News from home

First, I'd like to mention that I updated my post (Rest of WI trip) with pictures. I finally got the CD of pics in the mail from my mom.

Well, my mom tells me today that Chico has a scratch on his nose (just a tiny superficial one). I'm not worried about it, but I cannot believe how accident prone this horse is!

Let me list his accidents:
1) Last year, I go out to his pasture and find that his fetlock on one front leg was FULL of porcupine quills! The girls just had a quill or two in their noses, but Chico had to paw the poor thing. We had the vet out on a SUNDAY to knock him out and pull them all. I think there were about 32 of them. And they had been there for more than a day, according to the fact that there were puss pockets around the quills (and no one else had noticed).
2) A few weeks after the quills, he came down with an infection at the injection site of the anesthetic for the quills in his neck. This showed up after he went off the antibiotics for the porcupine quills. He had a major fever and was very depressed. He had to be on antibiotics for another couple weeks.
3) That fall, his lower hind legs swelled up for a day, for no discernable reason. But he wasn't lame and the swelling went down by the next morning.
4) Later that fall, his knee swelled up huge, although he showed no lameness on it. It looks like he must have knocked it really hard on something. The joint itself wasn't affected (but was initially filled with a bit of fluid), but he had a huge knob, seemed like a thickened mass of either muscle or tendon just above the knee joint on his front leg. It felt soft when his leg was straightened, but if you picked up his foot and bent the knee, the knob became hard as a rock. But, again, it didn't bother him, but it took about 5 months before it totally disappeared. We didnt' treat it, because there was nothing to be done.
5) In March, he ran into the barn and slipped on a pallet (apparently) and gashed his hind leg open right near the stifle joint...a 6inch wide gash that also cut into the muscle a bit. He was stitched up, but stitches didn't hold, so he had this gaping wound that took 3 months to close up. Thank goodness there were no flies about while it was gaping open. He was initially lame on that, but recovered quickly, although I didn't ride him until June, to be sure the muscle tear really was healed up.
6) In early October, we were riding through the woods on a tiny deer trail, he was distracted from his path by worrying about why the other horses had left him (we went off on our own), and walked right into a stick that stuck him just below the stifle joint. The next day he was really lame, but the vet said it was not a deep puncture and there was no wood in it. He healed up fine and showed no further lameness
7) 2 months later (a couple weeks ago), an abcess forms at that exact spot, so there probably WAS wood in it, and now his body is trying to get rid of it.
8) Now he has a scrape on his nose, but this one doesn't really count. It's too minor. But really, why is it always him? The girls never have these kind of problems. Is it because he's a male? Geldings play more and get into more trouble?