Hi Sweetie!
Another night when I couldn’t get to sleep, probably because it was so dang hot and humid, I had to run the fan and keep the inverter on even after going to bed. So it took me awhile to get to sleep, which ended up with me sleeping late, so I got a late start today. After chores and breakfast and a few computer jobs, I saddled up Flash around noon and headed out. I figured it would be a fairly fast ride, though Flash wasn’t particularly feeling it, probably because of the heat and humidity. Lola came along and plopped down into every mud puddle we came across. Flash took a drink on a particularly muddy creek (after Lola had stirred things up), but since he does that all the time, I didn’t think anything particular about it. We did about nine miles, including one short new trail we hadn’t done before, and when we got back to camp, he started to behave strangely. He buckled his back legs a bit when I took off the saddle, but when I checked his back it seemed okay. He did a lot of fussing when I was taking his tack off, wouldn’t stand still. Once I put him in the paddock, he laid down and started rolling, which isn’t that unusual, but then he stayed down for a long time. Then he’d get up and lay down again, over and over. I thought maybe he was dehydrated, so I tried to give him some water with electrolytes in it, but he wouldn’t drink, nor was he eating any hay or grass. He was also very shy of me when I approached him, like he was afraid, very unusual. I got online to see what it might be, and it seemed possible it was early stage colic. Best remedy recommended was to walk him around, so I put him on a lead and started walking him around the campground loop. I knew I had to get him to poop, since colic is essentially a stoppage in the intestinal system, so when we got back to our site, I tied him up to the trailer. He usually poops as soon as I do that, but not this time. So I took some advice from my friend Trish, who had told me a story about someone else who was worried about her horse not pooping, and someone else suggested that she put him in the trailer, because, as everyone who has ever trailered a horse knows, the FIRST THING a horse does when he gets into a trailer is to poop! Weird, I know, especially to non-horse people, but it’s the truth! So I cleared up a few things out of the back of the trailer and led Flash up into it, and sure enough! In less than a minute, he left me a nice pile. I got him out and put him in the paddock, and he immediately went for his hay bag and started eating. Suddenly, he was behaving normally, no more laying down, it was like nothing happened. I kept an eye on him for some time just to make sure he was okay, and everything seemed fine. I had planned on going shopping, but changed my mind, I wanted to keep an eye on him. Meanwhile, when I left at noon, the forecast said no rain until the middle of the night. When we got back around 2:45, I heard thunder and saw dark clouds, checked the forecast again, and it had changed to rain starting in 15 minutes and lasting a couple of hours! So I put everything away and sure enough, we had a terrible squall and then some steady rain for the next hour plus, which was really a good things, washed all the dirt off that Flash had accumulated. So I finally settled down for the evening, feeding the horses late so I could keep an eye on them, then watched a little TV, now I’m ready for shower and bed! At least it cooled down a little after the rain came through, hoping to sleep better tonight. Good night, my love!
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