A hard day at the barn
Jul. 21st, 2006 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
murakoziYeah, it's Friday and I'm writing about Sunday events. I never seem to get around to posting in a timely manner.
Sunday was more tiring than usual at the barn. Last week, Don called me on my cell phone while I was at work. That's really darned unusual. I was out playing courier and in a location where cellphones are verboten, so I wasn't able to answer the call. I saw the new voice mail indicator and listened to Don's message which simply asked me to call him back and that it was very important. That had me nervous, wondering what might have gone wrong to warrant the call. Images of barn fires and such filled my mind. I managed to get hold of Don that evening and he told me that he'd gotten a message at home from Irina. Irina is Czech and kinda hard to understand in person. A phone message left when she was upset was near unintelligible but Don had been able to make out something about her son dying and that she wouldn't be in to work at the barn for a while.
We later found out that she'd come home that Tuesday evening to find her son on the floor dead. So far, we don't know exactly what happened to him. Since he also worked Sunday mornings at the barn with Irina, Don had to find people to cover on Sunday.
So I went in bright and early, actually arriving around 7am, a bitlater than planned. It was a long hot day. Crystal, who used to work weekday evenings at the barn before going to college, was there with me and we managed to keep things pretty much on schedule. We were both pretty exhausted at the end of the day.
While we were cleaning the stalls on the boarder side of the barn, I determined that the ex-school pony, Lad, is perhaps the klutziest horse around. I had him crosstied in the aisle with a flake of hay while I was cleaning his stall whenI heard some scrabbling sounds and a thump. Crystal and I both came out of the stalls we were cleaning to see Lad just standing up. Dunno how, but he'd somehow managed to fall over while eating in the aisle. One of the crossties broke free when he went down and the other when he was getting back up, which is exactly what they're supposed to do of course. So we had a surprised pony, known for running around like a doofus when he's gotten loose in the past, loose in the aisle. Fortunately, Lad seemed to be as confused and trying to figure out how he fell so we were able to just resecure him.
Once he was up, he kinda kicked one hind leg a bit which had us concerned he'd hurt himself. Turns out he'd scraped his hock against the wall when he went down. We got Don and had him check Lad out just to be sure he was okay, sprayed some blue on the scrape and put him back in his stall. He was fine aside from the scrape. I still haven't figured out how he managed to fall; then again, he's kinda notorious for being clumsy.
Irina called during the afternoon and said she wanted to return to work on Monday. Hopefully she'll be okay.
Sunday was more tiring than usual at the barn. Last week, Don called me on my cell phone while I was at work. That's really darned unusual. I was out playing courier and in a location where cellphones are verboten, so I wasn't able to answer the call. I saw the new voice mail indicator and listened to Don's message which simply asked me to call him back and that it was very important. That had me nervous, wondering what might have gone wrong to warrant the call. Images of barn fires and such filled my mind. I managed to get hold of Don that evening and he told me that he'd gotten a message at home from Irina. Irina is Czech and kinda hard to understand in person. A phone message left when she was upset was near unintelligible but Don had been able to make out something about her son dying and that she wouldn't be in to work at the barn for a while.
We later found out that she'd come home that Tuesday evening to find her son on the floor dead. So far, we don't know exactly what happened to him. Since he also worked Sunday mornings at the barn with Irina, Don had to find people to cover on Sunday.
So I went in bright and early, actually arriving around 7am, a bitlater than planned. It was a long hot day. Crystal, who used to work weekday evenings at the barn before going to college, was there with me and we managed to keep things pretty much on schedule. We were both pretty exhausted at the end of the day.
While we were cleaning the stalls on the boarder side of the barn, I determined that the ex-school pony, Lad, is perhaps the klutziest horse around. I had him crosstied in the aisle with a flake of hay while I was cleaning his stall whenI heard some scrabbling sounds and a thump. Crystal and I both came out of the stalls we were cleaning to see Lad just standing up. Dunno how, but he'd somehow managed to fall over while eating in the aisle. One of the crossties broke free when he went down and the other when he was getting back up, which is exactly what they're supposed to do of course. So we had a surprised pony, known for running around like a doofus when he's gotten loose in the past, loose in the aisle. Fortunately, Lad seemed to be as confused and trying to figure out how he fell so we were able to just resecure him.
Once he was up, he kinda kicked one hind leg a bit which had us concerned he'd hurt himself. Turns out he'd scraped his hock against the wall when he went down. We got Don and had him check Lad out just to be sure he was okay, sprayed some blue on the scrape and put him back in his stall. He was fine aside from the scrape. I still haven't figured out how he managed to fall; then again, he's kinda notorious for being clumsy.
Irina called during the afternoon and said she wanted to return to work on Monday. Hopefully she'll be okay.