Tex's surgery- a scary moment

Tex is officially hernia-less and fixed! His surgery with Dr. Beauchamp (pronounced Beecham) was on Wednesday, July 22nd. Dr. Beauchamp gracefully allowed me to watch and even help a little with the surgery. I was in charge of holding the anesthesia drip, checking Tex's blink response, and adjusting the anesthesia as the Dr. told me to. The hernia hole in the abdomen was, by my best estimate, 2 inches wide and 3 inches long. The vet cut the skin, pushed the bulging intestines into the hole, trimmed the tissue along the hole's surrounding muscle, pulled the two sides together, and stitched them up. He first stitched the muscle, and then the skin. Tex has a total of around 15 stitches on the inside, and 15 on the outside. Then he was castrated, but I'll spare the details of that one for the sake of any guys reading the blog. He then woke up, stood up, staggered a bit, whinnied for Taz (who was nowhere near) and began eating grass. I was able to bring him home within 1.5 hours of the surgery.

My cute little horse felt bad the first night and moped alone in a shady spot in his pasture, away from his best friend Taz. He didn't seem interested in his food, which included a pain killing powder and an antibiotic, so we moved him to another pen. We left his food out for him to munch on as he felt better. The next morning, he had eaten every bit of his food and was walking about, seeming to feel much better.

Around the 5th day, I looked once more at his wound area to check up on him, and to my dismay, his belly area and private areas were quite swollen! My concern reached the point that the next morning, I highly expected my poor horse to be dead. Sure enough, at 5:30 am, in the bare twilight, I peeked out the front door, shone the flashlight, and saw the large hunk laying on the ground. While throwing my boots on and walking toward the area, I began to prepare myself by saying to myself "He's dead. He's dead." When I walked close to the grullo-colored hunk on the ground, it raised its head and looked at me as if to say "What are YOU doing up so early?" I petted him for a while, very relieved that my self-preparations were in vain. He later got up, ate his breakfast, and was a happy horse. In a phone conversation, the vet said I needed to exercise him more to ward off any swelling. Since that day, Tex has been lunged every evening for between 15 and 30 minutes, and the swelling is no more.

Here's a picture of Tex after his surgery, in the middle pen, meeting his friend Sparkle nose to nose for the first time. They had seen each other across fence rows, but never been able to touch. TM