Petunia – Against All Odds

Meet little Petunia. This sweet filly was born to J. Drummond Farms, February 26, 2010 just before midnight. She is sired by Meradas Money Talks and out of our mare, Smart Rosey Chic also known as “Rosey.” This little darling has had to overcome many odds to get where she is today. At birth, Petunia was a healthy, sorrel filly but her story doesn’t begin there.

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This is the dam, Rosey at the Okanagan Summer Slide in early August, 2009.

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On August 18, 2009, Rosey was bedded down for the evening in her regular spacious, indoor stall at J.Drummond farms in Regina, SK. She had eaten the same regular hay portion she was accustomed to for dinner and spent her normal amount of time out in her turnout for the day. However, during our evening barn check at 11:00 pm, Clay and I found Rosey rolling in her stall. Not a good sign – the mare was experiencing abdominal pains. At that point, Rosey was 5 months pregnant. As a maiden mare, this was her first foal.

Clay and I spent a sleepless night, traveling with the mare first; to see one of our regular veterinarians at Sherwood Animal Clinic in Regina, SK, and; secondly to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, SK. Our clinic in Regina is equipped to handle many things, but not surgery. This was hard for Clay and I – in our entire professional career in the horse industry, we\’ve never had to drive more than 30 minutes to get to an equine surgery facility. But it needed to be done. Following a mineral flush, sedation and pain killers, Rosey’s heart rate wasn’t returning to a normal level. Therefore, at 1:00 am on August 19, we set off on a 3-hour drive to Saskatoon with Rosey in tow.

During this drive several questions ran through our minds, the most significant of which being, “Why isn’t there a cure for colic?” I would like an answer more than anyone. But like everyone, that night I was at a total loss. Was it the feed? Was it a change in barometric pressure? Maybe it\’s the pregnancy? All these questions ran through my mind…

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Clay and I were hoping the colic would have subsided from Rosey’s long trailer ride. But we had no such luck. After several tests and exams, Rosey was prepped for surgery at approximately 5:00 am. Tired and scared, Clay and I got back into our truck and started the long drive back home. All we could do was wait.

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Several hours later, we got a call from our wonderful vet, Dr. Stacy Anderson at WCVM. She told us that Rosey had a 180-degree twist in her intestine which had to be righted. She had waited until our mare had recovered from the anesthesia, to call us with the good news.

Two weeks after we first took Rosey into WCVM, we brought her home sporting a large incision, a clipped belly and a cleared IV area in her neck. She had lost a lot of weight but she seemed happy and healthy, nonetheless. And amazingly, she had hung on to her pregnancy!

We changed Rosey’s feed intake to strict diet of grass hay and as she healed, added small amounts of Frisky Foal to supplement for the pregnancy. We had her vaccinated and a dewormed as a healthy, pregnant mare. Many months later, Rosey approached her due date without any further complications.

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