ding another day

This whole equestrian blogging community never ceases to amaze me - bloggers, readers, commenters, all of you. Really truly. Y'all are a special bunch.

charlie practicing his #goatskills during evening enrichment from stall rest

Sharing bits and pieces of my own life so publicly on the internet can be scary sometimes.

Like it's one thing to just post the glamour shots - those special glossy moments where everything knits together into a glittery rose-tinted moment of utter perfection. Or, ahem, well. You know what I mean. Those moments that to *us* are close enough to perfection.

loookie!! only a few holes through the toe of this wrap!! gettin better!

Those good moments are always the easiest to share, right?

The struggles tho? The low moments? The self doubt or mistakes or sadness or uncertainty or fear? It's a lot harder to form those feelings into words and release them out into the wild, into the notoriously cold judgement of the anonymous web.

so much stuff tho. we switched to packing with sugardine and i made wayyyyyy too much. kinda looks like blood, no?

But somehow, for some reason, so many of us are driven to do it. Superficially, I blog for myself and nobody else. I love having this little corner of the web as an archive of my horsey life. It's my encyclopedia, my diary, my book of record, and my photo album. And as such, I try to keep it as honest as possible. For better or worse.

more outdoor enrichment while waiting for the vet!! warm and sunny enough to be out without a blanket too!

Realistically, there's no reason why any "book of record" needs to be public in this way tho. Except, in sharing my story, it's taken on a life of it's own. Participating in this community has given me this whole new channel into the equestrian lifestyle. It's opened my world to trading horsey stories and experiences, and sharing in all the joys and sorrows with everyone else here.

apparently not too lame to keep climbing up that little hill

I'm amazed and inspired and filled with gratitude almost every day of writing this blog and sharing this small little story with you all. And equally amazed and inspired by the stories you all tell too.

I'm not sure what it is - whether it's about horses or whatever - that makes this community so special and unusual among the rest of the social media channels. But your genuine support and encouragement and engagement are like stabilizing forces in my world, especially in those most challenging times. I know that in the most difficult moments, you all will be there. And that means so much.

we interrupt this lame horse update with a pic of playing pups. bc obvi

So I probably don't say it often enough - but I remain extremely grateful for this community. Thank you. Just. For everything.

and uh. wait a sec. about that lame horse. ya know. the one who was waiting for the vet for rads on that RF to see if he chipped off some of the coffin bone?? uh. yea. THIS was how he chose to stand while waiting for the vet. needless to say, the radiograph machine did *not* need to come off the truck haha

I think my favorite thing about reading so many other blogs is just how relatable all your experiences are. We don't all have the same interests or goals or backgrounds or hopes and dreams or resources or whatever. We're not all in the same place or on the same trajectories... But it doesn't really seem to matter, right?

"oops, guess i was actually fine all along. shrug??" - charlie, probably

Bc the horses are still gonna be horses -- still gonna give us that thrilling ride of a lifetime or that unexpected serving of humble pie. Still gonna spook at that thing they've already walked past 8,000 times, or injure themselves in some moment of reckless abandon. And still gonna be exactly what we need after a long day of dealing with all of life's other obligations.

when you are a #bigboy it's easy to steal food over the fence

And in some small but important way, it's reassuring and reaffirming to share in those experiences with you all. Any sort of social media is hard, I think. It's hard not to want to compare myself or cast judgment or whatever, and I think we all deal with that to a certain degree. And I'm sure as shit not claiming perfection in any way over here.

But again. Something about this community makes me want to keep participating.

dis one might not be "big" but he's for sure the most macho resident on farm

And hopefully that will continue to be the case for all of the foreseeable future. Luckily, despite Charlie's latest ding, he seems fully on board with that idea too.

charlie loves the shetlands, even the fabio-esque stallions haha

We did end up getting the vet out bc that persistent lameness really wasn't sitting well. The vet agreed and we talked through options like rads and a distal limb perfusion.

If you're not familiar with that procedure, it's actually really cool: essentially you put a tourniquet on the leg, then pump it full of antibiotics below the tourniquet, leaving it in place for something like 30min. This forces a concentrated dose of antibiotics directly into the injured extremity, vs relying on some systemic treatment in a 1,400lb animal.

he just wants to be friends with everybody

The vet's thought was that: if we were still dealing with acute and extreme lameness this far out from the injury, there was maybe a not insignificant chance that Charlie had either chipped off a fragment at the edge of his coffin bone, or was brewing a bone infection, or both. Infection in particular would only make things worse the longer we waited, so she wanted to get in front of it.

of course, with that kind of hair, who wouldn't want to be friends with this guy??

As is Charlie's way, tho, he appears to have only tiptoed jussssst up to the edge of catastrophe, but not actually gone all the way. After we made the appointment, he came basically sound. And the morning of, as you see in the picture above, he was standing heavily on that hoof while grazing without a care in the world. Phew! Bullet dodged, again.

anyway. back to the vet visit. better living through chemistry. and a whole fuck ton of antibiotics.

Still tho. We opted to go guns blazing with the antibiotics, minus the limb perfusion. He got his tetanus booster plus shots of Gent and Excede, and will have more of each over the coming week. Bc bone infections are not cool, yo.

Other than that, tho? Well? The puncture isn't draining any more - another good sign. So the vet wrapped him up with some sugardine (sugar + betadine, a cool, inexpensive, effective vet-recommended DIY solution!), and we'll continue that until the sugardine I mixed is gone. Then just a dry wrap for another little bit. And meanwhile the big guy is back to normal turnout.

but hey, happy charlie = happy emma!

Not-so-secretly, I'm hoping that this veritable antibiotic-assault on Charlie's system will mean no abscess this time. Maybe? Pretty please??? But I guess we'll see. In the meantime, he gets another week or so of rest. A small price to pay, right?