Blink of an eye

I was making coffee this morning when I heard a tremendous crash, like a horse double-barrelling a metal gate or something. I ran out to see if it was Dixie, and she'd left her morning hay and was trotting toward the back fence very alertly. I ran far enough in the pasture to get a good view of everything and my heart about stopped. The neighbor's old skinny horse was down, awkwardly on his side, with a fucking hog panel wrapped around his legs.

I had a brief moment of panic. I couldn't remember the neighbor's names and I didn't want to take the time to get the truck, drive around the block, and bang on their door. I didn't want to leap into their pasture and spook the old fellow. After a moment, I remembered I had her cell number listed in my phone. I decided surely I'd know it when I saw it and bolted back to the house for my phone. YES! I did, in fact, remember exactly who it was when I saw it. I called and left a message and went back outside.

Armed with her name, I stood in my pasture and bellowed at the top of my lungs "D! Your horse is down in the fence!" She popped right out, half-dressed, took one look, and said "Be right there." I hustled up to my fence, turned it off, and slipped through my electric. I said reassuring nonsense to the old fellow. Thank god for old horses who know when you're trying to help. Once she came out, I stepped over her fence and met her at him.

Somehow he had slipped his rear right leg through the hog panel, up over the hock. He was laying on his left side, looking fairly panicked. D was trying to figure out how to cut the panel off, but I thought if he cooperated I could just slip it back off his leg. She stood at his head and kept him calm, and I carefully manipulated his leg and the panel and slipped it off.

I won't lie, I was terrified. If he'd freaked out and started thrashing it would've been very bad for all three of us. I don't like handling other people's horses, and I don't like trying to untrap horses, but it needed to be done. He stayed calm while I got his leg free and dragged the panel back, and he stood up promptly on all four legs.

He's limping on two legs - front left and rear right, IIRC - but he's weight bearing. I know she doesn't have the money for a vet. I gave her some Bute for him and suggested buting him for two days and if anything swells cold hosing it.

Their fencing is a disaster, and they've been really lucky so far. I have also kept horses behind disastrous fences. Never again, now that I've learned just how easy it is to pop up some hotwire. For $200 you can put up a couple rows of highly visible hottape or polywire to keep your horse off the shitty fencing you can't afford to replace. It's cheaper than a vet.

Lecture over! Look, I did brush Dixie's mane yesterday.


So much lovely fluffy hair.


I also got four tons of hay delivered.


And here is Bambers. Note how there is not a single flicker of intelligence in that eye. He is crazier than a shithouse rat, but he's my buddy anyway. :)

Suicidal horse

So Dixie tried to kill herself yesterday, but she's fine today. I am not so fine; my nerves are completely shot.

I packed everything I own in the truck and trailer, then got my horse out and dressed her up to go for a ride. I put the red Renegades on her front feet, to protect her heel bulbs, then I put these snazzy new shipping boots on all four legs. Then I spent an hour and a half trying to get her to load. I tried coaxing, annoying with the whip, food, clicker training food, pushing on her and crying, threatening to sell her at Fallon, and finally ignoring her. Ignoring her actually worked - the other ladies I board with, who had been quietly watching and occasionally offering helpful advice, came out and loaded the mare. One had treats and the other shoved from behind. We tied her head on the left side of the manger and left her standing diagonally in the whole trailer.

I thought there was no more horrible feeling than the totally impotent rage of your evil demon-horse going on a trailer when someone ELSE asks nicely, in the same way you'd been asking. I was wrong, actually.

I pulled out very slowly, in a textbook-perfect example of driving with a horse. At the corner, I stopped at the stop sign and made my right turn, and halfway through Dixie put her right foot in the manger. She immediately started thrashing around, so I turned on the hazards, leapt out of the truck, and yanked the window at the front of the trailer open while I frantically called ~C. She said to try and shove Dixie's foot back down, maybe with a rope to help lift the hoof over the lip of the manger, or just open the doors and let her try to get free on her own. I untied Dixie's head and she started thrashing around even more and got her head on the right side of the manger divider. Right leg on left side, head on right side. I have never been so scared in my life. I was so sure that she was going to break her leg or rip all of her tendons.

I couldn't budge the leg, so I ran around to the back to open the doors. As I headed around the trailer, there was an explosion of thunks and crashes, and when I got to the back my fucking horse's head was wedged in the back door window and she was wheezing. Her body was curled up sideways, with her back facing the doors. I have no idea how she did that - some kind of somersault backwards, I guess. I flung the doors open - gently shoved her head in as I got the second door open - and she hauled herself to her feet and walked out of the trailer completely sound.

I could not believe it. I still can't believe it, but the horse is completely unscratched. Her head isn't banged up. Her legs are cold, tight, and totally unscratched. Nothing is puffy or obviously sore.

I walked her the half-block back to the house, then walked back to the truck and drove it back to the house. I'd left the driver's door open the whole time, and there was a little kid standing at the fence next to the truck with her jaw dropped, just staring. I guess none of it took that long.

The trailer's kind of banged up. When Dixie somersaulted backwards, she hit the doors so hard that the divider thing between them is bowed out an inch and a half. The doors don't shut so good anymore. I think I can fix it with a come-along, if I can figure out where to attach the come-along. And I'd really like to fix it, because as soon as I get the title back from the state I'm selling it. I cannot think of a way to put that horse in that trailer where she'll ride without killing herself.

A couple people suggested I load her and take her around the block, because she probably learned something from getting her foot hung. I don't think humans usually learn anything from their mistakes, and it's the worst kind of anthropomorphism to think a horse, which is a creature not really known for its critical thinking skills, would learn from its mistakes. I think the only thing she learned is that (yellow) bumper pull trailers are absolutely, positively trying to kill her.

I don't know when I'll get another trailer. I still don't want to finance one, but once I sell the trailer of death, I could put almost 50% down, so it wouldn't be much, but I don't want to finance anything, ugh. And right now, I don't even want another trailer. I am so shaken by how I almost killed my horse that I don't want to do anything that might kill my horse. This is a problem because horses are huge idiots who can conceivably kill themselves doing anything at all.

I brought her an apple today. She ate it, then ran off the chickens who were scavenging for apple juice drool, then charged the fence to run off the low-ranking mare on the other side, then ran off the chickens AGAIN for good measure. Then she came back over to me, licked my hands for a long time, and fell asleep while I scratched the two permissible itchy spots - her poll and her withers. So I'd say Dixie is completely fine, and that's the only thing that makes this ordeal bearable.