Horses Will Be Horses

Thanks to all of you for inquiring about Ace’s abscess as well as your encouragement. The abscess is looking really good! Actually, it’s completely healed up and just needs to grow some hair over where it burst.

Ace is feeling really good these days. When he gets out of his stall in the morning he gallops and bucks and rolls and acts like a very happy, feeling-good horse. Of course, in doing so on Sunday his back end slipped out from under him. He popped right up though and got away with just a scrape on the inside of his fetlock. Naturally, it’s the same leg that had the abscess. If it’s not one thing, it will be something else.

On another very horsey note, I went down to the barn Sunday afternoon just to spray some fur-all on Ace’s heel. When I walked into the arena, Dave and Tracie’s three horses were standing quietly in the arena. Ace was standing quietly in his stall. Then I did a double take; his stall door was wide open! Ace has moved into Classic’s stall in the arena, but has not been integrated into the herd yet since he was healing (the horses are turned out in the arena except when they are eating). But the boys managed to let him and tried to speed up the acclimation process. It could have been bad, especially if they trapped Ace in his stall, but everyone came out of it relatively unscathed. Ace has one bite mark on his side and one slightly tender spot where he probably got kicked. And they broke the plug on his heated water bucket. But really, that’s not so bad compared to what they could have done. We figured that because of this, and since Ace’s abscess is better, it’s time to focus on getting him settled in with the herd so he doesn’t have to stay stalled any more. Ace sure will be happy about that!

I’m looking forward to Christmas, but am going to be sad to be away from my boy for four days while we spend the holidays with family. Hopefully we can get back into training in January now that he’s all healed up and once we’re beyond the holidays.