Thunder Worries

Thunder had a bad weekend.  He started having diarrhea, and that made him so uncomfortable that he would vomit when he finished with the litterbox—at least that was the best I could figure out.  It started Friday evening.  By Saturday morning, he wouldn’t eat.  I went to the barn to ride, and then rushed back home.  He started eating a  little—I didn’t really want him to eat a lot, but I was glad he was interested in food, again.  He needed a lot of consolation.  He likes when I sit on the floor while he sits on one of his pedestals and he will just lean his forehead on my face and purr while I pet him.  If I leave him, he calls out to me to come back.  He just doesn’t want to be alone.  By Sunday evening, he was much his normal self and I didn’t have to take him to the vet Monday morning as I had planned.

 

What a relief.  He is back to his old self.  He gets very upset when he doesn’t feel good.  A hairball is a big deal, and if I am at home, he needs petting and consoling for at least a half hour.  He gets so upset that he shakes—it is awful.  And then he will be just fine.  I feel bad whenever I find out he had a hairball, and I wasn’t there to comfort him.

 

He reminds me of my old horse, Mingo.  When Ming would get a hoof abscess, and he had many, it was the end of the world.  I remember once when my sister saw him laying down in his stall because of a hoof abscess.  He saw her watching him.  He nuzzled his back hoof to show her the problem and flopped onto his side and said he was going to die.  What a contrast to Dante this weekend!  We thought his foot was fine, and he ended up blowing out the abscess during the ride.  He didn’t even limp.

 

I guess animals, as well as people have different tolerances to pain.  I also know that some animals will hide it because they don’t want to appear vulnerable.  I don’t think that was the case with Dante, since it was evident he had an abscess a few days before.  It probably just moved to a spot in the hoof that didn’t cause him pain when he put weight on that foot.