Today is a day I have welcomed with a sigh of relief. It started out early with a feeding for two of the three horses. We saved Patches’ feed for the horse trailer to entice him in so we could take him to the vet. Usually Patches is very motivated by his tummy, but today he was not having any of it, so after a few tries on loading him using a lead rope, a butt rope, and so on, we finally called for a friend to help. Whenever we have tried to load him before and today, we have devoted an hour at a time to the task. Our friend showed us the right way to do it, and we had him in the trailer in a matter of minutes! It can be a daunting task when you are dealing with 1250 pounds of strong animal!
We took Patches to the vet to treat a case of cancer on his penis. You read that right. He has a growth reaching the size of a fist or so, and it cannot be a very pleasant thing to have! The reason for it is because we are in the desert, and the sun shines down all day, every day, and reflects off the sand onto his undercarriage mercilessly. For him, that is a particularly bad situation as he is a paint, and his color down there is very white, so he lacks the pigment in his skin to defend him from the harsh rays of the sun. He has been bleeding down there, so we were getting pretty desperate to round up the money to take him in. We have non credit cards, and are damned proud of that fact, so loans and the like are not an option, agree with it or not! The economy is just too harsh to go into debt right now.
Anyway, the vet gave him an sedative to relax him, thankfully, then she jabbed him with an injection which will hopefully kill the cancerous cells. She also tied the growth off at the base with catgut. She said that the best course of action in our case would be to have the growth cut off, and move him somewhere where there is not so much reflected sunlight. I couldn’t agree more. She finished up her work with him, and I went and got cash to pay her with, then she helped us load him, but when we tried the method we had been taught in the morning, he loaded right up. The vat said that it is possible for us to replace the catgut with dental floss if it becomes loose, but obviously to not put ourselves in any danger if we chose to do so. We may need some sedatives for such a task!
Patches took quite some time to return to normal from his sedative. All the while he was under it he drooped his head, and stood like he weighed… well, obviously more than 1250 pounds! It was easy to tell when he had recovered from it! For the moment we can only hope that this treatment does him some good. The vet is not properly equipped for surgery on large animals. If she were, we could be looking at well over $500 for just such a surgery as removing this growth. And by that, I have been told possibly in the thousands. Again, the current market does not justify such costs as a new horse would cost much less than that. It may seem a crazy way of looking at it to pet owners, but horses don’t make good pets. Try sitting one on your lap and you will begin to see what I mean.
Today may not mark a change in his health. Today does give a confirmation of what we have expected, and helps us to better understand what we need to do with the old boy! He’s probably the most popular horse in our area, which makes this all the more difficult as everyone knows him on sight, and when he is covered in blood, they see the state he is in, and well, it’s Patches! What’s more, I was with him after his injury when he was a colt, and it was from my hands the lead rope fell as he ran for the first time when we were told over and again he should be put down, and that he would never run or be saddled. Ten years on, he saddles, and he runs all he wants. Even today the vet could not believe what he had been through as I told her about the wire that has been wrapped so tightly around his leg that bone had started to grow around it by the time the wire was finally removed!
Hopefully today will mark a change in his health, and hopefully it will mark a huge improvement!
Kelsey J Bacon