Scotti gave me a huge scare last night. I was gone most of the day school shopping and by the time I got out to feed it was 8:30 and already dark. I fed everyone and was heading back to the house passing by the front pasture that Hope and Scotti were in, and Scotti whinnied a greeting as he always does, except it sounded really weird and wrong. I went over to check on him and his breathing was really ragged and I realized he was choking. So, we ended up having to have an emergency call at 9:30pm from Hannah.

She tubed him and cleared the choke, but his breathing was still very ragged and he had fluid in his lungs so he clearly aspirated something. We improvised an inhaler with a paper bag and some inhaler medicine and gave him some of that, that seemed to help a little but he still sounded awful. We started him on antibiotics and he’s on a mush diet for a while. I checked on him twice during the night and fortunately, he sounded MUCH better a few hours later (I was very worried about him). This morning he is breathing normally but he has a runny nose and goopy eyes. It’s possible that the choke was secondary to an upper respiratory illness that he was already working on, because I had heard him cough a few times the day before.

Any way, he’s on antibiotics now and hopefully will be feeling better soon.