Baby Horses are out to kill themselves!

Fiera has had her first official vet bill. Sometime last week she injured her leg. I saw it on Thursday and it looked like a scrape and I didn't think it was a big deal. After all, she wasn't limping, she was eating and drinking and running around and didn't mind me handling it. Unfortunately, now it's 3 times it's normal size and the vet had to come and she's loaded up on antibiotics. The vet was talking about me needing to take her into the racetrack clinic to have it flushed and cultured and I was pretty nervous. He just didn't want to waste my money coming out only to have to haul her to the vet. But, once he got there he was reasonably confident that we can get this under control.

I'm usually pretty quick to call the vet on stuff like this...In fact, I did call one of the vets I use yesterday evening and she said that it didn't sound like an emergency to her and to call her this am if the baby had a fever over 102.5. She didn't have a fever this am and was moving better, but then this evening she had a temp of 101.8 and when I called the same vet again she told me to call my other vet because she couldn't come out till Thursday at the earliest. Since I have to work the next two days, I wanted to get it seen so I didn't miss work so that Marisa didn't fuss at me for missing work, like I did two weeks ago when Merlin died. I just got the feeling that she didn't want to come out. I had that same feeling in April when Freeley colicked, but I just chalked it up to a lot of colics, busy Saturday...now I'm not so sure. It may just have been that she had plans and she's off tomorrow. Maybe she doesn't really do emergency calls? I'm not sure, but I think I will be sticking with the larger practice I have used in the future.

Poor Fiera is wrapped from hoof to knee but she was feeling better already from the banamine by the time I left. I have antibiotics to give her 2 times a day and banamine for the next 3 days. I'm sure my bill will be pricey with the after hours call, but I don't care since I don't plan to raise another baby and she is something really special. If she's not better on Thursday I am to get a referral to take her to one of the equine hospitals to get the wound cultured and flushed, which will be expensive!