Baker's final blog

I think I am finally ready to type up Baker’s last blog entry.  It’s pouring rain today, so that seems like a fitting time to write about our last night together.  It was a Friday afternoon.  I’ll remember the date forever, since it was his 8 month birthday – December 15^th.  I had brought him in to the barn to get him cleaned up so that I could get a picture of him to share how tall he was and how much he weighed at 8 months.  When I went to get him out of the field, he had been a little pushy – very much out of character for him, lately.  I took him into the round pen to work on some submission exercises – asking him to work (lightly, since he was still quite young), and asking him to move away from me, until he showed signs of submission – head down, licking and chewing.  Most horses take anywhere from 10-30 minutes, if they know what they are doing, to give those signs, but since it was Baker, who was born submissive, he only had to work about 5 minutes.  I brought him into the barn to groom him for his photo shoot, and I was going to work on pulling his mane.  He started to get very fussy and antsy, again, very out of character for him.  One of my students had brought her horse into the barn, a mare, and I thought, perhaps, he was getting distracted by her, or even interested in her, although it would have been a bit early for his hormones to be kicking in.  But I couldn’t figure out why he was so fussy, so I assumed it was the other horse.  I decided to finish up his grooming and mane pulling in a stall, where there would be less distractions.  I took him around to a stall and crosstied him.  I went back to the tack room to get my stool and brushes.  When I got back to his stall (less than 1 minute later), he had managed to lay down in the stall, still cross tied.  Immediately, I knew his fussiness was not due to the mare, but, more likely, another colic episode.  I immediately got him untied and got him up and started walking him.  For mild colics, if you can keep the horse walking, it can help settle their stomach, or get their intestines moving, and often remedy the situation.  Also, if the horse is trying to lay down, keeping them walking can help prevent that.  If a horse is able to lay down, they will often roll to try to alleviate their discomfort.  If they roll, then it is very likely that they will twist up their intestines.  Usually, the only solution for a twisted intestine is surgery.  So, we walked.  I also immediately called the vet.  Dr Routh informed me that she would be on her way directly, but she was about 45-60 minutes away.  I remember walking Baker a lot while waiting for the vet.  He tried to lay down so many times, and sometimes I had to get pretty forceful in order to keep him on his feet.  He wasn’t throwing himself down and thrashing as violently as he had been 5 months earlier, when he first colicked, so I was hopeful that this time wasn’t as bad.  He was getting harder and harder to keep up though, so I decided to put him on the trailer and drive him around the block until the vet showed up.  I had folks at the barn on the lookout for her, so they could call me as soon as they saw her and I would come right back.  He seemed slightly more comfortable, and he definitely couldn’t lay down while on the trailer.  As soon as the vet got to the barn, I drove back and unloaded Baker.  He was a bit calmer and not trying to lay down anymore.  Dr Routh was able to assess his vitals and decide on a plan of action without him trying to do anything, so again, I was hopeful.  As soon as he started to act painful and antsy again, she gave him some pain meds.  He calmed down pretty quickly, unlike the first time, 5 months before, so we were both hopeful that this would do the trick.  Unfortunately, in less than 20 minutes, he was fussy and trying to lay down again.  She had one more medication to try.  He quieted down, but this time, it was only about 10 minutes before he started getting fussy again.  We decided that the best course of action was to take him to the vet school.  There wasn’t really anything else that Dr Routh could do for him, and he was probably going to need more intensive care, which he could get at the vet school.  So, I loaded him back on the trailer, and made my way there.  As soon as I got there, they were ready for him.  Dr Routh had notified them that I was coming with him.  It had been a few months since we had been there, so there were many new faces, but a couple of familiar ones as well.  They immediately started working him up to try to figure out what was wrong.  At one point, the only way they could get him still and comfortable was to let him lay down, with the help of some very heavy sedatives.  They could not find anything wrong that they could fix easily.  They basically gave me three choices – 1. Keep him on heavy sedatives, and see if whatever was wrong worked itself out, 2. Perform exploratory surgery to see what was wrong, and then decide a course of action, or 3. Do nothing and see what happened.  Option three was definitely not an option for me.  And I had a feeling that if we tried option one, that it wouldn’t work, and we would end up going for option two anyway, but with time wasted and a higher vet bill.  I decided to put him through another surgery to see what was going on.  I had no idea how I was going to pay for it after having had the other surgery just 5 months earlier, along with several other unrelated, but large, vet bills.  But I couldn’t just put him down without knowing if there was a way for me to help him get better, especially after all I had invested in him so far.  So, I sat in the waiting room and waited for what seemed like an eternity.  When the surgeon finally came out to see me, I could tell by the look on her face that it wasn’t good news.  She said that she saw the problem as soon as she opened him up.  He had a massive tear in his mesentery – the sack that encloses the digestive organs.  The tear was so massive that she would have only been able to repair about ninety percent of it, leaving ten percent that she wouldn’t be able to reach to repair.  In addition, she noted that there were several other small tears in his mesentery that were in various stages of healing.  That meant his mesentery had been tearing on probably a daily or weekly basis since his first surgery.  She said those tears were probably not enough to warrant a dramatic response on his part, but they were an indication that this was a chronic problem that he would probably battle all his life.  Looking back, I remember often seeing him act slightly colicky at times – just looking at his belly, or laying down and groaning.  I would watch him like a hawk for worsening signs, but those instances never amounted to anything more.  Now, I believe they were moments when he experienced a small tear or two.  For whatever reason, on this day, he experienced a large tear.  They couldn’t explain why.  The only thing that was really any different from that day versus other days, was that I worked with him in the round pen.  Something I felt guilty about at first, but I know I did not work him too hard, and he was certainly going to have to work harder than that down the road.  The vet assured me it was nothing I did, and this was bound to happen sooner or later.  Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do, and my only option was to let him go and let them put him down.  I consented, and they let him go peacefully.  I still had to wait to finish up some paperwork, so I couldn’t leave right away.  I was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.  I have had to put down two other horses, and many other animals, throughout my life, but this was the most devastated I have ever felt about losing an animal.  Some of you might think I’m crazy, since it was “just a horse”, but he wasn’t “just a horse” to me.  He was amazing in so many ways. 

