Jasper was on pasture rest for a knee injury. His owners had been carefully feeding him from a bucket, but the Thoroughbred gelding had a habit of knocking his feed over and eating it from the ground. Over time, however, he was getting more than his feed. He was also swallowing gravel. Fifty-two pounds of it.
“I’ve seen two severe gravel impactions causing complete obstructions, requiring surgery to resolve in the last six years,” said Carla Enriquez, clinical assistant professor of large animal emergency and critical care medicine at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s not an everyday thing.”
On a summer morning, owner Gracelyn Bragg arrived at her North Carolina barn to find Jasper colicky.
She walked him for hours — 44,000 steps, recorded on her phone — trying to keep him moving. A veterinarian came out, and for a while it seemed like they had turned a corner. Then Jasper went back in the pasture, went down, and wouldn’t get up.
When they finally got him to his feet, they knew the window was closing. They loaded him on a trailer and headed to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Virginia Tech.
Their field veterinarian had sedated Jasper heavily before loading him for the two-hour trip, and Enriquez had coordinated with her by phone the whole way.
When Jasper stepped off the trailer, he immediately tried to lie back down. The team was ready. They had set up in the induction stall — where horses go when they may need to go straight to surgery — and worked him up there.
“He was blowing through sedation,” Enriquez said. “He was very gassy. Reflux was coming out of his nose, which is not a good sign in horses. They can’t vomit, so when you see that, you know the pressure in his stomach is significant.”
The blood work came back clean. He was a good surgical candidate. Within a little over an hour of arriving, Jasper was on the table.
Roanoke Equestrian 