When stock in bubble wrap is not enough…
The plan for today:
Get up at an ungodly hour, run out to the barn, wrap Ro, work from home for a couple hours, go back to the barn to meet the vet for some routine stuff (Coggins, vaccs, hand-holding about the stocked-up leg), finish work.
No big deal, right?
Everything went well, up until the “wrap Ro” bit. I wrapped the left, stocked-up leg, and then thought about the right leg. It’s 100+ degrees here during the day. Her right leg is not stocking up. She’s not favoring either leg. I’d be back in a couple hours to unwrap for the vet anyway. Despite having been drilled that you always wrap the opposite leg if you’re going to wrap at all, I figured she’d be fine with just the left leg wrapped. I wrapped and left.
I had barely settled in to work when the vet called to say he was running early. I called another owner who was sharing the farm call to let her know the vet was on his way and headed out to the barn.
The other owner met me as I was walking in, looking worried. “I don’t know what Ro did… she was fine a minute ago…”
My brain shut off a little, because “I don’t know what she did” probably meant “there’s blood involved.” I can handle blood, as long as I don’t think too hard about it. And, you know, it’s not mine.
Somehow Ro managed to scrape a big chunk of hide off her right hind cannon. I stared at it, nicely insulated from the blood (not very much, actually) by my shut-down brain. Then my brain woke up just enough to remind me that if I had wrapped the right leg like I should have, this wouldn’t have happened at all. Thanks, Brain. Where were you at Ungodly Hour of the Morning when I was making bad decisions?
I still don’t know what she did—kicked herself, scraped it on the pipes in her run, spontaneously shed skin to remind me that horses are expensive and vet bills inevitable?
I hosed her off, verified it was pretty superficial, slapped some gauze and vet wrap on it, and waited for the vet.
On the one hand: I’ve owned her for a week and she’s spent most of that tormenting me with minor injuries. Horses shouldn’t do that to owners inclined to be paranoid. It gets expensive. The vet, I’m sure, has already figured out that Ro + me = a new car for him in the near future.
On the other hand: if she has to be a goofball and scrape herself up like this, isn’t it nice of her to do so when the vet is already on the way? I mean, her timing is pretty awesome. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have called the vet if he hadn’t already been on the way. But since he was there…
Added to the routine vaccinations she was getting: tetanus booster.
Ro got tucked away again (both legs wrapped this time) and I went off to work.
However, Ro’s ability to apparently hurt herself on thin air inspired me to do what horse owners are always threatening to do: put their horse in a padded stall.
After work, I stopped by Big Box Store and picked up supplies. In case you weren’t getting enough funny looks buying routine horse health care stuff at the grocery store, try walking around in breeches and chaps while carrying a pool noodle and black duct tape.
I’ve padded the parts of the stall that she is most likely to hurt herself on. I’ll have to pick up another noodle to pad the less likely spots. Really. Seriously. I am for-real making a padded stall for her.
Someone ought to make a padded room for me.