Alright, that’s it, I officially hate 2020. It can fuck right off and go back to the hell whence it came. The good news is, neither of the boys are injured (knocking on every bit of wood I can find because omg fml), but now I’m the one down for the count.

The week started off pretty well, aside from dealing with the water leak in the house and the warranty people being unresponsive to my plight. But ya know, the weather was pleasant and work was ok and I was able to ride, so by my definition things were good. I rode Henry and lunged Presto the first couple days of the week, then on Wednesday I rode Presto for the first time in almost 6 weeks. He picked right up where he left off, like he hadn’t missed a single day. We just did some w/t work in the arena for about 10 minutes then I hacked him out in the field and he was a super good boy. My plan was to start riding him more like 3 days a week after his break was over, and that was ride #1 in the books, kicking off his winter schedule.

And then the next morning I tried to rip my foot off. What had happened was…

I woke up and put the dogs out, putting Quinn in his wheelchair, then went back in to use the bathroom. I came back out to get the dogs, lifted Quinn out of his chair, took a step, and my sandal got caught on the latching arm of his chair. We both went down, me twisting to try to break his fall. I was so worried I hurt him that I got up, kicked the chair off my foot, picked him up, and went and sat on the stairs to make sure he was ok. My foot was stinging but I figured I just scraped it or something, so once I verified that Quinn was indeed fine, I got up and went in the house. I carried him straight back to his bed, then went back to the door to take my sandals off. I looked down and saw blood. Blood everywhere. A trail of blood through the house, a pool of blood in my sandal… just blood.

My first thought was “well fuck, that’s definitely gotta be from me”. I looked down at my foot and just about passed out. I’m not particularly squeamish, I don’t have a problem with blood or things like that, but there was something about watching the blood pulsing out of my own very cut foot at 5:30am that almost did me in. I grabbed a paper towel to staunch the flow and sat down on the bed for a minute until I was sure I wasn’t gonna hit the deck. I didn’t have any bandaging stuff in the house except for bandaids, which WERE NOT gonna cut it for this injury, so I taped a panty liner to it and rode my bike down to the barn.

Once I fed the horses I went through the med kit and grabbed stuff to clean and bandage it, and… it was pretty borderline for needing stitches. Just the thought of it made me woozy AF again, so I just cleaned it really well, bandaged it up, and have been careful with it.

So far it’s healing well (I’m def anal about keeping it clean) but god it’s in a really uncomfortable place. Wearing shoes hurts. I can only sleep on one side. I have to walk a little funny to compensate, which has made my old bad ankle sprain flare up again. Getting old is stupid and having a sliced up foot is just freakin irritating. I was putting my foot in a barn boot to clean stalls the first couple days, but afterward it was so aggravated I kinda gave up on that, put a bag over my foot, and put a flip flop on. Problem solved. Looks janky as hell but it’s much more comfortable. I’m trying to do the smart thing (for once in my damn life) and rest it as much as possible so I don’t just keep ripping it open, thus I haven’t been riding. Putting it in a boot seems to piss it right off and doesn’t feel particularly nice either.

It’s definitely a lot better today. I’ll probably give it at least one more day out of a boot lest I prolong this agony any further than absolutely necessary.

So anyway, all my riding plans quickly went kibosh. Presto got… a ride… and then it looks like another week off. I guess at this point it clearly doesn’t matter much, but I was trying to take advantage of the good weather while it existed. Some rain (which we desperately need so I won’t complain) is popping up in the forecast, along with cooler temps. I was hoping to have him fully back in the swing of things before the weather started to turn a little more frisky, but oh well.

Henry of course has decided he’s a feral retired horse now and has been a complete moron about everything. He’s already had almost a week off and it shows. Hopefully this foot will be ready to go back in a boot by tomorrow! We’ll see.