Last weekend I noticed Peanut coughing. He tends to cough, and I even had him scoped during his pre-purchase exam in '04 to try to find the cause. Nothing. A second vet looked at him a few years later. Nothing. All she could come up with was allergies.
The cough comes, the cough goes. Sometimes a year will go by without it, sometimes it will show up several times a year. It mostly arrives in fall, but it has come in spring and, well, last weekend.
I've gotten to the point where I ignore it. If there are no secondary symptoms then I just go on with life, knowing that in a couple of weeks it will go away. He tends to have a roaring, almost a mucousy, gurgly sound, quickly followed by a cough. There is no nasal discharge, and no temperature. He has even had this cough during lessons, and I've been told to ignore it.
So, last Saturday and Sunday I noticed it was back. Odd... pretty late in the year. I ignored it. It was pretty violent, but sporadic. To me, riding is out of the question as I don't want him to deal with me perched up there when he's not feeling his best.
On Tuesday, I turned on my phone after work to find a message from John. He was concerned because the girl feeding them was getting very worried about his cough. I called back and explained his history, then asked that they let me know if anything develops other than the cough.
All week I've been wondering, wishing that I didn't go to and come home from work in the dark. Towards the end of the week, I started to worry that I didn't take his temperature and, with my luck, it really was something that I was ignoring.
Today we made it out to the barn. I hiked out with Peanut into Fair Hill, even doing a little bit of jogging, and nothing. Not one cough. Well... ok. This is the shortest it's ever lasted, but I am very relieved. Again, both horses seemed to be in good spirits and full of energy.
Stupid horses. Stupid horses making me go grey.
No comments:
Post a Comment