This is beginning to feel like The Year of the Abscess. First, Hap, with the abscess under his jaw caused by a fractured tooth, which took several months to completely heal. Yesterday, the vet came out and opened an abscess which formed where Rags got one of his vaccinations three weeks ago on his butt.
I will spare my readers the details required to care for Rags’ abscess. Horse people will probably already know, and the process has a high ick factor. As far as my personal ick factor scale goes, only eye injuries rate higher.
I was feeling apprehensive when Jack and I went out to treat Rags this morning, after having watched Rags acting almost belligerent with the vet and her assistant yesterday. Fortunately, I suppose the area didn’t feel as sore this morning, because Rags was comparatively well-behaved. I told Jack to let him walk in a small circle, because I didn’t want Rags to feel trapped as I treated him. The abscess is on the near side, and I was able to treat it by standing on the off-side and reaching over, on the theory that if he was inclined to kick, he would kick to the near side.
When Rags had pigeon fever (aka dry land strangles) several years ago, I was able to treat his chest abscesses without help. I doubt I will be able to do that with this abscess, but at least he is cooperative enough that I shouldn’t have to go to Plan B, which involves getting Rags to my trainer’s place, so I have an experienced horse person to help.