Sunday, November 27, 2011

Seriously?!?

I came back outside last night after the horses had been fed to take the dogs out and the pasture gate was completely torn off the hinges, it looked like someone had blown it apart with a hand grenade.  I grabbed Bentley and ran back inside and hollered at Shawn telling him the gate was gone.

I put on boots and a coat and ran back outside first towards the highway because I just assumed the worse and I was going to find them both out on the side of the road hit or something or they were just gone....
When I didn't see them out there I went back over to the gate and looked down towards the back of the pasture.  Shawn saw her before I did and started to walk in that direction.  Buck was down there with her and as we got closer I noticed she was standing funny, with all her weight in the front end and her right back leg was up, I knew this was not going to be good...

When I got down to her, her leg was broken at the ankle.  I won't go into details but needless to say there was nothing anyone could do to repair it.  She had torn up the backs of her legs, I assume she got sided up to the fence and got shocked by the electric fence and some how got her leg caught in the pasture gate (it was just a galvanized gate).  There was nothing we could do but call the vet and have him come out and put her to sleep (it took him an hour to get there though).

When the vet finally showed I grabbed Buck and walked him back up to the top of the pasture and gave him some feed to distract him while Shawn was down with Dolly and the vet.  Buck kept watching her of course and was fine for a while until she started to go down.  When she laid down he got very agitated and made the strangest low whinny, I've never heard anything like it and I hope not to again.  It sent chills down my spine and made me cry, I know he knew what was going on.  He basically dragged me all the way down to where Dolly was laying.  When we got down there he snorted really hard and flipped out and dragged me all the way back up to the top of the pasture where he proceeded to dance circles around me and holler for her.

After the vet made sure she was down we decided the best solution for Buck would be to load him up and haul him to New Spring Farm (about an hour trip with a trailer, it was almost 2 in the morning at this point).  She was going have to stay out in the pasture over night until we could get someone to come bury her or something the next day and I didn't think it was right to leave him out there with her all night long, he would have been panicking all night anyway.  I was really afraid he might go through the fence in the middle of the night and get hit on the highway.

Once he was comfortably in a stall we left the trailer at the barn and went home.  I went to bed about 4:30 this morning.  We got up this morning and spent the entire day trying to find someone to help us.  Luckily we have a great neighbor who just happened to have a huge bulldozer with a bucket on the front, he took care of everything in about a half an hour, I was so grateful.  There are few people out there who will still drop everything and help someone just because they can, I don't know how I'm going to repay him.

I feel so guilty for what happened to her and right now I feel like I'm not fit to have horses...  This has just not been the holiday break I had been hoping for.  I feel like a horrible horse parent today...

No comments:

Post a Comment