It was a beautiful fall afternoon in northern Colorado.  I was doing barn chores with the help of one of my boarders, and though the last few days had been chilly, today the sun was set on "high" and it felt like Indian summer.  The small forest of cottonwoods that grew in the dry creekbed behind my house were aglow with the gold of autumn.

            I was on my last pile of manure, and Bobby Jo had already finished up her end ahead of me as I passed her on my way to PoohPooh Mountain—an area designated for all the horse manure from our small herd.  I four-wheeled my way to the top, jumped out and unlatched the dump bed of the 6-wheeler to empty the cargo.  The manure slid out with a whoosh, and as I stood there waiting for the deluge to finish, I turned my attention like I always did to the small herd of horses up on the hill in the pasture.  Without thinking, I looked first for my lead mare, Nadrah, who was also my top endurance horse and dearest to my heart.  Not surprisingly, she was standing close to my 5-month old colt, my second favorite.   She had always taken care of Wasabi, even though he wasn’t her foal, and I had begun to call her “Auntie Nadrah.”

She was holding her head up in a strange position, and knowing how Wasabi likes to chew on the mane of another horse,  I thought, “That little stinker, he’s chewing on her mane and she’s enjoying it.”  But as I continued to observe them, she moved off towards another herd member, stood for a moment, and continued moving her head in a funny way.  Then she turned and walked up a ways from the herd, pushing her nose up towards the sky, as if attempting a bugle call.

“Uh-oh.” I thought.  “She’s acting weird.”

I dropped my manure fork and ducked through the hot wire fencing.  It was a ways up the hill to where the horses were hanging out, but a walk would be good for me, and I wanted to make sure my mare was okay.  “I’m probably just being paranoid,” I told myself as I made my way through a small ravine and continued up towards the herd.

But as I got closer, I began to hear a strange wheezing noise.  I picked up my pace, and Nadrah came into sight.  Right away I could sense that something was wrong, even though she was still some distance away.  As I got nearer, I realized that indeed something was terribly wrong with her face—her delicate Arabian nose was huge and bulbous and the wheezing noise was emanating from her.  She took several steps toward me as I approached, with her nose stuck up in the air in that strange way, and I suddenly saw two puncture marks right on the end of her velvety muzzle with two dribbles of blood coming from them, like exclamation points.

I immediately knew she’d been bitten by a rattlesnake, and I didn’t even continue my way  up to her, but rather turned around and began a dash back to the barn, screaming at the top of my lungs for Bobby Jo to get a halter and lead rope.  As I ran, I frantically scanned the ground, looking for snakes, then glanced towards the barn to see Bobby Jo running towards the pasture gate, alarmed by my screaming, halter in hand.

As we met midway, I quickly told her that Nadrah had been bitten by a snake and to go up and catch her while I ran to get a hose.  She gave me a funny look but kept on going.  I was also frantically dialing my vet on my cell phone.  I told the receptionist what happened and that this was an emergency, we needed help NOW.  Then I ran to my office, grabbed a pair of scissors and made a beeline to my house, scouting around for the “best” hose—something smooth, I thought, not the industrial hose my husband usually has out.  I decided on the hose from the rose garden and held it up in confusion—all the books said to do this, but how much?  Just to be safe, I cut a much longer length than I thought I would need, then cut that in two.  What I had were two lengths, about a foot long each.

As I sprinted back up the hill to where Bobby Jo was holding Nadrah, my brain kept screaming, Call, Call, Call, gosh darn it, why hadn’t the vet called me back yet????

I shoved the hose pieces into Bobby Jo’s hands and took Nadrah’s halter and wrapped my arms around her neck.

“Okay,” I said, breathing hard, “you shove the hoses up her nose while I hold her!”  I tightened my grip, my breath coming in sobs.  Only later, with the gift of hindsight, did I realize how absurd by orders had been.

Bobby Jo, bless her heart, gave it a good try, but there was no way in hell Nadrah was going to let anyone stick a hose up her nose, even if she was suffocating right before our eyes.  As Bobby Jo went towards her again with the hose piece, Nadrah reared and wheeled away from her, dragging me through the brush.  The mare’s breath was now coming in ragged, wheezing gasps, and I knew we were going to do more harm than good if we kept up with the hoses.

