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He didn’t scare me, and I would get back on him if I was able to ride. But that would also take time. I knew I should have listened to Ham when he told me to get Maveric more adjusted to the place before getting on his back, but that was in the past now, and I couldn’t take it back. It was just a matter of working with him and finding the right balance.
And with the time I had been spending at the other farm, there was a chance he had come far enough that I would be able to see Ham riding him by now.
But, in response to my question, Ham ran his hand over the back of his head and looked away, clearly hesitating to answer the question. I was instantly on high alert.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It wasn’t anything bad,” he said. “But he kicked at the door of the stall the other day and splintered the board on the frame. I thought I had it all fixed up for him, but I must have missed a nail. Or perhaps he cut himself when he was kicking at the door. I don’t know.”
“He hurt himself?”
“It wasn’t bad at the time,” Ham said. “But though I’ve been doing my best to keep it clean and sanitized, I’m afraid he’s getting infected. I was hoping to wait to tell you until you were here, so I’m glad you did come back this weekend. For a minute there, I wasn’t sure you were going to.”
“Of course, I’m going to come back every weekend to make sure the horses are doing okay, and that you’re okay, too. Let’s take a look at that leg,” I told him.
“I had a vet out here the other day and he prescribed a round of antibiotics, but I’m afraid it’s not seeming to make much of a difference with the leg. We might have to take more drastic measures, I don’t know. Again, I wanted to wait until you were back home to talk to you about it. I didn’t think it would go over too well with you to tell you when you were two hours away and had no means to see him.”
“True,” I said. “But now that I am here, I do have the means to see him, and that’s what I want to do now.”
“Alright, but you’ve been warned.”
I wasn’t sure how to take the warning my friend gave me and kept the idea in the back of my mind that Maveric was likely going to need more care. But, when I saw him with my own eyes, my heart sank. He was still the rebellious horse he had been when he arrived, but there was a listlessness about him now that told me he was in pain.
If Ham hadn’t warned me, I would have asked him if there was something wrong with the animal. Now, I was worried that infection had already taken root in the leg, and I didn’t even want to begin to imagine what that would mean. Not only for the horse, but for us. I knew his owner wanted the best for him, and if the owner found out that he was hurt and now sick in our care, I was the one who would have to take the heat for that, and I really didn’t want that.
I had enough going on with this other job at this other facility. I didn’t know if I had the time or the means to be able to deal with a horse that was injured and in need of treatment. But, I also didn’t want to be that facility that took on a horse in good health, only to return it injured to its owner later.
Even if I wasn’t the one present for the injury, or no one but the horse himself was responsible for his injuries, I still didn’t want to have to deal with that. I knew it was going to come back to haunt me, and I reluctantly opened the door to Maveric’s stall.
“I wouldn’t get too close to him now,” Ham warned me. “He’s still not much of a gentleman when it comes to dealing with, well, anyone.”
“I’m not going to touch him,” I said. “I just want to see.”
I stood and looked down at the horse’s injured leg, wishing I was seeing something different from the injury I was. Ham was right. They had clearly been doing what they could to take care of the wound, but it didn’t seem to be doing much in response. It looked hot and angry, and Maveric wasn’t in the mood to let me get any closer to him.
“Give him another shot of antibiotics,” I said. “And make sure he’s got some painkillers in there, too.”
“Right now?” Ham asked in surprise.
“I want to be aggressive with it,” I told him. “With the way it’s going, he could very well lose that leg, and I don’t want that to happen.”
“Aye, boss,” Ham said.
He turned to head back to the front of the barn where the medication was kept, but I couldn’t help but worry. We could do as much as we could to help Maveric’s leg, but at the end of the day, if things didn’t get better for him, I worried he was going to lose the limb.
And for horses, that was all but a death sentence. Horses didn’t do well without all four legs, and it wasn’t a simple fix to deal with an injury that was already on the verge of being infected. We could do what we had the power to do, but there was only so much medicine could touch.
At the end of the day, we would have to wait and see what happened with that leg.
And right now, it didn’t look good.
