Had this idea after drawing Caslick’s Procedure last night.
The world of horses is a wonderful - and expensive - one. While a rural school would have no difficulty shipping the former 4H kids off to a farm for their veterinary training, the universities deeper in the city were looking for cheaper and easier options.
Along came fluffies - things that didn’t truly qualify as animals, yet reproduced all the same. They were already proving a breakthrough in medical research. There were no laws and regulations to protect them, they had organs that worked like you would expect (save for an incredibly fast metabolism) and they had the overwhelmingly useful - albeit irritating - quality of being able to tell you exactly how whatever you were doing to them felt.
They were of curious interest to Big Horse. They had all the necessary qualities of a horse without the size, cost, or danger. No longer were spoiled little girls asking for ponies that they’d tire of and discard, they wanted fluffies, and the true equine aficionados were content to let the world of frilly pets be. Surely enough, veterinarians were soon doing house calls on fluffies, and a couple innovators in the field saw great potential in these abominations as cheap and abundant practice dummies.
Dr. Palomino was one such innovator. He embraced the fluffy quickly and with great zeal, bringing a feral fluffy in basically as soon as his curriculum was approved. This took a couple tries, the ethical board was vaguely concerned but the university was happy to save money on expensive trips and licensing. And anesthetic.
“Good morning class!” Veterinary students walked into an very normal classroom. Palomino, an eccentric old bald man in a custom-knit sweater and scarf, stood excitedly in the front of the room alongside a solid steel table. Upon the table was a a tray of surgical equipment and a miniature metal crush stall, a minty green fluffy wriggling inside, facing away from the desks but straining her head to look at everyone coming in.
”Hewwo! Hewwo! Mistah, why is Yowk in da sowwy box? Can’t see anyfing.”
”Hush now, you’ll find out soon! Hello, hello everyone! Today, we’re going to be doing something very exciting! How many of you are familiar with the Caslick’s procedure?”
A handful of hands were raised, mostly from the unfazed, flannel-clad former 4H kids.
”Anyone dealt with mares who have had this procedure before?” One girl raised her hand again.
“Yeah! My horse Sugar was getting a little, uh, droopy with age. We did a Caslick’s so she didn’t get endometriosis.”
”That’s a great example of why a Caslick’s is done! Mares typically have three defenses against uterine infections, especially ones that could cause infertility - the vulva, the vestibulovaginal seal, and the cervix.” He started jotting notes down on the whiteboard.
“If your horse is old, was injured during birth, or has poor vulvar conformation, air or manure can get inside the horse’s vagina and cause a lot of problems. When any of these problems are present, a Caslick’s is done where the upper vulva are sewn together, and is undone when the mare needs to foal. It’s also usually done as a solution for prolapse. This procedure can be done several times throughout a mare’s life, although it gets harder and harder to do the more you do it.” He gave a big grin and stepped over to the crush stall, turning it around so that the fluffy faced the class. The little green mare smiled and waved her hoof as much as she could.
“Hewwo! Hewwo cwass! Fwuffy name am Yowk!”
“Yes, this is York. She’s going to be our demonstration tool for a Caslick’s procedure today.” He turned her back around.
“Wait, whewe go? Whewe cwass go?”
“You might be asking - why a fluffy? Why aren’t I demonstrating this on a regular horse? Well, to be honest with you all, fluffies are cheaper, we aren’t required to use any anesthetic, and they have the same reproductive anatomy as a normal horse. In my personal opinion as well, you might find that practicing on such a small vulva will make any Caslick’s you perform in the future a piece of cake! Now, come on, gather around.”
Dr. Palomino got a headlamp and situated himself on a stool in front of the crush cage. York’s ears flattened and she bowed her head sheepishly as the students gathered around to gawk at her no-no parts.
“Now, another reason we like fluffies for this training is that they’re kind of poorly designed. They defecate a lot, and their vulvas sort of naturally - as natural as you can call these things, ha ha - turn upward. Endometriosis and vaginal infections are really common, but a lot of fluffy owners don’t know this. If you have any friends who are fluffy breeders, you might have heard how fast broodmares can become infertile, and its usually because of infections owners don’t realize they can prevent - most fluffy owners aren’t ‘horse people,’ so to speak. As an equine vet, you might occasionally get called to treat a fluffy, and they are really good practice for doing really delicate work.”
Palomino gloved up and grabbed a tapered metal cylinder with a flared base, which attached to a reticulating arm that he snapped onto the crush stall.
”Let’s get started! Now, obviously won’t do this on a normal mare, but for fluffies we are going to use an anal plug to keep our work area clean. This plug is specifically designed for fluffies and miniature crush stalls, but its not cheap, and if you do have to do this procedure on a fluffy, you probably won’t have it on hand. Another option is to make a sort of temporary diaper with towels or gauze. But, for the sake of this demonstration - “
Palomino parted the fur around the fluffy’s anus, applied a paltry amount of medical grade lube to the cylinder and slid it inside her. York squeaked, wriggling helplessly in the stall.
“Owie!! Why huwties in poopie-pwace??”
“Aaaand there. Not going anywhere. Now, again - fluffies do defecate a lot, especially when they’re scared. There’s a very real chance this won’t stop everything, so keep some cleaning supplies on hand. But that goes for pretty much any animal - you will be covered with shit at some point in your career, trust me. ” The students chuckled a little bit.
