Phantom turned 20 years old on Sunday!
How it started:
The ponies celebrated the occasion with a couple of dishes of carrots that were next to a 4' tall unicorn balloon. Phantom, much like me, was far more interested in birthday cake (carrots) than the party decor.
Cisco, who will always be the life of the party, really liked the unicorn. Maybe he recognized it as one of his brethren.
He really wanted to play with Phantom in the arena, but since she is now officially a cranky old lady, she wanted nothing to do with him. It was also still really smokey out so I also didn't want him running around.
Once the cake was eaten and many photos were taken, the ponies went back to the barn so that we could get back to our regular routine.
How it ended:
All the excitement from the party seemed to have gone to Cisco's head. I popped the Flexineb on him and took him outside for a walk while it worked its magic.
I have no idea what set him off, but we were barely out of the barn when he started calling to someone. Which he continued to do for the next five minutes while I chatted with someone in the parking lot. He was trying real hard to be all big and bad, but it was really hard to take him seriously while he was calling with his squealy whinny that was getting muffled by the nebulizer.
He was an absolute twit to walk, including one time when he thought about scooting off with a snakey neck. I almost went back to the barn to grab a chain lead, but carried on, and he eventually (after many stop and back-ups) he got the message and chilled out.
Phantom came in and picked at her food (totally normal these days). She ate the few alfalfa cubes that I added to her regular ration balancer, and left almost all of the ration balancer. I had to add some oats to it and she ate almost all of it, but not quite. No worries, Cisco would get a second supper.
I took her on our nebulizing walk outside. We took a slightly different path than normal. There suddenly appeared a gopher hole in Phantom's path that I had to make a split decision about - move her out of the way, or, because the hole was only a couple of inches wide, let her continue on the path because she obviously wouldn't be able to stick her foot in that small hole. I chose that one.
However, I forgot that Phantom will always put her foot into the hole I want her to avoid.
Sure enough, she stepped onto the hole with a hind leg. The hold must have collapsed, she of course panicked, and in flailing about she stomped on my foot. Hard.
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| It looks worse than it feels. Still not sure if the nail will survive though. |
She also managed to scrape about 4 inches of hair off the front of that leg.
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| Really, it's just a scrape. A two-day old scrape in this pic. |
Cue big guilt on my part.
I think she held a bit of a grudge as when I turned her back out she ran away from me and wouldn't let me catch her to put her fly mask back on.
While this was happening, Cisco was standing at the gate waiting for me to give him the feed dish with the remainder of Phantom's food in it that was on the ground just outside the paddock. His hopes for second dinner were dashed by the goat that always slips through the fence and had eaten everything before I got Phantom's mask on.
Let's hope Cisco's birthday in July is much less exciting.
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