PULLMAN, WA – Trenna Pannier is just weeks from beginning her veterinary career and, thanks to surgery and round-the-clock care at Washington State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Shirley, her once gravely ill horse, is going with her.
“We went back and forth on it – whether to continue or to humanely euthanize. I didn’t want her to suffer but we also wanted to give her a fighting chance. After 12 hours of intensive treatment, she started to trend upward,” said Pannier, a veterinary student in her senior year at WSU.
Shirley, a 22-year-old Appendix mare co-owned by Trenna and her mother, Patti Pannier, a retired veterinarian, was initially brought to WSU in early February. What started as mild inappetence and fever, turned into one of every horse owner’s worst fear – colic.
Shirley, a kind and gentle retired show horse, has been loved and cared for by Patti for almost 10 years as a pleasure riding horse.
After initial hospitalization, Shirley continued to decline and abdominal surgery was elected to further investigate the underlying cause of her colic signs.
“With any colic surgery, you never know what the surgeons will find and if the horse will be able to recover, so I was really concerned when she was going to surgery,” Trenna said.
During surgery, a displacement of the colon was identified in Shirley’s large intestine and successfully corrected by WSU’s equine surgery team. Although the surgery went well, Shirley aspirated reflux from her stomach during anesthesia, which led to severe pneumonia and later sepsis.
“Shirley wasn’t eating and was very sick. She started to get very uncomfortable and was deteriorating quickly,” said assistant professor and equine veterinarian Dr. Erin Pinnell.
The daughter-mother duo gave Pinnell the green light to do all necessary procedures and treatments to save Shirley even when things looked grim.
Pinnell started intensive treatment which included antibiotics, fluids, plasma, and steroids. As Shirley’s pneumonia progressed, a chest tube was placed to drain the fluid around her lungs.
Shirley remained in intensive care for several days, in which she gradually improved daily.
“The first week, she was very critical, and we almost euthanized at one point because she was so sick, but Shirley gradually made improvements over the next couple of weeks,” Pinnell said.
Trenna said her experience as a client in the hospital is a good reminder of the emotional toll a sick animal can have on its owner.
“It makes me empathize even more with the owners,” she said. “They are waiting for that phone call with an update every morning and it can be scary having your animal in the hospital when they are critical.”
She’s also thankful for her colleagues who supported her and Shirley every step of the way.
“I love the veterinary community, but it made me appreciate the community even more being a client and having all your friends and colleagues rooting for your horse and wanting the best for her,” Trenna said.
Patti is grateful to everyone involved in the case as well. “I know anytime there is a pet that is sick it is a team effort – it’s the students, technicians, veterinarians, medicine team, surgical team. They treated her as an individual and I think it goes beyond medicine when you put your heart into it like they did,” Patti said.
