Leave it to a horse

A few days after having left the horses at their new home I went out to do some ground work with Booker.  Now that my guys are too far away to ride during the week I'll be "leasing" Booker.  After chasing him around the pasture for 10-15 minutes, I finally caught him and noticed this:

Of course, first day out and he's got himself a big old chunk of skin missing from this leg. Since his leg was messed up I went right to the tree to tie him and get the hose.  He stood fine that whole time.  Drug the hose out there and took off the sprayer thinking that'd be too scary and just the regular water coming out of the hose would be better. But he didn't like it anyway and started to pull back.  I put the hose down and he stopped pulling for a second but then started again until he broke the halter and took off.

He ran around to the drive way and then down to the gate to the pasture. When he saw me coming of course he took off again.  I went around the other way and he went back down to the gate. He tried to get into the trees but it must have been too thick.  I was able to get to the gate and open it while he went and stood a bit off.  I was then able to herd him back into the pasture which is where I think he wanted to be anyways.

I needed to get the remaining pieces of rope off him so I decided he didn't get out of work that easy and got the regular halter.  This time I was able to catch him easily.  Maybe because he had that rope on his neck still?  I took him to the hose just to see if it was the hose or being tied that was his issue.  He didn't even want the hose on his front feet so we worked at that for a while.  He was better being held but still would pull back so we had a few times where I made him back up all over the place at high speeds.  Didn't really "fix" anything though.

Took him into the arena, shut the barn door just in case and got a bucket of water.  He stood better for that (not tied) but when the water would hit the wound he'd walk/run away, probably didn't feel good.  Even with getting some water on it I wasn't getting it clean enough.

I decided to work on something so I got the fly spray and we worked on that.  Still with the pulling back so we did some more backing and I made a lot of "shhhing" noises to imitate the spray.  Finally he just stopped and let me spray him. Not sure if he gave up, or if I won or what?  But I gave him lots of praise and sprayed a bit before I lost my chance.

So it's looking like Mr. Booker needs some lessons in not pulling back, fly spray, hose, needles, and who knows what else.

I ended up calling the vet to come out that night.  I couldn't get it clean enough and we figured the flap of skin would need to be trimmed off.  So I armed the vet with the warning that Booker did not do well with needles last time (granted those were needles in his feet - I don't blame him).  He was able to get the needle in with little trouble and Booker was drooling soon enough.  Thank goodness he doped up easily ;)

The vet cleaned it up and gave him some Novocaine and trimmed off the skin and also gave him some morphine.  And as long as the guy was feeling good we also floated his teeth, saved a call charge and drugs since he was ready to go.  So the vet said clean every day, spray with Aluspray, and give him antibiotics.  Could be 4-6 weeks that we'd have to keep up the cleaning and spraying.

The day after I went out and the barn owner helped me clean him up. We weren't sure how he'd do un-drugged and we didn't want to tie him so it was a two man job.  I held him and she cleaned him up with a bucket of water and a rag.  And he did really well. I had to shank him a few times with the halter but other than that he stood really well.  He even stood for the Aluspray and some fly spray.  To top it off, he ate his meds in some grain.  Was thinking we'd have to make a paste out of it and put it in a syringe.

So Nancy has handled subsequent cleanings and he's doing really well with it and we think it's healing nicely as you can see from the photos.  And I think he's getting the added bonus of learning to not pull back, at least with this situation.  She's been working on flyspray as well.  Still haven't tackled the tying issue but that's a bit more tricky.

He's a little pushy going into the barn right now, he looks forward to his grain/meds.  But that should go away when his meds are done in a couple days.  Of course it might be harder to get him in to clean his leg with no treats ;)  And we're loving the Aluspray.  Something we're definitely going to have around the barn for cuts and scrapes and things.  It sticks really well and keeps the bugs out.