Horse Ownership is Not for The Faint of Heart
I returned from an outing to the movies last night to find my barn looking like a scene from a horror movie. It was like Zydeco said "There are two hundred acres on this farm, and I intend to spew arterial blood over every single one of them." There was blood on the floors, on the walls, and dripping from the bedding beneath him.
There was some sort of incident in the pasture while I was gone and when my father brought him in from the barn he was shooting blood across the stall and so the vet was called. A shot of sedatives (for the horse, not for me), some freezing and twenty stitches later, my horse is still with us. I got this information over the phone and the horse was patched up by the time I got here. That still doesn't mean that I was prepared for what I saw when I arrived.
I did what any rational horse owner would do and began weeping uncontrollably while trying to get the bedding that was thickly coated in blood out of the stall because I couldn't look at it. That was when I noticed it dripping from the deep bedding on the bottom of the stall, as it seems that gravity did its job and pulled it all to the floor.
Zydeco was moaning and pawing while I did this, still dozy from sedation. I stayed up all night going back and forth from the house to the barn for fear that it would start bleeding again. At around one a.m. he began stamping his foot in pain and I was scared he would open up the stitches again, but he managed to pull through.
When I went out to the barn at six this morning, I got an eyefull of what really happened last night and was mortified once more. There was a towel, several gauze pads. some bandages, and puddles of blood around the entrance to the barn.
Zydeco made it through his first night with success. I've medicated him for pain to get through this night and hopefully he won't be bothered by the leg and commence stamping it again. There is nothing worse than a horse who won't quit stamping his foot on the ground.
I spent the day in the pasture trying to track his trail and find out what could be there that would cut him in such a fashion, but to no avail. I found a trail at one point and it just disappears. Perhaps I am just a really bad tracker and I need to call in some backup to find this terrible thing that hurt my horse.
I used to think that it was the environment that was causing these troubles for my horse. Now that there are two other horses living here, however, I realize that my horse must just be a special kind of idiot.
I haven't slept, my hair is greasy and I smell like horse and medical supplies.
I am going to bed.
There was some sort of incident in the pasture while I was gone and when my father brought him in from the barn he was shooting blood across the stall and so the vet was called. A shot of sedatives (for the horse, not for me), some freezing and twenty stitches later, my horse is still with us. I got this information over the phone and the horse was patched up by the time I got here. That still doesn't mean that I was prepared for what I saw when I arrived.
I did what any rational horse owner would do and began weeping uncontrollably while trying to get the bedding that was thickly coated in blood out of the stall because I couldn't look at it. That was when I noticed it dripping from the deep bedding on the bottom of the stall, as it seems that gravity did its job and pulled it all to the floor.
Zydeco was moaning and pawing while I did this, still dozy from sedation. I stayed up all night going back and forth from the house to the barn for fear that it would start bleeding again. At around one a.m. he began stamping his foot in pain and I was scared he would open up the stitches again, but he managed to pull through.
When I went out to the barn at six this morning, I got an eyefull of what really happened last night and was mortified once more. There was a towel, several gauze pads. some bandages, and puddles of blood around the entrance to the barn.
Zydeco made it through his first night with success. I've medicated him for pain to get through this night and hopefully he won't be bothered by the leg and commence stamping it again. There is nothing worse than a horse who won't quit stamping his foot on the ground.
I spent the day in the pasture trying to track his trail and find out what could be there that would cut him in such a fashion, but to no avail. I found a trail at one point and it just disappears. Perhaps I am just a really bad tracker and I need to call in some backup to find this terrible thing that hurt my horse.
I used to think that it was the environment that was causing these troubles for my horse. Now that there are two other horses living here, however, I realize that my horse must just be a special kind of idiot.
I haven't slept, my hair is greasy and I smell like horse and medical supplies.
I am going to bed.
posted by Amanda at 23:18
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