Wobbles

So three in the morning the dogs were barking and I thought is someone breaking in or something?

I go out and there's nothing, but I think I hear Maggie the mare who has figured out how to get out the tiny gate and into the chicken area and eat all the chicken food and then come over into the backyard where I'm worried she'll fall in the pool so I go out to make sure she's not causing trouble.

I hear water gushing so I'm like dammit Maggie, she must've broken a water pipe and I go into their area and there's a flood happening but I caught it early so I go over to the water pipe and there's no one to help so I do what Tim taught me which is look at the base of the pipe for a shut off valve and it looks like there's one buried in the dirt so I'm kneeling in wet dirt in my boxers and digging with my fingers in hard dirt and I get the valve and will it by some miracle actually shut off the water? And it moves and it DOES! I am amazed at myself for finally fixing a boy thing somehow on my own in the middle of the night and the flood is not so bad thanks to the dogs for waking me up now instead of later. So I clean up horse poop barefoot since I'm already out there and I hate a mess and there's my boarder's horse, an OTTB, laying right next to the flood and not seeming to care, sleeping, so I just go back to bed after dipping my feet in the pool.

Then I hear again the sound of horse hooves hitting metal piping and I'm thinking dammit Maggie she is really getting into the chicken area now so I get back up and go out and there's the boarder horse, and he's flinging himself all around in the dirt like crazily. I watch him, frozen, because this is weird. He's laying down like a normal horse but then he can't get up. He rolls and it's like his legs aren't working, he flops and throws himself to get up and his legs just don't work, they don't belong to him, they aren't reaching under him to help him up like normal. I think oh shit he got his leg stuck under that water pipe and broke his leg. Something is so wrong.

So I have to wake up my boarder and knocking softly on anyone's door at 3 am is not the thing anyone wants to do or hear.

She comes out and we watch this horse fling himself all over and then I start getting worried because he's going to hit the water heater or the wall or break everything and himself - a 1200 pound whale flailing around in a too small corral is a disaster movie.

I tell her to call her vet because we need a sedative, and she calls him and her old cigarette smelling cowboy ex boyfriend and the cowboy shows up.

We again try and understand what has happened, checking the horse's legs, which all seem to be intact, and trying to get the horse up, and trying to angle him for safety while trying to stay out of his way.

After 2 hours and some sedative and no vet, we get him shakily standing. He's like a baby who is just learning to walk he has no balance at all.

The sun is suddenly coming up and I go back to bed for an hour and then the vet comes and it is a stroke or a broken vertebrae and I'm thinking how do they get dead horses out of backyards? Because are we having to put him to sleep and he is huge.

The horse looks like a boxer with swollen eyes and cuts and swelling all over his body from his fight with balance and the ground. The boarder and I have tried to remain calm and figure out what to do.

In the next six days he stays in one small area, and eats and drinks and barely walks. One time he's standing and we're watching him and he just falls over suddenly. But after that he manages to stay on his feet and slowly start to walk funny, tiny steps with a weak back end, all mismatched weirdly like the kind of walk you do in a horse costume when one person's the head and another is the butt and nobody knows where you're going.

The vet says he has a 50/50 chance of making it.

My horse licks his knees. My boarder thinks it's because he's a healing horse but I think it's because he had some food on his knees. Maybe it's both. Except I know my horse. He's a kindhearted horse, but more than that he loves food.

She has an animal communicator out even though she hasn't been able to pay her rent. I try not to laugh but I'm getting now a little bit worried. And I'm open to voodoo shit, sure, that's cool, but animal communicator is the one thing that can be totally made up and no horse is going to tell you anything different. Because they can't talk. She could in fact be making it ALL up.

My horse comes up to her and she says the horse is showing her on her body all the places where the boarder horse is hurt. I'm thinking my horse is checking your pockets for snacks. But. Okay.

She tells us the chickens are happy.

THE CHICKENS ARE HAPPY. Of course the chickens are happy. Their brain is the size of one sand. No doubt they are happy.

She then gives an expensive laundry list of all the things we have to do for stroke horse, and my boarder who never listens to anything I have to say even though she is new to horses, she suddenly wants to do everything this quack who is talking to my chickens wants her to do.

I told her no I will not electrify my fences. No I will not feed special hay. No - have you looked at my horses? My horses are fat, healthy and happy. I will continue to do what I am doing to give them the life that is obviously working. Overworking in fact.

I am sorry for her huge, ill-used ex racetrack thoroughbred who was hard used and then thrown out, and then romantically adopted by her with the thought that you can love anything into being better. We had a feral dog that I did the same thing with and he was never normal. He just cost a lot less to feed, and a dog is not a horse. A horse is a partner and unless you're rich, not a great pet to upkeep. Especially if you're not riding him.

I'm hoping she will find him a home with a big pasture where he can stretch his long legs and be a companion horse for someone else's horse. That is a horse's ultimate dream anyway. To just hang out in a meadow and not have to do anything. Heck that's MY dream.

In the meantime I will try not to be mean in the meantime because she is a nice person and we need the rent too, and her horse isn't dangerous. But I hope she will do what he needs, and maybe we'll see where we all end up. This horse was not the ideal companion on the trail anyway, maybe he's best resting the rest of his life. I have hope for him.

Wobbles, the stroke horse. Still standing. So far.