For information about the American Endurance Ride Conference, visit AERC.org. To find out about the 2019 AERC National Championship rides, visit 2019NC.com. The 2019 championship rides will be held in Ridgecrest, California, on October 31 (50-mile ride) and November 2 (100-mile ride). Qualifications are in place for the championship rides, but open rides will be held at the same time, including limited distance rides, so all are welcome!
38 / Sport and Trail Magazine
For more information on the 2019 AERC National Championship Ride, including entry forms and location guide, go to 2019NC.com or see our Facebook page at facebook.com/AERC2019NC. For more information about the American Endurance Ride Conference, visit https://aerc.org.
Pro Bono D
Owned by Karen Chaton
Gardnerville, Nevada
10,000
American Endurance Ride Conference Miles
By Karen Chaton
In April, 2019, my horse Bo passed the five-year mark since having colic surgery for a 180 degree twist. Bo’s colic began, or became noticed, one morning when I fed him his normal mash and some hay. I checked on him a couple of hours later and, while he had eaten some of his feed, he had not eaten all of it. He was also covered in hives.
I kept a close eye on Bo, and he just didn’t seem right, even though his vitals were all in the normal range. So I loaded him up in the trailer and brought him over to the local vet clinic where the veterinarian examined and tubed and did a rectal, and could not find or feel anything wrong, and vitals were still all in the normal range. So we were sent home.
A few hours went by and I still did not think Bo was feeling right, so this time we decided to load up and take him to the next closest vet hospital, which was also a surgical facility. At this point in time we were hoping that putting Bo on fluids would be all that would be needed.
Bo eventually did start to get distended and at some point they let me know that if we were going to do surgery, the sooner the better—as there would be a much greater survival rate. The plan was to go in and do an exploratory and see what was going on and from that point on I could make the decision to continue with the surgery or euthanize on the operating table.
The surgeon came out with good news saying that there was indeed a twist, but it wasn’t completely strangulating anything, so they wouldn’t have to resection anything, and no sign of lesions or other problems. Great! The surgeon told me that he believed Bo would have a 90% chance of survival and of returning to work. They continued with the surgery, which seemed to go fairly fast. Then the surgery team left Bo in the padded surgery room alone for him to wake up.