It is always such a relief when you finally get a sick or injured animal to a hospital that can help them. Finally, they are in the right hands and are somewhere where someone can actually fix the problem. To have him jump out of the trailer and have so many people there and ready for him was like we could breathe again.

It would be much easier from here to simply put his medical records online and I'm sure much more accurate, but I'm not clear on the legalities of that. Nothing on them indicates that they are confidential, but I will ad lib anyway.

He was too painful for them to diagnose him, so they wanted to go straight to surgery, which I agreed to and wrote a check for $2,000 to get him on the table. To quote Ohio State, "an abdominal exploratory was performed and the displacement and torsion was corrected. An enterotomy was performed to aid in the correction and evaculate the large colon." Basically, he had 270 degree colon torsion, which was
corrected.

Everyone there during the surgery was extremelly kind to us, let us watch, spent time explaining the surgery and the prognosis. They were very encouraging and patient in explaining what they were doing and what he was going through.
When the surgery was complete everyone was very pleased and his prognosis appeared quite good. We were told he had gotten there in time, he had lost none of his intestines, blood flow was good, everything was pink and we were discussing the possiblility of him making it to Congress. They told us all he had to do was to wake up and recover, all was good and we should go home and get some rest. Since I had a barn full of horses I had left at home, that is what we did. I will regret that decision for a very long time.

We purchased Reiley in June and showed him the following weekend. He had not been shown since Congress and Daniella had only ridden him a few times, but it was show season and that's what we did. He won the first class she was in (senior HUS and she is a first year amateur) and was in the points every weekend she showed him. At the Region 4 Regional Experience she was 4th in the amateur HUS and 3rd in the senior HUS. She put his ROM on him and came close to qualifying for the open world in just a month. We were looking forward to Congress and having a good time.

The day he coliced could not have been more normal. Daniella rode him, worked on lead changes, hosed him off and tied him up. I let him dry and untied him, went to the house for half an hour and went back down to feed. He laid down. Never a good sign. I gave him banamine, walked him, and called our local vet to give the heads up in case we needed him but then Reiley began to look like himself. Half an hour later he was in trouble and I called the vet back.

It didn't take long for him to send us to Ohio State University Veterinary Hospital.
He wasn't hearing any gut sounds and the trailer was ready. OSU said they would need $600 to meet us there since it was night and they would be waiting for us. When we arrived at OSU they had the doors open and were indeed ready. Reiley had a hard trip up and we didn't know what we would see when we opened the trailer doors, but to our relief he got up and jumped out.

I have never lost sleep before over equine law or veterinary malpractice. I've had a barn full of horses for 30 years and have been fortunate and I'd like to think diligent in having very few accidents and good outcomes when there is one. Years ago one horse coliced in the middle of the night and my vet was unable to save him. Two successful colic surgeries-both went on to have long careers and our 24 year old Polly still gives about 4 lessons a week and suffers through the county fair to give a few more trophies to a novice rider. The closest to this experience I can say I've had is when a local vet came out to the barn to do some work on a young stallion we had and when he started to get up before the work was done he was given one more injection to keep him down that proved fatal. I can still remember him jumping up and down on him, cussing at him not to die. When nothing he did changed the outcome he asked me what I thought the value of him was. I was fair and he wrote me a check. We remain friends to this day. The accident was not intentional, yet still a mistake was made. At any rate, I do lose sleep over equine law now, and it can be complicated. There are cases that are cut and dry though, and Reiley's case certainly seems to fall into that catagory. No one denies what happened to him.

Artini On The Rocks aka Reiley

With luck and fairness the subject of this blog will change and it will focus on the success of our horses and riders, but for now it is to follow our unfortunate journey with Ohio State University Veterinary Hospital. On August 10 our gelding, Artini On The Rocks, died following a successful colic surgery when the morphine pump he was on malfunctioned and overdosed him.

OSU has admitted fault both verbally and in writing, yet still has sent me a bill that includes the morphine that killed him and have not offered to compensate me for the loss.

As horse owners we know all the things we must always be concerned about--diseases, legs, joints, feet, the ability for their intestines to turn on them at any moment, the dangers of surgery and the complications of recovery, the list is endless. But I believe that the responsibiity for faulty medical equipment and the professionals that run them should lie in their hands and not ours. We can never predict the outcome of any surgery but surely we should not have to add either incompetant equipment or major human error to our list of owner worries.

This is my attempt to not only document whatever the outcome will be, but to also seek advise, concern, or other owners' journeys and experiences.