”Okay. Our tools today are a scalpel blade, Metzenbaums, suture scissors and a 2-0 suture on a cutting needle. Now, there are a couple ways to do this - some vets opt to create an incision on the vulvar lips, but I’m going to be demonstrating the method where we remove tissue from the each side of the vulva so that we form a strong permanent seal. So, take your Metzenbaums and remove a thin strip of tissue from each side of the mucocutaneous junction. And when I say thin, I mean thin, removing too much can result in fibrosis.”
Palomino grabbed the Metzenbaum scissors and began to cut into York’s vulva. She jerked and screeched, thrashing against the crush stall but almost entirely incapable of moving. Some of the students glanced between her and the demonstration, disturbed grimaces pulled across their faces. Palomino didn’t look away from his cutting.
“Don’t worry about her. Fluffies don’t experience nearly as much pain as you or I do, they’re just easily scared and a bit dramatic. This cut is going to extend from the dorsal junction to the pelvic brim, which is about two-thirds of the length of the entire vulva. For a fluffy, this is going to be a very tiny amount of tissue, see…here.”
He held up a very thin strip of tissue, barely a centimeter in length and paper-thin. Blood trickled down York’s thighs while she sobbed, crying for her mummah.
”Next, we’re going to be suturing using a split thickness Ford Interlocking stitch, but a simple continuous suture is all that you need. Make sure you’re making your sutures very tight, the purpose of this procedure is to prevent anything from going in.”
Palomino took a curved needle and began to sew York’s vulva together, humming contently, moving in a looped pattern that created a very tight, neat seal. He wiped the blood off with some gauze. York shook, tears streaming down her face, although nobody was watching.
“And we’re done! It’s a very simple procedure, really. But there are a couple other things I want to show you. Now, it’s pretty difficult to breed a mare with her vulva closed. A stallion can really hurt his penis trying, and it’s going to hurt the mare too. Sometimes a stallion can get under the Caslick’s, but the safer method is just doing artificial insemination.”
Palomino grabbed another device from the tray, a small gun-like apparatus with a long, thin steel tube.
“This is a fluffy-specific artificial insemination device but it’s very similar to what is used with horses and cattle - they all kind of work the same way, anyways. The semen in here is already loaded, and we just carefully slide this underneath the Caslick’s…”
He carefully manipulated the thin metal rod underneath the stitches and into York’s vagina. She winced, feeling the cold steel rub against the stinging sutures.
”Huuhuu…bad enfies…bad enfies…no-no pwace hab biggest huwties…huhuhuuu…”
”Aaand there we go, also very simple. That concludes our demonstration for today, but we’re not done with little York here yet. It’s going to take a couple months for her to gestate, and at the end of the semester we’re going to perform basically an episiotomy to remove the Caslick’s and let her give birth. Hopefully I can also procure some more fluffies next week for you to do your own surgical practice on. I’m going to go put York in my office, and then for the rest of the class we’re going to be looking at some more literature on equine reproductive anatomy.”
—
Several months later, York was swollen with foals. She had practically forgotten about the trauma of her pussy being stitched shut, and was glowing at the idea of being a mummah. She did ask at one point how she would make “biggest poopies” if her “no-no pwace” was “cwosed,” to which Dr. Palomino gleefully and plainly told her that there would be a “simple procedure,” one that he had explained to his class - the vulva was simply cut open a couple weeks before the mare was due to foal. But he would have to change his lesson plans.
York laid on a little bed in Palomino’s office. She had enjoyed a relatively peaceful life since her operation, watching FluffTV on the professor’s computer, eating skettis and humming to her unborn children. It was nearly a month before she was due, and several weeks before Palomino had planned to cut her back open, when suddenly the worstest hurties started.
All alone, she felt a pop, and fluid began to dribble out of her. Her body spasmed and contracted, feeling the swollen masses in her body begin to move. The panic and pain of birth sent her screaming and writhing around the office, but to make matters worse, York was maybe a little smarter than the average fluffy. Dread befell her as she remembered that her no-no pwace was cwosed. What could that mean?
The first foal began to travel down her canal, but it was abruptly stopped by the securely healed upper vulva. Otay, maybe babbehs won’t come yet, heaving and staggering around the office that she had now thoroughly stained with shit and bile-colored ammonitic fluid. She felt both the heavy dead weights of stillborns and the wriggling of small, weak premies, but she of course had no way of knowing what either of these things were. All she felt were foal upon foal attempt to deliver themselves, piling themselves against her vulva, her body desperately trying to expel what was inside her. Some of the foals began to suffocate under the weight of their siblings, imperceptible cries that nobody could hear. York strained and heaved, coughing and sobbing. One foal managed to squeeze its way underneath the Caslick’s, chirping weakly as it was slowly crushed by York on her belly, trying to give birth through the hole that wasn’t there, completely unaware of anything other than the pressure and searing pain.
At some point, the floodgates opened. Her vulva burst open, a blood and foals spewing out from the gaping wound in a rotten little pile. What few foals survived the ordeal gasped and chirped, struggling to free themselves from the sticky mess. York collapsed, her ears ringing, her no-no pwace evocative of a gunshot exit wound.
Dr. Palomino opened the door and stopped dead in his tracks. He closed the door, shook his head and sighed.
“Well. I guess I have a good example for my class of why you need to remove a Caslick’s before foaling.”
