I'll change her wrap again this morning very shortly. I'll first hose it clean, and I plan to trim the long hairs around the edge of the cut this time. Before it seemed much too tender for her to allow me to do this, but I am hoping now she'll allow me to do that. It looked much improved already on Monday morning, so I am hoping for even more improvement today.
Last night my husband set up a temporary fence in a grassy area for Arabee. I wanted to give her the chance at some unrestricted movement (Freedom!) after being stalled for so long, but the pastures are not yet ready for hoof traffic. It's much too soft and any large animal (horse or cow) moving over it would just tear up the grass, and pasture management is important now - the better you take care of your grass the less hay you end up having to feed in winter. So we set up the temporary fence in a section of a field entrance that is close to 1 acre that has well established, never been grazed (since no real fencing) grass. It is sturdy enough that her hoofprints wouldn't have hurt it, and at the same time, all we'd been doing was mowing that section anyway, so any grazing we get out of it would be good.
You can see the lane at the right, and there's woven wire fence along the tree line, and a good section of woven wire along the road, and a gate at the lane. We put up a single strand of 1" wide electric tape (which you probably can't see in the picture) with a few step-in posts and made a triangle. I stayed out w/ Arabee for about 20 minutes (it was COLD and WINDY last night!) and if I wouldn't have chased her around I do believe she would have stood in one spot and ate all the grass there.
She was pretty greedy - huge mouthfuls of grass, and when she'd lift her head up to stop to chew (it's a wonder she ever did!) I'd ask her to trot out a bit. Then I'd say "easy" and she'd immediately drop down to a halt and stuff as much grass into her mouth as possible. She wound up getting decent exercise - more freely than if she'd been on the end of a lead rope, and I think she greatly enjoyed the grass!Off to go dress the wound!
6 comments:
I know the feeling. I'm doing the same thing. Except I gave my girl a tranquilizer to clean and debride it. Because she just was getting more and more protective of it the more I would do with it. And it really needed to be cleaned better. I could hose it. But she wouldn't let me get in and scrub it good. The tranq took a while to work but she finally relaxed enough for me to get it cleaned out good. The vet said to do that once a week for the next couple weeks. Besides me hosing it out every day. She is finally putting weight on it, and wants to run and can almost kick at me now. Good but not good. Leg wounds take forever to heal in horses. Urgh!
Ouch! So Sasha's injury was pretty serious! Fortunately for Arabee, she has been moving great even with the cut, except for immediately after, which I'm sure was just because it stung. (like when I stub my toe and can't walk for a few minutes... ha!)
I've never dealt with a baby, Jack was 15 when I got him, and Arabee was 3. Do you find yourself working on manners quite a lot?
It's harder to discipline her when she's so injured and she's a baby. I was doing good before the injury. But now when she tries to kick at me with her hurt foot because I am touching it and making it hurt worse, I really don't feel right punishing her.
Michelle Detmer
What a great photo! That green grass looks beautiful! Can't wait until it turns green (and warm) up in Wisconsin. Glad Arabee is doing so good. Terri
looks like arabee's on the mend. Good that you're exercising her.
Here in montana where we're enjoying a very SHORT spring.. 13 more inches of snow expected :( But weather was great yesterday for a show here that I rode Gazi .. he was a champ
Manker - Oh neat! I always did enjoy showing, it just costs more than I want to spend at this point!
I'll head over to your blog and see if you've posted any details up of the weekend!
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