Bingo Bungo!

I have spent the last two days pointlessly fretting about what we would do if the answer to Jazz's breathing was not simple. I needn't have worried. He had a bit of sedative and stood in the stocks like a good boy while a thick black tube was slid up his right nostril. Almost immediately it was in, the answer was obvious and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Try this to imagine what we saw, in perfect detail in colour on a PC - put your hands together palm to palm. Now separate your wrists by about an inch. Keeping your fingers straight, bend your knuckles where they join with your palms. That's what a normal horse's throat looks like as it breathes, with both sides drawn back like curtains on each in-breath. Not Jazz! Keep one of your hands dead verticle, and absolutely still, and "breathe" with just one side - that's him - total paralysis of the left hand side of the throat. Worse than that, the paralysis was so complete that the left side has actually sagged, and is taking up more than half of his airway. On top of that, it's creating so much turbulence in the flow of air as he breathes hard, that he's not even getting half the amount of oxygen that a normal horse would.

So that explains that then! It's probably the best outcome I could have hoped for. The operation to correct it rarely fails, can be done only 40 minutes up the road and is reasonably commonplace. They tie the paralysed parts of the throat out of the way with fishing twine (tieback) and then they deliberately scar the areas around it (hobday) with the intention of causing it to stiffen and pull back out of the way. Best of all, my vet is going to use a surgeon (Chinese) who will do a laser hobday with the tieback, so that there will be NO hole in his throat which there would have been with a conventional hobday. This will make recovery time much shorter, and he should be home in a couple of days and back in work in two months. All we are waiting for is a price (over £2000, we know already :-00000) and a date when the surgeon is available.

The main drawback to the operation is that the airway is not protected properly when the horse eats. Tied back horses have to eat from the floor to stop them breathing in food. That's no problem, I feed from the floor anyway. He just won't be able to have a haynet in the lorry, but that's too bad, I suppose. He could also die under the anaesthetic but that's a risk we will have to take, it's about one in 300 healthy horses, is my impression.

Today it was clear that there is no option on this. The sagging paralysis has happened in the last 2 to 3 weeks, and he is now making a noise at the walk. We tried a bit of showjump schooling before the vet arrived and he was limited to two jumps and then a rest. Incidentally, the jumping was fantastic. Completely competent and happy over 3 ft. But still spooky, because the jumps had all been moved around from where they were when he saw them last. So that's just his baby brain, which we know is growing up all the time. Basically, I wouldn't leave him in that state, he's not happy. So even if I was going to sell him, I'd still have it done for his own sake.

As it is, I think he is the most fantastic horse I've ever met. He has all the depth of character that Tetley had, and twice the physical capability. He's got to be worth finding the money for. Meanwhile there is no question of hunting, or even jump schooling, until it is done. Zip has been ignored for two days, but I'll give him some attention tomorrow now I know what the future is. He's going to be top dog for two months soon - hell be so proud of himself!

C