Horse Injuries

We turn our horses out to pasture on Friday evening and assign a trooper to feed them twice per day over the weekend. The pasture feeder is also responsible for locating all the horses and verifying that they have no missing shoes or injuries. Unfortunately, we received the dreaded "evening feed" call last night that indicates that there was a problem. The pasture feeder reported that he could not find one of the horses. It is unusual for one horse to be missing unless something is very wrong. In this case, our large quarterhorse named Charlie had not appeared for the evening feed. Fortunately, he was eventually found but was also found to be injured. The trooper indicated he was "pretty beat up" on the shoulder and back. Debbie and I headed out to the Fort about 6 pm to check the damage. After an examination conducted with a flashlight, it appeared that Charlie had fallen onto some rocks. He indeed had scrapes on his left shoulder and back. His back was very sore to the touch and he was caving slightly when pressed on the lower spine. We figure he had either fallen into one of the ravines that cross the pasture or that he had reared up while playing and had fallen over onto some rocks. The wounds looked very much like he had gone over backwards and then had rolled to his left to injure the left shoulder. There is no telling what happened. Charlie will be okay but will be on pen rest for a while until we can get the veterinarian to check him out.