Pony Rides...FREE at own risk :-)

On Saturday I offered to let Jen and Laura sit and walk around on Lester, but they both declined. They have witnessed first hand how he gives "pony rides". I had some friends come out one time years ago and I let one on Lester (the girl who swore up and down that she was a "rider") and the other was put on our "monkey-see-monkey-do" horse, Polo (I call him P-Lo though to make him sound "cool"). Well Lester wasn't impressed with her pony riding skills and sent her flying and P-Lo sent his passenger flying as well :-( Thankfully I had made them both wear helmets!
Lester is like a box of chocolates, you just never know what you're gonna get.
I have forgotten to mention several times now that we are NOT taking Lester back to Auburn to scope him and see how his ulcers are doing. We all (me, Dr. Hanson and Dr. Olsen) feel that it's not worth the stress to put him through and besides, the Omeprazole (GastroGard) he's been on for over a month now is proven 100% effective in healing equine ulcers. In order to scope him he would have to come off all his food, including grazing for a 24 hour period and I'm just not willing to do that to him. It's one thing to take food away from a sick horse, but a happy/ healthy one is another! Lester hates the GastroGard, but he knows the routine now- he's allowed to chase it down with a carrot:-) He is such an easy and respectable boy on the ground.
I got on him again last night and he seemed perkier, but still very well behaved. I'm pondering right now the best "position" to let him walk in. I guess I'll let him "airplane nose" it a while longer and then maybe ask for a little long and low.

One Stormy Night...

Lester was mimicking his favorite "Breyer horse" last night; Fighting Stallion. *rolls eyes
Last night was very stormy with TONS of rain (my rain dancing has finally paid off ;-) No turn-out for Lester, I didn't want to risk it and have him running all over the paddock. He and I helped take out the other horses and by the time the last horse was let go the bottom fell out. We could "see" the rain coming. This was when Less wanted to practice his "rearing". He danced around a little (I had to tell him the dancing was no longer necessary as it was ALREADY raining) and with a couple of shanks on the leadrope he settled back down. He grazed a total of 30 mins I think. I would have been happy to stand in the rain with him while he ate grass, but he really just wanted to practice more of his rearing so I said enough and put him to "bed". He whinnied a couple of times too, man does he sound like a little girl! (don't tell him I said that!) At least his nicker sounds pretty manly:-)
I spoke with Dr. Hanson yesterday about what comes next. We have lowered Less' GastroGard to 1/4 dose each day, however I fumbled with the tube too much and he got a little more than that. Dr. Hanson wants me to schedule an appointment with Dr. Olsen so that he can give him a good once over on the incision site and check for hernias, but I swear it looks like he never even had the surgery- the site is so tight, clean, and there is virtually no scar (see under Medical pics/ information to the right). After that Lester will be able to have a buddeh! We've decided on using "Fella" as the guinea pig errrr I mean companion choice for Lester:-) He's very laid back and not at all a player/ fighter. Dr. Hanson heard that Lester had a blog and signed the guest book! They (the vets and students) were joking about it (the blog) when we took Less to get scoped for ulcers- a student gave me a print out of his ulcers and said "Here, you can put this on your blog". I really wanted a print out of the ultrasound of his small intestines- looked just like a baby ultrasound. I would have most definitely put it on the blog, but also would have put it on my bulletin board at work so people would ask, "Oh is that your baby?" and I could say, well sort of, it's my horse's intestines:-)

*Knocks On Wood

Well it's once again a Thursday and so far so good. I feel a little guilty for cheating Lester out of 15 mins of "out" time this morning when I kept hitting the snooze button....ZZZzzzzz But I have been sooooooo tired lately! The last two Thursdays have been when Lester's tummy hurt again, so I badly want us to break that cycle! He's now had 5 good days due to the GastroGard...I still wonder why Less' ulcers/ tummy never acted up when he was in Auburn??? Maybe the trailer rides really set him off. I've added a link to the right that explains the causes of ulcers in horses at my sister's request: Lester had a lot of things against him and it's no wonder he developed ulcers! * Coliced, had surgery, trailered, off forage for days, stall confinement, high doses of medications* I wish I had had more knowledge on the subject because I would have given him a preventive. Laura is the one that brought up the possibility of ulcers and when I asked the vets this, they immediately concurred. She had remembered a case of Dr. Olsen's where a horse was chronically colicing and the owners wanted the horse put down. Dr. Olsen asked the owners to give him 4 days to treat her for ulcers and she's been better ever since with no signs of colic.

I have discovered a way to graze Lester and entertain the mutant hound at the same time;-) Limo likes to play tug-o-war with the leadrope now--Lester doesn't seem to bothered by it. I let him graze 3-4 times a day and try and get at least 30 mins to an hour each time. He's getting better "pickings" then he would if he was turned out in the pasture. He's still being a very well behaved "stall rest" patient though he's had a couple of hyper moments. Yesterday, he was grazing one minute and the next he had leaped up, partly reared and got his left front leg over the leadrope. I was able to hang on despite his backing up and trying to get a way. I think he had caught Laura in the corner of his eye and thought she was a "monster"...though two horses had just galloped past him so maybe he wanted to go too.

He gets some more blood work done tomorrow and I've been taking his temp periodically which has so far always been normal.

Got Ulcers?

Lester does have ulcers. The scope showed a few moderate to significant ulcers. Due to the fact he still had some food in his system I'm sure we didn't see them all. The good news is that ulcers are very treatable and he's already had his first dose. Dr. Harper said it tastes like cinnamon and it's a paste that you just squirt in like a de-wormer. It smelled like cinnamon and tasted like the really bitter cinnamon without any sugar :-x ewwww, yes I tried it. I figured I had a few ulcers myself after all this, joking. We are back home, Lester too, this time he didn't want to stay, he wanted to get home. Oh the good news? Seems the Ulcer treatment makers were having some kind of special so we got the tubes for half price! So in a way the scoping was free;-) He was a stellar patient as always. So we will treat his ulcers and go from there.
Dr. Hanson admitted to being very concerned about Lester. His bloodwork looks normal except for his creatinine level.