Once I was bad

Mom likes to tell the story of the one time I was a bad horse. The story is that a couple years ago, I stepped on an old rusty nail and it poked a hole right in my heel! After Vet came, Mom had to clean the hole by squirting saline solution into it and put another bandage on my foot. My foot hurt, so one of the times she came to squirt it, she asked me to pick up my foot and I wouldn’t pick it up! I was a bad horse! At last I relented and let her have my foot and do hurty things to it. Mom laughed and laughed because as bad behavior goes, I guess not picking up my hurty foot is not so bad.

The point is that I am a really good horse, and Mom couldn’t be mad at me for my little moment of rebellion. Especially since it involved hurting.

This weekend my friend Jay was hurting really bad. His foot hurted so much that Jay became a horse with only three legs! That is NOT enough legs. Vet came and spent a long time with Jay’s foot. Vet made the hurting stop which was good because Jay’s other leg was very very tired from being the only back leg where there are supposed to be two legs.

Jay has a thing called Abscess, which is hard to spell, and also very hurty! He also has a thing called White Line Separation which is a very bad thing because it means there is a hole in his hoof. Jay’s hoof hole looks like a smile that goes around the front of his toe. It is a very bad thing.

So things around the barn are different because Jay has to spend a lot of time with his foot in warm salty water while Mom makes him a very funny looking boot out of a thing called Duct Tape. Jay’s foot can not get dirty even a little tiny bit or it could go back to being hurty. Jay is a pretty good boy but sometimes he can be rough on Mom, like this morning, when she was working on his foot and he decided he needed it back right then. So there was a battle over the foot and Mom did a lot of yelling. Jay ended up not being able to take his foot back right then, but Mom was very tired and saw spots in front of her eyes.

I want to tell Jay that he ought to be a good boy because once his foot was very very hurty but now it’s not. But Jay thinks I am a bit of a pansy for always being such a good horse, so maybe I won’t tell him. Instead I will be extra good and try not to move my feed bucket so Mom doesn’t have to walk out and get it.