Holy crap!
Only a horse owner would find it reassuring when their house sitter says “Don’t worry. I love pus” and he’s not talking about the cat. Especially a horse owner who is flying to the other side of the world (i.e. me) and has a 24 year old horse called Charlie with a gaping wound in its side
I love travelling, as my past blogs would show, and I love covering events around the world. But it doesn’t fit well with having two old horses, a dog and two cats that need to be cared for in my absence and of course, as luck would have it, nine days before I fly to the UK for the first half of the season, my 24 year old horse rips a rather large chunk out of his side
Let’s not go into the how or why; to be honest this is a horse that can injure himself anywhere, anytime and his only saving grace is that he seems almost completely oblivious to pain (which is probably how he gets into these scrapes, combined with being the nosiest horse ever). One of most popular articles on the website is the one about caring for Charlie's leg wounds - I swaer it gets viewed almost every day by some poor sod who is anxiously surfing the Internet for advice on wound management. I think there is another article coming up ......
You know that it isn’t pretty, especially when the vet sort of sucks their breath in a bit and says “Erm, that’s not what I was imagining he had done. Not sure if we can stitch that up but we’ll see”
In fact Amber of Melbourne Equine Practise did a fabulous job of stitching it up, even though it was getting dark by the time she had finished. Even more amazing, the stitches have stayed in for eight days now although my horse is getting very fed up of being boxed (and I’m even more fed up of cleaning boxes, washing rugs and hand grazing)
So, on day seven, my house sitter Jayden drops by to check out what has to be done in my absence. He will be living in the house and looking after everything and everybody while I’m away, including the four legged patient. I remove the cotton rug which also doubles as a dressing and mutter “I hope you’re not squeamish as this has to be cleaned every day until it’s fully healed”
Jayden stands back and takes a long hard look then mutters those welcome words
“I love pus” he says “I would have loved to be a vet. I think it’s fascinating – look at those holes!”
Jayden is now on a mission to have this horse looking as good as new (well, with a few Frankenstein-like scars I’m guessing) by the time I get back in nine weeks.
“It’s going to be my personal challenge” he says
The Gods may have been a bit slack letting my horse injure himself (what were They doing, looking the other way or something?) but somebody up there seems to like me by sending possibly the only house sitter in the world that likes pus
Jayden and Charlie are going to battle the pus together ..........
