When your horse who has never had stitches, gets them.

Gruesome pics below but not before I tell the story.

Last Wednesday evening I hauled my butt out to the barn to work on setting up stadium for the upcoming mini-trials. We host a mini-trial nearly every month from May to October and this year I've taken on the stadium course responsibility. So basically I just re-create the SJ course from the mini-trials I attend (up north) for the ones we host. It's working out well this year.  Below is the upcoming course (already emailed to competitors)

Maiden = Starter. Don't know why it's called Maiden but we'll go with it.

SO. There I am, moving poles and standards and whatnot when AC calls over to me; our friend K is coming over with the Gator to pick me up; Dassah's has an eye injury.

Now I board with fantastic women but some of them are a bit more hyper-vigilant than I am. If I see a scrape, I slap some goop on it and go on my way. If it's a puncture wound, I'll message my vet with a pic - the last time Dassah had a puncture wound, I sloshed some betadine on it and followed up with some neosporine. That's it. Wounds heal themselves so long as they are clean (unless you are a Bobby, then all bets are off)

So when I heard she had an injury, I internally laughed it off but decided to play the concerned owner part.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA.

Ok, I know I said I'd save the gruesome pics for later but I can't wait. If you want to stop here, know that after three rounds of sedative (Dorm, more dorm, and Xyl-whatever) A TWITCH, she's stitched up and the swelling has gone down.

Ready?
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(I don't think you are)
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(giving you more space so if you scrolled down to read, you aren't hit with the photo)
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(ok)

PUKE. Right?

I called and texted my vet and sent her a picture. Dassah is THE WORST with needles so Dr. P had me scrounge up some Dorm to get her at least semi calm for the xlya-whatever. After a full tube and 40 minutes, she was still awake enough to throw her head around for the xlya-whatever injection. Thanks for the blood splatter, mare. So two of those done (vet was not taking any chances), she was still tossing her head (but totally wobbly) when Dr. P started cleaning up the wound. So then we added the twitch.

I had 3 other people with me for 2 hours and I couldn't have done it without them. It took one to prop her up, one to hold her, one to twitch her (me), and another to provide relief.

Here's Dr. P stitching her up and my barn owner propping her up!

Thankfully we went from the first pic to this in an hour:

Baby girl was snoring by the end but still managed to wobble back to her stall.

I took a turn propping her up when everyone stepped away to stretch their legs.

Of course the fly mask we put on was ripped off and ground into her shavings the next morning - it may have been a bit too big but at 10:30pm, it's what we could scrounge up. (mine was found the next day).

Also, how hilarious is this parking spot? Friend K couldn't find reverse (it's a tough one to get) so did the best she could. Bless her for bringing my car over.

The next morning I went out and found her eye looking much better.

She's on eye goop, Banamine, and SMZ's for a couple more days and had to stay in last night when everyone went out (she was NOT happy but we kept a new horse nearby for company, not that she cared).

She'll go out tomorrow night if her eye continues to look better. Friend G stopped by this morning (she works near the barn) and said it looked better and she took the eye-goop fine. Apparently soaking the SMZs in water before adding to the grain works because she's been eating it all up (woohoo!!).

As for what caused it, who knows. We searched her stall and found a couple potential suspects but nothing certain. She's been in that stall nearly 2 years but who knows, a nail could have popped out, she could have caught it on her feed tub, the halter hanger hanging over her stall door, or maybe it was done in an act of self-flagellation for how horrible she was in our dressage session earlier this week.

Fingers crossed she's done beating herself up for the near future.