Update on Dante

The news about Jazzbit a.k.a. Mo a.k.a. Dante (the horse who’s seen it all) is all good right now. After dealing with his limping, his bute-scarred gut, and the strangles, a skeletally under-weight Dante left the barn under a soft, fluffy bareback saddle and went on a ¼ mile trail ride, in hopes that his spirits would improve. Guess what.

They did. I rode him at a relaxed walk for the short ride and brought him home and made a fuss over him. He looked pleased with himself but a bit quivery in his weakened muscles. Thinking that keeping him in good spirits was just as important as feeding him and medicating him and sitting with him through his (many) bouts of colic, I continued the routine of riding him on very short rides at least 3 times per week. The transformation was amazing!

But there’s a lot of water under the bridge…

As I understand it, Dante’s feet were his main problem. He was tender in his feet when he came here, and I thought it was sore joints (I think his previous owner thought the same, and many vets certainly did). As per vet’s orders I gave him Bute and then Banamine when the Bute wasn’t enough. Still he continued to lose ground, hobbling around more and more.

This got so bad that several vets suggested putting him down. I kept refusing, but one day I was at wits’ end with him and saw abscesses begin to drain above the crowns of his front hooves. I was ready to give up—but the most recent vet said no, maybe he’s been cooking those abscesses for months, even before I got him. “A horse like that…” he said, “deserves any chance. Maybe all this time it’s been just the abscesses bothering him. They can hurt pretty bad, you know.” So I soaked his feet once or twice a day in salt water for two weeks. The abscesses cleared up and so did any sign of a limp. Even with his knee about double its normal size, and with his ankle totally fused, he still walks like the proud athlete he is—all fluid, efficient motion ready for a kind of speed that looks easier than breathing. I got him off the banamine and the bute as soon as I could to save his stomach, because the vet said that his most recent blood test indicated left dorsal colon scarring.

And this was our next focus. Poor Dante would colic about once every four days. On those days, I walked him and stayed in the barn with him at night, and during the days when he seemed okay, I used my biostatistician’s credentials to gain access to veterinary journals and learn about colic. I read dozens of articles and devised a theory. According to my theory, horses who have constant (as in, 24-hour) access to hay, remain in constant motion during daylight hours browsing for that hay, and whose lives basically mimic those of the mustangs who lived in Mongolia during the evolution of horses, have the lowest risk of colic. So I altered Dante’s lifestyle and toughed out my impulses to coddle him.

First of all, no matter how he seemed to feel, he went out with the herd. Second, he had (and thus the herd had) constant access to something to eat. But instead of just giving him his hay, I spread it all over the pasture so he would have to go looking for it. He never ran out of water and he always had something to fill his stomach so that no stomach acids could accumulate anywhere in his gut. And no matter what—no more bute. Banamine was allowed only during his most intense bouts of colic. He ate senior feed only, with corn oil (thanks for that tip, Eline), and whenever he felt especially bad I walked him.

We went from once-every-three-days colic to once-a-week colic. From there we went to once-every-couple-of-weeks-colic—and the last bout was almost four weeks ago!

But…right in the middle of this improving cycle, a terrible thing happened. I bought a Shetland pony for my son, and that Shetland brought streptococcus equi with him: strangles.

Everybody got it, because I go in for the herd model of keeping my horses. I know it’s a trade-off—disease can spread easily through a herd—but up until now we had experienced only the benefits of good social interaction and general happiness. But when strangles hit, we got the full force of the down-side of the herd model. Two of our horses had vulnerable immune systems: Katie—the pampered and ne’er exposed star Arabian brood mare, and yes, Dante—who was struggling to pull his physiology back together after abscesses and colon ulcers and thus had a vulnerable immune system.

Katie almost died. The vet and I did an emergency tracheotomy on the floor of her stall and saved her life by minutes.

Dante almost died, and our vet would not help him, having seen him in his horribly skinny state and assumed that he was at death’s door anyway with colon scarring, and knowing that I could hardly pay for another horse after having paid Katie’s very excessive vet bills.

I hung up the phone from the vet who said, almost in so many words, “We don’t save horses whose owners can’t pay cash,” and dialed the number of another vet. Randy.

I told Randy, “Dante is in severe respiratory distress. He is struggling for every breath. His lymph nodes are so swollen that he looks like a chipmunk, but most of the swelling must be inside his throat, because if the swelling was all on the outside the lymph nodes would have burst by now. But he has collapsed on the floor of his stall. He struggles for every single breath with sounds like a lawn mower; I can see him trying to stay calm and draw in air slowly. If you don’t get here soon—he’ll die.”

Randy sounded agonized. “I know I need to get there, but I can’t because I have to visit a colicky horse. Look, I will get there just as soon as I can. Just keep putting warm compresses on his throat. I’m a great believer in warm compresses.”

So I lit the camp stove and put a big pot of water on it. I dumped a whole bunch of rags into the water. This was in winter, so everything iced up pretty quickly, but boiling rags dropped briefly in snow ended up at about the right temperature when they got to Dante’s throat.

The guy who rents the apartment above the garage, Matt, came home. I asked him for help. He became the tender of the rags and brought the warm ones to me in a pot as they cooled. I sat down on the floor next to Dante’s head and held the compresses against his throat, one after the other after the other after the other… and listened to him breath, long , slow, agonizing breaths that made me think of tiny, tiny holes for air to go through. We waited for the vet and hoped that Dante wouldn’t die.

