Tony
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- Dec 1, 2002
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Saturday afternoon, after we got home and unloaded the horses from the show, my jeans were so muddy that I had taken them off and Carol had started the washer, when a lady came rushing up our drive and reported that two dogs had a horse down in the south pasture! I ran upstairs to get some pants and called Michael, our helper who was at the barn and always has a gun with him. He had just gotten a new cell phone and apparently I had entered it wrong in my phone, so I rushed out, jumped in the pickup and started honking and speeding toward to barn. He came running out and I told him what had happened and we both sped toward the pasture with Lauren in the PU with me. When we got there there were three cars stopped by the road and thankfully they had stopped the attack and had actually caught one of the dogs and were holding it there. While I checked with them Lauren crawled through the fence to check on the one stallion standing down in the draw where Bingo and Sterling Fantastic had been killed in February. She yelled for me to go get the trailer and to call the vet. The people who had caught the dog were holding it with a strap and I took it from him, saying that I would take it to the house and put in a trailer, but after a second thought, and at their urging, took it to the fence, and as I did so it was trembling and pulling trying to get at the stallion again. I had Mike come over and shoot it, as we had been told to do by animal control and the sheriff on numerous ocassions. I called the vet, animal control (who of course don't work on Saturday) and rushed back to the house to get the trailer. Because of the wet, I almost didn't get the trailer out, but as I did a sheriff's deputy showed up and I told him to follow me.
Mike and Lauren had led Top Cat, the injured stallion, to the gate at the corner of the pasture, about 150 yards. We hurriedly loaded him in the trailer and leaving Lauren and Mike to deal with the sherrif and to try to find the white pit bull that got away while I ran thirty miles to get the horse to the waiting vet who had treated many of the horses the previous attacks.
Luckily the flooded roads had cleared since the rain had stopped about two hours before. When I was about six miles away my phone rang and Mike was on the phone, saying, "You lost your load. Go back to Windy Hill Road." Oh, no. Can things get worse? Now let me explain. My miniature trailer has two doors. Any time I take a horse out of it, I fasten the door shut before I walk off. A couple of weeks ago I had loaned the trailer to a customer and they had failed to fasten the door. In my hurry and stress to load the horse and get to the vet, I unfastened the other door, loaded him, fastened the door, but did not notice that the other door was not fastened correctly. Luckily the first four miles to the interstate have a very strict 40 mph limit and the road was wet, so I wasn't going too fast, but about 3 3/1 miles down the road, the door had swung open and the horse had jumped/fallen out? Please no flames.... I have beat myself up enough for this idiotic act.
When I got back there was a car and a police car there holding Top Cat. Luckily, I had left his lead on his halter, so they were just holding him. I quickly pulled over and ran to get him breathlessly telling the policeman, who had actually helped on the investigation of other attacks what had happened. He and the person who was following me thougth that all the damage to the horse had happened because of his falling out of the trailer and wanted to hold me to "talk" before leaving for the vet, but when I opened the door to the trailer and he saw all the blood, he said, "Oh, okay." I started to drive off, and realized that I hadn't thanked the man, so stopped, jumped out, ran back to his car and thanked him and apologized for my current state of mind!
We did a u-turn and high tailed it to the vet south of San Marcos, passing through an area that only hours ago had been hit by a tornado. When I reached the vet hospital he wasn't there, but luckily lives next door, but I was holding the horse out by the clinic so called getting the answering service again, as I had the first time. The "service" started wanting me to give phone numbers, details, all AGAIN. I said, "Look, I am in Dr. Williams front yard. Just tell him I am here," and hung up! When the vet, whose daughter was just starting a sixteenth birthday party at their house came out, I apologized and told him if he gets a complaint from his service, to make my apologies.
He rinsed him off since he was coated in mud from being attacked in a very muddy area of the pasture, before taking him inside. the underside of one of his jaws was extremely damaged, so much so that there was no stitching that could be done. It was actually open into his mouth and there may be some nerve damage because his lower lip was a little too relaxed. His ear on the same side was almost torn off, with two big holes near the base. Dr. Williams said that it probably won't stand up again because the dogs got quite a bit of the cartilage. He also had a couple of small tears on his back legs, but that was about it. Thank goodness for the stanger who stopped and that it was during the day, because if either had not been the case, we would have found him dead, without doubt!
The vet trimmed the jagged edges of the skin, but decided that although he was bleeding a lot that he probably did not need an IV because his color was good and he didn't seem too "shocky". He treated all the damaged areas and gave shots and said that I could leave him there or could take him home and treat him, but that we would need to cut away any dying tissue daily and bring him back mid week. Since an ice storm was predicted for the next three days, I decided that it would be better for him to stay at the vets, where he would actually be kept in a kennel inside the office rather than in my cold barns, so left him there. I helped clean up some of the mess that we had made, thanked Mark, and started home.
When I approached our place, there were two police cars with their lights flashing and about five cars near our front gate, about three hundred yards from where the one had been when I left two hours ago for the vet! Some drunk had slid off the road and drove in the bar ditch, barely missing our pillars at the entrance, driving between our mailbox and the fence and finally getting stuck about forty yards further down. I pulled just off the road into our entrance and stopped to see what was going on. As I started approaching, the deputy who had found my "load" turned around and drove off and the wrecker pulled the pickup out of the ditch, and I decided to forget it and go on home, when....
