I rarely read this thread, and am not sure if I have ever posted in it, but I happened to be reading it yesterday and wanted to give you my deepest condolences. I know your heart is hurting, but Chaco is no longer in pain.
I hope my own story will give you a little comfort. Colic can be such a difficult thing to deal with, and can range from a mild “stomach ache” that is easily dealt with, to a massive impaction that is frequently fatal. I dealt with the full range of that in my beautiful gelding, Strider. He was my pride and joy. I owned his mother, and had bred him, raised him, and trained him all myself. So the first time he colicked at around 5 years old I was determined to save him. The surgery cost several thousand dollars, he had a coastal impaction. So I never fed him coastal again, he got only alfalfa. The recovery took a few months or restricting his activity and monitoring his diet and incision. Finally he seemed to be all healed up.
About a year later, he colicked again and I rushed him to the vet. They tubes him and this time it turned out to be a simple fix. We had seeded part of the pasture to try to get it to grow some winter grass, and he had discovered the grass seed and licked it up from the ground. Along with a ton of dirt. And once in his stomach the grass seed swelled up. They flushed/drained his stomach through the tube, and took about 3-4 five-gallon buckets of fluid/seed/dirt out of it. Once again he seemed to recover just fine.
A year later it happened again. He colicked and I rushed him to the vet. They examined him and decided it was something more major, and would require probably require another surgery. They recommended that I take him to the Texas A&M vet college/hospital for further examination. So we made the hour long drive. After more testing and a lot of tears I decided to let him go, to not put him through another surgery and recovery, and held his head as they put him down. Because it is a teaching hospital I gave them permission to do a necropsy on him, which would also let them practice some surgical skills. The next day they called me and said I had definitely made the right decision. His intestines had dozens of adhesions that had developed from the first surgery, which were keeping things from moving freely. They said it wasn’t uncommon for it to happen after an abdominal surgery, and that at that time they hadn’t figured out any way to predict when it would happen, or what caused some people/animals to get them worst than other. They were surprised he had made it as long as he did without colicking again, and said he would have been prone to it happening frequently for the rest of his life.
I miss him still, and even though it has been over 10 years since I let him go it took me several hours to type this. I kept having to take a break because I couldn’t see through the tears. But I take comfort in the good memories, and in knowing that he never again has to go through that pain and discomfort.
Worst part is right now I can’t even find any old pics of him to post.
burns can sing and tap-dance
