George still hadn’t quite gotten used to talking on cell phones, and I winced as he answered his phone at his usual volume. It increased twofold when he realized it was me.

“WELL, HOWDY COURTNEY, WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!”

I held the phone away from my ear.

“Hey, George! if you’re not busy, I have a quest—”

“IT’S SUNNY HERE RIGHT NOW, BUT I SEE CLOUDS MOVING IN, AND DANG IT, I’VE GOT COLTS TO GELD!”

“GEORGE, I NEED TO ASK YOU A MARE QUESTION,” I bellowed.

Once in a while, George remembered to put his hearing aids in, but today was not one of those days. I explained the situation at the top of my lungs and asked if it was safe to allow the pregnancy to continue.

“THAT FOAL WILL GROW TO THE SIZE OF THE UTERUS. IT’LL BE BORN NORMALLY, AND THEN WHEN IT HITS THE GROUND, IT’LL REALLY GROW!” George boomed. “AND TELL LONNIE TO QUIT FEEDING THAT MARE ALL THOSE DANG SUPPLEMENTS—ONLY THING THOSE’LL DO IS MAKE HER FAT!”

George knew that Lonnie was an indiscriminate user of feed supplements, and her barn shelves were lined with every possible product, powder, granule, additive and oil. He made his opinions clear to Lonnie, and he liked to joke that she probably used a supplement dartboard to guide her protocols.

Incessant Calls about the Pregnant Pony

Lonnie was still worried about her pregnant pony, although she was grateful for George’s advice, and the waiting game began. We had an estimated four months to go, plus or minus.

Looking back, I think it might have been the longest foal watch of my career. Lonnie made sure the pregnant pony stayed on my radar with many helpful evening and late-night calls informing me that the mare had lain down twice and groaned several times, or that her udder wasn’t tender yet, or that she hadn’t finished her alfalfa hay in the same time frame that she’d finished it the night before.

I liked Lonnie, but I started letting the calls go to voicemail after a while, as having my dinner interrupted to be told that the mare was scratching her butt on the fence was getting old. When Lonnie couldn’t reach me on the phone, eventually she started paging me.

“Lonnie, what is it this time?” I asked wearily after my pager had gone off three times in a row.

“You need to come right out, Doc! I think she’s bleeding from her birth canal!”

That got my attention.

“How much blood? When did it start?”

Lonnie wasn’t sure, and when I arrived, she was holding a towel to the pony’s backside.

The towel was black, so I couldn’t tell how much blood there might have been.

I gently removed the towel and inspected the little mare. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Lonnie had a chair ready for me, and we watched the pony for about 20 minutes, but there was no sign of any bleeding or leaking fluids.

“Well, she was wet back there, and it seemed red,” said Lonnie defensively. “But the towel was so dark I couldn’t really tell.”

I stared at her. “Lonnie, I’m going to say this once. The pregnancy is progressing normally, and you need to leave her be and get some rest. Don’t call me again unless she’s showing actual signs of labor!”

The Wait is Over for a Pregnant Pony

My phone was quiet for the next few weeks. Finally, early one morning I finally got the call that I was waiting for. The pregnant pony had given birth during the night. Her foal was nursing well and the mare was up and eating. I didn’t see any reason to cancel my morning calls, and I told Lonnie I’d be along in a few hours.

Her number popped up on my cell a few times, but I was busy and didn’t answer. Then my pager went off.

“Where are you?!” Lonnie demanded. “The baby’s down, and she’s twitching!”

“Lonnie, she’s sleeping!” I said in exasperation. “I told you, I’ll be along when I finish my calls. Don’t page me again!”

Lonnie was sulky when I finally arrived, but she cheered up when I examined the mare and her huge foal and pronounced them perfect. The filly had the largest knees I’d ever seen, the mare was bright, and she hadn’t even torn during the delivery. I was charmed by the big filly with her whiskery, milky muzzle, and Lonnie was beaming when I drove off.

Growing Like a Weed

When the foal was a week old, her back was level with her mother’s hip bone, and by one month of age, she had to squat down to nurse. It was comical to see the pony with her huge gangly baby, and soon the filly was taller than her mother. Lonnie was much calmer now that the pregnancy was over, and my phone stayed fairly quiet.

One day, Lonnie announced that she was still hoping to find her driving team and was planning a trip to the horse sale.

I stared at her. “No more auction mares, Lonnie!”

She grinned. “Oh, don’t worry, doc! I’ve got my hands full with this elephant out in the field, and I’m sorry to have been such a pain about the whole thing.”

