Aspire's Injuries

As my earlier post said I moved Aspire to a new place on Wednesday. The first night I kept Aspire in a pen with hay and water that is adjacent to the arena with Dusty, an older gelding. Phoenix (the dominant horse), Rosie, and Gray were all left out in the pasture with the arena gate open so they could come in and access the automatic water that is shared between the arena and the pen and allow Phoenix and Gray to meet Aspire through the fence. The following day I put Aspire, Rosie, and Dusty out to pasture so she could get a feel for the terrain and learn the fence lines. Phoenix and Gray went into the pen for the night and most of the day on Friday. Friday afternoon we let Phoenix and Gray into the arena and closed the gate so they had room to run around and still meet over the fence if they wanted before letting them out to pasture with Spy. We let Phoenix out first, keeping Gray in, and he ran straight over to her and began chasing her around. He ran her pretty hard, nearly into a fence a couple times, but eventually stopped. Aspire was at one end of the pasture (which is about 20 acres) and Rosie, Dusty, and Phoenix were in the middle when, after about 10 minutes of peace, we decided to let Gray out as well since all seemed to be going okay.

Gray ran over to Aspire to check her out and Phoenix followed. The two of them began chasing her again. She was running her little heart out trying to get away but they kept on her, biting her and kicking at her if she slowed. She began running down one of the fence lines approaching the corner where the arena meets the pasture fencing. This little corner is hidden behind the tack shed and we couldn't see it from where my friend and I were sitting on the fence observing the horses. All of a sudden we heard the screech of wire and the fence break and Phoenix and Gray running away. We took off across the arena to find Aspire upside down with her feet tangled in the barbed wire fencing, her completely on the other side. It looked as if she'd got her two front feet through the fence and got pushed to try and jump or run through it then somersaulted and flipped over the top, twisting the wire around her feet and tangling her so she was trapped laying down on the other side.

As we approached we were worried about her flailing and hurting herself worse but she just laid there. I'm pretty sure she was in shock, which was a good thing for us since it seemed to be keeping her still. I knelt over her neck in case she tried to stand while Jamie worked on freeing her feet. After she was freed, she laid for a couple more minutes before standing up. She just stood with me, let me halter her, and lead her into the pen that she had stayed in the first night.

Her injuries are mostly superficial, lots of cuts and scrapes. She has one cut on her upper and inner forearm on the right with a big flap of skin hanging (flap is attached at the top so hopefully it will keep it's blood supply and not dry up) that looks pretty bad and one long scrape going down the outside of her tendon on the left front that doesn't look bad but it's swollen, as was her left knee today. She let me doctor her up by myself yesterday and today. She's such a trooper.

She's never been hosed before, and I only had 3' of hose to work with that's in that pen today to try and clean up her cuts. She wasn't crazy about it, but eventually did stand to let me hose her a little (of course she had to drink from the hose first). For a two year old, with such minimal handling, and with all the stress she's under and the pain, I was so impressed with her letting me do as much to her as I've had to for doctoring purposes. I'm going to bring ice packs to hold on her knee tomorrow to alleviate some swelling if I can since I don't think she'll stand long enough for cold hosing and because of the tiny hose I don't have a lot of room to allow her to drift and help teach her to really hold still for now. I'm optimistic about a full recovery, minus some scars possibly, but am still going to keep a close eye on everything until I know more.

I'm not really sure what the plan is next for keeping her there or moving her. I'd love it if we could help them get long and create an environment where they could work it out but I don't really know how to do that except possibly put Phoenix and her in the arena and have people with flags in each corner to help them from getting stuck, and let him chase her around. Anyone with opinions or thoughts on this?! I'm not willing to sacrifice her safety again.

My heart is just bleeding for her right now. She's lonely and every time she sees me nickers and calls to me, and when I leave she paces the fence and gets anxious. She has made pretty good friends with the goat, Kaluha, and Gyro the sheep who's recovering from a broken leg and is in the barn attached to Aspire's pen. I opened up the barn today so she and Gyro could get better acquainted since Kaluha is always roaming around and Gyro doesn't move at all. Aspire loves the goat and I hope Kaluha will start sticking around with Spy more. I wish I could just take her home and keep her in my front yard, I feel terrible about the whole thing. I know we did everything to cover our bases for this introduction but I still feel badly about it... I've never seen a horse run another horse like this in my entire life and I've seen a lot of new horse introductions to already established herds.

I'll probably take some photos tomorrow of her injuries to track her healing. Keep her in your thoughts for a full recovery!