I stood next to Nadrah, sobbing “No, no, no!”  Meanwhile, BJ’s 11-year old daughter, Lilly had joined us and stood next to her mom, a look of horror on her face.  My own daughter, along with my son and a friend of his that was visiting, stood clustered in an anxious group a small distance away in the rabbit brush.  I yelled at the kids to go back to the house, conjuring up the rogue snake that was somewhere on my property slithering around………I mean, it was October 15^th, for chrisssakes, shouldn’t rattlers be hibernating by now?

How could this be happening?  Why wasn’t my vet calling?  BJ took my phone and said she was going to call her vet, but that she had to run back to the barn to get his number.  She left with the children, and I stood there alone, with my best horse, watching her struggle for each breath.  The thought flitted through my head that she should be trying to breathe through her mouth, but even as I thought it, I somehow already knew that if it were possible, she would be doing it, so therefore it must not be an option.  (Later the vet did confirm that horses are "obligate" nose breathers--meaning, they are unable to breathe through their mouth because of how their soft palate is positioned in their skull cavity.)

I began to realize that, no matter what happened, whether she lived or died, I needed to get her back down to the barn area.  If a vet ever did show up, he would need his things close by, and if she died, it would be easier to dispose of her body where it was more conveniently located.  Nadrah continued to fidget and wheeze.  It was getting harder and harder for her to breathe, and her face was getting more and more swollen with each minute. 

I wanted to be anywhere but here, watching my mare die.  I wanted to be down at the barn with BJ, looking for a phone number, or waiting for someone to call and say, “I’m sorry, we did everything we could but your horse didn’t make it.”  I did not feel brave.  I did not feel strong.  I didn’t even want to stay with her because it was too damn hard. 

The least you can do, I admonished myself, is be here for her, no matter what happens, and try to give her comfort in her last minutes.. ..

But the thought of actually having to watch her fall to the ground and die filled me with so much dread and horror that I would have jumped out of my skin if it were possible, to escape this horrible, sad scene unfolding before my disbelieving eyes.  And this is just a horse! I thought.  How much more horrible if this were my child?

Well, much as I would have wished it, there was no escape from what was happening, so I set my shoulders and began to urge Nadrah down the hill back to the barn.  We would do all of this one step at a time.  She was reluctant at first, but then began to follow readily.  As we made our way through the brush, I called my friend Teri and asked her if she knew how to stick a hose up a horse's nose....?  Unbelievably she replied yes, and then said she’d be right over.  Even though I knew she’d probably have no better luck than we had with the hoses, it would be nice to have her on hand for moral support.  She had been with me when first went to meet Nadrah, and knew how special the mare was.

We were almost back at the paddock, but I had to get Nadrah through the ravine and then up a steep bank, and I was afraid she wouldn’t have enough air to make it, but she kept coming and finally we were in the paddock next to the gate.  As I got there, Nikki drove up in her mini van to pick up her son who was playing with mine, having no idea of the maelstrom she had just driven into. 

BJ was back in the paddock, and said that she had gotten in touch with her vet and he was on his way.  Thank god!  Meanwhile, my vet had called to say she was in an emergency and couldn’t be here for another hour and a half…..!  She tried to reassure me that most horses survived snake bits, but as I looked at Nadrah’s nose and how quickly her head was swelling and how difficult it was for her to get air, I knew that in this case, she was wrong.  

Before ending our conversation, her final suggestion was to load Nadrah up in the trailer and drive her to CSU for anti-venom emergency treatment.  I couldn’t imagine loading and driving Nadrah in her current condition all the way to CSU.  She would be dead upon arrival.  And the honest truth was that I couldn’t afford anti-venom treatment.  The anti-venom plus emergency stay at CSU would cost me thousands of dollars, and I just couldn’t swing it.  If Nadrah was going to live, she was going to have to fight for it, and I would do my best to help her in any way I could.

Nikki had come in and was helping to hold Nadrah, who was now trembling and looking like she was about to go down.  BJ kept telling me, “Don’t worry, your unicorn isn’t going anywhere.”  Nadrah is an exquisitely beautiful gray Arabian mare and people had often remarked that with the addition of a horn, she would look just like a mythical unicorn.  Don’t ask me why, but somehow I believed Bobby Jo—my unicorn would make it if I had anything to do with it.  Teri had just shown up, and she took one look at Nadrah, and then stood with the rest of us, trying to comfort my horse.  We all knew that her only hope was the vet arriving in time to keep her airways open.

I took my phone out again and dialed the vet.  “Where are you now?” I asked.  “Just turning down your street.” He replied, much too calmly.  My heart leaped with hope.  He had come all the way from Fort Collins during rush hour, so I was impressed that he was already turning down my road.

