07/29/2024
Let's talk about Nona! She is a sweetheart mare that we have absolutely loved getting to know in the time we've had her here with us.
Nona has had a hard for the last couple months. It had become clear that she needed some extra attention in May when she began losing some weight. We moved her out to a larger pasture where she would have more abundant grass and room to roam, but that soon proved to be a bad idea. Nona did not thrive after the move, in fact, we thought due to the other horses in the new pasture she was being picked on. (As expected for a new horse being put into a herd) we had made sure to keep her pasture buddy with her from previous area but did not seem to help. After about a week and half of that with no signs of change her condition only seemed to worsen believing stress to be the cause of that. Then we proceeds to take her and her companion out to be in their own large open range...no other horses to bother her and plenty of good forage. Another week or 2 goes by and still no better, even worse now she is constantly peeing, squirting actually. So now im getting really concerned. At this point I decided to call in the vet. She had been thoroughly been vet checked, floated and all others less then a year ago so anything serious was not at all something we'd been concerned with up until this point.
Nona had a bladder infection. 10 days uniprim and all should be better. Not quite...still peeing constantly. Never fully emptying bladder and hind end is constantly soaked. Not good! So I take her back in...we do an ultrasound and find a very large mass on the bladder. We were then referred to Dr Speer at Equine Surgery and Medicine, where we did a more detailed ultrasound and found that she had a bladder stone that was over 6.4cm (that's more than 3") in size.. it is most likely causing all the stress that she has been under for this entire ordeal. In order to remove it, it would have to be broken apart and removed surgically. Doc says he'd never seen one this large, who know how long she has been growing this think without anyone knowing. Anyhow, we decided that she is worth the surgery expense and although she is 25-26 years old she is no doubtbworth the expense of this. There's no comparison.
Dr Speer opted to keep here there until we could run some bloodwork to make sure she was not in renal failure, because if she was there would be no way to save her. Good news, bloodwork came back good. Doc performed her surgery the same afternoon and sent me photos of the stone (broken to pieces) and I couldn't believe it. Said she did great and to let her recover dor a few days before we bring her back. We picked her up 2 days later and she has been completing another round of post op antibiotics and so far she is recovering so well. We are very hopeful that she will continue to get better and praying that she feels so much relief now. I feel absolutely terrible that I didn't insist on getting her checked long before.
We will continue to monitor her improvement and soon will have her checked with chiropractor since her last check showed she's possibly needing some adjustment in the hips. August I will have her checked for cushings and pray she doesn't have that buy if she does....we will deal. I know how to treat that and she can live an amazing and active life with it as long as she continues staying on top of it. Let's pray that's not gonna be the case though.
Ps...did I mention that Dr. Speer saved the stone for me? He kept it refrigerated in a zip lock and gave it to me to keep...lol I think I found my favorite vet.😂
100% recommended, no doubt!
Also thanks to Dr Mikaela in El Dorado for finding this issue and being so wonderful with our girl.
If you would like to donate to the rescue here is our venmo link...
https://www.paypal.com/qrcodes/venmocs/56db558b-cc69-4712-bff0-176fd3092db6?created=1722276699
