52 pounds of gravel, one thoroughbred, and a connection that's inspiring a future veterinarian
Horses are not supposed to eat rocks.
But Jasper did — 52 pounds of them.
"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."
Jasper had been on pasture rest for a knee injury — he couldn't be in a stall because the turning aggravated it. His owners had been feeding him carefully from a bucket. But Jasper had a habit of knocking his feed over, and over time had been picking up gravel along with whatever spilled.
The surgical challenge wasn't finding the gravel. It was getting it out.
"We basically had to pull out a bag full of rocks, and the bag can tear," Enriquez said. "The intestinal wall was inflamed, the colon was extremely heavy, and with that kind of manipulation, it can rupture and the entire abdomen gets contaminated with manure. If that happens, there is unfortunately nothing else we can do other than humanely euthanize the horse."
She called Gracelyn Bragg, the horse’s owner, before they went any further.
A gift horse
Gracelyn Bragg was 13 when her father, Jesse Bragg, surprised her with a horse.
He had been saving for three years. Jasper — a 6-year-old thoroughbred with a habit of fist-bumping for treats and running up to greet you in the pasture — was Bragg's first horse of her own. She had been riding since she was 5, when her mom took her to a single lesson just to try it out.
"I kind of just fell in love from there," Gracelyn Bragg said.
For a year, they showed the horse, mostly as a hunter/jumper, with some eventing on the side. Then, on a summer morning, Bragg arrived at the 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.
The drive from North Carolina took two hours. Their field veterinarian had sedated Jasper heavily before loading him, and Enriquez had coordinated with her by phone the whole way.
"My concern was that his degree of discomfort would progress," Enriquez said. "You could have a horse that's stuck between the divisions of the trailer, down, and we'd have to anesthetize him, put him on a rescue sled, and drag him into the hospital."
When Jasper stepped off the trailer, he immediately tried to go 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.
What was inside
Surgery residents Nadine Altmann and Victoria Whitworth were both scrubbed in, each taking on key parts of the procedure under Enriquez's supervision.
"In this surgery, we had a first year resident and a third year finishing surgery resident. The way the surgical program is designed, the finishing third year residents have all the skills to perform abdominal surgery independently with faculty supervision and mentorship,” said Enriquez. “We walked through what was the safest approach to exteriorize the colon full of gravel and empty it via a pelvic flexure enterotomy. Overall a routine surgical procedure, but with the added challenge of a very heavy inflamed colon.”
Getting it out without rupturing it was another matter.
The gravel was packed in his large colon at the level of the pelvic flexure — the narrowed section where the colon folds back on itself, already a common site for impactions.
"We went very slow," Enriquez said. "We made the abdominal incision bigger so we had more room to work, used lubricant on the bowel, floated the colon with saline for buoyancy. A lot of communication. But at the end of the day, sometimes you do all of that and the colon still tears. The rest is luck."
It didn't tear.
When the contents were out on the table, rolling around in the gravel, was a penny. It turned out to be from 1987.
Veterinary student, horse’s owner bond
Third-year DVM student Mikayla Hearne had been on the large animal medicine rotation for just a few days when the call came in. She was the one who first saw Bragg — standing on the back of the trailer, visibly frantic, while the adults handled paperwork.
Hearne is an EMT and volunteer firefighter. She knows what the worst day of someone's life looks like.
"Everyone was talking to her dad," Hearne said. "But I looked at her — she's leaning up against the wall — and I could just tell. I decided the best thing I could do was go lean up on the wall next to her."
She noticed Bragg's socks — pulled up high, the way softball players wear them.
"I just said, 'You play softball,'" Hearne said. "And she was like, ‘Yeah, when I was younger, but stopped and got into horseback riding.’ Which is ironic, because I quit horseback riding to do softball."
They talked through the workup. When Hearne was needed, she went. When she wasn't, she came back to Bragg. By the time Jasper went into surgery, the two had something resembling a friendship.
"When we treat a patient, we're not just treating the patient," Hearne said. "We're also treating their family."
A penny for your thoughts
Hearne got to scrub in for the surgery. Standing at the table, Whitworth reached over and guided Hearne's hand down into the cavity — the colon was so heavy it couldn't be lifted.
"I felt down into it," Hearne said. "I observed the whole surgery. And at one point, out on the table rolls a penny — silver, shining, in the middle of all that gravel. I just thought, one in a million."
She kept it.
Hearne took care of Jasper through his recovery — and she noticed something.
"Any time someone said Gracelyn's name, his ears would perk up," she said. "You could just tell that he loved his girl."
When Bragg came to visit, Hearne was waiting. She handed her a small container of gravel from the surgery table and said: "Jasper just wants you to know that you rock."
Then she gave her the penny.
"Even the smallest thing can have a big impact," Hearne said.
Going home
Jasper was discharged five days after surgery — fast, for a colic case of that severity, and a reflection of how cleanly he came through. Bragg walked him every day during recovery, sometimes with friends to help. Three months of stall rest lay ahead, then a small paddock, then slowly back to normal activity.
Bragg said she was especially thankful for the help of a friend, Charity Green, in helping her family navigate the crisis.
The experience settled something for her. She already wanted to be an equine surgeon. Now she knew where she wanted to train.
"After being here, I really want to go to Virginia Tech," Bragg said.
Hearne, for her part, said she already knew what Bragg would become — long before Bragg said it out loud.
"Lots of people love horses on the easy days," Hearne said. "The good days, the trail rides, the ribbons, the perfect moments. But future veterinarians learn to love them on the hardest days, too."
