Owie Update

Thank you, everyone for your well wishes for Junior. Other than being mad as hell at being kept in his stall the last three days he seems to be doing fine so far. I keep waiting for my phone to ring with someone telling me he tore his stitches out, but so far I don't think he's rubbed it at all. At least I couldn't find any silver rub marks in his stall. Seems to be a teensy bit of puffiness in the middle of the flap and when he let me put my hand there it felt just the slightest bit warmer than the rest of his face, but only slightly. If it gets bigger/hotter I'll call Dr. Johnson but it's just ever so slight. I thought about sending him a photo but I couldn't find an angle that would actually show it, that's how slight it is.

The BM is keeping a baby sitter in for him so he's not so lonely. Yesterday it was Little Red Apples the mini who lives right next to him and today it was Ranger the QH/Arab. As soon as I walked into his line of sight he whinnied at me. SAAAAAAAVE MEEEEEE! I took him out right away and let him trot a few feet up to the wonderful grassy spot near the turnouts. He acted like he'd not eaten in months. The BM is keeping him with hay but he has been mostly trampling it instead of eating it. His stall was a MESS and it had already been cleaned once! I haven't seen his stall like that since we moved out of the old barn!

After our walk/grazing I brought him in to eat his dinner, cleaned his stall, and brought him out for some grooming. He let me brush some of the dried blood out of his face pretty close to the stitches so that was an improvement over yesterday when he wouldn't let me touch his face at all. He even rubbed his forehead on the mitt a little.

Since these face scratching injuries seem to be a trend with him, I'm looking into ways to provide him with the horsey equivalent of a scratching post. Hopefully this will prevent him from using sharp objects! I found THIS mountable scratching pad, but at $15 for only 5"x6" I'm not excited. I hate that everything with "horse" in the description is so much more expensive than it's equivalent MINUS the "horse" on the label?!?! Besides, I like creative solutions so I started brainstorming and thought of something like THESE. 16" x 24" for $18. I'm going to try to find them locally and look for some the consistency of a rubber curry comb. At least now I have a place to start. Maybe I'll find something perfect!