We gazed out at the enormous filly, now six months old and dwarfing her mother. Lonnie winked at me.

“Doc, make sure to ask Dr. Platt what supplements he recommends for the filly to get her ready for weaning.”

If you missed the first part of this story, click to read it now.

The post Growing Pains for a Pregnant Pony appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

The barn was dark and empty when I pulled up, and all the horses were far away in a huge field. I parked the veterinary truck in what I hoped was a convenient location for the emergency at hand and scanned the facility for some sign of life before I started to care for a horse in the middle of the night.

Where was Vivian, the trainer who’d called me about Frisco, the colicking horse? She was supposed to be meeting me at the barn. More importantly, where was Frisco? I called Vivian back, but no one answered, and the voicemail was full.

I’d known Vivian for a while, and she was notorious for not answering her phone and not showing up when she was supposed to be somewhere. I waited for about five minutes and then texted Frisco’s owner, a nice woman named Dana, but she was several states away, knew nothing about a colic and suggested calling the barn manager.

So I did. She also knew nothing about a colic and replied that she was at a party and to call Vivian, who was dealing with Dana’s emergencies while she was out of town for a few months.

Where’s Waldo?

I was by myself at a creepy, cold barn, and it was nearly 9 p.m. The horse had to be somewhere not too far off. I pulled a halter out of my truck, put my headlamp on and set off to find my patient, a bay Thoroughbred in a sea of bay warmbloods and Thoroughbreds.

After half an hour of trudging around the field of bemused horses and scaling fences to check the contents of various pens, I located Frisco in a small pen behind the barn. He was nibbling hay happily and had passed several large piles of normal manure.

I slipped the halter over his head, and he nudged me in a friendly manner and stood agreeably while I checked his vitals and looked him over. Everything was normal, and his gum color and gut sounds were perfect. I monitored him for a while, updated Dana, and headed home.

Call Back for Middle of the Night Veterinary Care

At 11:30 p.m., my phone rang. It was Vivian, demanding to know what the status was on Frisco. I was sleepy and grumpy, in no mood for late-night phone calls about healthy horses with irresponsible trainers. I filled her in, but I was very short with her and told her I didn’t appreciate her not showing up to meet me.

Oh, I had to be somewhere,” she said dismissively. “You’re going to go back out and check on him later.”

It was a statement, not a question.

I thought fast.

“No, actually I’m going to need you to do that. I might have another emergency to tend to.”

There was an annoyed silence on the other end, so I soldiered on.

“In fact, if you could just run out there around 3 a.m. and make sure all’s well, Dana and I would really appreciate it.”

Vivian grudgingly agreed to check on the horse. Chuckling, I went to bed. Since I might have another emergency, I wanted to be sure to get plenty of rest.

Add It to the Tab

The line stayed quiet for the rest of the night, but over the next few months I received a series of evening and weekend calls from Vivian demanding emergency visits for various elusive medical problems and mystery lamenesses that always seemed to have resolved by the time I examined Frisco. Sometimes Vivian would even show up to meet me, but she always arrived 15-20 minutes after I did.

Interestingly, Vivian usually had me work on her own horses while I was at the barn, telling me to bill Dana, and she’d often ask for refills on various drugs that Frisco “needed” and which I was fairly certain that Vivian was using on her herd.

When I calculated the total bill that Vivian had racked up and that Dana had approved, the amount was appalling. I also noticed that Vivian was driving a fancy new truck and trailer that Dana had bought a few weeks ago.

It took a year, but eventually Dana must have realized that she was spending a fortune and not getting much in return, and hired a different trainer.

Meanwhile, Vivian had found another wealthy owner, and in a matter of weeks had managed to move all of her horses into their barn and was living on their property.

“Dr. Diehl, isn’t it wonderful how my horse never seems to get sick now?” Dana asked me one day when I was doing a routine dental on Frisco. “And he’s moving so beautifully in our lessons and hasn’t had any more lameness problems. I think it must be the feed change and that joint supplement that my new trainer recommended.”

This Vet Adventures column on veterinary care in the middle of the night originally appeared in the January 2020 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Vet Adventures: Veterinary Care Alone in the Middle of the Night appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

In this Vet Adventures column, veterinarian Courtney Diehl, DVM, has a hard time knowing how to charge for a dead-end veterinary visit, but the day turns around quickly when she saves a horse in dire shape after an accident.