A few months later, the vet that had done the surgery called me with the results from his necropsy.  At the time I had him put down, we had decided to do a necropsy so that we could, hopefully, find some answers to what was wrong with him.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get many answers.  They decided that Baker was just born with some sort of defect in the way his mesentery was designed.  They said that it was nothing that was genetic, so no worries of having Fiona pass this problem on to another foal.  It was just something that Baker was born with and it would have plagued him his entire life.  Unfortunately, they don’t know a lot about why the mesentery tears like his did, what causes it, how to fix it, or how to prevent it. 

I was quite depressed, for a while after losing Baker.  This had all been so painful, that I briefly thought about quitting horses altogether.  But, I decided, that there are so many things about horses that make me happy, that I wasn’t going to let this one thing keep me sad forever.  Baker wouldn’t have wanted that anyway.  He was always so happy himself.  It took a while to pull out of it, but I had a lot of help from supportive friends, family, clients, and the horses.  And one horse in particular … Gia.  I hadn’t done a lot with her over the past year, since I had been so focused on Baker.  Recently, I started to see Gia in a different light.  She has so much potential, she’s very smart, and turning out to be quite a stunning horse.  She’s going to be huge though, so I decided that I needed to work with her more so that she would still be manageable despite her size.  She’s no Baker.  She’s much flightier than he was, but she does have his sweetness, and she can be very loving.  I have decided to put my energy into working with her and bringing her up as my next competition horse, rather than selling her and rebreeding Fiona.  She recently went to her first competition – a dressage breed show, where they judge the horses on their conformation and movement to decide which one will make the nicest dressage horse. Gia received decent scores from the judges, and placed third in both classes, but the biggest win was just getting her off the farm to see how she would handle show life.  She had good moments and bad moments, but it’s a start!  Fiona has been leased to someone else for the year.  She is still mine, but, emotionally, I needed a break from her.  Don’t get me wrong – none of this was her fault, but in my mind, she was still connected to Baker and all the bad things that happened.  She has been confirmed in foal, and she was recently inspected by the Westphalian Society, and accepted in the Main Mare Book 1, which means she is eligible to breed to any stallions in their stud books one or two.  Meanwhile, I have decided to start blogging again, but about Gia this time.  She is much further along, but I’ll try to catch everyone up on what she has done so far!