Equine surgeons love music in the operating room. Dr. Larry Bramlage, for one, is a big fan of David Allen Coe, the outlaw country and western artist. This writer needs her music as well. Here's some of what was on my playlist as I reported and wrote Equine ER. I loved driving around horse country at six a.m. through the mist listening to Purple Rain.

1. When Your Mind's Made Up (from the soundtrack of the movie "Once") – Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.

2. Air on a G String – National Philharmonic Baroque Ensemble.

3. Purple Rain – Martin Sexton's solo version.

  A light-footed Belgian looks a bit like he's dancing during a lameness exam.

 4. I Will Survive – Cake's version.

5.  If I Was Your Woman – Syesha Mercado's version - (Yes, Equine ER watches American Idol!)

6.  Fool of Me – Me'Shell Ndegeocello.

7. Northern Downpour – Panic at the Disco. 

8. Angel – Sarah McLachlan.

9. Flat Foot Floogee – Benny Goodman (Equine ER was a band geek in junior high - clarinet.)

10. Ruthie Pigface Draper – from the soundtrack of the movie "Dan in Real Life."

We're working on some new features, including a surprise development that came out of the publication of the story of Marching Orders that we just excerpted. Stay tuned. Also, at the request of a reader, we're now offering SIGNED copies of Equine ER. To order one, click here. Thanks for visiting this blog.

On Monday, we concluded our excerpt from the new book Equine ER about Marching Orders, the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart who transformed an inmate's life. Today we have a video about the chapter. The footage of Chris Huckleby was shot last year by Equine ER author Leslie Guttman right after Huckleby violated his parole upon finding out about Marching Orders' death. (Although the video says Huckleby is incarcerated, he was released in summer 2009.)

If for any reason you can't access the video below, you can see it by clicking right here. 

Equine ER just returned from the Kentucky Book Fair! We are so happy to announce we sold lots of books and met many horse lovers. We also recently got a letter from reader Jackie Betts. She wrote of Equine ER: "I found myself swept up in the day-to-day, sometimes minute-to-minute drama of this group of dedicated [vets] ... [the book shows] their private moments of fatigue and doubt and tears; all of this information is accessible and captivating."  To order Equine ER, click here.

On Thursday in Part 7 of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, Marching Orders, the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart, died on the operating table because of complications from a portion of his small colon being trapped inside a diaphragmatic hernia. Today, we find out what happened when the inmate whose life the horse transformed, and who was intending to adopt him, found out about Marching Orders' sudden death.

On the last weekend in March, former inmate Chris Huckleby got word his sister had been killed in a car wreck in Texas. One week later, he got a phone call at work from the head of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation that Marching Orders had died. The foundation knew what the horse had meant to Huckleby.  After he was told what happened, it was as if the sun had been painted out of the sky. About three days after that, the wife of the couple who had donated the horse to Blackburn brought Marching Orders’ halter to Huckleby, knowing he would want it. He says on that day, life became overwhelming.

The paddock where Marching Orders once grazed.

Depression and drinking followed and within a week or so, Huckleby violated his parole by going out of state to Wisconsin, for family reasons, he says. As a result, he ended up back in jail, first at the Fayette County Detention Center in Lexington, in a cell where where he dreamed about Marching Orders at night. Shortly afterward, he was transferred to various facilities, and ultimately ended up in a minimum-security prison southeast of Louisville, where he was released in summer 2009. (This story took place during 2008.)

Huckleby’s downward trajectory had a flickering spot. One day after he got the call about Marching Orders’ death, his daughter’s mother called and said she’d permit him to see the child for the first time since 2004. He felt like somehow the horse had helped him get to that point.

“The horse loved me with everything in him,” says Huckleby. “He trusted me. It gave me a lot of confidence. … I wasn’t loved a lot as a kid. I’ve been loved more by a horse than anything in my life, it’s sad to say, besides my kids. He was everything to me at the time.”

Thursday: A video featuring former inmate Chris Huckleby and the story of Marching Orders. 

Equine ER author Leslie Guttman at the Kentucky Book Fair this Saturday, Nov. 7!

