Quel jour!

What a day, that means. Mine was...insane really.
Went to school this morning with not enough sleep and a new haircut. I like the haircut. Radical, emoish tendencies, nut it works with my opressively round face.
So math calss was first. We had little 5 min review presentations to do, and I had gotten mine done last weekend thinking they were due on monday. anyhow, i get up to present, pull up my powerpoint, and am informend that I did the wrong topic. go figure. so I hafta get a new presentation together, which I promised myself I would do tonight.
Biology and french classes were normal. As in annoying and altogether too long. In spare a friend and I commandeered a grade 9 music class, which was interesting. We literally just took it over.
So after school I was chilling at home, and I wanted to go to the barn to drop off this month's board. My mom told me to be home by 5. It was quarter after 3, and I just was planning on stopping, leaving the cheque, and taking off. I didn't even put socks on when I left.
So when I get to the barn, the barn manager, Lynn, is just walking down the laneway, which is odd, cuz she almost never leaves the place. I roll down my window to see what's up and she tells me one of the horses cast herself. A cast horse is one that is stuck n the ground for whatever reason. She was about to go get help from the mennonites across the street. So we go to this horse Tara's stall. She's an old horse, about 28 or so, very sweet white arab cross. She had rolled in her stall (which is ridiculously large) and managed to end up lying faicng the wall with her legs tucked against her. She had no room to flail anout and get herself up. So Lynn and I looped lead ropes around her and rolled her over, and Tara got up and looked worried.
We noticed that Tara was ridiculously sweaty. Today was hot, and this horse has a ridiculous amount of hair, but she felt like she had been standing in the rain for a few hours. Sweating is one of the major signs of pain in a horse. Lynn listened to her belly and couldn't hear anyhting for quite a while (horses have almost constant tummy gurgles). So this meant colic. Colic in horses is a bit different from in humans, though it is the same basic principle. Something bcomes stuck in the digestive tract, which causes gas and food to pack up behind it. The stomach gets bloated and uncomfortable. Most people take pepto bismol and are all good once stuff shifts around and they pass some gas or something. Horses are a bit different, Becasue of the discomfort they want to roll on the ground. This rolling often progresses to wild thrashing. The horse can twist its gut then, which means they must be euthanized. So it is essential to keep the horse from rolling, and to try to get whatever is blocking the system to move. The general way to do this is to walk the horse until they gas or poo.
So we walked Tara. The poor old girl hasn't gotten exercise since I don't know how long ago, other than her daily time in the field. She got this anti-gas stuff and mineral oil pumped into her, but that didn't help within half an hour, so Lynn called the vet. Tara had already dropped to roll once, and it's not easy to get an arthritic uncomfortable horse to stand up again on slippery mats. That was about 4 that she phoned. I kept walking Tara with Lynn's husband Doug. tara tried to roll again and was harder to get up that time. At about 5 I called my mom and siad I wouldn't be home for a while yet.
The vet showed up about quarter after 5. They gave Tara huge amounts of pain killers. Hehe, she was totally stoned about 10 minutes after the vet's arrival. The vet couldn't hear any digestive movement, so she tubed Tara (tube through nose into stomach) and flushed huge amounts of electrolytes and mineral oil into her. About quarter to 6 Tara was feeling fine, even though she was massively high. Her digestion was moving decently and she was standing and moving about a little in her stall. One of the drugs that the vet gave her casued tremours, so every minute or so she would just twitch and get the most confused expression. Hehe, it reminded me of this kid in my drama class who had acid twitches.
Anyhow, when I left around 6 Tara was doing just fine, thankfully. I'm really glad I was there on time to help. And I leared a lot. 1: I'm so pumped to be a vet 2: I never want to see a horse I like colic again 3: never leave the house without socks.