Rolling Dog Farm Blog

At feeding time this morning we found Lilah, one of our sighted horses, had cut her face open.  She had a deep wound right down the center, all the way to the bone.  A thick flap of skin hung loose.  Blood was everywhere.  In fact, even Patches, our other sighted mare who is Lilah’s buddy, had blood on her; it appeared that Lilah had been using Patches as equine tissue paper to wipe the blood off her face.  (Resourceful, huh?)

I called our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, at Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Missoula.  Erin came out here a short while later to clean the wound and suture it closed.  I took the photo above of Erin working on a sedated Lilah in the horse stock in our medical room at Beauty’s Barn. 

When I first met Erin at the barn this morning, she said cryptically:  "I know what you’re going to say." 

I said, "About what?"

Erin replied, "Just wait. I’ll let you know when you say it."

Me: "Say what?"

Erin:  "I’m not telling.  But you will."

Hmm.

About 15 minutes later, Erin was just about to sew up the bloody wound when I said, "You realize, of course, that this is a horse who can see."

Erin turned to me, laughed, and said, "There!  You just said it.  That’s what I was waiting for!"

Blind horses have a completely unfounded reputation for being prone to injury … people assume that a 1,000-pound animal that can’t see is going to get hurt all the time.  It’s one of the many unfortunate myths about these wonderful animals.  In fact, the opposite is true.  They tend to be very careful and cautious in their movements because they know they can’t see and they don’t want to get hurt.

Thus I have this (apparently well-known) habit of pointing out when sighted horses like Lilah hurt themselves in dumb ways from things that, yes, they can see.  We looked at the pasture Lilah was in and couldn’t find any obvious source for the injury … but clearly she managed to find something to cut her face on.  She’s been in this pasture for about three months, too, so it wasn’t a new environment.

We see more sighted horses do goofy things and get themselves cut up, and the blind horses rarely do.

So we have a saying here at the ranch, a twist on an old expression:  "Where there’s a way, they will."