You need Calm, Healthy Horses to survive this............... I have had Safari for 8 years he came to us from Opotiki. He is quite well known in our district, a big bay gelding who always looks after everyone who rides him. We regularly go riding in the forest. He has been on ProvideIt products from Calm Healthy Horses and diet recommendations for years. Recently, on one of our trips to the forest, the thing all horse owners dread actually happened. We were hit by a rural delivery van zooming backwards out of a driveway! The float was ripped off the back of our 4wheel drive and flipped over. I was carrying Henry, a friends horse and of course Safari. Henry ended up on top of Safari who was pinned down on the bottom of the float. Emergency services including my vet, were soon there. Traffic officers had a gun at the ready! My vet said if it had have been 2 TB’s in there they wouldn’t have even attempted to get them out but luckily he knew these horses. Even so there was no way of knowing exactly what injuries they had sustained. Both horses were lightly sedated but even before that they were amazingly calm after the accident. Henry was somehow extricated first but poor Safari who had been underneath, was down in the float for another two hours. He was amazing through the whole ordeal, jaws of life operating just a few inches away from his head! I was sent away up the road when they finally got Safari out (it was thought he might have broken limbs) but unbelievably and thankfully they couldnt find any major injuries when he did get out and even more incredibly both he and Henry loaded straight into my friend’s float for the trip home. Safari is 19yrs old and the trauma of the accident did take an incredible toll. In that first week he stopped eating and was so sore we nearly made the decision to put him down. Fortunately my wonderful vet stepped in and said he would take him to his property in order to administer better pain relief and keep a close eye on him. This was an extremely generous offer and meant he had the best pain relief but he was put out on very lush dairy like pasture. Rye grass and clover! Safari had never been on that sort of pasture! Also they did not give him any of the Premium minerals, Alleviate C, salt or GrazeEzy. Within three days he became so itchy and sensitive that he started rubbing the hair off his head. By the fifth day he had completely rubbed himself raw and was continuing to drop weight an incredible rate. I spoke to the vet about it and said we thought it was because of the grass and no minerals. But he would not agree and said this was just the stress of the accident. Im afraid I just didnt believe the hair loss and itchiness was stress because we had always been careful about what pasture he was on. We had always managed his diet very carefully. However the vet had got him through the terrible pain and I am incredibly grateful to him for the wonderful care Safari received which got him through the worst. As soon as we thought he was improved enough we moved him to a friend’s 100 acre property where there was some wonderful pasture down on a river flat that had had no fertilizer for 30 years and had never been over grazed. Ideal because Safari had become thin through the whole ordeal and this pasture was quite long and mature. We also put him back on his Premium minerals etc. We watched to see how he would go. Within two weeks all his itchiness had gone and he had started to put weight back on. It took over a month for all his hair to grow back. I am very lucky that the two horses survived such a terrible accident. Henry’s fractured eye socket has healed up and he is back to normal. Safari is steadily recovering now three months after the accident and I will slowly start to bring him back into light hacking. He is a wonderful horse and I hope to enjoy many more years of us riding together. He still self-loads onto the float and thoroughly enjoyed his walk down the beach yesterday. (see pic) Also a picture of the float after the accident.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 05:16:45 +0000
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