Page 760 - The Veterinary Care of the Horse

• risk injury to yourself or other people in your attempts to help the horse.

VetBooks.ir How to help the vet

•
Make sure the horse is adequately restrained in a bridle or headcollar whilst the vet
examines it.

• Provide a bucket of clean, warm water.

• At night, have the horse in a well-lit stable when the vet arrives. Examination is more
difficult when carried out by torch or car headlights.

The examination

The vet will carry out a thorough examination of the horse. This serves two purposes. Firstly

to establish whether the horse really has colic or whether it is suffering from some other
condition causing colic-like symptoms. Amongst the more common false colics are:

• laminitis

• exertional rhabdomyolysis syndrome
• foaling

• liver disease.

Secondly, the examination and history will sometimes reveal the cause of the abdominal pain.

Specific medical treatments may then be prescribed or a decision made that surgery is
necessary. The examination includes the following tests.

TAKING THE PULSE AND TEMPERATURE

The pulse rises in response to pain and cardiovascular shock. With spasmodic colic, the pulse
may rise to as high as 90 beats per minute during the bouts of pain, but then return to close to

normal. A pulse that remains above 60 in the quiet periods despite the administration of
painkillers, is a cause for concern.

In many cases the temperature is normal but it may be raised if colitis or peritonitis is
developing. Sub-normal temperatures occur in horses that are toxic.

LISTENING TO THE GUT SOUNDS

The vet will listen to the chest and abdomen with a stethoscope to establish whether the gut
noises (known as borborygmi) are greater or less than normal. On the whole, an absence of

gut sounds is more worrying than a noisy abdomen.