I was thinking today that there is rarely a dull day on the farm. Living with a farm full of large, accident prone creatures there is always someone walking around with a scrape or some sort of boo boo. Or they are doing something that makes me look twice, and I often have a few minutes of freaking out as well.
A couple of weeks ago I was in one of the fields and happened to look up into an adjoining field in time to see Wiz go down for a roll at the edge of a wooded area. Nothing at all unusual about seeing a horse roll. I almost always watch just because they always look so happy and care free. So I’m watching Wiz roll and he is having a great time, and then he flopped over onto the other side. Then trouble started. When he flopped over he flopped into/on a large, downed tree branch.
This really freaked poor Wiz out. He tried really hard to get back up but he needed to flop back to his other side to do that. However the tree branch was really making that hard. Wiz looked like a bug on its back with his legs flailing up in the air. He finally managed to flop back over again and get up, and he quietly resumed grazing. I walked out to check and make sure he was ok. He had several patches of missing hair in some interesting places but was otherwise fine. If I hadn’t seen it happening I would be forever wondering what did happen to cause him to have all the scrapes in odd places.
A couple of days ago I was feeding dinner and as I was putting Boo’s feedbag on noticed what appeared to be a hematoma on the left side of his jaw. He also had a small patch that I wouldn’t even call a scrape, just some missing hair. It was kind of partly underneath his jaw. No sign of a puncture wound or anything. He wasn’t sensitive, let me palpate everywhere with no reaction, I took his temperature which was normal and he ate happily. He did not have a nasal discharge or any unusual odor coming from his nostrils or mouth. Just a hematoma on his jaw and a small patch of missing hair underneath the jaw. We started him on antibiotics and anti-inflamatories. Jason is convinced that he got his head stuck in a tree or something and had to struggle some to get it out.
A few days ago I noticed a horse down in dead horse position in the pasture. I realized it was Spike. I’ve never seen Spike do this although his mom had told me he was a frequent napper. As I said to her I hurdled two fence lines and sprinted through the pasture like I was in training for the Olympics screaming Spike’s name the whole time. Spike quickly got up from all the noise, gave me a look like “WTF is wrong with you lady, can’t a horse take a nap around here?” and started grazing.
There is no telling what tomorrow will bring.
Elfin
Thomas
Apollo
Tony
Ivan
the group of deer that we see in the same pasture every evening at about 5pm; the horses don’t even give them a second glace
Fuzzy, Murphy, Wiz and Dutch
Alex and B-Rad grooming each other
Justin and Boo grooming each other
Sebastian, Asterik, Faune, Winston and Romeo
Lightening and Teddy
Wiz playing in the water again
Missy, MyLight, Harmony and Cuffie
MyLight