MY PICKUP WOULDN"T START! The end of my little trailer was about three feet off the highway, and I can't get it started, eleven hundred feet from the house!!!
: :no:
To make a way too long story a little less long (shorter is an inappropriate choice of words), I called Carol to bring jumper cables and her car down. Then Mike who was on his way home tried. We finally had to get our other pickup and tow the little pickup and trailer up the hill to the house, where it is still sitting outside my office where I can be reminded of the "day from heck" which started with a great show in San Marcos... another post.
Mike and Lauren had led Top Cat, the injured stallion, to the gate at the corner of the pasture, about 150 yards. We hurriedly loaded him in the trailer and leaving Lauren and Mike to deal with the sherrif and to try to find the white pit bull that got away while I ran thirty miles to get the horse to the waiting vet who had treated many of the horses the previous attacks.
Luckily the flooded roads had cleared since the rain had stopped about two hours before. When I was about six miles away my phone rang and Mike was on the phone, saying, "You lost your load. Go back to Windy Hill Road." Oh, no. Can things get worse? Now let me explain. My miniature trailer has two doors. Any time I take a horse out of it, I fasten the door shut before I walk off. A couple of weeks ago I had loaned the trailer to a customer and they had failed to fasten the door. In my hurry and stress to load the horse and get to the vet, I unfastened the other door, loaded him, fastened the door, but did not notice that the other door was not fastened correctly. Luckily the first four miles to the interstate have a very strict 40 mph limit and the road was wet, so I wasn't going too fast, but about 3 3/1 miles down the road, the door had swung open and the horse had jumped/fallen out? Please no flames.... I have beat myself up enough for this idiotic act.
When I got back there was a car and a police car there holding Top Cat. Luckily, I had left his lead on his halter, so they were just holding him. I quickly pulled over and ran to get him breathlessly telling the policeman, who had actually helped on the investigation of other attacks what had happened. He and the person who was following me thougth that all the damage to the horse had happened because of his falling out of the trailer and wanted to hold me to "talk" before leaving for the vet, but when I opened the door to the trailer and he saw all the blood, he said, "Oh, okay." I started to drive off, and realized that I hadn't thanked the man, so stopped, jumped out, ran back to his car and thanked him and apologized for my current state of mind!
We did a u-turn and high tailed it to the vet south of San Marcos, passing through an area that only hours ago had been hit by a tornado. When I reached the vet hospital he wasn't there, but luckily lives next door, but I was holding the horse out by the clinic so called getting the answering service again, as I had the first time. The "service" started wanting me to give phone numbers, details, all AGAIN. I said, "Look, I am in Dr. Williams front yard. Just tell him I am here," and hung up! When the vet, whose daughter was just starting a sixteenth birthday party at their house came out, I apologized and told him if he gets a complaint from his service, to make my apologies.
He rinsed him off since he was coated in mud from being attacked in a very muddy area of the pasture, before taking him inside. the underside of one of his jaws was extremely damaged, so much so that there was no stitching that could be done. It was actually open into his mouth and there may be some nerve damage because his lower lip was a little too relaxed. His ear on the same side was almost torn off, with two big holes near the base. Dr. Williams said that it probably won't stand up again because the dogs got quite a bit of the cartilage. He also had a couple of small tears on his back legs, but that was about it. Thank goodness for the stanger who stopped and that it was during the day, because if either had not been the case, we would have found him dead, without doubt!
The vet trimmed the jagged edges of the skin, but decided that although he was bleeding a lot that he probably did not need an IV because his color was good and he didn't seem too "shocky". He treated all the damaged areas and gave shots and said that I could leave him there or could take him home and treat him, but that we would need to cut away any dying tissue daily and bring him back mid week. Since an ice storm was predicted for the next three days, I decided that it would be better for him to stay at the vets, where he would actually be kept in a kennel inside the office rather than in my cold barns, so left him there. I helped clean up some of the mess that we had made, thanked Mark, and started home.
When I approached our place, there were two police cars with their lights flashing and about five cars near our front gate, about three hundred yards from where the one had been when I left two hours ago for the vet! Some drunk had slid off the road and drove in the bar ditch, barely missing our pillars at the entrance, driving between our mailbox and the fence and finally getting stuck about forty yards further down. I pulled just off the road into our entrance and stopped to see what was going on. As I started approaching, the deputy who had found my "load" turned around and drove off and the wrecker pulled the pickup out of the ditch, and I decided to forget it and go on home, when....
MY PICKUP WOULDN"T START! The end of my little trailer was about three feet off the highway, and I can't get it started, eleven hundred feet from the house!!!
To make a way too long story a little less long (shorter is an inappropriate choice of words), I called Carol to bring jumper cables and her car down. Then Mike who was on his way home tried. We finally had to get our other pickup and tow the little pickup and trailer up the hill to the house, where it is still sitting outside my office where I can be reminded of the "day from heck" which started with a great show in San Marcos... another post.
it ended up biting my stepdaughter in the eyebrow and cheek!
