Six Days Later

Today was the first Duke-Day inside the new structure. Granted, we have stalls on only one side and a lot of other unfinished elements, but I am sure Duke appreciated not being in the sun all day.

Steen got his feet trimmed, and afterwards we celebrated his progress down the path of healing by putting him back out in the large pasture with his herd.

Things are looking pretty good. We changed the bandage on Thursday and decided to leave it off so the scab could start forming, as the swelling was mostly gone and the flap of skin we were hoping might reattach clearly has no intention of doing so.

He’s off his antibiotics and painkillers now, so mostly we’re just applying copious amounts of zinc ointment and hoping he will heal without infection.

his two worst wounds – I didn’t think to take the photo until after I put the zinc on today

Steen and Brian, hanging out the area we’ve been letting Steen graze a lot lately

at least he’s still pretty

It’s been a pretty harrowing week, with many, many trips to the barn to check on Steen and doctor him. After the first day, he was walking much more willingly, but still clearly tender. We changed the bandage for the first time on Tuesday, and he was such a good-natured patient, things went smoothly. The last number of days, he’s behaved as if it’s barely bothering him, and has not favored the most injured leg for many days. So, hopefully this incident will leave nothing but scars. I’m happy to get him back in the pasture and hopeful he’ll put the weight he lost this week back on quickly enough to leave him in good condition for the onset of winter.

That's a bit of an accomplishment in our attention-deficient age. Kinda makes me wonder if you like to read things that are even longer than blog posts? Like ... books?

Novels for Horse-Lovers

Woh! Hey, look at you reading this entire post!