Yesterday, I poked my head out to check on the horses and they were in the back field. The fence looked like something had come through it from the outside, in. I went out to retrieve the horses, and brought Freckles and Jessie in... this left Ari and Bronwyn and Sable, our 25 year old retired broodmare. When I went back for my second round of pony wrangling, Sable was standing with her back to me and I could see that her fetlocks were covered in blood.
When I got a little closer, after she evaded me a bit, I saw that the entire front of her back legs were drenched in blood and she had a very significant cut on the front of each leg. I helped her to the barn, going slow and easy, and got the other two horses into the fence. I lugged her to the barn and then tried to set up the hose so I could rinse off the blood and see how bad the cuts were. I could not coax her back out of the barn and to the hose... we stood in the yard and she bled and bled while I called mom and dad, and the vet.
I didn't realize she was bleeding THAT much and the thought of stopping the blood somehow managed to be secondary to getting her hosed down, I don't know why, but when I looked back and saw how much blood was there in just the few minutes I had spent talking to mom and dad, I realized she needed to have some pressure put on them.
I got her inside, got some pads and polo wraps and wrapped her up as tight as possible, then put her in the back box stall all bedded up. The vet arrived about 45 minutes after we called for him and gave her a shot for the pain, then investigated the wound a little bit to find that her tendon was severed. We decided almost immediately to put her down because she was such an old horse and the stall rest would have really hurt her with her breathing problems. We got her back outside and to a relatively soft spot, and we gave her the shot.
After she got down, the vet checked the other leg and found that tendon was severed, too. I have absolutely no idea where she hurt herself, mom and I each walked the area twice and can't find anything. It looked almost like she had put her feet through a floor or something, which is completely impossible. With the amount of blood she had lost, it would have been difficult to save her regardless. Poor old girl. There was just so much blood everywhere.
I'm just very discouraged right now. This morning, fence all fixed, I put the horses out and they didn't stay in the fence a whole hour before they were out, and then when I went to put them back in the fence, Shay's dumb draft cross went through and tore down another section.
I'm just tired of not being able to do the horses justice. They need a stronger fencer. But we're getting a puppy instead. I don't even want to talk about that.
I am hoping that Roux comes home from visiting his parents in time to come with me to Bangor to pick up the puppy but it seems unlikely that he would want to be stuck in a vehicle for another six or seven hours after he's just made a trip that long the day before... if he even comes home today.
I keep, in my brain, imagining (or hoping, in some sick way?) that he's gone up there to get permission from his parents to date a non-Catholic girl. But you know, honestly, I feel so indifferent to just about everything right now, I don't even care, and I am not willing to bank on anything positive happening right now. I just want to load my horses up on the first trailer that shows up here, and not have to think about them anymore. I know it is my grief talking but all I can think about is all the blood.
RIP Old girl.
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