Dr Dragon

"She's in VF, 10ml adrenaline stat. Shock at 150 Joules, CLEAR!"

Well not quite... but I am now operating an intravenous cannula and administering IM injections which given my previous medical skills were more or less limited to going down to the chemists and buying a packet of ibuprofen is a pretty neat skill to acquire over a weekend.

However it's a skill I wished I hadn't needed to acquire as Sunshine (my Irish Draft mare) is sick. Started on Thursday with her just standing about and not eating which isn't like her and in the evening she didn't touch her feed which is not at all like her but she wasn't in any obvious discomfort so it wasn't colic (for you non horsey people colic = über badness) and as the vet was coming round on Friday morning for a routine flu and tetanus jab I left it. Following morning she didn't eat again and I noticed she wasn't drinking so now it's getting serious. Anyway Dr Horse shows up, has a listen and sticks a thermometer up her bum and she's got a temperature. "Hmmm..." goes Dr Horse, "Hopefully it's just a virus and will go away after a couple of days but there's something not quite right here, I'm going to do a peritoneal tap. Does she like clippers?"

"No idea, I've never clipped her."

"Well let's see... "

...click...

...whirrrr....

..."WHINNY!!"

Five minutes later when we had treated our wounds and Dr Horse confirmed that despite pain to the contrary your green scaly friend has not sustained a broken back when Sunshine had tried to get out of the open top stable door via a dragon who was in the way we figured that, no, she doesn't like clippers one little bit so it's time for snoozy drugs.

In goes the needle (which she's fine with).

"What's this then, ACE?"

"Might as well piss in her ear, that's the one we give to owners because it's hard to screw up," he's a proper bluff northerner is my vet, "this is detomindine."

"How long before it takes effect."

"About 30 seconds, hold her head up"

Ever tried to hold up a 570kg horse's head when she's determined that all she wants to do is lie down and have a sleep? In the end I ended up propping it up using a combination of my shoulder and the door whilst playing with her ears to keep her vaguely conscious.

"She seems sensitive to it... might have given her a bit much."

"No shit," grunted the little dragon who had enlisted some flappy wing action in an attempt to keep from being pressed into the stable floor.

Anyway we shaved a bit off the belly fur, needle in the tummy and took a sample which he said looked OK and whilst we're at it filed a couple of sharp points off her teeth, took some blood and give a couple of antibiotic injections plus some pain relief and the apparently obligatory vitamin injection vets are contractually obliged to give at each visit and then make up a bucket of warm isotonic stuff that looked and tasted like flat lucozade, shoved a tube down her nose (that's apparently how you get a tube into a horse's stomach) and poured it in. After all that she started to wake up. Mind you I think I would have done if someone had just poured a bucket of lucozade up my nose.

So off Dr Horse goes to the lab and after another hour Sunshine is wanting out of the stable and is, at last, eating and drinking again - vet says that would be the pain relief.

About 6pm the phone goes.

"You know that peritoneal tap I took and I said it looked fine."

"Yes."

"It isn't; white cell count is elevated at 8 and the lab found some proteins, we're culturing it for bacteria now but we're looking at Peritonitis. She's had a gut perforation."

"Arse"

"I'll be round tomorrow morning at eight."

So tomorrow dawns, Sunshine is scoffing away just like normal and Dr Horse starts preparing to fit an IV cannula. "Now I'll show you how to maintain this."

"Hang on," I say, "I'll get Mrs Dracunculus, she was a nurse before she started poking loonies for a living."

"Now it shouldn't come off," says Dr Horse once the medical staff of Emergency Ward 10 are all assembled, "I'm going to put a couple of sutures in and superglue it to her neck."

"Superglue?"

Out comes a tube of Heinkel's finest adhesive.

"Yes. Works a treat does this." and indeed he glues the top of the cannula to Sunshine. Now that's going to be a laugh come Friday and we have to get it off!

Mrs D however is swapping intravenous war stories with Dr Horse and talking about flow rates and tissue scarring and drawback and all sorts of other medical stuff, turns out that there isn't that much difference between humans and horses when it comes to this sort of stuff and he gets Mrs D to flush everything out and put the first dose of Gentomycin in. Mrs D however whimps out when it comes to the IM injections though as it seems to involve thumping horse bottom before shoving the needle in and being such a soft hearted thing she can't bring herself to do that although I pointed out shoving a needle in probably huts one hell of a lot more.

So it falls to the newly minted veterinary surgeon Dr Dragon to start giving injections. Vet does the first one just to show how it's done and Sunshine doesn't even flinch, then comes my turn. What you do is palm this huge fuck off sharp needle between thumb and forefinger, whack the horse's bum a couple of times with the heel of the hand, turn hand and push needle in. Seems straightforward so off I go and the needle stops after about a centimetre and Sunshine starts dancing round the stable.

"Keep pushing!" yells Dr Horse, I do and in it goes.

"Should have told you that you'll get resistance, sorry."

So there we are. Up at 6 this morning to give injections before dashing off to work but Sunshine seems a lot perkier although she's starting to get very wary when we turn up at her stable with lots of white tubes.

Still, I invested in a big bag of bran so she's getting nice warm bran mashes every evening to make up for it.

Will keep you all informed.

And what's the grumpy angle here? Well apart from being grumpy I have a sick horse you haven't seen anything like the grump I'm going to have once I start getting the insurance company to pay the vet's bill.