The MANE event! Get it? ha! (It’s probably too late at night to be writing for the public eye…)

After a week “off” for research my group headed back to the equine hospital for our External Equine Rotation. This rotation was meant to be like a ‘general practice horse vet’ but we actually only spent one day driving around to farms to look at horses.

On the first day of the week we used a teaching horse from the university herd and did a practice ‘Pre-Purchase Exam’ on her. This is a special type of physical exam that veterinarians can do on an animal (typically horses or breeding animals) if someone is interested in buying it. There can be a lot of legal implications surrounding these exams– disclosure of medical information, high value of animals, suspected performance status. As a veterinarian you need to know the full extent of your role in this situation. During our exam of the teaching horse we detected some lameness so we took some radiographs of her leg. I have taken many x-rays on cats and dogs but never on horses. It is very difficult to know exactly how to position the horse for x-rays and where to position the machine in order to get the best pictures. This is something I will likely need a lot more practice with if I end up seeing some horses in practice.

Horses have this weird anatomical structure called ‘guttural pouches’ inside their heads. They are a common site of infection in horses so it is important to examine them.   I got a chance to practice driving the scope again. I really like this—its the only “video game” I enjoy.

On Wednesday, my wish came true! The main event! I finally got to see a colic surgery, and not just one, but two!! The horses went into surgery right after each other. I was able to stay on the “dirty side” of the surgery (I didn’t scrub in and work on the “sterile side”) and help out with an impaction colic.  This involves getting rid of all the excessive food material in the horse’s gut that is unable to move through. This was so cool! The second colic surgery was a different kind of colic—this horse had a twist in his intestines.  Can you imagine how painful it would be if your intestines twisted up on themselves? I am so glad that I finally got to see colic surgeries before I finished my equine rotations and be involved in helping these animals recover!

This is just before the surgeons will open the gut to remove the impacted feed material

We worked with another teaching horse from the university herd and practiced placing bandages on his limbs. I much prefer practicing on live animals instead of models or cadaver legs–it is a much more real experience and there is a lot of factors that you learn to deal with i.e: windy day, muddy feet, how to pick up a foot on a horse that doesn’t like his feet being picked up, etc.

I know this isn’t a limb, but can we all just take a moment to appreciate how great this vet wrap is?!

We also practiced nasogastric tubing (NGT)  horses. This is a really common procedure veterinarians can do to provide a horse with fluids, medications, or decompress a stomach during colic!  It is important to make sure that you put the tube in the stomach of the horse and not the lungs! Quite often we pour fluids down the NGT and we really don’t want to be pouring fluid into the horses lungs.  The way a horse’s larynx & pharynx is placed inside it’s head means that by flexing a horse’s neck downwards while we insert the tube (through the nose) the horse will swallow the tube into the esophagus (where we want it to go!).  You can smell stomach smells from the tube (surprisingly not as bad as you would think…) and hear the stomach bubbling away (a fancy medical version of the game ‘telephone’).

Everyone looks forward to the ambulatory day of this rotation. We drove out to meet one of our wackiest professors for a day of horse vetting in the field! It was a very relaxed day, seeing and chatting about a variety of patients. None of the patients were very sick and it was a pleasant day. We preformed a Caslick procedure, a mini-neurological exam on a mini horse, did some more guttural pouch scoping, and had a lot more fun! Our lunch on this day was legendary! An extremely lovely family made us a feast and I experienced the best date scones I’ve ever eaten…

Me and two of my group mates with our horse vet professor! There was a huge sunflower field just outside one of our appointments.

On the last day of the week we gave a presentation that we had prepared and spoke about our ambulatory cases. Our last practical class this week was on a life-size model horse. We practiced rectal palpation–it is SO important to know the anatomy of a horse (or cow) so that you know what you are feeling (because you can’t see what you are feeling). You can make a lot of diagnoses this way, so the practice was appreciated!

My group isn’t going to leave any rotation without some great baking!

Thanks again to the equine team for a wonderful week! We had a blast 🙂