‘Oh Crap’ Monday: Murphy Must Have Owned a Horse…
Monday already is the crappiest day of the week, so it only makes sense that we make things official. Here’s our latest “oh crap” moment.
Horses have an interesting relationship with rules.
“Respect my personal space” is open to interpretation. “Please stand still” requires extensive negotiation. “That fence is there for a reason” gets referred to a committee.
But Murphy’s Law? Anything that can go wrong will go wrong?
Oh, they follow that one. To the LETTER. And my mare, Mac, appears to have appointed herself head of enforcement.
Picture it. Saturday morning. I called the horses in to eat. As usual. The horses come trotting to the fence. I watch them, assessing how everyone is moving and counting legs.
Then I see Mac.
Even from a distance, I could see that she was INCREDIBLY lame. She was hobbling in, and my stomach did that familiar drop that horse people know entirely too well.
With Mac, unfortunately, this is familiar territory.
Remember, this is the horse who fractured her P1 (long pastern bone) and then, within weeks of being cleared for turnout, severed her medial digital artery.
Weeks.
Apparently, being cleared for turnout sounded to her like an invitation for more stall rest.
She also throws shoes regularly and finds plenty of other ways to keep things interesting. I would prefer boring. I would pay extra for boring. In fact, I’m fairly certain I already do, and I would like to speak to whoever handles refunds.
So, as she hobbled toward me Saturday morning, my thought was the exhausted, deeply unoriginal: What have you done to yourself NOW?
The answer: she had thrown two shoes. In spectacular fashion.
Right hind AND right front. An entire side of the vehicle. Excellent.
Front foot. Photo by DeAnn Long Sloan.
Hind foot. Photo by DeAnn Long Sloan.
And boy did she mean it, because apparently slipping off a shoe and leaving it somewhere in the pasture for me to find would have been insufficient.
She had managed to get the clip of the front shoe lodged in the sole of her foot. Super.
Somewhere, Murphy was checking a box. Murphy must have owned a horse.
This is what gets me about horses. They can have acres of room, food, friends and absolutely nowhere they need to be, and still find a way to turn breakfast into an incident report.
Meanwhile, we spend our lives trying to anticipate every possible problem.
We walk fence lines. We inspect footing. We pick up objects and think, Could a horse hurt itself on this? before remembering that the answer is yes — regardless of what we’re holding.
Photo by DeAnn Long Sloan
So here we are: wrapped foot and leg. Again. Antibiotics. Again. Stall rest. Again. And sedatives for said stall rest. Again.
Because after demonstrating that unsupervised leisure time is beyond her capabilities, Mac now needs pharmaceutical assistance to participate in supervised leisure time..
And yes, underneath all the sarcasm, I hate seeing her sore. The jokes come after that first awful look across the pasture, after the worry arrives and makes itself comfortable. I love this horse, and I want her comfortable and sound.
I would also love for her to stop treating those goals as a personal challenge.
For now, we’re back to the familiar routine, and I’m once again wondering how an animal can be so committed to injuring herself and so opposed to the part where she has to stand quietly afterward.
Horses are the worst. Naturally, I’ll be back out there checking on mine shortly.
Murphy, if you’re reading this, you can cover the next farrier bill.
Sigh.
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Go forth and tackle your Monday, Horse Nation.
Have an “Oh Crap” moment to share? Email your photo/video and a brief explanation of what is going down to [email protected]. Instagram users, tag your moments with #OhCrapMonday (your photos need to be set to public or we won’t see them!).
