Friday the Thirteenth...........Oh My!

I'm really not a superstitious person but I must admit when I realized that today was Friday the thirteenth and I was getting ready to leave town with my Arabian horses, I had just of twinge of discomfort. Little things keep happening throughout the day to blow my schedule all to h*ll but I just chalked it up to Murphy's and keep on my way, hours behind schedule but on my way none the less.

Then on the ride home I got a frantic call from Lindsay telling me I might want to get myself home as soon as possible. Such a call is not the norm for Lindsay. She's made many calls with problems at home but never once has she told me I needed to be there ASAP. I knew immediately that something really bad had happened.

When I asked her what had happened she told me that the yearling colt, Andy, had cut his leg and blood was squirting from the wound. I know Lindsay well enough to know that if she tells me squirting, then squirting is what it's doing. I told her to tell Dad to put pressure on the wound. I would call the vet and be there as quick as traffic would allow.

I don't know what it is about Friday night traffic but it seems all the nuts come out of the woodwork to make hay on Friday nights. There were cops with flashing lights and drivers still bouncing from lane to lane acting like they owned the road and my truck and horse trailer just plane p*ssed some of them off. Not because I was doing anything but minding my own business but because I was there in the first place. Not driving like a lunatic just isn't acceptable behavior to those Friday night freaks.

So I'm trying to survive my trip and call the vet at the same time. But that's another funny thing I've noticed about Friday nights, vets are rarely available. I called Jack, my regular go to vet (also the only one who runs a tab for me.....bless his sweet little heart) and the man was in town at a wedding. The first back up vet still had patients at the clinic and couldn't come for a couple of hours. Thanks, but no thanks, my horse could have bled to death by then.

Driving and calling on the cell phone are not really my thing. I can talk just fine. It's the finding the right number part that causes the problem. My go to vet is always in my recently dialed numbers so that was easy enough to find but when I needed to search for vets number two and three and still stay in my lane, I was getting a bit frustrated. Flashbacks of the night the twins were trying to be born and not vet could be found were popping in my head.

Thankfully by vet number three I got a service that promised a call back in at least twenty minutes. This service did know enough to advise me to apply pressure to the wound so that gave me a shade more confidence. However, I was worried about that twenty minute call back.

Fortunately, my cell phone rang in about two minutes. That and this vet was only twenty minutes away, gave me a bit more breathing room. I hadn't heard from Lindsay or Dave so I assumed they were managing the wound ok. However, not having an idea where it was made me nervous.

I was really relieved when I turned the corner down the road to my house. I parked my rig and opened the back door of the horse trailer so the horses inside wouldn't cook while Dave screamed his lungs out at me to get him more guaze as he lay down on the ground next to this yearling colt grasping his right front pastern with both hands.

To say that Dave was stressed would be a gross understand. This is the most excited I've ever seen the man be. The gauze he was using over the top of the wound to apply presssure was completely drenched in blood. Dave was worried it wasn't being effective anymore with it being so sooped.

I tried to soothe his fear a bit by telling him to remember that horses have a LOT of blood. More than you would every expect! So even though it looked like a lot of blood had been spilled, it was really nothing in the big scheme of things. As long as it wasn't squirting anymore, we were good. The vet was on the way with projected arrival time just twenty minutes.

I headed to the barn and grabbed my emergency kit and brought the whole thing back out to the horse. Then I double checked the location of the wound. It was from the front to the inside and from the coronet band on up across the artery and around the side.

I figured that the more direct the pressure was, the better off I'd be. So I opted to not use guaze and apply a firm but not too tight pressure wrap directly with vetwrap. I figured by wrapping around and under the hoof I might be able to stop the flow of blood.

It sounded good in theory but it didn't work that well. Even with the vetwrap in place, we still had to apply external pressure. However the vetwrap worked more effectively than the guaze that Dave had been using to try and stop the flow of blood. So we took turns keeping the pressure on and waited for the vet.

to be continued..........

This picture is Andy last year at my open house.

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