Acorn Adventures

Monday, June 14, 2010

Grieving

Thank you to all of those who have sent messages of support and prayer for Boomer, they have been greatly appreciated. Despite a valiant effort from the amazing vets at MSU, they were unable to save him, and he crossed the rainbow bridge at 8pm last night. He was a fighter to the end and a true friend to Phil. He has left permanent hoofprints in our hearts and he will be sorely missed. I wish I had different news to share. Please keep Phil in your thoughts and prayers as he grieves the lost of his friend.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Wordy Wednesday - Boomer

Warning...critter related post:

While Christopher is napping I wanted to share the recent events we are dealing with on the farm. Keep in mind that prior Christopher coming home we had 20 four legged "fur-babies" that were the focus of our entire lives and attention. One of them, Boomer, has become my husbands best buddy. They are a perfect team, each one feeding off the others strengths. The two of them have grown by leaps and bounds together as a riding team and have greatly accelerated their skills in recent months. Boomer is know by the little girls at our local riding stable as "the most beautiful horse in the world". We were anticipating an awesome show season with the pair of them this summer......but all that came crashing down when Phil found him down and thrashing early Monday morning. Since we are not new to horses (as we have 11 of them) we knew immediately that we were dealing with a bad colic. By the grace of God we were able to get him up and into a trailer and while Phil rushed off to work, I rushed Boomer the our vet nearly an hour away. It took only 2 min for the vet to examine him and say...."I am sorry, there is nothing more medically that can be done for him. The only options we have now are to put him down, or you can take him to MSU to see if they can save him with surgery".

I nearly vomited. This was the last thing I wanted to hear.

I had only moments to make this life altering decision.... I had to try. With tons of pain medication and sedation on board we were able to once again get him loaded into the trailer and I was on my way across the state with our huge gray baby dying in the back. It was an agonizing trip. He is such a fighter. I couldn't believe it, but he was still standing when we arrived. The amazing team at MSU were working on him in seconds. There were as many as 25 people at one point working on some part of him - ultrasounds, IV's, endoscopes, tubes and lines etc. It was amazing. After a horribly long day of ups and downs, he survived the emergency surgery that has saved his life for now. They removed 22.5 feet of his small intestine that had twisted, blocked and become necrotic. ugg. I actually watched the whole thing through a window into the OR. His recovery over the last two days has been nothing short of a roller coaster. More than one point the vets thought he wasn't going to pull through. It looked like he was never going to wake up from anesthesia; he woke nearly 4 hours after he should have! The surgeon said he has only seen that twice. Now after more ups and downs, he has become toxic and has taken a turn for the worse. They are trying a plasma transfusion to try to help, but only time will tell.

To say that the last few days have been heart wrenching is an understatement. Please say a little prayer and send positive thoughts to Boomer and Phil at this time. He will be crushed without him.

"The Most Beautiful Horse in the World" with our little man.