This morning, as I drove to the yard I couldn’t shake my feelings of guilt, knowing how Riley and Blackjack had spent the night—hungry and confined in bare stables, I also felt apprehensive because I knew what was to come.
The ordeal ahead
The vet and her assistant were scheduled to meet us to scope both horses for gastric ulcers, a procedure that requires a long period of starvation. Though I dreaded finding them unsettled, I was relieved to discover the opposite. When I reached their stables, they greeted me cheerfully, seemingly unaware of the ordeal ahead.
When the vet arrived, I suggested she begin with Blackjack, since I suspected he might become unsettled if he had to watch Riley go first. He had been scoped just six weeks earlier, so today’s procedure was a follow-up to check whether his ulcers had healed.
Not a pleasant thing
After he was sedated, the vet carefully passed the scope through his nose and down into his stomach — not a pleasant thing to watch, and no doubt even worse for Blackjack who had to endure it. We gathered around the vet’s monitor as the images appeared, all of us quietly hoping for good news. To our relief, the ulcers had gone. The vet advised a gradual weaning off his medication rather than stopping abruptly, a promising sign that he was truly on the mend.
Who could blame him?
Then it was Riley’s turn. Earlier, I had foolishly declared how calm and compliant he usually is — a statement that came back to haunt me almost immediately. In truth, I had momentarily forgotten that Riley can also be rather opinionated, and in this situation, who could blame him? No horse would willingly stand still while a scope was pushed up their nose.
The vet administered the sedation, but it quickly became clear that Riley wasn’t having any of it. A second dose was needed before he would finally accept the procedure. Once he was settled, the scope went in and we gathered around the screen once more. This time the news was less reassuring but not as bad as I had feared: Riley did have a very minor ulcer. It was unlikely to have been causing him discomfort yet, but it was important to address it early.
So, Riley is now at the beginning of the same six-week treatment programme that Blackjack has just completed, along with two weeks off work to aid his recovery.
It was far from an easy morning — for the ponies or for us — but sometimes the hardest decisions are the ones made with their best interests at heart. In any event, armed with the knowledge that they were getting the expert treatment they needed and were going to be fine, the drive home was much more relaxed.