Seeking Words....

Zydeco had X-rays done on his knee yesterday because he's been limping quite a bit this year, despite our interventions to prevent this.

I was there while they were done, dressed up in the finest lead apparel the vet could set me up with. This is the first time I've dealt with an equine professional without the aid of my parents. The horse was sedated PRAISE BE, because I don't really do any actual horse handling as part of owning Zydo. I'm a bit of a wilting flower that way.

I trotted my horse in hand for the vet to see and then I looked at him hopefully and said "Is it that bad?" And he said "Yeah, that's bad." And then I 'fessed up and told him how many milligrams of painkillers my boy was taking and he said "Oh." And then he promptly walked away.

Ouch.

Zydeco was then sedated and I did my best to help out with the machinery and holding up Zydo's sore knee and immediately after we were able to see the pictures.

I really wish it was an old-fashioned machine and that I'd had a few days to sit at home and hope before I knew the results.

Please excuse my lack of medical knowledge and lingo here.

He has some little bone chips floating where bone chips don't belong. There is something called hooking in the bones that make up the knee joint where the arthritis has eaten them away. This means that as he moves, the hooks nick each other and cause him pain, as well as causing the potential for more chips to be created.

My childhood of watching horse races was on my mind as the vet spoke to me, and I wasn't sure if I was being scratched or if I was being set down. Both terms mean you aren't competing any more. I'm still not sure which means what and I don't really have the energy to look it up.

I continued on with my day as per usual, oddly with no shedding of tears. And I have continued much in that fashion, although really, I'm not gonna lie: it did kinda hit me late last night.

Zydeco and I will not be going to any shows this year. I don't know what our future holds but the only thing I'm really thinking right now is Bring my horse home. I want him back here with me. I want to go down to the barn late at night and have a beer sitting outside his stall. I want to sing the lyrics of pathetic country music to him. I want to scratch the inside of his ear and watch him lean in closer and shake his head.

I was going to have trailering arranged today but I can't really do it without my parents around because of the whole wilting flower thing I mentioned earlier.

Hopefully by Monday or Tuesday my boy will be back here with me and we will be walking daintily through the field behind the house with Tia and Trooper. No trotting, no jumping, no jarring the knee.... But walking together here at The Ranch.