Go kiss your pony!

Tonight at the barn one of the horses got himself stuck in a feed window in his stall door.  Red is a 16.2hand 24 year old QH gelding.  He's been abused in the past, and can be nervous and flighty but is generally very well mannered and level headed.  No one saw how he did it, but somehow he got his front end thru a 1ftx2ft (ish) window and got stuck at his hips.

Thankfully Rick and Connie were home, as well as Red's former owner Jake. We called the vet and she came out within 20 minutes and sedated him. Luckily Red didn't struggle too much in the 20 minutes. I ran to the boarding barn next door and got the owner Carl to help. They were trying to take the door off the hinges when Red's current owner Sharon and her boyfriend showed up.  I took Sharon away because I knew she wouldn't be able to handle seeing it.  Between everyone else they managed to push Red back thru the window with some ropes and pulleys.

The only obvious injury was a scrape on Red's right hip that the vet wasn't too concerned about.  She checked him out thoroughly and while he was still sedated he seemed fine.  She gave him some banamine and said just a bran/senior grain mash tonight for dinner after the sedation wears off.  Obviously there's a chance of internal injures as his pelvis was constricted for about an hour.  We'll all be keeping an eye on him over the next couple of days. 

Horses never fail to amaze me at how inventive they are.  After everything settled down I made sure to go kiss each of my ponies (including miss Zoe) and just spent a couple minutes loving on each of them.  It was hard enough watching Red struggle tonight, I couldn't imagine if it had been one of my own.




Phoenix in his old stall.  This is the size of the window Red got stuck in.