Rachel Wise: Please remind me again why I have horses?

Rachel Wise

A friend put up a Facebook message last week: "An interesting afternoon ahead", it read.

She attached a photo. It was a bull. It had a ladder around its neck. "How are you going to get that off?" I asked her.

She replied the vet was on the way to sedate the bull. "Hahaha that is hilarious," I answered.

I really should have bitten my tongue.

Because of course, within a few days the vet was on their way to my place, to sedate Chalkie.

Chalkie is a tall, opinionated horse.

While the weather has been hot he has been spending a lot of time under the trees in his paddock. A week or so ago I noticed he had a small injury on his face, under his fringe.

He appeared to have poked his face with a branch, I informed him he was going to need the injury cleaned up and maybe a dab of antibiotic cream.

So I caught him and tied him up, filled a bucket with warm water and iodine, ripped up an old towel and went to wipe the small scratch.

Chalkie decided he didn't want the small scratch wiped. Not at all. In fact he didn't even want the small scratch looked at, thank you very much.

He drew himself to his full, opinionated height and flatly refused all medical treatment.

Unable to reach his face, I climbed upon an upturned feed bucket and tried again. Chalkie did a creditable impersonation of an offended giraffe and still refused to have his injury cleaned.

I told him he might get germs. He seemed to think if he kept his head way up in the air, germs couldn't reach it.

I told him he had to bring his head down some time. He reckoned he didn't have to and wasn't going to and that was that.

Eventually my arms got tired and I gave up, telling him he would just have to suffer the consequences and not to come whining to me when his head fell off.

The next morning the small scratch looked no worse. That was good. The morning after that it looked much the same. That was good too.

The next morning it looked very, very scary.

From Chalkie's forehead had sprung a torrent of goo. Some of it had hardened and was hanging like stalactites from his fringe. Some of it was still runny and was sliding down his face and dripping off his nose.

"I told you you'd get germs," I told him.

I caught him and tied him up, filled three buckets with warm water and iodine and found the towel I had ripped up.

Chalkie didn't want his goo wiped off. Well, not on the nice clean pieces of ripped up towel, anyway.

He wiped some on my sleeve and some on my arm, but he wasn't letting the damp towel bits anywhere near him.

"OK," I told him, "now you've done it, I'm going to the vet."

I reached up and took a picture of Chalkie's gooey face and I went to the vet clinic. "Look what Chalkie has done," I said and showed her the picture.

"Yuck," said the vet.

When I went home to Chalkie I had a bottle of purple antibiotic spray, two big syringes of antibiotics and a tube of sedative.

"This will fix you," I told him.

The instructions on the sedative said to syringe it into his mouth and then wait half an hour.

Half an hour later Chalkie was looking particularly chipper. If anything, he looked more alert than he had half an hour earlier.

I caught him, tied him up and reached for a nice clean towel-portion and dunked it in the first bucket of water. I heard a snap, and when I stood up Chalkie had left. In his place swung a broken lead rope.

Putting down the piece of damp towel I went and retrieved him and tied him up again. Snap. This time the halter had broken, and Chalkie had left again.

I began to get the impression he wasn't sedated. He certainly didn't look very sedate as he cantered around the paddock.

Four catch-and-release eposides and one more broken halter later we'd come to an agreement. He would stay tied up, so long as I didn't touch his - now fairly revolting - small injury.

I was permitted to wipe his face. But not the sore bit.

I could trim the stalactites from out of his fringe ... but not touch the sore bit.

Any approach, however sneaky, towards the sore spot was greeted with a horse-sized tantrum and another attempt to leave the scene.

After an hour I was soggy with water and iodine. I had purple antibiotic spray on my shirt, my arms and my hands. There was no purple antibiotic spray on the horse. My buckets of water were tipped over and my pieces of clean towel trodden into the puddles. My fringe was full of goo but Chalkie's was clean.

The injury was completely untouched.

I rang the vet.

"Can you come out tomorrow please? Bring lots of sedative."

I heard the bull with the ladder round his neck was extremely well behaved and all was sorted quickly and quietly. He even posed for pictures.