Another Day at the Office

I start and end my days feeding the horses on the ranch I work and live on with my husband, our horse Autumn, our dog Lilly and our two cats Kiki and Fluffy Pants (AKA...  F-to the-P-pants).  During the week I spend most of my days working at the local horse and livestock veterinary hospital.  We treat horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, donkeys, mules and we deal with some pretty "special" owners.  The one thing I can say about that job is that you never know what you're in for from day to day.  Somedays, you may be stuck on the phone, doing inventory, working on the computer... Then the next day you could be staring at a wall wondering how a cow was able to shit a cow pie over a seven foot wall and have it plaster itself 10 feet away, splattering eye level on the laundry room door. 
The other afternoon, we had a horse come in that was colicing real bad.  Colic, simply defined, is like deadly constipation in horses that can kill them relatively quickly if not treated.  This poor guy was in bad shape.  He clenched his teeth and his eyes were screaming with pain.  His owners wanted us to do everything we could to save him.  He was their kids horse.  We gave him pain killers and 6 liters of intravenous fluids (think of that in terms of  liter soda bottles).  We even gave him a horsey enema.  To do this the veterinarian used a special hose that he inserted into the horse's butt, while I pumped a bucket full of an enema into the hose and into the horse.  It took about a half a bucket of fluid before he exploded it back out complete with poop into my face.  I missed my golden opportunity to ask for a raise at that moment.
The next morning I ran to his stall to find that he had passed away during the night.  I knew it had to have been a painful death.  As bummed out as I was I had to start making a plan to get him drug out of the stall before we had appointments come in.  I made arrangements with the usual rancher who did this sort of thing and had the RIGHT equipment to do the job.  But, when the owner came he said he would take care of it.  He had a backhoe show up and he told me the trailer would be there any minute.  It appeared he had it all under control.  The morning was ticking away and still no trailer.  I got busy on the phone for a bit and sort of forgot about things until I saw the medical marijuana doctor's wife outside the window holding her hand over her mouth in shear horror.  I went to see what she was looking at.  Hanging 20 feet in the air upside down from the backhoe bucket was the horse.  They were trying to heft him over the side of a gravel dump truck but his head kept knocking against the side not letting him flop in and his butt was starting to pop out.  Meanwhile, cars on the highway slowed  to a crawl, and the pot doctor's wife was looking dead at me with  judging scorn.  All I needed was a school bus of kids to pull in.  The guys made some adjustments and they were finally able to get on their way.  We made some new office policies that day.
I wasn't left with much time to dwell on what just happened before the doctor was calling me back to the barn to shave a horse's scrotum for an ultrasound.  Luckily the horse was a gentleman about it and I told his owner he'd need to buy him a pair of pants after the appointment.  He didn't get it but I thought it was pretty funny. 
As I dusted the horse's ball hair off myself the phone rang. The woman on the phone wanted to know how long goats lived.  I told her from 12-15 years.  She said "I just wanted to know how much longer I needed to live."  Huh. Before I could figure out what to say to that, she said she was 85 and didn't want to die and leave them alone.  She told me that she loved them so much and they brought her so much happiness.  I told her she was a lucky to have such great goats and that she was stuck living for at least another 7  years maybe more with those little guys. 
The day ended with a horse coming in that was sick with diarrhea.  The poor guy was plastered in it and it took an hour to get him washed up and looking dashing again.  I left the office that day, smelling like horse diarrhea with remnants of horse scrotum hair stuck to my pants wondering what I would've done if that horse's butt hole would have popped out while it was hanging in the air. 
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