Unlucky ponies

Luckiest horse in the barn Emilie ain’t. We had that big laminitis scare in December which turned out to actually have been a massive hoof abscess instead (‘biggest damned thing I’ve seen in a while’, the farrier said). That was good news—she got to lose the mouth guard, and she certainly was not unhappy about that.

Trust Emilie to finally get the vet’s word that she’s fine and promptly get injured again. This time she got into a fight with a gelding in the field (same one she was cheerfully handing out sex ed lessons with two weeks previous) and now she’s got a lame hind leg and severe kick injuries on the front.

Some days I don’t think there will ever be a day when Emilie and I are in good health at the same time.

Oh, the fjord at the top of the page? That’s Loke, one of the resident senior geldings who felt like modelling on a hot spring day.

Emilie and the husband in the arena.
At least one of ’em has great hair.
The husband in the sun.
Too hot to work. Emilie trimmed the arena edges while we just slacked off.

Gravity? Works As Intended!

Thank the gods for helpful friends, small blessings, and little grey pills. Those were pretty much the thoughts on my mind when the figurative dust settled and I was alone in the dark in my hospital bed. Nothing’s so bad it couldn’t be a whole lot worse.

My otherwise very cool headed horse spooked and bolted, bucking. I found myself testing gravity which turned out to be working as intended. As I hit the ground my first thought was, at least it’s dry; landing in mud isn’t all that pleasant, particularly not in winter. No, actually, that was my second thought. My first went something like, OH PINEAPPLING CRANBERRY, this is going to HURT!

It did. For about thirty seconds everything in creation revolved around trying to breathe in spite of my lungs trying to escape through my abdomen.

Giving all the attentions.
Have a picture of cute animals. It’s better than the pain.

I managed to roll onto my back and noticed out of the corner of my eye that my arm didn’t roll along. Dislocated shoulder, fantastic. I was immediately reminded of stories about how much it hurts to have a shoulder pushed back in place. Then I realized that I could not move my arm and mentally added broken arm to the list.

My recollection of the next minutes are a little hazy. Somebody caught my horse and returned her to pasture. Somebody called an ambulance. The ambulance guys poked me everywhere to check for spinal damage and waved fingers in my face to test for concussions. A lot of bad jokes were made because laughter sure is preferable to crying. The ambulance guy gave me a shot of morphine before loading me onto the stretcher, and another before we drove off on the dirt road, the oh so bumpy dirt road. Somewhere in the middle of this my shoulder snapped back in place, but thank you, sweet morphine, I didn’t notice. I got a third shot before x-rays so that I didn’t try to kill the radiology nurses for moving my arm around.

Now I sit typing with my left hand only and thank the powers that be for helpful friends. Everything is difficult in my drugged state, and people have stepped up all over to offer assistance. At times like this one remembers how important it is to have a solid network of friends, how important it is to be part of a community where helping each other out is the natural choice.