Vet Rant

I don't know if I explained this before, but my barn owner is very close to Walker's vet.  I mean, they are actually friends in real life, and she texts him on a regular basis.  In many ways, this is a great thing for me because it means that anytime I have even the slightest question, she can get a hold of him and ask without me paying an arm and a leg to get him to come out to the barn.

However, my barn owner is also one of those "my barn, my rules" types, and in fairness to her, she deals with a lot of children, parents without horse knowledge, and people that don't pay their bills.  I am none of these.  In fact, I am the only adult at the barn who owns a horse.

Anyway, as it turns out, my vet and the on-call vet do not particularly get along all the time.  I'm told it is an ego thing, and the problem is simply that the on-call vet is a large animal vet whereas my vet is an equine specialist.  Naturally, I need to defer to my vet, but the on-call vet continued to contact me all week, including today.  Since I have never had any problems with Walker before, I didn't realize the procedure.  Apparently the on-call vet is supposed to hand over the case to the vet in charge as soon as the work week begins, but instead, the on-call vet continued to check lab results and contact me.  I mean, it is not a bad thing to have him so enthusiastic about Walker's case, but obviously problems have arisen between him and my own vet.

For instance, today the on-call vet called me to prescribe a drug to treat against ulcers, since ulcers can be a cause of anemia.  After some extended conversations about me being a nervous wreck about Walker's swelling, I convinced him to also prescribe me the medication we used the night before to bring Walker's swelling down.  Several hours after I shell out over $100 for all of this new medication, I get a text from my barn owner saying that she talked to my real vet who prescribed the anti-swelling medication and some other antibiotic, different from the one for ulcers.  I immediately messaged her back and explained what the on-call vet gave me.  Apparently, my vet was livid, and also happens to be the on-call vet's boss.  He told me not to give Walker the ulcer meds (goodbye money) and he would "deal with it".

All this hullabaloo has left me extraordinarily slightly perturbed.  First of all, what if I had went to the barn and administered those meds to Walker, and my barn owner had went out and gave him the other stuff.  I mean, can all three even be administered?  What if we had overdosed on the anti-swelling meds?  I don't care if the vets have drama.  Work it out among yourselves!

Secondly, I feel like my barn owner is overstepping her bounds.  I will preface the following rant by saying that she knows how crazy worried I am about Walker, she knows I want the best for him, and she knows that I am also depending on her to help me with all this (I happen to have a severe phobia of needles, which is making giving him shots kind of wildly impossible).  However, I am the owner of the horse, and I feel like I am the person who is the most out of the loop.  I don't care if my vet tells her things.  I want her to know.  But why the hell isn't he calling me and telling me!?  I mean, he prescribes Walker the meds, my barn owner picks them up, she tells me about it, and then she administers them to him without me being there (and of course, I now owe her money for them).  She did tell me about them before she administered them, but I did not expressly give her permission to administer them (or buy them!).  And then I find out that he was very difficult to give one of the meds to, and it took four of them to essentially hold him down.  Ummm.  And why wasn't I there?  Why was all this going down without me?

The problem here is that my barn owner is a controlling person (as am I, to be fair), and she is used to dealing with everything at my barn.  One of the horses this week got into an argument with another one and needed stitches.  She called the owners, and they didn't show up for two days!  So it's regular course of business for her to have the vet tell her what she needs to do and then for her to look after other people's horses.  But I'm not like that in the least.  The problem is that she also takes offense easily, and if I confronted her on all this, I would not be surprised if she simply refused to help me anymore.  I can't afford for this to happen - phobia of needles, remember (hereafter, called "the bad thing" since it bothers me to even type the word).  So I clearly have to tread lightly on the matter.

I think tomorrow I am going to have a heart to heart with the vet and try to gently explain to him that he can tell my barn owner whatever he wants, but he has to let me know too.  I don't want to hear it from her.  I want to hear it from him.  And more importantly, I'm afraid that someday I am going to do something (like decide to administer the drugs myself) and she will do it too.  I shouldn't have to check with her if it's ok for me to administer drugs to my horse.  It should be the other way around.

Anyway, that is the end of my long vet rant.

The main thing is that Walker looks better tonight.  He was still swollen a bit and moving kind of slow, but not nearly as bad as last night.

I rode a horse named Coal in the lesson tonight. He is about 14.3 hands, jet black, with a huge barrel on him.  He's a quarter horse, but more the ranch style horse who is quick on his feet and turns on a dime.  He was great fun to ride.  And when I say quick on a dime, let's just say that I may have run us into a lot of obstacles throughout the evening - including my leg into the wall.  And when he canters, he's got a quickstart kind of canter.  He really rockets off his haunches.  I actually thought he was bucking at first!  I think he will be fun to ride in the hiatus while Walker gets better.  Although, of course, I miss my big boy's floaty canter and gentle jog.  :(