On Monday in Part 6 of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, we returned to the operating room where surgeon Scott Hopper was trying to remove a portion of the small colon trapped in a diaphragmatic hernia of Marching Orders. Today, we find out what happened to the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart who transformed an inmate's life. 

Dr. Scott Hopper turned back to surgical resident Dr. Travis Tull, the nurses, and visiting vets and students, “It’s even more near the liver and stuff,” he said of the hole. “We could leave it in there, but right now everything’s running into it … and the small colon is losing blood supply.” It was almost like the hernia had a pattern now, he said, one of drawing in more of the intestinal tract.

 Thoroughbred Marching Orders in his prime.

The mood in the room had changed from relaxed to strained. For the third time, Tull made the incision in the horse's abdomen bigger to give Hopper more room. Hopper asked Dr. Megan Romano to slightly turn down the amount of air the ventilator was pushing into the horse’s lungs because some of the lung tissue also kept returning to the rent.

Finally, Hopper said to Romano: “Go call it,” to note the time of euthanization. “Goddamn,” he added, mostly to himself. He asked one of the nurses to get the number at the Blackburn prison and left the operating room without saying anything.

I walked up to the front of the table. The horse’s eyes were glazed. He was missing a tooth on his right side. The room became quiet as the respirator and ventilator stopped. Tull carefully sewed up the incision.

Monday: How did former inmate Chris Huckleby handle hearing of Marching Orders' death?

We recently got a letter from reader Jackie Betts, telling us what she thought about the new book Equine ER (Eclipse Press, 2009). She wrote: "I found myself swept up in the day-to-day, sometimes minute-to-minute drama of this group of dedicated [vets] ... [the book shows] their private moments of fatigue and doubt and tears; all of this information is accessible and captivating."  To order Equine ER, click here.

On Thursday in Part 5 of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, we returned to the operating room where surgeon Scott Hopper was trying to remove a portion of the small colon trapped in a diaphragmatic hernia of Thoroughbred Marching Orders. Today, we go back to the operating room.

The mood in the operating room was relaxed and a little chatty. Dr. Scott Hopper had his left arm in the horse’s abdomen up to his armpit. Somehow the conversation got off onto people whose arms were double-jointed or abnormally flexible like Hopper’s. Dr. Megan Romano, an intern doing the anesthesia, came over for a moment and commented about how Dr. Embertson and Dr. Brett Woodie could bend some of the joints of their fingers so they looked clawed. She said she found it bizarre: “It’s so gross,” she added, as she stood right next to the horse’s guts, with blood and feces all over the floor. Then she went back to monitoring the anesthesia.

Hopper couldn’t get the hernia dilated with his fingers; he had to cut the scar tissue to widen the hole. That done, the muscle tore easily and he got the opening big enough to pull the colon out. But now the problem was trying to close the hole. The muscle comprising the diaphragm is thin, flexible, and hard to suture. And now, because of the hernia’s location, he couldn’t see what he was doing. He’d have to close by feel.

With a headlamp on even though the light added almost nothing to help guide him, Hopper plunged his left arm into the horse’s abdomen up to his armpit again to draw back some of the bowel and liver away from the hole, followed by his right arm and hand to suture it closed. The curve of his right index finger shielded the point of the needle to keep it from piercing the horse’s gastrointestinal tract. “There’s almost no way in hell I can get to this,” he muttered after about an hour. He didn’t need to suture the hole completely closed – as he would with a laceration – he just needed to get enough sutures in to keep anything from going back through it. But the muscle around the opening kept splitting. Hopper kept trying. The muscle kept splitting.

Another half hour passed: “C’mon, bastard,” said Hopper.

Thursday: What happened to Marching Orders. 

We recently got a letter from reader Jackie Betts, telling us what she thought about the new book Equine ER (Eclipse Press, 2009). She wrote: "I found myself swept up in the day-to-day, sometimes minute-to-minute drama of this group of dedicated [vets] ... [the book shows] their private moments of fatigue and doubt and tears; all of this information is accessible and captivating."  To order Equine ER, click here.