Annoyed

Its been another busy week around here, so this morning I headed out to the barn for a long therapy session via horseback. Perfect day for it! Sun out.......but not too warm. My horse was as delighted as I was to be heading out and we went forever. All alone........just the two of us on winding trails, up hills and down hills, along meandering creeks, an d through wide-open meadows. Even the elk were nowhere in sight, which was nice, since Yodi is rather afraid of them.

In any case, we returned to the barn almost two hours later with the cobwebs blown out of both of our brains. I was congratulating myself on what a terrific horse I have, and feeling very grateful for his ability to just GO. No fuss......no fanfare........he just puts his ears forward and happily goes down the trail. If you are a horse person, you know the sheer value in this statement and how rare it can be!

I got Yodi unsaddled, cooled off, brushed out, and turned out in his paddock. All was good. And then, less than 15 minutes later, he pulled an extremely stupid stunt with a fence and is now missing a 1 inch x 6 inch piece of skin on his left hindleg. I'm glad that I was still at the barn, so I could bring him back in, doctor him up, and stall him for the rest of the day. I briefly considered calling the vet, and then realized that there wasn't enough skin left to stitch together, so the vet wasn't going to be able to do anything to him that I couldn't do myself. I guess that's where my years of experience with horses pay off.......the ability to not get too rattled by a little blood and make a rational decision about treatment. I can certainly clean and bandage a wound as well as the vet, so there's really no point in spending the money for a Sunday outcall and all that goes with it.

So........I'm probably looking at about two weeks of wound care and bandages. The part of his leg that he scraped is right against the bone, so there isn't really any muscle of soft tissue to injure. I guess I should be thankful of that, but still..........he earned himself a few weeks of vacation and I will go through enough bandaging supplies to fill a landfill. We're at the height of "fly season," so even when it is scabbed over, it will need to be bandaged to keep the flies off of it.

Good grief..................