One Step Forward, 300 Back

Victor arrived on Tuesday night. Bloodied nose and all. But this was to be expected. Earlier in the day, Joe, the fellow I'm fostering for, phoned to tell me that Victor had bonked his head on his feeder but that Victor was on his way, regardless. "Just clean up his nose and he'll be good," said Joe.

For some reason, the hauler decided to take Victor on a tour of Northern California so they didn't show up until 7pm. Victor has claustrophobia issues so I didn't expect him to be all happy and smiley when he got here but jeepers, he looked bad. Really bad.

Yesterday at work I get a call from the ranch. "Victor's nose is still bleeding and his face is swollen." Bye bye work, hello 80mph up Highway 87.

For those of you who don't have horses, let me tell you that every horse person is an expert on horse care. So when I got to the ranch I had six people giving me six different explanations as to what was wrong with my horse. I opted to call the vet since Victor's paddock looked like a crime scene. There was blood smeared everywhere.

I shall spare you the gory details of the vet visit. The long and short of it is, Victor has fratured his frontal sinus bone on both sides of his face. He also has a rather nasty wound where his head made contact with the feeder. For now, we're taking a wait and see approach and treating with antibiotics and the horse equivalent of Motrin for pain. My vet is reasonably confident it will heal on it's own, provided Victor is kept quiet over the next three weeks. If not, well let's cross that bridge when we come to it. But you know you're a horse owner when a vet hands you a bill for $300 and all you think of is, "Oh thank God that's all."

And through all of this, Victor has been the kindest and gentlest soul. Can you imagine what kind of pain this poor boy was in, standing in a trailer for seven hours with what must have been the world's worst headache? Yet not once has he fussed or been difficult.

Joe's response when I phoned him to give him an update yesterday? "Well just send him back."

Like hell I will.