That Horse

That horse. You know the one. Whenever someone mentions "That Horse," you automatically know who they're speaking about. Every barn has at least one. You know, that one horse that is always sick or injured or lame or not feeling well. Unfortunately, I have one of "those horses." Yep, Jetta is a walking disaster. So this morning I got a call from the Barn Owner (BO) that Jetta was laying down and getting up a lot and pawing. She had walked her around a bit but thought she was acting like she had colic. I rushed out there and found her kind of lazily pawing the floor.

I took her temperature which was a pretty normal 99.5 degrees F. Her pulse and respiration and gum color were all normal. I walked her around a bit then sat in the car with her on the end of the leadrope to eat my lunch. She seemed fine. She wasn't nipping at her belly (she did once, but it seemed more like she had a scratch to itch) and she was surveying the field and trying to eat my sandwich.

I stuck her back in her stall and watched her for another hour. All she did was nap and hoover up stray bits of hay. Hmm... She started pawing once more, but stopped and stuck her head over the door and went to sleep. I think she might have a slight tummy ache from getting wormed yesterday. I know that if a horse has a heavy worm load then they can get impaction colic from being wormed, but Jetta always gets wormed every other month. I left her there and we'll see how she does tonight.

Gosh that horse is going to give me an ulcer with her antics. The BO said she'd keep an eye on her and I think she's going to give her some hay for dinner since it got taken away this morning and Jetta is convinced that she's starving. If she's still feeling like she's got a tummy ache tomorrow I'll give the vet a call but I am hoping that this'll all blow over.

Sigh. I am feeling so stressed right now! I don't want Jetta to be in pain :( We'll just have to see how the next 24 hours goes. This is definitely not the first time that she's gotten me so worried. It seems like there's always something wrong with sweet little Jetta. I am going to bubblewrap that horse!

When I first got Jetta, she ended up getting a scratch on her cornea. Luckily it wasn't too bad, but it still required daily medicating (which was a pain in the butt) and now she always wears her flymask in the summer. I think it's something to do with her third eyelid being very large and it tends to trap things in there.

Then she got pigeon fever. We had a mini epidemic on our street two summers ago. Again we were pretty lucky that she only got a small abscess the size of a quarter on her belly. Even though it is highly contagious, none of her pasture buddies got it and with some antibiotics she got over it very quickly. The poor horse down the street had massive abscesses that required draining by the vet almost every week.

And then Jetta outdid herself. I walked to the barn to feed the horses in the morning and found Jetta still in her stall. The stalls are always open and I would just feed them in there at night and then they'd leave when they were finished. She kept nickering at me so I walked over to see what the fuss was about and her right hind foot was stuck between the stall boards of the stall. She stood there patiently while I examined the situation but I couldn't figure out how to get her out. I called my dad and he showed up with a sawsall (sp?) and he cut the board out. The foot was a little swollen, but I iced it for a bit and put some antibiotics on the small scrapes on the front and back and put her back in the pasture. I didn't think anything of it and I was gone for the weekend. All of my other horses healed just fine when they got scraped and only had some antibiotic cream put on the wound. When I got back it was a nice, pus-oozing infection. That led to daily scrubbings and medicating and spraying on an aluminum based spray that should've protected it from the environment but the scrape on the back of her pastern refused to heal and ended up developing proud flesh.

The vet came out and blocked the leg and removed the lump and Miss Jetta had to be on stall rest so it wouldn't get infected again from all of the mud in the pasture. She was stalled for a month which involved daily unwrapping, treating and rewrapping her leg as well as giving her a daily sedative shot to keep her from kicking down the stall. She was very upset that her buddies were outside and she was not.

Her leg is all healed now, though that hind leg is still a little swollen looking with a small lump on the back where the proud flesh was.

The last event wasn't very serious, but I came out to the barn and Jetta was hanging her head over the door and there was a puddle of drool on the floor. I almost thought she might be choking. She stopped though and we figured that maybe she was just a little sore from her teeth and the next week we had them floated.

Sigh. Oh, horse what am I going to do with you? Over at Tucker the Wunderkind there was a similar blog on horsey accidents. Luckily nothing with Jetta has required stitches. Yet, knock on wood.