Suddenly, Dante heaved. He gagged, and I thought, “Oh, ess aich aye tee, his airway is blocked,” and sat on my knees helplessly while he sat up and struggled and gagged. He threw his head out in front and tried to cough. A huge glob of bloody mucous came out of his nose and mouth simultaneously. I caught it in one of the rags. Dante heaved to his feet, lowered his head, and gagged again. I started to think about what I would need to have on hand to do an emergency tracheotomy without a vet’s assistance (I had just helped do one on Katie the night before). “Knife, syringe casing with the ends cut off, sterilizing stuff,…” I was thinking, and at the same time, “Come on, Dante! You can do it!” And just then, after he stood up and lowered his head, an even bigger glob of mucous and blood dropped from his mouth, and his next breath was slightly better than his last.

He stood there, trembling. He concentrated and carefully took one breath, then another, and then another. Each one sounded just a tiny bit easier than the last. All were fluid-filled, agonizing breaths, but nothing compared to what had gone before.

I stood there and pieced it together. There was only one possibility: An abscess inside Dante’s throat had burst, and was draining. I watched him slowly re-oxygenate.

About fifteen minutes later, the vet silently materialized next to me. I hadn’t heard his truck.

“Oh my god,” he said, in hushed tones.

“This is nothing compared to half an hour ago,” I said. “Believe it or not, I think he’s getting better.” I told him what had happened.

We stood and watched him for a bit. After about five minutes, Dante walked over and took a bite of hay.

“Wow,” the vet said.

“That’s Dante,” I said. “He just plain doesn’t give up.”

“How old is he?”

“Eight.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“If you told me he was twenty-eight I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Well, he’s been through rather a lot,” I said.

“I don’t want to be callous or anything—but are you sure you want to spend any more money on him?”

“I’ve asked myself that,” I said. “And I keep looking at him, and watching his eyes and his face, and I don’t see a horse who wants to give up. And as long as he doesn’t give up, I just can’t. Not with a horse like this.”

“Well, he’s not a good candidate for surgery, not in that condition,”

“I know, but it just isn’t time to give up on him yet.”

“All right,” Randy said. “Let’s see what we can do, short of surgery.”

And we brought Dante to the cross-ties and numbed the nerves under his chin and cut open his lymph nodes to allow better draining. We inserted a tube to keep his lymph nodes from closing too fast, and stitched it up. We gave him penicillin. I learned how to clean out the wounds and administer more penicillin. And then we moved around in the barn, horse after horse after horse, treating each strangles victim in whatever way made the most sense. But it was likely that none of the others would become dangerous cases. Just Dante—and Katie, who was already in the expensive hospital in “guarded” condition.

By the time Randy left I was half in love with him, he was so good to my horses.

And then, for the next week or two, I repeated our routine. Cross-ties, brushing, penicillin shot, wound-cleaning, and also, for Dante, food soaked in warm water so it was easy for him to swallow. A neighbor took care of the two healthy horses (Harry the donkey and Bella the hardy quarter horse) so that my children and I wouldn’t infect them. Neighbors even brought us casseroles!

And—Dante made it. Cadaverously skinny, not too interested in much outside his grain and hay, but alive.

And when he made it past the strangles, after watching him carefully for a while and deciding that he needed a purpose, I rode him, blushing lest anybody see this emaciated horse with a rider on his back, and brought him home happy.

Since then, Dante has had but one bout of colic. It was a bad one, but Matt (the apartment-over-the-garage-guy) sat with him for a few hours and helped keep his spirits up. I gave him banamine and hated doing it because it is the worst stuff for his stomach. Weighing this against that, though, it seemed like the best choice.

And we continue on: senior feed, corn oil, a bit of sweet feed for happiness, beet pulp for weight gain, free-feeding hay, plenty of exercise no matter what the weather, constant access to fresh clean water, 4 feedings a day if I can pull it off with my schedule—and finally, the big payoff.

Dante is gaining weight.

Yes, and I have been taking him on three-mile trail rides (mostly walking).

And he is feeling a bit more like his old self. He twists his head sideways and yawns when he is frustrated (feed me first!). He splashes other horses with water on purpose if he doesn’t like them and they try to drink with him. He loves his box stall. He loves his blanket. He rolls his head around if I scratch behind his ears. He thrusts his head right into the halter when it’s time to do something. He stands perfectly still when I tighten his girth—and perfectly still when I lead him up to a bit of fence so I can get on him (I’m only 5’ tall and he is, what almost 17 hh? I can’t even reach the stirrups!).

He is not quite back to perfect yet, but he has a new life in the making. He doesn’t limp at all. His joints are not stiff and his feet don’t make him stand on tippy-toes when he walks on stones, even without any bute. He objects strongly to crossing water but will do it when Bella (whom he loves) goes ahead of him and if I lead him. He looks carefully and earnestly on the world when Danny, my eleven-year-old son, rides him. He loves to be allowed to canter across a field. Even a slow canter leaves Bella, the quarter horse, hunkered down in a low and frantic gallop, way in the rear. He nibbles on peoples’ belts and tries to lift me up by my buttons (I suspect he’ll succeed at this, someday soon). He likes drinking best when you put the hose right into his mouth.

I’m not ready to pronounce him well, but these flickers of Dante being his old Jazzbit a.k.a. Mo self make me hope that his life with be long and fulfilling. I thought that we would have to let him go some time soon. Everybody said so, even about five vets. But that great heart of his just keeps beating, and he has never once doubted that his job is to keep on breathing, keep on walking, get back into his stride, and start clowning around again with his people and the other horses.