It hadn’t been a good day. I’d been yanked out the door at 6:30 a.m. for a dude ranch call and was almost there, an hour drive, when they called back and said I didn’t need to come after all. And it was too late to run home and get my travel mug of tea and some snacks for the road, so I was stuck starting my regular calls without breakfast or lunch. I still had not figured out how to charge for a veterinary visit that dead-ended, so I knew I’d be eating the cost. Again.

My first scheduled call was supposed to be four dentals but turned out to be only one. And, real quick, could I just check teeth on eight other horses, all of whom were far away in adjoining fields.

This was always a process guaranteed to take far longer than “real quick” and also guaranteed to leave me covered in stinking green saliva, struggling with horses that I didn’t know. The woman at the barn assured me that the owners would call and schedule the dentals later, but I knew from experience that this was unlikely to happen, and that I would more than likely never get paid for the oral exams, although it’s a veterinary visit I would like to charge for.

X-Ray Vision

Then, my interpretation of some radiographs I’d taken had been called into question by an owner. I was no radiologist, but after doing a lameness exam and finding bone chips in the horse’s fetlock, I felt pretty confident in calling them bone chips, and so did the orthopedic surgeon who had reviewed my X-rays.

Apparently, the owner’s sister was a non-practicing vet who claimed that there was no real way to know if the chips were really chips. A 45-minute discussion followed, and my plan to do more diagnostics on the chip-filled joint was derailed. I left, wondering how exactly to charge for that veterinary visit.

I rounded a sharp curve as my phone blared at me for the umpteenth time, and I decided it would be a good idea to pitch it out the window. It bounced off the ground and landed in a patch of tall grass, and I drove defiantly for about 40 yards before slamming on the brakes, reversing, and jumping out to grab it. That was an expensive phone, and I’d already lost several under similar circumstances.

As I retrieved my phone, I looked up to see one of my clients holding a horse. Charlie was a very successful dressage trainer in the area, and surely he had just seen me chuck my phone onto his pasture, then retrieve it.

Charlie’s Horse

By some diabolical twist of fate, it had been Charlie who’d called just now. I opened my mouth to explain but realized that the horse was covered with blood, and he was holding pressure on a massive wound on the horse’s shoulder. Another awful laceration gaped across her chest.

I leapt from the truck, carefully pulled his hand away from the injury and was rewarded with a cascade of blood. I grabbed a sterile pack of hemostats and quickly clamped every bleeder that I could find. Charlie and I led the horse across the road, hemostats clanking, and I spent the next three hours repairing the massive lacerations and tying off blood vessels.

After I’d finished the job, I learned that the horse was owned by one of the most prominent horse vets in Colorado and was very valuable. Great. Now I was probably going to get my work picked apart and honestly, I couldn’t take another beating today.

But I had to explain the situation to Dr. Famous; Charlie was already holding out his phone with a gleam in his eye.

“Better use mine. Yours probably has a bunch of dirt and grass packed into the speaker.”

I took the phone uncertainly.

A Surprise on the Line

“Dr. Diehl, I want to thank you for your speedy response today and for saving my best mare. Charlie told me that you were there almost before he hung up the phone. I saw the before-and-after pictures of her shoulder and chest, and I have to tell you I’m impressed with your work!”

I mumbled a response, thanking the gods that Charlie hadn’t told him anything else about phones, and did my best to summarize the extent of the injury and my treatment plan. Dr. Famous gently cut me short.

“I know she’s in the best hands and I trust you and Charlie completely. Please keep me updated and again, I thank you, Doctor. This mare means a lot to me.”

I hung up the phone in a daze and Charlie made an exaggerated show of hurrying forward to snatch it from my hands.

“Just want to get this back before you throw it across my barn!”

Ending on a Good Note

I didn’t react, as I was almost in tears at how kindly and respectfully this great vet had just treated me. He had every right to be overbearing and bossy, yet he’d allowed me to be the vet in the equation and call the shots on his expensive mare without question. I was humbled to the ground.

Now I’d get to go home and put Dr. Famous into my client list. And cope with the fact that I had to send him a vet bill.

Charlie smirked at me as I packed up my stuff. I knew he wasn’t done with me yet.

“You know, Doc, you’ve got a heck of a right arm. I hear the local softball team is looking for a pitcher!”

“And I hear they’re looking for a jackass for their mascot.” I shot back. “You might fit the bill.”

I could hear him laughing as I drove away, and I chuckled too, shaking my head.

It was just another day at work after all.

This Vet Adventures article about how to charge for a dead-end veterinary call before the day turns around appeared in the December 2019 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Caller ID: Being Able to Charge for a Veterinary Visit appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.