The best sign of spring

The automatic waterers were turned back on today!  Phew, three months of breaking ice out of buckets was more than enough.

Here's the latest on Gwen's leg.  Looks pretty good, eh?  There are two small scabs left but it looks like 95% of the wound has finally closed up.  Time will tell how the hair grows back in over it.  She's guaranteed to have one heck of a scar though.

I've been working further on saddling her this weekend.  She had no issues with the girth yesterday or today, I even put one of the stirrups on the saddle and practiced putting weight on it.  It might not be much longer before I need to gather my courage and swing a leg over!

I even climbed up on Coriander bareback this weekend.  Thank goodness he's a saint of a horse, because it was more like desperately scrambling onto his back.  Even with the snow advantage, he's still 15.3 and I'm still 5'4".  I just walked him around the pasture for a few minutes, maybe if Gwen sees me riding him she won't be so surprised to find me riding her.

It was another beautiful weekend, sunny and in the 40s F, and it's supposed to stay that way all week.  Finally!  I cannot wait for all this snow to disappear.

A rotten, pulsating, cesspool of disease?

Maybe...

Check out this picture of Gwen's leg from a few weeks ago:

See that black line that's running down the middle of the wound there? I think that might have been the culprit in Gwen's last infection.

Check out how the wound looks now after taking Wolfie's advice and putting polysporin on it:
See where it's raw looking in the middle there? That's right where the black line was. I put polysporin on it the night I saw it was infected. The next day when I went to put more on that black bit sloughed off, under it her leg was raw and bloody. Obviously that black bit was an ominous sign that I wasn't paying close enough attention to. Hindsight is 20/20 they always say.

Anyway, I'm paying attention to it now, so hopefully her leg can get busy healing again!

The danger is past

Great news, The swelling in Gwen's leg was down significantly last night and almost completely gone tonight. Apparently it pays to have a huge bottle of antibiotics just sitting around the barn.

I bought Coriander some underwear because his blanket has been wearing the hair off his shoulders (Bleh for cotton lining and no shoulder gussets. Yep, I'm living and learning here). I sincerely hope that next winter the quarters will have a lovely big pasture with a run-in to live in and I won't have to do blanket ballet again with them. Of course that will also depend on what kind of winter coat they grow. This winter they just didn't grow enough hair for the frigid cold we've had and are still having.

I'm tired of winter, I can has spring now?

Dear Gwenevere

Baby girl, you know I love you but you are killing me. When I walked into the barn this morning and found your leg swollen up like a balloon and warm to the touch, I almost screamed with frustration.

Really my dear, do you have the WORST immune system possible? How is it that after SEVEN MONTHS your leg still has not healed to the point where it won't open up the tiniest fraction and allow an infection in? Speaking of that, why is it that you get an infection every time you have the most minor laceration? It really is mind boggling.

Maybe you just really like the taste of SMZs? Well you're in luck, because you're going to be getting your fill of them for the next seven days.

Blue Sunday

... because it's raining and I can't ride :(

I realized I haven't posted a photo of Gwen's leg in a while. Here's what it looked like yesterday. As you can see the skin has grown back over the wound and there's very minimal scabbing left. It looks like the hair might grow back over most of it and she'll only be left with a narrow scar. Time will tell. I've been leaving it unwrapped when she goes out, I don't want the pads to get sopping wet in the melting snow, but I still keep it wrapped if she's standing in the stall overnight or during bad weather. If she were any other horse I could leave it completely unwrapped at this point, but not Gwen.

Clicker training is progressing. We've moved onto the next phase of training: targeting. I went to the crafts store last night and picked up a dowel and a styrofoam ball and made a target. Today I taught her to touch it with her nose. Fortunately she's the curious sort so that wasn't hard. I'll keep on with the target for a couple days. I'll see if I can get her to move her feet to touch it, or raise and lower her head. Then I'll take Gwen and the target out for little walks. Hopefully if she gets comfortable touching the target it will help her stay focused when she's away from the other horses.

I've been using the clicker to get her started picking up that left hind foot. I'm trying to keep her relaxed and let her know what I want all at the same time. You'd think she would know that I want her to pick it up like all of her other feet, but obviously horses don't work that way. I've also been spending more time touching her ears and belly, getting her ready for the saddle and bridle that she will someday wear.

Injury update

Look at that, by golly!  She might be healed up by Christmas.  It's amazing what happens when you just leave things alone and let them do their thing.

After being stuck inside yesterday due to nasty cold, blustery weather, the quarters went out today and enjoyed a most unusual wintertime visitor: the sun.  Here in the middle of the finger lakes we typically don't get sunshine between November and April - we just get gray.  Stupid lake effect weather.  So today was a special treat.

I even went on a short little ride on Coriander.  The ring is too frozen to ride on, but we went around the farm a bit and had a nice time.  Then we went and practiced setting up for a halter class.  He's getting a lot better at it.  It helps that he was probably taught how to square up about 8 years ago, so all I have to do is refresh his memory.  Now I have to work on getting him to trot in hand.  We'll take it one step at a time.

There's a light...

Here's an updated photo of Gwen's leg:

compare that to two weeks ago:

 

 

Now that's progress you can see!  Finally it's looking like she's going to heal in the near future.  Don't let all that grey stuff bother you, that's just the Equaide.  The hock joint was even less swollen than that, but the weather here has been nasty for the last week and a half and they've been stuck inside a lot -- so it's been filling with fluid.  Grrr. 

You may have noticed that Gwenevere is skinny, well I'm working on that.  She was on antibiotics for a long time and was getting probiotics to offset their affect on her stomach, but she didn't like the taste of the probiotics so she was really picky about eating her feed.  Then the vet suggested I give her some rice bran oil to pack some calories in and she hates the taste of that.  She'd just get mad and paw all the grain out of her pan.  So now I'm onto my Father-in-law's special Cornell Mix (he sells grain for a living, it's legit).  He said it's guaranteed to pack the weight on.  We'll have to see about that, but at least she likes it.  She actually licks the pan out now.  So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she's going to start filling out now.  With winter coming on strong she's going to need a bit of fat!

My Lady of Perpetual Injury

So a week after I got Gwen she tried to jump the fence. Fortunately and unfortunately I watched the whole thing happen. Though I was impressed that she managed to jump 3' from a standstill, I would have been more impressed if she had seen the top strand of wire. That way she would have cleared the whole thing and not ended up stuck between the strands. Then she wouldn't have ripped the front of her left hind leg off jumping back out.

And thus began a saga...

This mare refuses to heal. The accident happened around August 5, around August 10 her leg looked like this:


The last time I took a picture, around November 14, her leg looked like this:

Seriously, refuses to heal. I've learned a good lesson about nervous, hyper 4yo mares, they will gnaw on their legs like wolves. So I've got to keep it wrapped. Wrapping an injury that high in front of the hock and having it stay up? Almost impossible without massive amounts of really expensive elastikon (which she hates). But it is finally, finally looking better- believe it or not.

I'll keep you updated.