Fat leg

Tom, the klutz, looks as though he’s borrowed a lower near-fore from a passing elephant. A brown and furry elephant, obv.

Earlier on I had so many things arguing for brainspace that I felt my head was about to explode, so I legged it up to the yard for a little equine escapism.

I arrived as the dentist was packing up; I had booked him to give Tom a check-up whilst he was at the yard looking at another horse.

Unfortunately Tom needs quite a bit of dental work, so we’ve booked it in for next Wednesday; we will need to have the Vet in attendance too, to administer some anaesthetic.

But Tom also saw the Vet today.

The dentist mentioned the aforementioned fat lower near-side foreleg, so I checked it out. The leg wasn’t hot and there were no obvious signs of damage so I cleaned it up, hosed it for five minutes and re-inspected.

The hosing didn’t reduce the swelling (known as ‘filling’, in equine circles) and very close inspection revealed nothing except a tiny and very old nick that looked a bit pink.

Hayley said that Tom was paddock hopping yesterday but today he didn’t, which indicates that whatever it is he’s done, he did it within the last 24 hours.

So I called the Vet, put the kettle on (for a mug of tea, obv), got Vin in and set about grooming the pair of mud-covered Herberts I call my horses.

Three-quarters of an hour later I had a sparkling clean, large dark bay chap and a slightly smaller, but equally sparkling chestnut boy. And two enormous piles of dried mud on the floor beneath them.

The Vet arrived while Sammi, Hayley, Owen and I were sitting in the tack room, drinking more tea and having just a minor gossip.

The Vet had a good poke around, said there was nothing embedded in the leg and that it was probably just a minor infection behind an old but not-quite-healed cut.

She put a huge syringe-full of antibiotic in Tom’s neck and followed that with a small dose of ‘Bute.

The fat leg should be back to normal by tomorrow morning, but we have to give Tom an antibiotic twice a day for a week.

The bad news (for Tom) is that as of tomorrow he can go straight back in to work.

By the time all these things had happened, time was getting on, so I gave both boys an extra carrot and came straight home – so Vin got a bye today too.