Today was
a big decision making day. I am not good with big decisions. I always pray that
God will make it very clear to me one way or the other. Well, he
doesn't always make it that clear to me, in fact most of the time my decsions are not obvious and could go one way or another. Today,
with Jayden & Jake we went to the ISU vet school to have Ace, the horse vet
checked. The owner’s willingly brought their horse to go
through a complete check over at the ISU vet center. Ace stood perfect and let them do anything and
was quiet and relaxed. The took him and did flex tests then trotted him on pavement. At first everything was going great. Ace was a little
sore acting when trotting in one direction. I had hoped this horse
would pass with flying colors. The vet helping us made it so hard. We decided
to go ahead with x-rays in order to rule out what may be the problem. The
x-rays showed tiny bits of wear in the navicular, which would be common in any
horse over the age of 10. I talked to my vet on the phone, who is also the sister of the
owner. She was not at all biased in her conversation. I also talked to a family
friend, Verlin that works at the vet school, is a farrier, and knows a ton about
horses. I valued his opinion over the vet working with us. We decided to do a
nerve block to see if we could pin point the cause of pain. We had to wait because
the horse had been sedated from x-rays. We went for lunch and I called Mark and stressed
over my decision some more. It was such a high stress situation. The owners were
patiently waiting a decision, as was Jayden. The day was dragging on and I could not decide what to do. One vet told me if I wasn’t sure that I shouldn't do anything at all. My
stomach hurt as I stressed. I told Jayden I thought we should just go home and
think about it. Tears formed in her eyes and she was so disappointed. I thought
about is some more and made some more phone calls. I had an idea and asked the
owners to allow us a couple weeks with the horse. If we saw anything obvious in
the way of lameness the horse went back, if he was fine we would keep him. She
agreed to a week and went down just a little on the price. As we loaded the horse in the trailer and I handed the dated check over, the knot in my gut did not go away. It was kind of sad as I had hoped to purchase the horse with joy and excitement and for Jayden to be gushing with excitement of her new horse.
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