This is the last few moments of the video. Can you tell who's not playing anymore?
Chief, the sorrel and white paint, that's who. And I actually have the evidence on film of who kicked the snot out of him: Jack. Horses are either homicidal or suicidal, end of story.
A beautiful day abruptly hijacked.
As it happened, our resident vet was coming up the driveway and before he could be welcomed back from his trip, he was up to his eyeballs with me in cleaning and trying to stem the bleeding.
The cuts were deep and close to the hock joint. Our equine vet was on vacation, but as usual, Dr. Brown doesn't know how to turn her phone off, so I sent her pictures of the damages.
Word came back that she was on the fence about whether or not to take him to the vet school as an emergency. My fear was a septic infection of the joint, bleeding, tendon damage, bone fragments.... guess what I did?
Road trip. No one drives my rig, but me. It takes a little finesse to wiggle the 38' trailer around and she's so heavy, good luck stopping unless you give yourself plenty of distance AND always manually engage the trailer brakes to assist the truck.
And I don't go anywhere without my boys.
And Flynn wasn't about to let me drive off with his favorite riding horse, like we get to ride more than once every 3 months, but that's neither here nor there!
He wasn't having it... concerned papa.
We sat in a corner and watched as he was X-rayed, shaved, ultrasounded, probed. Dr. Zetterstrom was thorough. She found a chip missing off a bone, but couldn't locate it in the wound, hopefully it is in the pasture somewhere. No tendon damage or joint capsule compromise. Whew. Too much swelling and emphysema (air pockets up in between the tissues though.
We watched and watched and watched some more.
Instead of suturing it up snugly, it was decided to leave gaps for fluid drainage.
With just one single stitch holding the whole thing together and rain outside and a special compression bandage applied, I opted to not trailer Chief and risk further injury trying to bring him home.
Good call. The vet texted updates on the diminishing swelling.
And it gave Flynn and Brock time to set up a hospital stall at home.
For 14 days, he's not going to be allowed to get his bandages wet or run around like a ninny. Think he can handle it? We'll find out when he gets released on Wednesday.
