Sunday, December 23, 2007

Twister or Les?

This is Twister the One-eyed Wonder Horse relaxing in a patch of sun in his paddock. He has a huge cataract and is essentially blind in the one eye he has. Yes, that is a bandage on his hock. If you look carefully, you can see a matching purple and white one on his right hind leg. He usually has at least one bandage somewhere on his person (or horse). He's sort of like the Les Nessman of the horse world.

This most recent bandage is due to a wound that won't heal. It has been 5 months now, and it is very close, but not quite there. He somehow managed to grind gravel into a bedsore on his hock, probably during his second favourite activity - rolling (his favourite, of course, is eating). It got very nasty very quickly, so here we are months of bandaging, 6 weeks in a long-term care facility, and many many 100s of dollars later. The purple bandage is the real one. The white bandage is actually more of a preventative measure. I can't afford to do this again.

Supposedly he's an American Quarter Horse. He's about 16 hands at the whithers; luckily they don't measure at the lowest point on his back. He originally belonged to my son, but my son became more interested in girls than horses and officially "gave" Twister to me a couple of years ago. Twister is only 23, but is officially retired now due to numerous foot and behavioral problems. He's lucky he's so cute.

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