Rite of Passage?

This morning Brian and I were finishing our coffee when my cell phone rang. The caller ID told me it was Cathi, who owns our barn. My heart gave a flutter as I answered.

Cathi is at least sensitive to the fact that most of her boarders have a reaction like mine when she calls them. She said immediately, “Nothing catastrophic, but Bear’s bleeding from his left hind leg. He doesn’t want to let me near enough to get a good look.”

So, Brian and I bundled up and headed out. Cathi was out in the pasture when we arrived, and told us Bear had been walking around fine and only favoring the leg sometimes when he stopped. Brian haltered Bear without a problem and we brought him indoors. There was quite a bit of partially frozen blood in the hair around the wound and on Bear’s other leg as well, so it was hard to tell at first what exactly was wrong, but eventually we got things cleaned up enough to see it was only one cut, about 3/4″ long and deep enough to be more than nothing but not serious enough to warrant calling the vet. It’s location on the outside of the leg midway between the hock and fetlock is not a high-mobility area.

Brian stood by Bear’s head to keep him quiet while I cleaned the wound with surgical scrub and then packed the gash with Neosporin. Bear was mostly patient with this, frequently moving the leg away when I touched the wound but otherwise not resisting. Finally satisfied we had done all we could, we wrapped the leg to help with keeping it clean. So now Bear is sporting a bandage quite a lot like the one Steen had to wear after his leg injury.

For comparison, here’s an old shot of Steen and his bandage (with his nursemaid, Sassy):

So, it is kind of funny that our two horses have each been injured once and in almost the exact same place. Of course (thankfully) Bear’s is much much less dramatic and serious than Steen’s was.

We’ll keep an eye on the wound over the next few days but hopefully it will heal without complications.