Disaster strikes again... poorly Bertie

8 June 2001
In need of medical attention again.

Its not fair ... Bert has been off work for four months with his lip. No sooner as he comes back into work ... and its not like we have been doing anything too strenuous because of his previous injury ... his is in the wars again.

I had noticed that Bert has been careless on his right leg, tripping up at walk quite a lot lately. A number of people uttered the N word (Navicular) and so after speaking for the farrier I asked the vet to look at him ...

Well we didn't get as far as the N word ... the vet says he is lame ... not that anyone else seems to have noticed! Anyway, the vet ultra-sounded Bert's leg and determined that he has damaged to the upper suspensory ligament.

This is the image of Bert's leg. The top of the image is skin and the bottom part of the image is the bone in the middle of the leg. The red circle highlights the damaged area which is darker than the surrounding tissue.

Bert has been confined to a stable for six weeks ... I feel so bad for him ... he should be out in the field eating grass with his friend George (who already misses him dearly).

I spent an hour on Saturday and an hour on Sunday filling a dustbin with grass so Bert could at least have something nice in his stable. It is going to be a very hard six weeks. I don't know who I feel worse for, Bert stuck in a stable or George who cant find Bert in the field.

17 June 2001
Living in a small box for six weeks can be a very trying affair, especially for a horse. I feel constant guilt and am constantly trying to come up with ideas to keep Bert amused.

The single swede hanging on a string lasted 30mins, so I have upgraded to version 3.0 of the swede confined space distraction program. He didn't touch it on Sunday, I am sure that it was gone five minutes after I left for home.

Equally interesting is the apple bobbing excercise. I wasn't sure if it would entertain Bert or drown him ... Needless to say he didn't touch them the previous weekend, but they were gone when I got there this weekend. Now, human intervention may have been involved ... but finally I cought Bert in the act.

It really is quite interesting watching him at work. Last weekend he wouldn't go near the floating apples. Now its muzzle in and fish arround. His most sucessful technique is to push the to the side and scoop them out. Other times he just bites them in half as they float helpless in the water. Every now and again, after a long failed struggle, he gives up and just drinks water as if to say ... "silly apple was in the way" ... either that or he thinks the best way to get to the apple is to drink all the water first !!!

Here is some video of Bertie apple bobbing. The files are in the RealVideo format and about 800KB in size.