“I think you can still save her, but you need to get here quickly!”  No sooner had I made this appeal than I heard his truck laboring up my gravel driveway and coming towards the gate.

The minute the truck came to a stop he jumped out and ran to the back, opened up his mobile unit and loaded a syringe with sedative.  All at once, I felt the most tremendous flood of relief—it was so wonderful to finally have a vet onboard with all the necessary, life-saving tools and know-how!  He got one shot into Nadrah, then gave her another because she was still full of piss and vinegar.  BJ and Nikki were holding her head, and we had slid the halter off because we noticed that it was getting too tight as her head continued to swell.  Her head had dropped to the ground from the sedative and she was trembling all over and looked like she’d go down any minute. 

The vet turned to me and said, “Where are the hoses?”

Surprised, I turned and picked them up off the ground, where they had been laying, all but forgotten.  In my mind, I had thought he would use something a little more……technical.

He took a quick look at the hoses, nodded approval, then dunked them in a stainless steel bucket of disinfectant he had brought in.  Then he turned to Nadrah and deftly worked one of the hoses up one of her nostrils.  She struggled, but there were three of us holding her, so he got it in pretty quickly.  As he began to insert the second hose, Nadrah suddenly came back to life, and reared up, almost knocking Nikki to the ground.  The vet jumped out of the way, but I was still holding on to her, and so was Nikki.  He went back to his truck and came back with more sedative, loaded her up again, then shook his head.

“I just gelded a colt yesterday, and he was down on the ground after only one shot.  This tells me she’s really stressed and pumped with adrenalin.” 

Listening to what he was saying, I recalled some of the trail books I’d read which cheerily suggested one to “take along pieces of garden hose, in case of a snake bite while out on the trail.”  What they neglected to mention is how you get the darn things up your horse’s nose without an armory of sedative!  I knew Nadrah was probably more difficult than most, but still—how many horses do you know that will just let you walk up and stick some hoses up their nose?  My conclusion:  None.

Nadrah was swaying with weariness as he inserted the second hose, and it was all we could do to keep her on her feet.  But soon we were rewarded with the reassuring sound of her breath whishing in and out of the hoses.  Relief flooded through me.  She was still shaking and it was growing cold, so we put a blanket over her.  Upon request, I presented the vet with garden shears to trim the end of the hoses as close to her nostril openings as we could get.  Then he gave her another shot on the very end of her nose, where the puncture wounds were, to numb the area throroughly before suturing the hoses to the delicate tissue of her nostrils.  She gave a snort of disbelief as the shot went in, but soon hung her head back down again so he could finish his nasty deed.  The sutures would keep the hoses securely in place, but looking at how the tissue had already swelled around the hoses, it was easy to see that the hoses weren’t going anywhere for some time.

“So, would she have made it if you hadn’t gotten here when you did?”  I ventured.

Dr. Suit gave me a look, then shook his head “no.”  There was a moment of silence as we looked at the scene before us:  Here was my once beautiful mare, now sporting the head of a hippopotamus complete with green garden hoses sticking out the end of her nose and dripping with blood, head held at half-mast.  Strange to think that the only thing between her living and dying were two pieces of garden hose.  I found little comfort in it.

Before he left, Dr. Suit reminded me that now that her airways were working, the next thing we had to watch for were secondary infections, some of which could attack her heart.  He left me with several days worth of a full-spectrum antibiotic to be given intra-muscularly.  And before he left, I brought up the idea of giving her a shot of steroids, to control the amount of swelling.  He was a little reluctant to do this at first, mainly because steroids suppress the immune system, and Nadrah would need a full-functioning immune system to fight infection.  However, as she continued to swell, we also realized that there was a finite amount of space in her skull, and that she could die first of a brain hemmorhage before we even had the luxury of worrying about infection.  All in all, Nadrah ended up with two steroid injections (another given the next day, when her head, unbelievably, was even bigger), and four days worth of antibiotic.

It was growing dark, and Bobby Jo went down to my house, into a kitchen she was unfamiliar with, and rustled up dinner for all the kids.  Nikki stayed with me to finish helping while the vet gave Nadrah a shot of antibiotic, and left me with more shots and medicine for the coming days.  I knew Nikki had been up since four in the morning, because she worked at the airport and had to be there by six.  She must be dead tired, I thought, yet here she was to the bitter end helping in this emergency when all she thought she was doing was picking up her son.  I couldn’t help but be impressed with her ease and skill around horses, until I learned she had been a vet tech in another life and used to ride as well.  That explained it.

