Re: choke

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

Hey Barbara,
Sorry to hear you had such a bad choke incident.  I can pass on what they
taught us in vet school about choke and aftercare---the bottom line was that
they don't give antibiotics unless they see a specific need to, ie,
suspicion of some food particles aspirated into the lungs or evidence of
infection.  If he's really feeling punky, it would be a good idea to keep an
eye on his temperature to watch out for a secondary infection.  They did
talk quite a bit about feeding nice, soft, mushy feeds, such as soaked beet
pulp, well-soaked hay cubes, etc.  We saw alot of slides of esophageal
lesions after really bad chokes and geez, I'd have a sore throat, too.  So
I'd let him have the soaked alfalfa and if he already likes/gets soaked beet
pulp, some of that, too.
The tissue surrounding where the choke is is going to be pretty irritated
for awhile, so whatever you can do to make his food nice and soft would
probably be appreciated.  If there's any available, maybe you could handwalk
him out for a few minutes of grazing if he was interested.

I guess my gut feeling is that I'd leave the guy alone until he's feeling
better.  I can't imagine anything so important that he HAS to be worked and
I guess I would just let him hang out until he felt like doing something.

Last word, what they also told us was that really bad chokes can leave an
esophageal stricture--a narrowing of scar tissue where the original choke
occurred---and so he might be more prone to choke again in the future.  Hope
this was just a one time thing for both of you. :-)

Susan G

----- Original Message -----
From: <guest@endurance.net>
To: <ridecamp@endurance.net>
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 7:39 AM
Subject: RC: choke


> Barbara Marcius run2fast@neo.rr.com
> Hey Folks,
> Have dilligently tried to search the archives on this subject to no avail.
Would any of you who have experienced this horror please e-mail me privately
in case this has already been covered?
> Here's the sad story.  7 year old Arab gelding choked for the first time
last Thursday pm.  In 28 years of owning horses, I've never seen this, and
never want to again. Had the vet out for a 2 hour visit.  Said it was the
worst case he'd ever seen in his career.  Tubed him repeatedly till his nose
was bleeding.  Said we'd pretty much gotten it all, that he would be just
fine.  Well, he's not.  This vet is VERY hard to get ahold of, and still
hasn't returned my calls, because "it's not an emergency". The gelding acts
like he's 80 years old, very lethargic, wants not a whole lot to do with wet
grain, only wants wet alfalfa, and not eating tons of that either. This is
normally a very busy alert horse.  Anyone have a clue if this is just normal
after such an event?  C'mon guys, the vet said no big deal, start riding him
as usual.  Gut feeling says no way.  Any comments from you ridecampers?
This is very scary stuff.
> Barbara
>
>
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