A scary week for me and Mr T

breaking and entry evidence

It all started on Saturday morning when Mr T and Sofie’s field suffered from a pitch invasion. The girls in the ‘retirees’ filed next door barged down the fence and I found them merrily munching with T and Sof in the morning.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been wanting to mix Tonto in with the retirees for a while as I will need to split T and Sof at some point due to their different needs. The retirees have a feed once a day and hay which is perfect for Tonto, less so for fatty-mc-fat-fat sof. An added bonus is that the retirees are an all-girl group atm, so if he plays his cards right Tonts could have his own harem.

I have been putting off the mix though because I was worried about Tonto’s health and have been trying to keep Sofie calm. Mixing into a bigger group normally requires a bit of argy-bardgy. I didn’t want to force this on my ponies.

But as always, they took matters into their own hands. The groups have been next to each other for a while – so when it came to it the argy-bardgy was fairly minimal. Scarlet the dominant mare had a quick display to show she is top dog – Tonto very chivalrously put himself between Scarlet and Sof but I don’t think there was any venom in Scarlets kicks. They were for display only, no contact was made. I decided to leave them as a group.

Making new friends

I came down Sunday to find a very sore Tonto. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot on his back legs. I was utterly devastated. I really thought  his legs were gone. I felt so guilty for mixing them in with the girls next door. Even worse I could not make it down on Monday due to work commitments. I gave the yard instructions for painkillers and turned them back out in isolation, and then cried – solidly – for the rest of the day.

Monday I called the vet, and they were concerned that it could be laminitis. Mr T and sof were pulled back in to spend a night off the grass. I spent the night beside myself with worry.

When I finally was able to get down on Tuesday I found two very cross ponies. Sofie was in a mega grump – even took to kicking Tonto. She was firmly sent to the naughty corner (perhaps too firmly as she was rather scared of me for the rest of the afternoon). Tonto was not only grumpy from being in, and clearly in discomfort. This time however, the cleaver bugger spelt it out to me. He kept coming up to me, and then cocking his leg and pointing at his gentleman parts.

The vet arrived shortly afterwards. Mr T was having nothing to do with her after the blood test fiasco a few weeks ago. She did check for pulses (when Tonto begrudgingly let her check his pulse – but only after taking a few swipes at her to show his displeasure) and watched him trot. But it was very clear the problem was his parts not his legs.

She quickly conceded that Tonto was not going to let her treat him. So I volunteered to ‘go explore’ but I kept the vet near-by just in case I failed to find anything. After a quick rummage I found fly lavee. No wonder he has been wincing. The vet was dismissed and I was left with the un-envious task of cleaning.

I have never been so happy to be elbow deep in rotten maggot filled horse parts playing a bizarre game of tough of war (Mr T won fyi). The relief that this was not the end for Tonto and I can easily remedy the problem far outweighed the horror of sheath cleaning. Mr T was also clearly very relieved to no longer have maggots squiggling in his genitals. He was very patient throughout, and if could not have been all that comfortable for him.

For now on I vow to take better care of T’s intimate areas. Horse ownership is in no-way glamorous.