I handled the area. Divna is usually really jumpy and difficult to work with when something is bothering her and/or scaring her. She did not react at all to this, so I put some Furmacin salve on the wound.


After a couple of days, I noticed it was beginning to drain quite a bit....I attempted to bandage it. I tried bandaging every way I could think of, even looking in books for bandaging methods. The bandages just would not stay. My horse reference book said that a cut in that area is one of the most difficult to bandaage, and it is true.


Then, a day or two later the drainage got worse. I could then see more of the cut, and it did not look good -- it looked worse than what I originally realized. I started her on antibiotics and called the vet.


As it turns out, it was worse. It was actually a gash. I have guilt that I did not call the vet immediately. Considering what happened over Christmas weekend with the poor horse we tried to save.....well, I feel horrible. Like the worst horse owner on Earth.


So the vet comes out and assesses the situation. It is a very strange gash with a sort of "pocket" area above the cut (??). He had to suture it and put in a drain tube. He gave her an antibiotic injection, and gave us some more antibiotic pills. He will be back to check her in a week, then hopefully suture removal in another week.


We have had a LOT of snow here, and John said today Divna and Zora were running and jumping and playing in the snow.That coupled with the fact that she has yet to show any sign of favoring that leg, or limping or anything, assuages my guilt somewhat. I check her sutures every morning and evening when I give her the antibiotic, and so far everything looks good in spite of her running and jumping.


The strange thing is, we have absolutely no idea how this happened to her. At first I thought it was the fence incident, but that would have been almost a month ago and the injury doesn't appear that old. The vet said it looks more like she impaled herself on something. All of our fence posts are upright and secure....there is nothing else in the pasture that we can find....so I have no explanation. The vet assistant said it seems that sometimes horses can just "....cut themselves on air....." She also said with the long winter hair it is sometimes difficult to see injuries....


Here is a photo of the injury. Don't look if you are squeemish.

Cold, Slick, Short Ride

The weekend before the fence incident, we were able to take a ride. We have not ridden since then, which is not good. I hate to go this long between rides. It seems like the beginning of November it has been one thing or another preventing us from riding -- either weather, social obligations, work, or one of us not feeling well.

Actually, that was the first ride in a long time, too. But we had the opportunity to go, so we felt we should take advantage of it. It is not good for Zora to go so long without being ridden. She is a really hot horse anyway, and in a perfect world would be ridden every day to keep her under control. John has to spend a lot of time going around in the pasture to "get her head straight" for the trail.



It was the 18th of December, and about 12 degrees outside.
So we bundled up.



Here I am in my longjohns and wool socks...














In Northwest Indiana in November and December you have to have lots of orange on as it is hunting season. It would be awful to get shot by an overzealous deer hunter!














We were really bundled up for this ride. It had been snowing quite a bit here, and any surfaces that had been gone over with a snowplow were very slick.



You gotta do what you can to stay warm!




I miss riding!!!


It was much too short of a ride. Because of the cold and because it was so slick and we were concerned about Zora possibly falling, we cut it short. Hopefully we will get out again soon!!

The Horse Did Not Make It

I just checked my cell phone voice mail -- I have had my cell turned off all weekend. There was a message from Dolly. She went out to check on the horse at 6 a.m., and he had passed on.

I am just sick over this. That poor thing.....it did NOT have to be this way....

Horse Rescue, of Sorts

Today (well, yesterday technically, since I am writing this after midnight) was an unbelievable day.

We woke to our answering machine. It was our friend and fellow equestrian, Dolly, in a panic "I am taking care of D and K's horses while they are out of town. I got here this morning to feed them, and one of them is down. I can't get him up! He won't eat, and he is laying in the snow and shaking!"

We immediately got up, called her back, went out and threw down some hay for our horses and goats. I threw some Banamine, a syringe and some mineral oil in a bag, grabbed the two thick blankets we use for our horses, and we took off.

When we got there, Patty (another neighbor and friend) was there. The poor horse was laying out in the pasture, and he was just shaking. Dolly and Patty had put blankets on him, but he was very, very cold. I immediately put a dose of Banamine in his mouth, and noticed his gums and tongue were a grey-ish color -- not good.

