Thank you for all the good thoughts... I really needed them today.

He looked positively horrible this morning, lots of swelling in his shoulder, moving very slowly and his jowls were so swollen he looked like he had the mumps. I called the vet again and told him about the swelling in his jowls and told me just to keep an eye on them, and he felt it was caused the amount of trauma to his poll area from the rope halter.

I came home at lunch and checked him again, the swelling had come down significantly and he had rolled in the dirt (great for open wounds ya know!). But also a good sign that he felt good enough to even get down and do it.

Tonight he was much, much better, and I managed to get everything scrubbed out with a minimum amount of discomfort for the poor boy.

My property is fenced and cross-fenced, then the whole perimeter is fenced as well.... but a whole lot of good all that fencing does if you don't close the freakin' gate. GAH! Clearly, I've gotten WAY too complacent with my horses and need to step it up a notch or two.

I highly suspect my saddle twisted prior to the accident because in hindsight so much that has been going with him lately just makes sense that it wasn't right.... unfortunately I was just too damn obtuse to see it.

He is already a young, green, hot horse, but my trail rides of late have started out with him stretching and on-the-buckle... then by the end of the ride he is fidgeting and being more jumpy than normal. Then he bucked me off a few weeks ago, which I attributed to wearing spurs on him for the first time, even though he was merely walking in the arena on-the-buckle, and all I did was pick him up at the walk and he exploded. Then the past 2 days when I have worked him in the ring he was cross-firing as the canter on the left rein, as well as hollowing his back and throwing his haunches in.

I attributed all this to his relative greenness and likely didn't see what he was so blatantly trying to tell me.

So it's entirely possible my saddle was twisted in the wreck, but somehow I don't think so.

I was going to take pics yesterday, but I forgot... I will take some tomorrow. (I'm into looking at wounds and stuff too..... very educational).

When he has healed up I may try riding him bareback in the arena for the first few rides, then maybe my western saddle to really spread out the weight and try to reverse what his muscles and brain have become accustomed to.

Last Edited By: darkclark Sep 18 08 8:57 PM. Edited 1 times.