Monday, Bloody Monday

Mon Sep 6, 2004

No rest for the wicked, or the Reserve Champion! I tried my darndest to get together a trail ride for today, even emailing people from the barn, and putting a sign up yesterday...but not 30 seconds after I brought Himself into the barn, the skies opened up and it RAINED and RAINED and RAINED...just stopped a little while ago, about 4+ hours later, GRRRRGH! Needless to say nobody showed up for any sort of trail ride...Fine, just one day I'll go so stir-crazy, I'll take him out on the Shore-To-Shore alone, he'll kill me and then won't they feel bad! Harrumph!! (JK!!)

I will try again for next weekend, probably all those teenagers were worn out from their horse show, but I'd think people who weren't into showing might have been interested. The barn owner said if he's around, he'll ride out with me during the week, probably dragging along plenty of potential horse buyers like he does, LOL, that'd be nice.

Instead we worked indoors, the arena is 2/3 its normal size due to all the temporary stalls still up from the weekend, but Quzqo and I worked on backing and flexing and some trotting. Got him to back 1-1/2 steps!

We did manage a quickie trail ride around the perimeter of the property between rain showers, and he did pretty good, even with the 30 mph wind gusts making the trees creak and rattle!

However, when we got back to the barn, we found one of the families there crowded around their elderly pony mare in the aisleway, which was puddled with blood!! Apparently the mare SOMEhow got a big (like 1" diameter) puncture wound just right of her vulva! It was deep, and it was bleeding...the Mom was having a devil of a time keeping pressure on it, because the towels kept getting soaked with blood....course being a holiday, they couldn't get ahold of any vets, just their Services. I found my vet book (I forgot I had it, dealing with a healthy young horse all summer), but all they recommended was keeping pressure on it and calling the vet. Duuuuh.

The mare seemed unaffected by the whole thing, patiently standing in the cross-ties while her people took turns pressing on her buttocks. They were at it for well over an hour, with the blood still dripping through the saturated rags...but we thought it was finally subsiding. (the dripping)...the stuff has to clot some time! It was dark, veinous blood, so that's good I guess, not the bright arterial stuff. There's SO many big vessels in that part of the horse, and so close to the surface...wouldn't take much to make 'em bleed. When Quzqo got his West Nile Virus booster in that area, he bled pretty profusely, shocking the vet, who blamed it on him being a "delicate Arabian", yeah, right. Well, true, he doesn't have a big fat ass like some of those QHs that jiggle when they walk, LOL!

That poor mare though, she's 29, barely has any teeth, but gamely toted tots in Lead Line this weekend. I know it'll ruin the vet's holiday, but I hope they heard back from one, I had to leave before I found out how it all came out. To top it off, that Mom has a Trakehner filly who also suffered a puncture wound THROUGH a leg tendon a couple weeks ago. If I were her, I'd be out walking that pasture & figure out just what's going on!!