Ouch

After Conrad’s spa day, I headed out to the barn. I thought I might ride Eli, in spite of the heat, but that plan changed. As I pulled him from his stall, I noticed blood dripping from his forelock.

But I couldn’t see a cut on him. My trainer was right there, so I asked her to check him out. We looked all around his stall for signs of blood, and couldn’t find anything. Then a working student mentioned Eli was flinging his head around while they were feeding lunch and he bonked his head on the cross beam of his stall doorway. My trainer and I thought this was really unusual because contrary to just about everything else, Eli is extremely polite during feed times. My trainer usually feeds lunch, although she didn’t that day, but she said he doesn’t really do that. He doesn’t paw, he doesn’t fuss, he doesn’t make a sound. He just stands at his feed bin patiently waiting for it to be filled with goodies. Maybe he flung his head for some other reason? Who knows.

I felt around his poll and sure enough as I brought my hand back down there was blood on my fingers. Ew. And ouch. Really, that had to hurt. I am sure Eli’s head felt achy. I decided not to ride and washed his forelock. Once clean and with the help of a stool I was able to find a wound under his forelock almost directly (but not quite) on his poll. Again, ouch. He was clearly tender there and not super cooperative about me trying to look at it. I managed to get some Corona in the vicinity of the wound, so hopefully Eli’s head is feeling a little better today.

A bridle’s crownpiece wouldn’t interfere with the cut in any way, but Eli may still be tender in that area today so I am on the fence about trying to ride this evening.

I guess Eli got a spa day, too, in a way? Probably a better choice than riding at that time of day, anyway.