A bad start to the new year

The new year started off on a sour note. Poor Trooper coliced! It is a horse’s worst nightmare. And it was his own fault for causing it. Trooper has this very bad habit of scratching his tail on his water bucket. He’s always done it, even though Shorty and I have repeatedly told him how gross it is to do so. It is obivious that no matter how illustrious your ancestors are it doesn’t always mean good manners.

Trooper’s human, a young female, had bought him several new things for this Christmas Day thingy humans do. One of the items was a new purple plastic water bucket. He also got new purple brushes, halter, leadrope etc. He was quite the grape-colored extravaganza when she was done.

Unfortunately, the other humans in the barn forgot to warn her that Trooper cannot be trusted with rigid plastic buckets. He has to have the heavy black flexible rubber ones or he destroys them.

Trooper had assaulted this rigid bucket several times, in the days after he got it, and must have created a crack, because it developed a small leak. Which no one seemed to notice because of the cold weather.

On the night before the new year started we were fed and watered at our usual time, but the humans were all acting silly about some “partee” thing that happens every year at this time, so no one noticed Trooper’s leaking bucket.

Shortly after being fed, when the barn was dark and quiet, Trooper assaulted his new bucket one last time and broke it into two pieces. All his water fell out.
He spent a dry night, and I must admit to having no sympathy for him.
The following morning we were fed again, and because someone had allowed the hose to freeze up we weren’t watered again until well after we ate. Most of us still had water from the previous night, but Trooper was without it for over twelve hours.

By the evening he had an awful impaction colic going, scaring his young human to death and worrying the rest of us.

The sticker man came out and stuck a tube in each end, hopefully not the same tube, and then Trooper got walked for half an hour. He was also loaded into a trailer, something that always annoys Trooper, and had to remain inside until he pooped.

He was walked some more after he was unloaded and after pooping again was finally allowed back in his stall, complete with new rubber water buckets.

My human, and Lucky’s human, stayed to help, and even Goblin and Football walked along with them. The cat-beast just sat up in the rafters and made nasty comments. If Trooper had felt better he might had spoken back, but he was quite miserable.By the time the humans finally left he was feeling a lot better. Shorty and I both remonstrated him about breaking his buckets and he assured us that he was going to try to break his nasty habit. I hope so, because the sight of him with tubes stuck in him has given me nightpeoples. More later…