Not Successful

We had a nightmare of a morning trying to get on the road at 6:00 am to take Ribbon to her date with Dr. Boero. The first thing I noticed was the right headlight on the truck was out.  The next problem was the back right trailer light was also out. Ribbon was loaded but it was so dark that her colt could not see his mom in the trailer and took off making Ribbon worried. She was already cranky as she had been the entire night without food. Ribbon was tied and it took 3 of us to get her colt in the trailer. That boy is HUGE but the 3 of us women (Karin, Emily and I) lifted him in and slammed the middle divider. We turned the brights on and hoped for the best. Going down Smithville road the trailer started swaying terribly. Ribbon was throwing herself around moving the trailer at times off the road. We stopped at the lights on Airport road, Emily and Karin jumped out of the truck to cross tie Ribbon but came in and said, "we couldn't get the job done", Ribbon turned herself around, her rear end was crammed up against the front of the trailer and there was no way to move her with out taking her out and reloading. The only good thing that happened was the head light started working. We stopped about 30 minutes away at a McDonalds parking lot and unhooked Ribbon from the front trailer tie giving her more room but she is such a big mare I didn't want her loose in the trailer so hooked her halter up to the back trailer tie. This too turned out to be a mistake. By the time we arrived at Dr. Boero's clinic she had broken her halter and we didn't have another draft halter in the truck. Julie, pictured below from Dr. Boero's office met us and checked us in.

 Ribbon and her colt were put in a stall then Julie found some all purpose perfectly suitable blue baling twine to fix Ribbon's halter. Is there anything that baling twine can't fix?  Ribbon was led into the padded stall for sedating while her colt was left in the stall barn. The staff were thinking they would have to sedate the colt to but we told them he would be fine and he was. Below Ribbon has been backed into the padded hospital stall by Karin. Belinda, Dr. Boero's assistant is checking over Ribbon while Dr. Boero gets the machines prepared.

 Below is Titan, Ribbon's colt. He laid down to take a nap then got up to wee. He called a few times but was content with hay in front of him waiting for his mom to come back. He really did impress the staff. 

Below Belinda is cleaning out Ribbon's nostril, Julie is scrubbing Ribbon for the IV, Dr. Boero is getting ready to insert the IV while Emily is braiding her mane to get it out of the way. 

 Below Dr. Boero is inserting the IV. 

 The next step was to flush out as much of the drainage as possible. Belinda is pumping the fluids while Dr. Boero flushes. 

 The scope was the next step. We were pretty pleased to be able to see everything on the monitor.

 The yellow is the tumor.

 The tumor is quite big and obstructs a big area of her right nostril. 

 Below Dr. Boero is trying to run the wire around the tumor but after many tries he wasn't able to do it. 

 The decision was made to lay her down for a better approach. The stall was set up, Dr. Boero stayed on the inside while Belinda, Julie, Emily and Karin hung on to the rope to gently lower Ribbon onto the pads. 

 Below everything is getting set up to keep her comfortable while she sleeps.

 The wire snare was tried again and again no success. The next step was to try to cauterize the base of the tumor. This also didn't work. 

Below is a short video clip of Ribbon waking up. She was calling to her colt in the other room. 

Ribbon is such a good mom, she worked very hard to wake up to get back to her colt. Dr. Boero asked if we could bring her back on Monday the 14th and this time he won't even try to snare it, he is going to put her under and do the face flap surgery. She will have a much harder recovery from this surgery, as Dr. Boero will have to saw open her bone, go into the nasal passage, remove the tumor, then reattach the bone. We had to wait for Ribbon to wake up so Dr. Boero suggested we go to lunch and gave us the name and directions to a local Mexican restaurant. The food was good, the service was quick. It was pouring down rain when we got back to the vet clinic. This time Ribbon was cross tied, the colt stepped right into the trailer and we had an easy safe drive the 101 miles home. Ribbon was put out in the field with the mares and by this time was so very hungry she could hardly graze fast enough. 

I am exhausted both mentally and physically. Ribbon's stall from last night was cleaned, the horses fed, supper cooked and now this post written. A huge storm came through dropping a lot of hail. Joan took this video clip: