The Horse Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

*Sigh* What a scary couple of hours!

2K views 13 replies 10 participants last post by  Jake and Dai 
#1 ·
I go out to the barn around 4pm today. We have 4 horses here, all pastured together. They usually are glued to one another's hips. Our gelding Nut-Megg was standing up by the water tank by himself...no sign of anyone else. I had seen him lying down about 15 minutes before I headed out there to groom horses.

I get out there and he's standing still. Looking listless. I look closer and he has bright green snot caked to his muzzle and dripping down to the ground. :shock:

I luckily had a rag with me and cleaned up him a bit but it was still coming out.

He's choking. He's done it before years ago on an alfalfa cube so I recognized the signs. My panic was starting to rise. I check his pulse, respiration and gums. Pulse is normal, respiration is okay, a little "raspy" and his gums are extremely pale. I can't get a capillary refill. Checked for gut sounds and all is well there. Lots of gurgling.

I call my mom and let her know what's going on and tell her I'm contacting our vet.

Call the vet's office...It's closed. Ha. Of course.

Call the vet's cell number and she answers. Thankfully. I tell her what's going on. She tells me to massage his esophagus for 20-30 minutes and see if that helps to get things moving. So I start rubbing on him and talking to him. His eyes start to close and he's very relaxed. Vet told me a lot of times you can feel the lump and help to massage it through. I didn't feel anything. I noticed he has some enlarged lymph nodes on both sides of his neck.

After some time, his head lowers and he starts grazing again. His snotty nose has subsided and it's no longer wet. Whew. My panic has reduced and I feel the high blood pressure in my veins ease away. LoL.

The vet called me back and asked how things were. I told her and she says good job. LoL. I told her about the swollen glands too and she thinks that that's his thyroid glands. I'll keep an eye on that and hope it doesn't progress into something else. None of the other horses have any issues going on right there so that's promising.

Overall, that was not what I wanted to deal with today. LoL. It didn't help that I was the only one home and we had the delivery guy show up to drop off our new fridge at that exact moment in time.

All is well though. I'm heading out to check on him one last time before calling it a night.
 
See less See more
#3 · (Edited)
Woah! I would totally have freaked out. lol I'm so glad he's ok.

At work today (I work at at vet clinic) I was helping the vet clean out a cage (she lifted the cat - he couldn't walk and had an IV) so I could change the blankets and then the dog in the cage started gagging and I had to lift his head so he didn't puke in his mouth and on him (he was drugged)... all while she was still holding the cat and trying to get it situated. lol It wasn't pretty, but I know how it feels when things get crazy like that.

Gotta love 'em. :p
 
#5 ·
Huh you'd think he'd be a bit more panicked when choking then again I've never seen a horse choke so I wouldnt know. Glad everything turned out
 
#7 ·
Well, horses can still breathe through their nasal passages while they are choking. It's not like with people that can't breathe at all. So he was still calm, just trying to get whatever he choked on unlodged and make himself more comfortable. Typically it's not a life or death situation, but it can turn into one depending on severity.

Update: He's doing well. Trotted up to me when I went out to check him again. Obviously he's feeling better. His glands seem to have reduced in size from what they were earlier so I don't know what exactly was going on but I'm glad it seems to be going away.
 
#8 ·
Choking is so scary! My mare was fine one morning, turned her out, all normal. Go for afternoon feed, and she was completely off. I honestly had no clue what was wrong with her. She had her head held low and tilted to the side. Then she started acting like she was going to cave in on her haunches. We called the vet asap, thinking it was colic. Around fifteen minutes later, the green boogeys started to flow. It was so strange. Even though we figured it was a choke (and the vet later had to tube her), she kept trying to lay and roll. I guess she felt uncomfortable. It was such a scary situation.
 
#9 ·
^^^ That's why I made sure to check for gut sounds because I had seen him lying down. I wanted to cover all my bases before contacting the vet so I could relay the most accurate assessment of him. *Knock On Wood* I've never had to deal with colic in my 12 years of owning horses so I don't know what I'd do...I've been super fortunate with all my horses.
 
#10 ·
Same here! Not to jinx it, but so far in my eleven years of owning horses we haven't had any colics and that was the first choke on my watch. What was strange about it, was that just a few days earlier we had to end a riding lesson early because a horse boarded on the farm had choked as well. The vet thought maybe the dry weather was a factor, as there had been a lot of chokes in the area around the same time.
 
#12 ·
I know what your saying. I dont feed cubes anymore because thats what he choked on the first time. It was grass that he choked on yesterday. Go figure...lol.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top