Another busy day, and so, so, cooold! The oppressive overcast played havoc with my emotions today as we went about our chores…but the cold weather did its delightful number on the horses. All the geldings and Little Dude charging around in the North Pasture, while the mares and fillies in the 40 went dashing to and fro, up and down the hill and in and out of the trees. I was watching the show like a lazy bones while Amy was working! When they start their antics I cannot help myself. Whenever we move horses around on the property, it precipitates exuberant behavior, some out of joy and spirit, and some out of anxiety from being moved from those buddies to these buddies.
Raven will really push some of the others around, trotting and strutting back and forth with her head all over the place. Socks and Violet totally clear out of her way. Sweets is a really beautiful little mover. She puts her tail up as high as any mustang, and steps out with a graceful, flashy extended trot, just like a bay mini-Rosa, which is fitting, since she is Rosa’s little buddy. Violet is trying to get back with her buddies in the North. She likes the boys. Though she misses Comet desperately, we can’t keep her in the same area as Little Dude until he gets snipped. He still acts like a baby, gets chased and bitten, and has shown no studdy tendencies…yet…but that doesn’t mean anything with spring in the air.
Comet has been a great deal more active in the past two months than he ever has been in the past. He was never one for spontaneous gallops and gleeful buck-farts, so it’s been very enjoyable to see him playing around with the other boys. Even though I also saw the sad sight of him standing with Violet, with a fence between them.
Royo of course can’t run around much until he gets a special paddock made (and unless he decides to use his space), so this morning at feeding time he pranced around the certain area of his pen that he uses, flinging shavings everywhere, flipping his hay nets over the panels, and throwing his bucket on the ground, every so often checking to make sure his snooty Arabian neighbor, Tempo, was still there. Tempo’s a beautiful, bay *Bask granddaughter in her 20s, penned next to Royo for two reasons: One, she wasn’t keeping weight on in the 40 because of some more dominant horses; and Two, Royo has to have a neighbor to talk to!
Angel was running up and down and all around her paddock, bucking and twisting, and Coco stayed out of her way!
Blizzard, Star, and Puzzle nickered at the boys, then nickered at the 40 girls, then looked at us to see if we were getting hay.
Then there was the watching of Tink lying down in her day pen, dozing… wondering just how OK she was…it looked like a healing doze and then she hopped right up to her feet! She is getting better every day, behavior-wise (after a period of getting worse) during care of her leg. Giving bute is less and less of a fight. I think she is putting the bute together with feeling better, and I really think that since she loosens her bandage and fiddles with it, it must get irritating, because she is so good when we take it off. Today, though, she was jumping all around and not about her leg. She was just jazzed, like everyone else. After a new bandage was applied & wrapped snug, she just seemed a lot more comfortable. She can walk better with the support of the freshly-applied bandage, I think.
When we took the bandage off, the wound didn’t smell very good. It’s really the first time I detected an odor that was actuallyfoul, and not just smelling like a wound smells. We applied Vetericyn, which has always helped. There was a clear demarcation between skin that looked dead, and live foot, and it occurred mid-fetlock. It was just awful enough that I had a major meltdown; yet there seemed still to be hope. Once bandaged, Tink was bouncing off the walls. Walking her, I might as well have been walking Arroyo. She was nickering and whinnying and putting her foot down flat and pulling on the lead and getting in my space, all of which made me happy… except that I was feeling unhopeful, devastated, fearful, questioning myself and our decisions, and sobbing.
Just another day, exactly like any other day, on which I might not be sobbing. Huh.
I’ve been doing some research and finding that lying down is a good thing for Tink to be doing! Sometimes with a grievous leg injury the horse ends up being euthanized because of damage to the OTHER leg, resulting from bearing too much of the weight on it too much of the time. Sometimes, laminitis can be induced in the other foot this way. Horses that are willing to lie down to relieve the pain and rest their legs have a greater chance of recovery. That really makes sense. Apparently, some horses aren’t. Another thing Tink has going for her is her temperament, cooperative attitude, her health in all other ways, and her zeal for life.
All night long, every night, I dream about the rescue horses, Tinkerbell, and the website/blog. I wake up in a state of anxiety, worrying. Should I have blogged about this, how should I have phrased that, what will be the consequences of being so transparent with every aspect of Tinkerbell’s ordeal, what are people thinking? Well, this Tinkerbell thing is all about Tinkerbell, and not about you or me. If Tinkerbell had given Daniel and me the signal that she was done fighting, then the fight would end. She has not told us any such thing. She is strong, and she is still fighting, and she is still living. What will happen tomorrow, I cannot know. But for today, that is our wisdom.
Now, I am going to watch Supernatural. The one thing that will take my head away from all things Horse Rescue, at least for an hour or two.
