A much better day today. The sun shone and the mare was stronger.

She remains on 5 meals of 600 calories (total 3000 daily) and this is helping her hugely.

I can also tell that she is fed up.  She is tipping her food buckets over and when I gave her the antibiotic injection in her rump, she was hugely offended.  I had to apologise by washing her face and massaging her muzzle, which she loved.

What this mare needs most is grass, nice green grass so we took her and her friend up to my neighbour’s field to eat for as long as she wanted.

Heads down and eat, eat, eat.  Perfect.

Don’t cross the streams, Daisy!   (It would be bad… Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light – Ghostbusters.)

Staff Nurse Soufflé was in constant attendance too.  She is taking this job very seriously.

After an hour, we put them into our neighbour’s back yard and left them there for 3 hours.  I really wanted the mare to enjoy the sun on her back and to lie down if she wanted (she did).

They were brought home later in the afternoon and she looked so much happier.

I think the mare is filling back out now and is looking far less bony and ill.

All good.  She is still attached to her drip at night and still on antibiotics.  This was her first day without painkillers.  I bet she sleeps well tonight.

Not our best day today.  The mare was very down this morning.  She had a raised temperature and was not eating.

Luckily the vet happened to be passing and dropped in to see our progress. I told him what I had found and we decided to give her more painkiller and antibiotic injections.

We left her while we had lunch – I wanted the painkiller to take effect before we went up to the green grass.

She was keen to go and we took a friend to keep her company.

I put the mare on a long lunge line so that she could have space from me and could roll if she wanted to.

It was a windy afternoon with occasional showers and I think she enjoyed the feel of the wind in her fur.

She wasn’t as enthusiastic about eating as she had been yesterday but still she managed to eat for an hour before she looked tired.

When we put her back into a clean stall, she had a bit to eat and then we left her to rest.  I will attach her to the drip later as she is still not drinking enough.  The hi-cal goop goes down her 6 times a day and she enjoys the strawberry flavour the most.

I have been missing my Minions and I think they are feeling a little neglected of hugging.

So we popped in and were instantly mugged.

I can only help this mare because all my horses and ponies are so good to work with.  They are in an easy feeding and mucking out routine and no one seems to be suffering from my neglect (though I miss my kisses).

This morning I made the decision to get the mare outside.  One of my many mantras in life is “fresh air is good for you”.

So OH kindly dashed over to the vets and was given some heparin to keep the intravenous line open and a bung to go on the end.

Once I had these items in my possession, I undid the drip and plugged the cannula.  The mare had been kicking at her belly again, so I also gave her a painkiller injection and left her for it to work.

Meanwhile, Daisy arrived, having ridden, mucked out and fed everybody at home.  We put a rug on the mare as it was raining and we set off to see The Great Outdoors.

Poor love has pitting oedema on her front legs and found it hard to walk.  There were a few trips while she found her  legs and off we went.  She was interested in her surroundings and I could almost hear her relief at seeing other ponies and smelling the fresh air.

We tried her on the grass by the roadside but it was evident she wanted green grass.  This is at a premium this time of year so, having phoned my wonderful neighbours, we took her up to a field they have that I hoped would solve all our problems.

And so we slowly plodded up the road and Daisy took the mare into their field.

The minute she saw green grass, it was head down and eat.

No, spitting anything out, just constant grazing.

Happy, happy, happy.  This is a big corner turned.

After about an hour of standing in the rain while the mare ate, I could see she was tired so we plodded slowly home.

We left her for the afternoon, while I had a sleep and at teatime I flushed her cannula and re-attached the drip.

We are now down to 3,000 calorie feeds and setting them to meal times which results in sleep all round.

Is that light I see at the end of the tunnel?  A very small pin-prick, perhaps?

And we are still at it.

Last night, the mare was doing well.  We really pushed food down her and she was beginning to look much better so, after this massive food drive, we left her at 04:00 to get some sleep.

Stupidly I thought we were out of the woods.  Idiot me.

I got a message later in the morning saying she was depressed again and had stopped eating and really this was it.  The End.

So Daisy and I dashed over, took one look and decided she needed quick energy and now. We had been given a recipe (thank you thank you thank you – you know who you are xxxx) that apparently helped so I begged and borrowed the ingredients, reckoned we had nothing to lose and we put the gunk down her.

Miracles of miracles, it worked and very well.

Kind folk were sent to the furthest ends of Shetland for more ingredients and Lerwick now has no Complan, honey, glucose or porridge oats.

Recipe:

100g Complan
50g Glucose
3 tablespoons of runny honey
400ml of water
plus a couple of handfuls porridge oats

The idea is to get in 4,000 calories each day so that works out at 3 hourly feeds with unlimited anything else the mare wants.  Every time she gets depressed, I squirt Rescue Remedy in her mouth and that does wonders too.

She likes food that is fresh, little and often and I duly oblige by holding an old washing up bowl for her to pick at.  Freshly picked grass or mare and foal mix is the chosen food today.

The vet came (as he was in the area) and agreed that whatever we were doing was obviously working.  He left us with this haemotology report and it is not pretty reading.  The mare’s temperature and heart rate are normal now but she is in some discomfort so he gave her an anti-inflammatory analgesic injection.

This is my pile of iv fluids.

And so we head back into the night and we will keep going.  We give her time to rest and sleep between bottles.  She needs that and then rallies and asks for food.

More vibes, peoples, please, more vibes.  This fat lady (me) ain’t singing yet.

I spent last night looking at another iv drip.  The vet came at midnight to site it as the mare was going downhill before our eyes.

We all agreed on the insulin route.  Not one particularly used in the UK but we decided there was nothing to lose now.

Left with an intravenous drip of Hartmann’s solution and some instructions on when to test her blood glucose, I spent the night as a nurse, making observations, taking blood samples and generally writing everything down to tell the vet at 07:30.

I had a bed but it was taken.  It was a long night for us all.

The mare made it through the night and I left to get some sleep in the morning with the promise that the vet would visit later and we would re-group and work out our next plan of attack.

I left my daughter, Daisy, with the mare and the owner.

This afternoon, I woke up after 4 hours sleep, did my chores (fed horses, quickly kissed noseys, changed foot dressing) and returned to the mare.

The drip had been re-sited again.  She was beginning to eat and we were told to really try and get food down her, whatever means.  Her temperature was down to normal, her heart rate too but now her front legs and chest had slight pitting oedema from her decreased liver function.

The nursing staff had increased.

And so I spent the afternoon/evening shoving Polos down (she likes them), apple and a carrot/porridge mixture.

The mare looks slightly better.  She is still reluctant to chew or swallow but there is more opinion in her objection.  The Polos make a very satisfactory crunch and I hope that any peppermint oil in them (if any) will help her tummy.  She can spit a piece of apple at me with surprising accuracy too!