If anyone even reads this blog anymore...
The story of Doofus...
whose actual name is Rockin to the Core...registered APHA/Breeders Trust/Pinto horse too...so with all this royalty (Grandpa is Dirti Rocki) why does he give me so much grief...
Day one...Doofus is born...actually at night...
ME: OH SHIT!!! It is a Lethal White...(tears and sobs...what else can go wrong in my life?) Waaaaiiiittt a minute...(pulls gently on snuffling little face emerging from mare) There's a medicine hat!!!!! (Relief) Oh wait!! He doesnt have an ear! (shit!!!) Oh wait! It's there just mashed down...
Anyhow he was born with a 'crushed' ear...all tangled up and turned inside itself...I named him "Crush" for a barn name...
Cut to a couple months later and multiple arguments with a blacksmith looking to get fired...but what the HELL do I know? I call the vet who determines that Crush/aka Doofus DOES have a club foot and if something isnt done LIKE TODAY I may as well put him down...it is BAD! I KNEW IT! By that afternoon I am on my way to Gainesville with a borrowed horse trailer...OH! I forgot to mention the day before we had lost our barn to Hurricane Charlie as well as our BRAND NEW Exiss gooseneck lying wheel up in the road since a tornado picked it up and tossed it and we couldnt move it until the insurance company saw it...SHIT! My life and welcome to it...anyhow, Crush, despite all his issues, hops right onto the borrowed trailer, a bumper pull, and waves buh-buy to mommy...welcome to weaning! We are on our way to Gainesville. Upon arrival I practically have to throw him off and turn around to race home as there is ANOTHER hurricane coming...Big kisses to my now weanling baby boy, admire his crystal blue eyes, his returning-to-normal ear, and I am back on the road battling 40 MPH winds and praying this borrowed trailer doesnt meet the same demise as my Exiss...
TWO weeks later, the hurricane debris is cleared from the med center at Gainesville and I can go pick up my baby boy...the board bill is $2000. He spent most of the time 'hunkered down' in the clinic kitchen with a group of trapped med students who treated him like a prince...I don't think he even missed his dam...Party on, dude.
So after that, his weaning was non-existant to me, his gelding at one year was uneventful, and when it came time to start saddling him, he took everything in stride...then one night he cracked his head open in the barn...I mean, open skull-this-is-it-get the backhoe kind of injury...Clint came in the middle of the night, picked the bone frags out of his poll, did meatball surgery on him for an hour and assured me he would be fine...Frickin' horse...Love my vet. He has hands that could sew up humans...
We deal with this...for 3 months, Crush recovers...quiet time in his dark cool stall...he loves it...
We start saddle time again...this time he is in the round pen and finds something imaginary to jump. He lands on a panel, cutting his hind leg to the bone...about a 2 inch swath. Cannot sew it so I tetanus him, pain killer, clean it and clean it...Now it is just a scar...
A year later...he is doing well. I decide to take him to his first show for just showmanship...no other horses, show off the trailer...his first time out for a real show...He wins his first class of 12, green horse showmanship! I am completely thrilled and he is such a good boy. We come home with great pride and feelings of accomplishment...let's get ready for the next show and I will ride him...Not to be.
The next day, a sunday, I turn him out for an afternoon in the woods. About an hour later I call him; he is standing oddly to one side of the pump house...he doesnt move...very unusual as he almost always comes flying in...I walk out to see his OTHER hind leg cut to the bone...I sob all the way in from the pasture; Clint will make me put him down...this is bad...
I don't call Clint (my vet)...I wash the wound out, tetanus, bute for pain, penicillin for infection, and scrub his stall down...In he goes for the next 2 months of complete stall rest.
Six months later...he is sound again...his hind legs look like someone dragged him down the road with a meat cleaver but he is sound. I take him to a show...he wins showmanship, green horse w/t pleasure, w/t horsemanship, and goes high point green w/t horse....I am living in fear of his self-destructive nature.
4 comments:
DANG!! Sounds like my Arabian gelding...it's just one thing after another...LOL! My husband (a mechanic) thinks I should "lemon law" him...oye...men and their senses of "humor"...LOL!
I am here, and reading right along. :-) Have we all had a horse like this? I had one that at 8 days, swallowed a fecal ball. Vet couldn't get it out of his throat, took him to the vet school two hours away. 1st thing a student puts the tranq in the wrong place, goes straight to his head and they spend two hours reviving him. Next they have to take the ball o' poop out with basically tweezers on a wire, one pinch at a time. Baby goes on milk only which means a muzzle and feedings every hour, 24/7. sigh. Milk had gone down into his lungs as he tried to nurse his anguish away so then he got pne... ok i can't spell it and I'm lazy, sick, and spent another week at the vet school. Luckily (why are these horses lucky too?) the scar tissue in his throat grew the right way and he was able to breathe. Then he grew an abcess in his nose from the tubing, had to have that drained...the size deviated his septum so he snored all the time. By the end of all that we called him Gold Gus since we'd spent his weight in gold to keep him alive. :-)
I have been coming back daily to read what is going on here, so keep up with the stories and I will keep up with the commentary!
hmm, Suicidal Horsey. Well, I almost got strangle trail riding yesterday. My BBG(Big Blakc Gelding) and I were jogging threw the woods(he knows those trails better than me as he took me right to the bridge where I wanted to go) We were jogging to get away from those dang mayflies as fast as we could and turned a corner, vine caught my neck, he kept right on going, now It looks Like I failed at suicide. But I was proud because as we loped down the driveway he kep his head pretty low, not quite low enough for showing, but low.
How close we all come to cashing in those chips via horses??? Once I had to bail off a runaway and missed a barb wire fence by mere inches...I still get goosebumps thinking how close that came...That stupid Appaloosa could have killed me 20 times in my youth as I tried to get him broke...he was 17 hands and had not the first brain cell...
Trail riding was his downfall...he just about went down for the count when he saw a cow and decided running away out of control was the best answer to handling that situation...now that I think of it, Doofus is a ROCK compared to that stupid nag...
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