I'll tell you what, life in general is much more distressing than usual lately. First there was Mark's sister Judy's illness and her ultimate death a month or so ago while Mark was stuck in the hospital here in town for more than a month, as well! Then Mark's Uncle Ralph died this past week. And now Janet's dad died yesterday. So sad. It's bad enough to be getting old ourselves, but losing our friends and family? . . . that's REALLY a difficult thing.
But you know what? . . . things in general have been a BIT of a hassle lately. First of all, it is cold, cold, COLD down here all of a sudden . . . down to the 20's at night! On the plus side, I had gotten a horse blanket for Shadow a month or two ago so we could keep all three of them nice and comfy when winter came -- we THOUGHT January or February. So I was happy to know I already had that thing when it went down to freezing all of a sudden down here. But as it turned out, she apparently had never worn a blanket previously because after I threw it over her (and that wasn't that big a deal), while I was trying to reset the strap across the center of her belly she threw her head around, grabbed my arm, bit the crap out of it and threw me down onto the ground!! Scared me to death ultimately! But at that moment, I just suddenly saw myself on the ground and didn't even realize what had happened for a couple minutes while I tried to stand up. A few minutes later it hurt like hell, but (thankfully) I was back in the house by then. Wow! I've NEVER had a horse behave like that before. Never! Needless to say, I'm a LOT more cautious with her now than I used to be!!
And you should see my arm at this point. It's swollen up to half again its size. It's entirely black and blue with a few red spots as well where her teeth just about went through! Luckily, I was wearing a really heavy jacket with two layers of shirts underneath. Darned good thing it was winter!! Now when I drive, I have to use my right arm, putting it up onto the steering wheel, because if it touches against the back of the seat that REALLY hurts. I can't stand to have anything touching it right now.
I remember Jan telling me last summer about one of her horses biting her leg when he was trying to bite another horse while she was riding him. She told me how awful that bite was but I had no idea just HOW awful it really must have been! Well now I know!
On the plus side, though, Gigi wants to stay inside instead of out while it's so cold out there, and she no longer complains at all about being closed into her big crate in our bedroom. And unlike the blankets in her dog bed out on the porch, she doesn't pull the stuffing out of the blankets inside her indoor crate. That's definitely a good thing! (I might be tempted to throw her back outside if she destroyed everything while inside. Lucky for her!)
At any rate, I sure do hope that things go back to a normal, happy lifespan by spring. Fingers crossed.
1 comment:
That's scary to have a horse that would do that. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
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