Punkin Chokes

 Day 11 Take 2 

September 24, 2022 

The blankets were warm and cozy and I could have stayed in bed all day.That should have been my first warning. I should have stayed in bed. 

The sky was gray but dry and I knew that I could multitask if I only had one fire. I decided to start the easy fire. 

First I put some hay into the bottom field for the horse with the intention of keeping them out of the smoke. 

I put the sticks that had burnt last time onto the fire and set up my fire shatter kit like I have been doing up until now. Finding dry enough wood to get the fire started was getting more and more difficult but I wasn't going to let it beat me. Not today. 

Nearly an hour later I resorted to starting a grease fire to get my yard clean up done. It was working but it needed to be thoroughly tended.It was now taking too much time and resources to justify burning. This would be my last one this year. 

Tonka decided that he didn't want to be fed in the bottom field this morning and broke into the garden to eat. Punkin was so upset that she couldn't get into the garden too that sen refused to go to the bottom field to eat. 

I finally took pity on her and brought some hay into her shelter so she could at least snack while she miserably watched her pony get all the good stuff. 

The fire was well on its way to being hot enough to load up and leave for a bit so I could start working on getting the rig set up. 

Punkin came running out of her shelter desperately trying to get something out of her mouth and trying to nibble teeny pieces of gras, which she promptly spat out. 

I watched in horror, terrified she had just eaten a fish hook. How would she have eaten a fish hook? There is no fish hook. That’s just your imagination. 

She sorted herself and went back to eating. 

Roughly 5 minutes later she came out of her shelter and flipped her top lip up at me. The colic face. 

“You’re not colicing”  I said. She flipped up her lip and looked at me desperately for help. Dropping everything I went over to her and took one look at her contracted abdomen. It flinched when I touched it and her lip flipped up again. 

Immediately the colic protocol went into action. I grabbed the happy tummy paste, made the special mash and ran out of the bar with the lunge line in my hand. 

First I pried her mouth open to make sure there wasn’t a fish hook. As I already knew there was no fish hook. My imagination could stop that now. 

She didn’t want the happy tummy paste. Normally she likes it but I made her eat it anyway. This colic seemed worse than the last one. 

Her lip flipped up and this time her shoulder shook, the muscle tissues twitching uncontrollably. Ahhhh seizure!! It wasn’t a seizure. I knew better. Lip flipped up again. 

“Oh my goodness you’re not colicing you’re choking aren’t you!” I said out loud to her as I rubbed her neck. Using everything I know about equine anatomy and the esophagus in general imagined a lump and worked the tissues of her throat to help the process of swallowing. It seemed to be helping. 

Punkin had choked on me once before as a yearling. Her and Tonka were racing to gobble the food and they both choked. Tonka cleared his and Punkin needed the vet. There was no vet today, just me, and we were going to have to get through this together. 

“You and me we're going to move through this together” I told her. “We’re just going to keep moving forward.” 

4 Kilometers and two hours later she nibbled some grass and had the tiniest sip of a puddle. Soon after she was nibbling the rain soak grass which quickly turned into grazing. I gave her the space to eat enough to make her feel better and we took our time. 

With Punkin on the mend and feeling much better I went back into the house I had melted down. I snuggled up on my couch and buried myself under a mountain of blankets where I hid until the world in my head was a little kinder and my body could handle the pressure of movement once again. I had worked so hard all week there was no energy left to handle this emergency but I did now there was nothing left.

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