Playing catch up

By now this is old news, but here's what's been going on at the barn...

I had a few great rides on my horse, so it was inevitable that something would happen to slow our progress. On Tuesday of last week I had just started to groom Kaswyn when I noticed a large swelling on his neck that wasn't there on Monday. Upon closer inspection I saw that he had a little hole in the swelling, and that he also had a few small splinters in random spots on his neck. I squeezed the area and pus came out. Great. I could feel a very large splinter in there. Susan said that she had seen him rubbing his neck on one of the posts by the gate, so that's how he must have done it.

I called Dr. B, who had just been out to give yearly shots, and had to wait a few hours for him to arrive. Since Kaswyn was outside when I got there, I put him back out and got some pizza with Marge and Susan. I figured I'd let him have some grass while we waited.

We brought all the horses in for the evening feeding, and a few minutes later Dr. B showed up. He checked out the swelling and then gave Kaswyn some geneticin and some sedatives. He had his tech shave and scrub the area, and then he tried to dig out the splinter with his fingers. No luck, so he went to the forceps. That didn't work so well either. He said he was going to have to open the hole a little bit to try and get to the splinter. He was really hesitant about just slicing it open because of course it was located right over Kaswyn's jugular vein.

So once more with the scrubbing, and Dr. B got gloves on and made a teeny incision just to widen the hole. I was watching him dig around in the hole, and as I was holding Kaswyn's heavy head I started to get a little woozy. I said to Marge "Here, can you hold him for a sec?" and then I walked rapidly out of the barn. Luckily there is a bench right outside the barn and I had to sit with my head between my knees for a few minutes. It got a little dicey for a minute or two and I really thought I was going to pass out. I got the ear ringing, tunnel vision, and little spots of light swirling around. I stared hard at a rock on the ground and begged my brain not to shut down. Somehow I was able to return to normal and walked calmly back into the barn.

Dr. B still was digging at his neck. Kaswyn was starting to wake up a little and he was beginning to fuss a bit. Dr. B said "Come on, please don't make me have to open this up. I really don't want to do that!" I made sure I focused on Kaswyn's face and not the hole so that I wouldn't almost faint again. That's why I didn't see Dr. B finally pull the monster splinter out. It was about an inch and a half long.

He decided to leave the hole open to drain and put Kaswyn on ten capsules of doxycycline twice a day for five days. That meant that I had to open up all of his feed containers and mix the capsules in. Just when I thought I was done breaking little capsules in his food. Ugh. It's been a week now and the hole looks great. Just a little scab and the swelling is almost gone.

In arena news, I've been in contact with Mr. K. He is now able to come and work on the arena, but we're having scheduling issues. He was going to come out today but that's just not going to work for me because I have to stay a little late at work and Craig's car is in the shop. So I'm hoping next week we can arrange a time. I've been watering and dragging the arena which has been improving the footing somewhat since my truck pushes a good amount of the extra footing up into the corners. It's not fixing the problem by any stretch of the imagination, but it's making it more ridable. I do need to be careful not to effect the base.

One afternoon I was lucky enough to see Marge's older son in his shop and I asked him to take a look at the drag to see if it could be fixed. It's broken and I wasn't going to come right out and ask him to fix it, but was hoping that he'd offer. We went over and I showed him where it had been broken and asked if it could be welded back together. He said it couldn't be welded because an important piece was broken off, but he figured out how it could be cut and reassembled to be a smaller fixed drag. I just nodded and said "Uh huh, okay." But never asked him if he'd fix it.

He looked at me while I was nodding and looking at the drag, and when he realized that I wasn't going to say anything, he sighed and said "Well, I suppose that on a day that I don't have anything going on I could fix this for you." I told him that would be great and we'd really really appreciate it, thank you so much, etc. He just said "Yeah, okay." It might take him a month, but at some point the drag will be fixed. It will be missing one row of teeth in the reconstruction, but that will just make it lighter and easier for me to pick up and move around. That damn thing is heavy!

Besides trying to get Kaswyn back in shape I've also been riding Susan's horse Albert a little bit. He's a real blast to ride but he's really out of shape. He was Reserve National champion at First level in 2003, top Ten in 2005, but he hasn't done much since. Just for fun I'll be putting him back to work. It will help both of us get back into shape! Maybe Susan will want to show him at some point. It would be fun to take both boys to a schooling show. I guess we'll see how that goes. For right now we're just doing body building with some serpentines for suppleness.

Lastly, tomorrow is our big trip to Ohio State for Kaswyn's skin test. It's a really cool place to visit, especially since I'm going there for something simple and not life threatening. I'll get lots of pictures!

So that's just the barn update. We've got other stuff going on like some drainage work for our yard, my parents coming to visit, and entertaining the girls. I'm ready for a vacation!