Nothing Worse Than...

...Coming home from the vets with an empty trailer.

This week has been horrible. My friend's husband suffered an aneurysm and is currently on life support. Please keep him in your prayers as he is not out of the woods.
Then my mom backed my car into a cement wall's corner. Dad had an absolute cow over that.

And today I had the day off since I have to work Saturday for a sale. I really hate the holidays sometimes. We pulled up to the barn and were greeted with the Appies owner, Gretchen telling us Rebel was colicing. She asked us to come see him and give our opinion. Well it only took one look and we said call your vet again. We told her if he needed to go to a clinic, we could take him.
An hour later, we had him loaded and were headed to our vets. Mom and I were both having visions of Sherman on his last day because Rebel was very similar.
Our vets tubed him, palpated, put him on IV fluids and ultra sounded his belly. During all this they constantly had to give him the good drugs to manage his pain. It was heartbreaking to see his pain and that of Gretchen's. For mom and I, is was no easier.
The surgeon who examined him was the same one who did the procedure on DaVinci last year. She pointed out to me the distended portions of small intestine on the ultrasound. Each time she found one, his prognosis declined. They did some blood tests to determine whether or not surgery was necessary. Unfortunately, Rebel was a candidate for surgery having numerous fatty lyphomas and it was way beyond his owner's means. Rebel's pain was continuous. We knew the time had come, Gretchen made the hard decision.
Gretchen bred his mother, helped him be born, trained him, bred him and now she said good bye. They had 20yrs together. Mom and I have known him for about 8yrs and worked on his feet for about 2yrs. He was a great, kind, sometimes stubborn horse who enriched all our lives.
We went home with an empty trailer and heavy hearts.

RIP Rebel  April 27,1992 - November 15, 2012