The horse has a history of founder. So was it founder, or was it colic, or something else??? A call was placed to the horse's owner who said they would be home the next day, do not call the Vet!!

After a few minutes, John started trying to get him up. The Banamine had kicked in, so with some pulling and pushing, we got him up. We finally got him into his stall, and started working on him. Another friend and fellow equestrian, Dee, showed up. Patty's husband Greg also came over. Dolly's husband Tom came as soon as he got off work. We had a team of people on this horse. He had absolutely no body heat of his own. We were all rubbing him and brushing him, giving him syring after syring of mineral oil. We found a torpedo heater that we brought to the stall, we found a tarp to close off the stall. we had blankets on him. We listened to his gut and heard some slight gurgling sounds, but not a lot of activity there.

Once we got him warmed up, we started walking him. He did release a little gas, and he did poop a little (not much -- not enough to make us feel better about the situation). We brought out a heated bucket, and he drank a little.

Dolly and Tom wanted to be able to keep a close eye on him, so we took him and his buddy down to their place. They have a very nice indoor faciltiy, with a round pen. We put the two horses in there, and took turns walking the sick one, continued to give him syringe afte syringe of mineral oil. He did keep drinking water, but never really dumped a good load -- just a little bit at a time.

The last update we got late tonight was that he did make a dump, but does not yet seem normal. I am very worried abut this horse. I am afraid he will not make it....I am really scared for this horse. I cannot sleep.

Divna Had A Bad Week

About 2 weeks ago I broke a mirror. Now I am not really superstitious, but being in real estate these days makes you a little shakey. You start to get nervous about everything.



About two or three days after I broke the mirror, I got a call at work from John...I could tell by his voice something was wrong.....



"Something is wrong with Divna," he says. "She did not eat this morning, and she just laid down, flat out."



I have to back up a bit at this point. We usually leave our barn open -- goats and horses go in and out as they see fit. But in the winter when the temperatures get below 15 degrees F, we put the goats and horse in and close up the barn doors. We put Divna (horse) with Marco (goat) and Zora (horse)with Misho (goat).



Winter arrived early here in Northwest Indiana, and we have been closing the animals up in the barn since early in December. One night last week, we must have forgotten to close one of the stall doors completely -- the stall door that leads into the tack area where we also store the food for the animals. John went out the next morning to find Divna and Marco feasting on the cracked corn we give the chickens.



After a call to the vet, and remembering the cracked corn incident, it was of course determined to be colic. Thank heavens for our friend, neighbor and fellow equestrian, Terri. She is also a Vet Technician and had some Banamine. After a dose of that and some mineral oil, she thankfully got past it.



Then, on Saturday I was out in the barn for the morning feeding. While I was tethering the goats, I heard this very strange sound.....it was sort of a cross between a fishing line being cast and a circular saw starting up. I just could not figure out what it was...then I heard hoofbeats -- lots of loud hoofbeats. I ran out into the pasture to see Divna running with the wire from the fence around her neck, and Zora frantically stepping nearby with it around her front legs!



I couldn't believe my eyes!i! I was a bit panicked....but then realized that I had to get control of this situation, FAST.....



As calmly as I could, I approached Divna speaking quietly and in what I hoped would be a comforting tone. I was able to lift the wire over her head -- with that accomplished, Zora was a bit easier to deal with. I was able to get her to back up as I slipped the wire under her hooves as she stepped up. The danger was not yet over, however. The wire was still laying all out in the pasture, and Divna was frantically running around still very freaked out. I was afraid she was going to run into the wire laying out there and get tangled up again. I was trying to gather up the loose wire before she ended up in it again. Very tense, very scary. But THANK GOD it all worked out. I was very shaken after it was all over.....



Needless to say we went to the Tractor Supply Store and bought some new fencing that day. We repaired the old wire as best we could, and put everyone in the barn until we could get rid of that problem fencing.



Our plans for Sunday was to install the new fencing. As it turns out, that was the day that we had our first real blizzard of the winter season...

Here is the offending wire.

That blizzard did not stop us. We got that fencing up. These pictures don't do the snowstorm justice -- it was really coming down.

Here are a couple of photos of the new fencing.

Poor Divna, she really did have a bad week!