The breeding manager and I went out to a field on Thursday to give hay to the 30 horses out there, earlier in the morning, maybe 5 hours earlier, said arrogant jerk was supposed to go and check on all of them to make sure they we alive and well. So we’re out there haying and we’re about to leave when the BM notices one of the horses, Stones at the bottom of the field. So we go down there hoping it’s just an abcess, we get those alot.
We get within maybe 500 yards of him and you can tell something is wrong, his whole left shoulder looked distorted. We get up to him and he has a big puncture wound on the front of his chest. Suffice to say the distortion was the amount on edema that had swelled up making him looked ridiculously bloated. Well he couldn’t walk really at all so the BM had to go and get the trailer and bring it into the field and we got him on then brought him to the main barn and cleaned up the wound as best as possible and waited for Dr. D to arrive, my boss is in Canada this week. It was hard getting near him because the stench of rotting flesh was overwelming. The AJ comes in while the BM and Dr. D were fishing around in the wound and asked who we had moved, I told him and he was all like, ‘Well he wasn’t like that this morning.’ Bull, flesh doesn’t smell that bad in 12 hours let alone 5!
Well when I was across the indoor I heard Dr. D say ‘Oh my god!’. She’d found a piece of wood fencing that was about 4 inches long, 1 inch wide, a 1/4 inch thick. She said he must have been like that for days…AJ screwed up, though he will NEVER admit it, he just blames it on everything but him and makes excuses. Anyway we started him on meds and he was stable but Friday he went downhill severely. The edema continued to spread all the way up his neck and to both his front legs then he started throwing himself around in the stall, then beat his head against the wall. He died at 9PM on Friday, earlier they tried to do a chest tap, they believed the puncture had gotten into the chest cavity and there was fluid, they got some but not enough and stopped becuase he was getting cold and shocky, his heart rate was 100 BPM.
Saturday afternoon D&N came to pick him up and Dr. D did an autopsy when he was on the truck, it was heartbreaking watching him being dragged on the truck, at one point his neck twisted and broke when he was pulled on the truck. So they cut off his leg and found that the pucture was about 8-10 inches deep and there was more wood in the wound! The puncture went as far as the first rib and was headed towards the heart. Stones should have been dead on impact, he should have survived as long as he did.
Now of course AJ is making excuses about it saying it wasn’t his fault. I don’t care if it was his fault, he could at least show some remorse or even better yet be like ‘Okay I screwed up.’ But he never will and it sickens me, this man has burned down a barn, has killed the tractor many times, and now neglected to find a dying horse…what does he have to do before he gets burned?
Poor Stones. Some people just shouldn’t work with animals.