Horses are silly

TW: minor gore mentions

Also, this is very long. Sorry.

These past few days have been fun around my family's place :D

To start us off, sometime between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, my horse got her head stuck in something then managed to free herself while injuring her throat. Her upper neck was incredibly swollen to the point where there was no line between cheek and neck. It was just straight. We applied "ice packs" (aka frozen veggies) to her neck for 5-10 minutes every hour on day 1. The vet had given her steroids to help, and us banamine to give her twice a day. But only 3 applications worth so on day 2, dinner had bute added. Miss T (horse) didn't eat any of her dinner. Day 3 came and I noticed 4 new marks on her face. We figured she hit her head on something so we put up a 2x4 to keep her head out of the stall separator. Later on in the day, noonish, I touched her face below the lowest one and it was, as I'll describe, crunchy. It was swollen and I figured it was air and fluid from being an injury. Not too big a deal. More on this later because next...

My mom was taking a nap when she got a frantic phone call from our farmhand. Our six thoroughbreds had escaped. My mom and I busted out of the house, grabbed every halter we could, and zoomed up the road. Luckily we live in an area where there are lots of smaller, personal horse farms. One of our neighbours saw our horses bookin it and went "I think I know who they belong to" so she also grabbed some halters and followed. They managed to get about 4 miles away before getting caught. 4 miles at a flat run is impressive and terrifying. My mom and I got there, we made sure all six were accounted for, we swapped halters out, and she left to hook up our trailer and start getting them home. The people who own the farm they ended up stopping at know my dad, the lady neighbour knows my sister, our farmhand was there, and a couple of random people who stopped because six horses flying down the road is not a normal sighting, even in a rural horse-loving town. 

While my mom was gone to get the horse trailer, I surveyed our horses. One had a hip injury from his escape but two had torn up legs. The gelding had cuts on all four legs, from his hooves up to his knees. They didn't look too bad but they were under the skin and very red. The mare was worse. She wasn't using her left hind at all. And it looked really bad. I called my sister (who hijacked a friend's trailer and was on her way) to ask if I should call the vet but she wanted to wait until she saw. Both of these horses are hers and they're like 4 and 5 respectively.

My mom got back and we loaded up two horses and she took off to get them home. My sister got there shortly after, I asked her again if I should call the vet, she said yes, she loaded up her two injured ones and sped home. And then mom got back about five minutes later to load the last two. The very kind people were slowly dispersing as we got horses out of the field. And then my dad showed up as we were loading the final two horses to talk to the owner and see if we owed them anything. Why would we owe them, you might be asking. Well, it's cause the two injured ones attempted to jump a wire electric fence and failed.

We got everyone home and the vet showed up. I was relieved of my duties after everyone was settled since we had dogs to tend to and I needed to check on my own horse. I checked on Miss T's food and water and she had barely eaten or drank anything all day. I watched her a while and she had trouble... doing her business. She seemed very lethargic and I asked if the vet could see her since she was here anyway. So she did. The swelling was fine, her temperature, heart rate, and gut noises were fine. The vet thinks she was just in pain since she wasn't eating the grain with bute. She gave us more banamine, which worked because this morning, all her grain was gone, she drank almost a full bucket of water, and her hay had definitely been munched on! Very happy :) But the vet also checked Miss T's face and figured that she "broke her face." As in chipped or broke some bone near her nasal cavity, or did something to some cartilage. The wounds were superficial only so there shouldn't have been a way for air to get inside except through her sinuses. There isn't anything we can do to fix it except give her time. Miss T turned 30 this year so she'll be a bit slower to heal and horse bones are incredibly slow to begin with yikes.

After all this, it had been over four hours that the vet had been at our place. It was 11pm and we had been dealing with it since about 4pm. And my mom told me that my sister's horses had both gotten stitches. The mare was by far the worst off. The front half of that left hind leg had no skin. The horse with the hip injury also road foundered, threw a shoe, and might have an abscess in another shoe. All of our horses are in for the day because of how sore they are. Everyone has hot legs and it's safest to just keep them in for the time being.

To help everyone cheer up a bit after all that bad news, here is my injured girly resting in the grass. This was yesterday while she was in pain and acting off. But she is most certainly feeling better today so at least we have some good news in all this lol. Also, please marvel at the fact that the top of her blaze looks like North America. Thanks :D



TLDR: My horse got injured over the weekend. 6 of our horses got out yesterday. 2 cut themselves up really bad. 1 is lame. All of them are sore. It's been a fun week. Also I'm exhausted and ready for a nap.

I'm right there with you. I only have one... thank goodness. I can only imagine what would go wrong with more than one. Mine has decided to have breathing issues on top of his typical haflinger sugar issues. I had to move him to a new barn so he could be out in an essentially dry lot. But he's still having breathing issues, even without wearing his grazing muzzle. So I just dropped $300 on a used equine nebulizer (on top of the ridiculously expensive breathing supplement)... I just want him to breathe right lol

Oh goodness! That does sound like an eventful week! I hope your horses heal well. Lameness issues can be a nightmare and expensive but it sounds like all of your horses will be better in time. Give Miss T a good petting, what a silly creature!    ♥

@tiedyesunset 
Yikes! We were scared about having to give her a tracheostomy and that would be a temporary nightmare. I can't imagine having a horse with permanent breathing issues o.o that sounds awful. Is it possible he has heaves or allergies?

@Ruffian
Yeah, we're concerned that all our guys will be lame for a while now. We know the hip-injury-one will be, but it looks like the other mare might join him. Somehow the two oldest TBs (23 and 28 I think) ended up unharmed. Mr 28-year-old is actually very perturbed that he does not get to go run 4 miles again today...weirdo.
I will be sure to give Miss T a pet from you when I bring her in from her field trip (ehehehee) in about an hour ^^

@box
We aren't really sure what his malfunction is yet. I'm leaning towards heaves, but we don't have a real diagnosis yet. He's not doing bad, but he's not right.

@tiedyesunset
Well hopefully it's something simple and curable ^^;; I leased a horse at a stable where a woman had a 4 year old paint and she claimed he had heaves but I'm 99% sure it was just cause he was out of shape since she rode like once every other week and asked him to do hilly trails for 2 or 3 miles <. <

@Ruffian
Miss T says thank you for the pets! She enjoyed them.

Hi,

My Goodness, what a week you had, I hope you, your Mom, and the horses are all ok. 
Miss T is so pretty, pats and hugs for her.