I sequestered a safe place for Nadrah to spend the night, thanked the vet profusely and sent him home with a check and some goodies from my tack shop, and then finally made my way down to the house, which was now glowing with light from the windows.  My husband worked all week away from home, and wouldn’t be returning for two more days.  What would I have done without the help of all these wonderful people that had just happened to be here?  I couldn’t say.

Sheri met me at the door with a shot of whiskey, which she shoved under my nose with strict orders to “Drink!”  And what a wonderful sight to see my kids, and Sheri’s kids, and Lilly clustered around the table, eating and doing homework and just rubbing elbows with each other.  It was the most wonderful way to return from the brink of death, I thought—enveloped in the warmth and care of friends and loved ones.

The next morning I woke early, with a feeling of utter dread.  It was still dark out, and I took a flashlight with me to the loafing shed where I had left Nadrah.  The vet had told me that the first 48 hours would be critical, and I knew there was a chance she wouldn’t survive the first night.  I tried to prepare myself as best as I could for the worst, knowing I still had to get my kids up and ready for school, regardless of what I found in the shed.  As I approached, I saw Nadrah’s head emerge from the shed, looking my way.  I breathed a huge sign of relief and went out to her.  She was doing as well as could be expected, but it was still an effort for her to breath.  Blood had clotted on the ends of the hoses in the cold, and I worried that she still wasn’t getting enough air, but she seemed relatively unfazed by the fact that she had two garden hoses stuck up her nose.  I made her a warm mash, and was impressed with her eagerness to eat, although I had to feed her by hand because her lips were too swollen to pick up the mash on her own.  I was distressed to notice that the swelling of her head had worsened overnight, to the point where it appeared that her head might literally explode at any moment.  It was a hard thing to look at.  This wheezing, bloated, blood stained animal was not the horse I once knew.  Still, when I looked into her deep black eyes, I could see her again, as she really was.

Later, my friends Teri and Sandy came by to help me give Nadrah her morning shot of antibiotic.  It took all three of us, and we barely got the job done.  Over the next few days, my aunt and her husband and Bobby Jo and others, helped me get Nadrah’s medicine into her.  She was not an easy patient, and had become completely intolerant of needles.  But Dr. Suit had warned me that once we dealt with the problem of suffocation, the next step was dealing with secondary infection.  Apparently, snakes are loaded with bacteria and disease, which they readily pass on to their victims.  I kept wondering when the swelling would begin to subside—surely this couldn’t go on forever?  But it seemed like forever. 

Then on Saturday, the third day, I began to notice that her nostrils were releasing their hold on the hoses and beginning to reopen.  And none too soon, either, because both hose openings were almost completely clogged with dirt and blood.  At this point she was breathing more around the hoses than through them, and so I set my mind on a new worry:  getting the hoses out before they caused infection or some other airway disturbance.  They had served a critical, lifesaving purpose, and now that purpose was done.  My husband and I tried our best to cut the sutures on Sunday, but Nadrah was truly feeling like her old self, and just as there had been no way we could get the hoses in, now there was no way she was going to let us take them out.  And to top it off, Dr. Suit was in St. Louis for a seminar, although I admit that I called and left him two messages anyway.  I know, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.

Finally, on Monday, five days after she had been bitten, Dr. Suit came out for his final visit, first thing in the morning.  The weather for our second encounter with the vet was as different as it could be from the first:  No sun, but rather a biting chill and fog that promised worse to come.   Now familiar with Nadrah’s ways, Dr. Suit quickly sedated her, snipped the sutures and magically slipped the hoses out.  A flow of blood and yellowish liquid drained out, and he shot her up with another, final dose of antibiotic. 

It is now Thursday, a week and one day later, and Nadrah is making a full recovery.  Her face is still a little swollen, but getting better every day.  Dr. Suit just called to check in and see how she was, and we both took a moment to reflect on the miracle of her still being alive.

If you hadn’t noticed her when you did……he said politely.

If you hadn’t gotten here when you did……I replied. 

And then continued:  And if Bobby Jo hadn’t known your number, and if Nikki hadn’t helped hold her, and if Teri and Sandy and Meryl and Greg and my husband hadn’t helped with her shots, and most of all—if Nadrah had not fought to live with all her might…..I would be telling you a different story.

But it wasn’t her day to die and if I am any judge of character, her best days are still ahead of her.

--Michelle Smith, October 23, 2008