Life Update: Candy's Annual Colic

Yesterday, I got the call I had been waiting for since our weird freezing-60s-freezing temperatures began. "Candy's laying down and he's not acting right- you should probably come out."

I got there, and he was doing his standard, "I'm ouchy, but you're my favorite treat lady!" routine. Heart rate on the high side of normal, tacky gums. You see, Candy does not like ice cold water, but he also sweats like a pig. Every winter since I've moved to Alabama, he gets a colic, and it's usually an impaction. I assumed the usual cecal impaction, and called the vet out thinking some tubed fluids and mineral oil would get him out of his funk.

10 cc's of Banamine, some sedation, and a rectal palpation later, the vet decided this wasn't a standard cecal impaction. There was a "mass" on the right side- either the spleen, the kidney, or a lymph node in his opinion. Of course, I panicked, I cried, thinking it was the big "C". We loaded him on a trailer to take him to the vet school to get him ultrasounded and really nail down what was happening.

At the vet school, they agreed the mass was weird, but thankfully, ultrasound confirmed it was just a very hard impaction in the very tip of the cecum. The cecum is comma shaped, and the "round part" of the comma was empty, while the tip of the comma was full of manure. It was a stressful 6 hours to go from cecal impaction to unknown mass to cecal impaction.

I left him overnight at the vet school; he's passing manure, bright and happy, but still dehydrated, and still has a bit of an impaction.

So I'll keep you posted.

- K & C & L