Between my sliced up foot, Presto’s knee wound, and Stewie’s herniated disc, we’ve been a bit of a walking medical ward around here lately. The cut on my foot managed to heal itself fine, although the resulting scar still doesn’t feel that nice if you press on it. It doesn’t impede me at all though, so… it’s fine.

It’s been a few weeks now from whatever the heck Presto did to his knee. I’ll probably never know. He likes to put his feet in places they don’t belong so it’s not hard to imagine how he punctured it.

Luckily he was never lame on it, and since the vet wanted me to keep riding him to keep the swelling down, we didn’t really miss a beat due to that. The cold hosing and antibiotics did their thing and within a week the knee was 100% normal again. He did find the scab to be super itchy though, and much to my sheer horror he liked to scratch it with his teeth. Very on-brand, honestly, but geez COULD YOU NOT.

Looking at it now you would never know anything had happened aside from the little leftover scab and very obvious patch of shaved hair which hasn’t grown back even a single bit. It’s a really cute look on his extremely hairy legs. The location makes it look like I’m injecting him or he had some kind of knee procedure or something, so it would be great if he could grow some hair back before we have to go out in public. I swear he just poked a hole in his own damn knee. He feels fine though, so I guess we’ll just ignore the aesthetics.

Stewie is also feeling better too. Those first few days he mostly just slept and looked pathetic, but now he’s back to acting and feeling pretty much normal. I wouldn’t call him spry, he’s 16, but he’s more mobile for sure and doesn’t seem to be in pain anymore. He’s also lifting and carrying his head like normal. In the beginning he was having to go outside CONSTANTLY (one night it was 7 times. Seven. Times.) so I was not getting much sleep, but the past few nights he’s just been waking me up around 2:30. One time a night is fine, the corgi usually has to go out during the night too anyway. Today was the last day of the steroids (it was a taper, so the last 3 pills were every other day) and he’s got a few more days of GABA left. He’s still got minimum another week of “house rest”, which he’s starting to get really irritated about. He misses going down to the barn every day. The GABA is doing a good job of keeping him a little calmer than usual though (I can see why the hunter people liked it so much…) so at least he’s not bouncing around the house like a little rubber ball of anxiety.

I guess the only one of us that wasn’t on the IR list (this is NOT a challenge, universe) was Henry (knock on wood). He’s still chugging along as usual, although I don’t talk a lot about his rides or what he’s doing because there’s nothing particularly noteworthy. It’s mostly just a maintenance schedule… we do flatwork, we jump a couple courses once a week, we hack, we trot and canter on the hills… all the usual stuff. I’ve made absolutely no plans for him yet this year so we’re just holding steady with where he’s at and we’ll see what happens as we go along. He’s chubby and he’s sassy and he’s enjoying his more relaxed life.

He’s also decided that Presto is his own personal pet, and they’ve been playing A LOT. It makes me happy because I was worried about Presto not having a friend to play with this winter, and I was worried that Henry would hurt him. Which… Henry definitely did try to hurt him a few times in those first few days, but they’ve settled into this thing where Henry pretends to hate him but actually seeks him out to play. It’s kinda cute. Henry would never in a million years admit that he likes that kid, but he totally does. It’s fun to see him actually playing with another horse for once.

I hope everyone got their vet bills out of the way early and this isn’t a foreboding of things to come. Like 2019, where I had a vet bill almost every month. Let’s not do that again please. No more additions to the IR list.