A Sedation Situation

Female circumcision is illegal in this country. Unfortunately, we found that out the hard way. The vet students were castrating some donkeys out at the goat site the other day and after one male donkey was de-manned, there was another one waiting in line that belonged to one of the guards out at the site. The vet student promptly sedated the donkey and we sat around and waited for the sedation to kick in. It wasn’t long before the donkey was droopy and drooling and getting to the point that it was ready for it’s little procedure. About that time, the donkey’s owner looked at the vet and said “What have you done to my donkey? I only brought her here for her vaccinations and now she looks like she is about to fall over!” It was at that moment that everyone thought it was a bright idea to check the sex of the donkey. Female. Giant “ooopsie” all around. There wasn’t much we could do but give her the vaccinations – without much resistance from her I must say – and wait for the sedation to wear off. As we were waiting, one of our workers decided to inform us that female circumcision was illegal in this country and had the government found us trying to circumcise this female donkey, we would have been in big trouble. He seemed to think his little joke regarding our mistake was very clever. We all got a kick out of the whole situation and the look on the owner’s face when he couldn’t figure out what was happening to his pitiful donkey when all he wanted for her was some de-wormer and a vaccine!

We weren’t all laughing about two hours later when we realized that the unnecessarily sedated donkey had been eating grass during her sedation (which apparently you aren’t supposed to do) and was now choking on that grass due to the sedation. About an hour later, after much hose being stuck down the donkey’s nose in an attempt to flush out the grass clogged esophagus, we were all a little tense. The donkey did survive and while we were all breathing a sigh of relief, the guard turned and said to me in his language, “Katie, my car was broken down and I had to take her to the garage!”