Last week, a 1,400-pound warmblood got his leg caught in a gate in this excerpt about 24 hours during foaling season from the Eclipse Press book Equine ER by Leslie Guttman. Today, interns get rattled as the warmblood comes out of anesthesia with a strong flight response.

In the recovery stall, interns Leslie Christnagel and Milosz Grabski waited for the horse to wake up to help him out of the anesthesia while I talked to Dr. Alexandra Tracey, another intern, as she cleaned up. At Rood & Riddle, to “recover” a horse from anesthesia, one rope is tied to the horse’s halter, another to its tail, and both ropes go through metal rings in the wall to act as a pulley system. One person (in this case Grabski) waits at the hind end of the horse holding the rope at the ready, while another (Christnagel) sits on its neck, looking for signs that it is waking: eyes become alert; the horse begins to swallow; the tongue regains its tone. Shortly after these signs appear, the horse usually begins to try to get up. Both people help by pulling on the ropes to stabilize the animal as it gets to its feet.

A horse coming out of anesthesia can be a handful. Here, farriers worked on a knocked-out horse whose feet were badly in need of trimming