The Followup Visit

Badger's followup visit was today and things went very well for him. His eye is almost back to normal! I'm glad the vet waited until this point to tell me that some elderly horses don't have the physical ability to bounce back like he did and many end up losing an eye due to injuries like he had...gah. I mean, not that they can't function happily with mono-vision; but I think anyone, especially a prey animal, would be happier with two functioning eyes instead of just one, given the option.

I'm sure he'll be relieved to find out that he only has to get one dose of eye goop in a day, instead of the 3x poking and prodding he'd been getting. As much as he's a sweetie, it was pretty easy to see he was quickly getting tired of people doing stuff to his general eye region. He still has to wear the eye cup for at least another week, though...poor guy.

It seems like the wait time has gone by so fast...now we're only a few weeks away from finding out whether he can be ridden, when before it seemed like the months were endless. Is it really already 21 weeks? At this point I might as well count by months instead...so March 3 marks the end of five months.

Learned something new and unexpected this week, too...I was brushing him and noticed a random bald spot on his neck that wasn't the one that'd been shaved for his injection site at the vet's office. Horrified (OMG does he have some kind of mange now?!) I immediately asked Tracy about it. Turns out, older horses don't shed as evenly as their younger counterparts do (hormones and health affect all this), and some can get really big bald patches while waiting for the new coat to grow in.

I'm really glad I was told that, since while I was brushing him today the fur on his shoulder area started to get really thin...always find it funny though, he really seems to like being brushed down right now. Perhaps it feels good not to be carrying all that hair now that the weather is warming up. His head droops really low like he's dozing off...if I was being given a massage out in the middle of a sunny lot I'd probably fall asleep too. Thankfully I can already see the hair growing back in the neck patch where he was shaved for his vet visit, so I'm sure he'll be sporting his new sleek summer coat soon enough.

Since it's been so wet I figured it wouldn't hurt his hooves to wash them off, so back on Sunday I finally got to see what they look like under all that mud! I'm actually surprised they're kind of medium-colored and stripey...thought that lighter colors and stripes only happened when there was a corresponding white marking touching the foot. Until then I'd figured his feet were mostly dark. Only washed off the front two though, since I didn't want him to get too bored. (It was a LOT of mud.)

Because he was in the vet's office for so long, he unfortunately missed his scheduled hoof trim...funny enough, the next time the farrier is scheduled to show up at the ranch is directly on my birthday. I guess I know what I'm getting!