the game's afoot

Get it?? See what I did there??? A foot?!?! Lolololol I crack myself up with the puns....

handsome boy. also, incidentally, currently not good for much else either.

The inevitable has become reality. Charlie's woe-befallen RH, of recent nail impalement fame, has indeed begun showing signs of abscessing. Sigh.

I had begun to hope we could avoid this entirely.... I mean, the spurting blood from the puncture seemed so promising! And he had become so comfortable!! I had even begun to tell myself that it really truly would be ok to school him purposefully again!

Alas, tho. Twas not to be. In fact, it all went down somewhat comically anyway.... In true Charlie fashion, naturally.

RIP horseware liner, you were gone too soon!
(for those curious tho, yes i absolutely went right on back and ordered another one....)

The foreshadowing: Charlie's normal sheet was still soaked from all our rain, so I had asked the woman who helps with blanketing to use my new Horseware liner and Mio sheet. Except.... dun dun dunnnn, I neglected to tell her about the clips on the liner for attaching it to the sheet's rear surcingle straps to prevent slipping.

Womp womp, you can probably see where this is going. Actually I know you can, bc the representative photo is literally directly above this text.

Suffice to say, Charlie shredded the liner beyond repair. I didn't even know if he took it off himself or if he needed to be rescued. All I knew was... that liner was DEAD. And whatever the case, I legit half expected Charlie to have maimed himself in some important way in the ordeal.

hm well golly gee wilikers, nobody could have seen this coming!

So the first thing I did after pulling him out of his stall that evening was methodically check each of his mud-encrusted limbs for blood, swelling or heat. And, Bingo!, I found two out of three where I least wanted to: his RH.

And it was hot. Dammit.

I guess it's possible that he somehow hurt that same hoof in some liner-related debacle. More than likely tho, we're still looking at fallout from last week's nail puncture.

fortune favors the prepared, eh??

So now we're back on full abscess protocol. Honestly I have no reason to believe this will be anything other than a normal, run of the mill abscess. Except that whole pesky "nail" business.... And the fact that it's Charlie and Charlie does things his own way.

But. The gist is: soak and wrap. Soak and wrap. Etc etc etc.

seriously tho. he's a good boy.

As far as I can tell, the nail hole is all sealed up. But I still cleaned up the hoof as much as possible before soaking it - rinsing in cold water and scrubbing with a stiff brush and hoof pick.

Then soaked in hot water with epsom salt generously poured in, plus some betadine too just for shits and giggles.

terrible angle. clean hoof tho...

After soaking for what felt like forever, I then poked around a little more with the hoof pick (finding nothing) then packed with poultice and more epsom salt and wrapped up for the farrier to evaluate.

and if you only saw this post from when i accidentally published it yesterday, you would have missed this sweet post-farrier barefoot pic..... still no sign of drainage tho...

The next day, farrier was able to pull his shoe and look around a little more. But while there's definitely something brewing in there, there's no sign of drainage yet. So Charlie's back on the farrier list for next week, and in the meantime I continue to soak and wrap, soak and wrap.

"hm this isn't so bad!" - charlie, probably

So. Ya know. Whatever, right? It's not like we didn't see this coming...

Frankly I was already pretty convinced that Charlie would wait until Saturday morning, after I'd already packed the trailer and loaded everything up for Loch Moy, to announce his intention to abscess.

"oh wait, shit, i immediately regret that choice"

Silver linings I guess are that the organizers allowed me to apply my entry to a future event instead of forfeiting it entirely (which would have made it the 3rd lost entry out of the last 4 mailed out, including the end of last season... those ain't great odds, Charles!).

now that's what i call thinking

So.... That's basically where things stand right now.

Still no reason to believe there's anything more nefarious going on inside the hoof.... He's been too comfortable for too long to suggest any injury to any of the important structures. Theoretically.

And an abscess certainly isn't the worst thing in the world. Honestly it's abscess season right now anyway, with all the wet/dry/wet/dry cycles we've been having with rain and freezing conditions. It's still reeeeeally freakin annoying tho.

C'est la vie, tho, right?