Good Morning - or not...

It's unfortunately common to stroll out to the barn for whatever reason and be surprised by some situation.

<= like this one.

We've had obscene amounts of rain in the last week and today, well... yesterday, was the first day we saw any sun in awhile. The horses are shedding and itchy, and so the pony came up out of her pen into the stall to have a good dry spot to roll and scratch in.

Since I have panels instead of solid stall walls (remember, in Texas we have more days each year over 110 than we do below freezing), the pony found herself in a little bit of a silly situation.

In this case I had to manage to get a long soft rope double-wrapped around the pony's pastern (between the fetlock and hoof) - which is how you turn a horse over by yourself - although getting down and between a horse's back legs when it's trapped and potentially likely to panic is very VERY far down my list of intelligent things to do ... and in this case was complicated by having to engineer the pony's leg so the bend in the hock would come back through the bend in the pipe fence panel. It was a little more excitement than I enjoy these days, but we got it done and no one any worse for the wear.


So what is it you do routinely?

I mean the kind of thing that if you stopped and thought about the process you'd refuse to follow through ... these are things that need to be done *now* ... that you can't call a professional to come take care of it for you. ...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, the silly things horses can do! So glad it turned out ok. I once found my horse standing - fortunately very quietly - at the pasture fence. The fence was woven wire (I boarded there, wouldn't choose that again) and my horse had somehow woven both front legs through the wire and then back again.

Becky Burkheart said...

*blink blink* ... through the wire and back again... *head desk* but, yes, I believe you. They do get into the weirdest things.

zoeybird09 said...

Oh My! Glad it turned out OK!

Val said...

**Snort** - that reminds me of the time I was having nice safe woven-wire fencing installed... The problem came when the guys left a "snare" in the form of one of the old twisted-wire corner-post braces.
Yep, Quig stepped right into it!
I thought he had permanently crippled himself (he did chip his extensor process on that coffin bone when I radiographed him later & that episode was the only reasonable explanation!), but he recovered to do a few more miles for me in years to come :-)

K.M. Saint James said...

I can't even imagine how you'd right a horse that's stuck like this. You make it sound like it's all in a day's work . . . and no one I know can work that way.

Congrats for freeing the pony.

Hey, next time one of my kids does something silly, like sticking their hand or head in something to small, I'll call you.

Here's to the miracle-worker of untangling testy situations.

Glad the pony was fine.

Becky Burkheart said...

HAHA! Sorry Sandra, I don't do kids. (or 'undo' as the case may be) ;)

Becky Burkheart said...

Val, I'm sure you have more than just a few similar stories, not just with your own horses, but through your work.