Wipe out (not me, this time!)

Deuce and Flash and I set out on a lovely early evening walk around the cross country field to enjoy the late fall sky colors as the sun sank lower on the horizon.

Flash has decided to take an interest in his surroundings while on trial rides. He looks around more and actually picks up his feet and moves with a bit more energy now. That's all well and good most of the time...

Tonight really was simply lovely in the field. We cruised around, looked at the sky and the horizon. We made big circles, and turns up and down the hill and all sorts of things. Flash stayed right by our sides and only tried to trot off once (mostly just to see what he could get away with and he was feeling good)  but Deuce and I both reminded him where he was supposed to be with little fuss.

Since both boys seemed to be mellow and on good behavior, I decided to take a small little venture down the driveway and over to the Christmas tree farm and then back past the driveway and down the dirt road just a little ways. All was well until we turned back towards home...

The neighbor's farm has a new horse in the front field, I learned in a rather unfortunate way. As we were headed back towards the barn and walking back up the dirt driveway, the new horse in the field came charging up along the fence line. The rapid hoof beats took Deuce and Flash by surprise. Flash wanted to run... and Deuce did too. I could not keep both from running off so I let Flash go. I figured we were close to the barn and that is very likely where he would go. And he did. Rather rapidly. He hit the asphalt driveway which was a little wet and flew around the corner and lost his back end. and thud!  He had a complete wipe out, all the way down on his side. He quickly got up and trotted around to the back of the barn. From where I was perched on a very amped up and trying to take off Deuce, it looked like the grey one trotted off sound, so I focused my efforts on settling a very hot spotted horse (who did some pretty fancy side stepping and nearly passage type moves) as we made our way back to the barn to go find and assess the damage on the poor kid.

He was grazing quietly behind the barn...on all 4 feet... good sign. I caught him easily enough, took a quick look over to determine nothing major was injured and then carried on with our ride. We were going to end on a good note, even if it was getting dark. I made a few more passes up and down the driveway then back for a small loop around the cross country field with no furhter incident or even really indication that anything had happened (both calm and relaxed!)

Back at the barn, I took a more through look at all the points of impact.... he had some pretty good road rash and will likely have some bruising. He'll be sore tomorrow but I don't think any major damage incurred.

I covered his owys thoroughly with ointment, gave his some bute and promised to check on him first thing in the morning.