HOMBRE

This post is regarding a little gelding I had when I was a young girl. My grandfather left a field drag in the horse pasture with the tines pointing up. Well we all know where this is going. Needless to say my 1 1/2 year old 1/2 Arab 1/2 POA gelding got his leg in the thing and severed all the tendons in his hind left leg. My parents discovered it and brought him to the barn. My Dad put a piece of rope around his fetlock and worked the foot back and forth while my mom led him. They then called all the vets they could find, most of them wanted to know if he was a high dollar horse and if not my dad should just put him down. Well my little English grandmother finally found a Vet in Onekama after she gave him a good scolding he said he would come over. He drove 2 hours to help my horse. He and my father performed surgery on my gelding. The vet tied together all of the tendons that were severed and then placed a cast on my horses leg. My dad made a steel reinforcement for the cast out of an old steel step in fence post one of those short nasty ones. They are hard to explain they look like those little step in temporary fiberglass ones but they were steel. I doubt they make them anymore they were pretty dangerous. Anyway the wing part at the bottom was molded around the hoof and the rod went up the front of the leg it was sandwiched between the layers of Cast material. The surgery took a long time, then the recovery time was the crucial time because often times a horse will panic when they come out of the anesthetic with a cast on. My dad and the vet spent 14 hours with my horse. He never panicked he woke up and just proceeded to eat laying down. Then got up on his own without a fuss. I was away for the week when this happened. When I came home my parents told me and I did not think I would ever be able to stop crying. I am crying right now writing this. I was told by the vet that I had to begin an exercise routine after a week walking him and brushing him. I did this daily for 9 weeks. After the 9 weeks we were to go to the vet to get the cast removed but there was no way in this world my dad could get that horse in a trailer. So my dad talked to the vet and he told him what to do. My dad removed the cast then he had to remove stitches. The stitches kept surfacing for several weeks after the cast was off and my dad would pull them out. I had to continue my walking and massage the leg daily. I did this without fail. When my gelding was healed and moving around in the pasture by himself for a while my dad said I could begin to ride him. We knew he had a limp and he might forever, there was not way to know if I would be able to continue to ride him or he would be a pasture pet his whole life. As I rode a little bit at a time every couple of days (I only weighed 40 # or so). Miraculously the limp disappeared. I actually cant remember when it stopped. Eventually this little gelding was my 4-H show horse and we did speed events. He was unbelievable we were actually the fastest in kalkaska at the time. We won every barrel race we entered. Looking back I wish I had known more about things like i do now.What brought all of this up is, I was wondering the other day what happened to that Vet my parents cant seem to remember his name and I would love to tell him how it all turned out. I never got to meet him or find out who he was. Then today while I was doing some cleaning I found the picture of my little gelding with his cast on. I thought it was lost for life and the amazing thing was I found it in a desk calender that was from 2005 but I never made a single entry in that calender. Because we recycle I ripped the paper part out to put in the recycle bin and there was the picture. If I had just thrown it in the trash that goes to the garbage pickup I would have lost it forever. These things often make me wonder when they happen. That little horse still speaks to me from over the rainbow bridge, in that I mean what I learned is invaluable and sometimes I even have dreams that I am riding him.

I will be posting the pics