A rough couple of days

The day after Mom passed away, I went to the barn to take Imax for a ride. It was relatively early in the morning and he had just been put in the pasture. i walked through the barn to the pasture to fetch him, and he saw me at the gate. He was on the far side of the pasture over by the mares where he always is (he is such a gigolo). he started walking to me, like he always does (he is a dream to catch, comes to you and puts his nose in the halter.) It looked like he was limping, and as he got closer, I saw blood running down his leg.

He had a two-inch gash on the inside of his left knee. I freaked out a bit, I certainly was not emotionally ready to deal with a bleeding, lame horse.

I washed the cut, ran cold water over it, and put some antiseptic on, and Mark, one of the barn owners, kindly called a Vet for me. When she called back, she basically told me what we were doing was ok, except I should get him a tetanus shot, which I did. A friend of mine Kerry, gave me a bunch of first aid supplies including Bute and some good advice. So I have been washing it out every day, running cold water over it for 15 - 20 minutes and putting a homeopathic salve on it that is also a topical anesthetic (sp??). I wasn't wrapping it for a while because it was pretty swollen. It has stopped actively swelling. So I wrapped it today.



The only thing I can figure what happened is he got into a fight with one of the other geldings in the pasture, and he got the worse end of it. It is not so surprising, he is really an instigator, he immediately challenges the dominate horse in the pasture and then wants to boss everyone else around. I may have to re-think him being turned out at all. Erin, his former owner stopped turning him out because he came back with a new scrape every time. I have to admit, he had a new ding nearly every day I have had him, too.

I realise this post is kind of boring to anyone but me, but believe me this is the abbreviated story - The wrap/don't wrap saga alone could fill this page and more.

So anyhow, I am grounded for at least another week to ten days. The up side is we are just hanging out getting to know each other. He is quite charming and funny.