What a terrible morning. A muddy section of the pasture and the playful aggressiveness of my horse Thumper caused my 25 year old saddlebred gelding, Majestic, to fracture his right-rear cannon bone.
It was a compound fracture that forced the bone through the skin. He was standing there with relative calm while I comforted him and tried to figure out what to do. I called my neighbors (who are cattle farmers and fellow horse-people) and then I called the veterinarian. The vet told me to keep the horse on his feet and try to brace the broken leg. I did that (more efficiently than I thought that I could) and waited the 45 minutes it would take for the vet to get there. While my friend Joy stayed with me to wait with Stick, her husband Mark drove to another neighbor’s house to see if he would be willing to dig a horse grave on my pasture with his 92HP grader.
45 agonizing minutes of comforting and petting the horse and then the vet arrived. There’s not really anything that can be done for a break like that and the horse, for all him calmness, was in a tremendous amount of pain. The method of euthanasia was an overdose of Phenobarbital injected into his neck. His death was extremely quick.
I had a cry and cut a large lock of hair from his tail to remember him by.
The neighbor with the grader arrived 20 minutes later and we picked a grave site. Shelly dug the grave surprising quick and Stick was buried.
He was an animal neglect/abuse adoption so I only had him for a year but he was a smart and gentle horse. I’ll miss him.
