After that I watched a mini getting a new splint put on its right front leg. It had tried to mount a 500 kg mare, and she didn't appreciate it much. The mini ended up with a clean break on the medullary aspect of his radius. He had had surgery and a plate put in on the anterior side of the bone. He should be fine after he's all healed up. It certainly hasn't dampened his libido any, that's for sure. :)
Then I helped hold down a foal that was having some joint fluid drawn to check on cell count. (This is the same foal with the luxated patella that was having the bandage change on Monday.) It took five people to hold him down (even with sedation!), while the doctor did the tap.
The next thing I helped with was a foal who had white muscle disease. This causes muscle necrosis, and the foal often can die quite suddenly from heart or lung failure. Today they were allowing the foal to nurse, then feeding it through a nasal tube to get more food in it, and just doing a general check on how it was doing.
Then I wandered around for 10 or 15 minutes looking for something to do because everyone had pretty much disappeared. Finally I was nabbed by one of the people there to hold a draft horse while she removed bandages from his meta-tarsus/carpus areas. He was just coming out of surgery. He had had more of a squamis (sp?) cell carcinoma removed. He had apparently been in before, but not all of it had gotten removed. After this it was time for me to go! More on Monday!
Back to the Space Log.
