I worried about what kind of life Loopy would have now. How could he eat? Would he always be covered in drool? Would his tongue hang out all of the time? Would he be miserable?

took a drink of water, then wandered outside to roll. When he came back he bypassed the soaked hay for the regular hay and relaxed in his stall. My fears were unfounded. He didn’t seem miserable at all.

Loopy proved to be a model patient when it came to taking the prescribed course of anti-inflammatory medications and antibiotics, but he had decidedly different feelings about the rest of his care. I was supposed to be rinsing the sutures each day with a syringe of warm water, but Loop made it perfectly clear that was not going to happen.

I emailed Earley about this problem and sent him photos of how the sutures looked. He answered right away to assure me that Loop should heal fine and rapidly, even without the rinsing.