The joys of owning horses....
People that have come to know me in the last 10 years assume that because we have a horse I am automatically a "cowgirl". They are wrong! I have always been scared of horses...and heights and for someone that is afraid of heights, sitting on the back of a horse 6 or 7 feet off the ground seems like 100 feet. When I was 11 I was bucked off a horse pretty aggressively and I've been even more scared since. When I met Kurt, he happened to have a horse so it is a lifestyle that I married into. I don't ride our horse, and only take care of it if Kurt is not able to. This summer I rode a horse for a long period of time and Kurt was very proud of me. It probably won't happen very often, but I try to involve myself in Kurt's hobbies so we can always do things together. We are very lucky to have enough property at our house to have a horse in our very backyard.
A few weeks ago on a stormy Monday night I was getting ready for my Volleyball game and Kurt went outside to feed the animals as he does every night. A few minutes later I heard our dog barking a lot, which is not super common, but he is known to chase the horse and bark at him if the horse is running around or something. After several minutes I heard Kurt yelling my name very faintly so I went outside to see what was going on. It was very dark and I couldn't see him. When I called Kurt's name, he didn't answer.....so I called it out again. At this point I knew something was wrong. I ran out into the pasture with my socks on and saw Kurt on the ground with Woodrow, who was also laying down. When Kurt went out to feed something had spooked Woodrow and he tried to kick Kurt. Luckily he missed, or else Kurt would have been badly injured. But as he got spooked he took off running down to the end of the pasture and reared up. As he reared up, he lost control and fell over onto our chainlink fence taking out 4 of the posts and getting tangled up in the wires. I went to get the neighbor and some tools for Kurt to cut the chainlink so Woodrow could be free. Remember how I said I was in my socks?....well in the drama of all this I never had time to get shoes so I had thorns in my feet. As Kurt cut him out of the fence Woodrow was able to get up and roam around. We had wonderful neighbors and friends come over to help us. We took Woodrow into the garage (where there was light) and he had several cuts all over his body, with a very severe cut on his left hind hoof which was bleeding badly. His other hind leg was not cut, but was very swollen and was getting bigger. 4 hours later we had him settled down and cleaned up. Kurt took Woodrow to the vet the next day and luckily nothing was broken or severely injured. We were grateful that Kurt wasn't hurt, Woodrow is recovering and that we were only left with a broken fence. It was a very scary night for us. Kurt is so amazing and always tends to stay calm; which then helps me to stay calm. We're thankful for neighbors and friends who came over to help because we couldn't have done it alone.