Saturday, December 08, 2007

Don't Give Up


click on photos to enlarge

I am writing a post on the Brookfield Trail System in Madison County over at The Other Side of New York and I was going through my old horse photos and figured I should post a few. They were really beautiful horses with wonderful gentle natures. We just ran out of time to ride and they became very expensive lawn ornaments. After thousands of hours of magnificent trail riding it was time to move on and I found them a good home. This reminded me of a story I'd like to share with you and I guess the moral of the story is that all vets are not created equally. My gorgeous palomino, Chauncey developed an infection in his gutteral pouch. I called my vet in Ithaca, he wanted thousands to do an operation whose outcome was not expected to be great. Somehow in my quest on the internet to understand Chauncey's infection, I found this gal that told me about a vet who also lived in Ithaca but was the United States Olympic Show Jumping Team Vet. His name is Dr. Ball. I called him and he came out with his wife who is also a vet. He did a scope and discovered a fungal infection in the gutteral pouch. He went home and designed a delivery system that would reach the pouch. He came back and snaked a catheter up Chauncey's right nostril. He stitched the end by his nose a few times to hold it in place. Twice a day we were to use a spray can (not unlike like the WD40 cans) which was filled with an antifungal drug, attached it to the catheter, and sprayed. If Chauncey wasn't the mellow horse that he is, this would never have worked. We did this for 5 weeks. It's amazing the catheter stay attached that long. The vet and his wife came back, rescoped and Chauncey was cured! Total cost? Around $500! Thank you Dr. Ball for not throwing up your hands and giving up. I believe he went on to write a paper on gutteral pouch mycosis.






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