I arrived at the barn last night to find Dude pawing his stall floor, not eating his grain and looking fairly pitiful. It definitely wasn't the usual "Hey, I want to go out" pawing; something was clearly wrong. I got him out right away and walked him around the indoor. He tried to roll a few times but didn't really fight me when I wouldn't let him drop down. Whenever we would stop walking, he would paw the ground again. After a bit we went outside and did circles around the parking area. Then, after about a half hour, I put him on the cross ties. He didn't paw, and had a little more of his usual twinkle in his eyes. I decided to go ahead and groom him and see how it went.
While he was on the cross ties I threw out what was left of his grain. He had probably eaten about half of it. Then I went back to grooming him, taking a while with the soft curry and really rubbing him down. Every so often he'd lift his tail and pass a little gas, and by the time I was done with the grooming, he seemed fine.
I put him back in his stall with a little hay, which he promptly started eating. Before I left for home I alerted the barn folks, who said they'd keep an eye on him. Later in the evening I received a text from Julie saying that he looked fine. Nice of them to let me know and give me peace of mind for the night.
Thank goodness, it seemed like a quick little bout of gas colic the he needed to work through. It's always hard to piece together the causes of these things, but I suspect the fact that he was just transferred to a field with quite a bit of grass from his previous field, which is pretty eaten down, may have had something to do with it. And yesterday it was warmer than it has been. The horses' turnout schedules have been pretty erratic because of the weather. We try to hand graze them the days that they don't get turned out, just so they keep some grass in their bellies. But I think that field may have been a wee bit too rich for Mr. Dude. He turned 19 at the end of January, and now I'm wondering, am I going to have to anticipate these things more? Is he getting an oldster's more finicky needs?
