Or, "I Knew the Lesson Kids Would Kill Me Us."

I swung by the barn last night to give Archie his beet pulp and beer.  The new trainer chick was giving a group lesson on Chubbs and Wuf while Skinny Guy and Archie grazed in the back pasture.  When I convinced Archie to follow me to his stall, I realized that they had knocked over one of the grooming boxes and scattered its contents all over.  In the midst of that was an almost-smooshed iPhone with a hoof print on the back of the case.  I grabbed the phone, tossed a few things back into the box and shoved everything back against the wall.  Then I gave Archie his stuff and walked the phone out to the lesson.

Convincing him to follow me.

The phone actually belonged to Wuf's teenage owner.  We talked about Otterbox Death By Pony for a few minutes, I congratulated Wuf's owner for sitting a fabulous spook-and-spin, and then I left and hightailed it to yoga.

I turn my phone on vibrate for yoga and was completely surprised to see that I had a missed text and a voicemail from BO.  She's going out of town today, but we had already covered all the details.

The story is this:  the grooming box was targeted because the teenager had left a bag of carrots in it.  And now they couldn't find the bag.

I called the emergency line at the vet's office and the vet on call told me that she thought everything would be okay, given the size of my horse, but advised wet food, wet hay and oil for the next three feedings.

D had already cooked dinner while all of this was going on, so I ate standing up at the trashcan and immediately went back to the barn.  I was there until about ten last night, trying to get oil into Butthole's face.  I then wet some hay and offered that, which he devoured.  There was this one moment when I was slippery to the elbows and his muzzle was all gross and we just sort of had a sloppy cuddle.  A reminder.

I forgot what it was like to be at the barn at 7 in the morning.

Archie affirming his position.  Side note:  I don't care if Wuf was "starved" (don't believe it), it's no excuse for horrible ground manners.  Dude has no concept of personal space.

Jinx helping submerge the hay.

I went back this morning before work and gave him more oil and some wet food and hay.  The teenager was bitched out by her trainer and was given the task of evening checks last night.  BO isn't really concerned about Skinny Guy, but she doesn't really think either of the horses ate the plastic.  D is supposed to meet me for lunch today and then he has agreed to drive by the barn and check on everyone.  He doesn't know what to look for, so I just told him to make sure that everyone was standing and acting relatively normally.  I feed tonight, so I'll probably just hand-walk Archie and let him graze for a while and repeat this morning.

BO did tell me that she told the trainer that I ought to be reimbursed for my gas, since I've spent about two hours driving just because of this.  And this is where I went mentally apeshit and ranted to myself that if Ponykins had to be visited by a vet (the e-vet offered to tube him and I almost took her up on it), the teenager was getting the bill as a lesson in horse ownership.