An eventful morning

First of all I'd like to mention that this is NOT A HORSE-OR-ANY-OTHER-ANIMAL-BLOG. The only animal this blog is about is ME! However, rules are there to be broken, and since we have a lot of animals that feature heavily in our lives, it is almost inevitable they will pop up now and again in this blog. Lately they have been here a lot! Sorry about that if you are only interested in little old moi. I assure you that interesting things about me will get a mention if they manifest. This post is again *sigh* about the horses. Or to be specific, about Naloma. You see, this morning I brought them all outside to the paddock and started to muck out their stables. Just when I had almost finished the mucking out, I heard galloping noises and looked outside. Naloma and Evie were running around, while Willem was just happily standing in the sunshine, thinking about life in general. Eventually Evie calmed down, but Naloma kept running around. So I thought that perhaps a nasty flying insect was pursuing her and decided to return them to their stables again to mislead the nasty insect. But when I brought Naloma to her stable she just didn't seem alright to me. Nothing definite showing, but she wasn't her usual self. And she started to walk around in her stable too. NOT a good sign. Colic, I thought. For the non-horsey-people: colic is a tummy ache and can be fatal for horses. They have highly sensitive tummies. So I called the vet. I had planned to call him anyway, because he has a mare that was due to have her baby and he also borrowed a car from us a couple of weeks ago to bring another mare to a studfarm to be inseminated with frozen sperm from a stallion in Spain. And I was wondering how both mares were doing. (Vet's heavily pregnant mare brought a lovely palomino coloured girl into this world just last night.) I told vet that I was worried about Naloma. I was using my mobile and watched her while talking to the vet. At that point she looked at her belly. "Okay, now I'm sure she has a colic", I said. "I'll be there as soon as possible", he said." "Until then I will put them outside again. Please be quick." (Not that I was panicking in any way -cough-.) So I took the horses to the paddock again and Naloma started walking around. Then she stopped and dropped her head. She wasn't feeling too good. I mean, if someone who doesn't know her had been there, they would not have noticed anything wrong. She could also be having a little nap. She wasn't breathing heavily or sweating, but she just wasn't herself. Then I noticed that the right side of her belly was showing signs of an alien trying to get out. It moved and twitched and looked like it was leading a life of its own. I couldn't see any of this happening on the left side of her belly. I called vet again. "Hi, sorry, it's me again." I described the alien thing to him. "And I have a bottle of Colosan somewhere. Shall I give her some?" "Great", he said. "Give her that and I'll be there in half an hour." So (and this is the point where I feel really sorry that I don't allow ads at my blogspace, because the Colosan manufacturers will be delighted with what I'm going to tell you now) I gave her 10ml of Colosan. Í don't know if it is a known product outside the Netherlands, but if you own a horse, you should also own a bottle of Colosan! Within 5 minutes the alien gave up his attempts to get out of Naloma's belly. Things calmed down and she started looking like her normal self again; bright eyed and bushy tailed. The vet came and gave her an injection to calm down her belly even more. "Keep a good eye on her", he said. "She'll be alright for the next couple of hours, but when she shows signs of colic again, we'll have to take a more drastic approach." Without boring you with the details of that, I hope it will not come to more extreme measures, I'll be leaving you now to check up on her again. Send positive thoughts her way if you like. Or keep your fingers crossed. Back with more, hopefully good, news soon ;-) Update 14.38 hrs. local time: Naloma seems to be doing fine. You have never seen someone so delighted with seeing a fresh pile of horse droppings. At least her intestines are working. I'll be watching her closely the rest of this day. Will be back... Update 18.03 hrs. local time: Still no sign of colic. We will assume this crisis is over and will resume normal activities.