A sawazall saved 2 1/2 lives
As i was sitting here thinking about this thread, I got to reflecting on a few of those spectacular wrecks that I mentioned. I figured I’d post them here (although not show related) for educational purposes. If it just makes you think a little, or give someone the confidence to take action in an emotional urgent situation, then it’ll be worth it.
First of three “sawzall incidents”. I was bringing in one of my broodmares to ultrasound one evening. Heres the barn layout: made of stone in the 1930s, 8 foot aisle way, draft-sized standing stalls down the left with super-reenforced feed bunks made from old school 2 X 8 boards (back when they measured a true 2 inches by 8 inches, and so hard you can hardly drive a nail in to them) bolted in to the structural vertical columns supporting the loft and reenforced with more 2 X 4s; solid enclosed rooms down the right side. The mare (new to me, I discovered that day she is claustrophobic) decided she didn’t like the shadows at the end of the barn my ultrasound was at, or something, not sure. But she started backing up in to one of the standing stalls. Not super hurried, but insistent and methodically backing up, there was no way I was going to stop her. Over the span of about 5 seconds I tried giving her slack in the rope so she wouldn’t think she’s stuck, pulling on her, giving her slack, and just as she backed up to the feed bunk and practically sat down on it, I gave one last hard pull to keep her from going in. She backed up to the bunk until her back feet stopped, sat down on it, and continued to back up her front end. She lost her balance, rolled in, and fell from about 3 feet up on to her back on the concrete floor. Now I have all 16 hands and 1200 pounds of her stuck upside down, tightly squeezed in to this horrendous hard-ass feed bunk. For a nano second I thought “holy crap, I don’t know how to get her out, she’s going to die in here”. I screamed at my mom to get a sawzall (mostly because I didn’t know where it was :o) while I tried to keep the mare calm. She never did really thrash much, thank god because I had to work with my face right at her feet. But she was obviously headed down a bad path and I knew she would be going in to shock very soon. Talking to her seemed to help. It took me about 45 minutes of cutting and several blade changes to get the bunk cut down. I was able to summon some ungodly new found strength in the couple areas that I had to tear apart a few boards with just a hammer. I got it cut down far enough that we could pull her out with a truck and a strap run through the barn door to pull her out of a small hump of dirt that was packed against the base of the feed bunk. Once out she was a little rattled and needed a couple minutes to lay there and get her bearings. But stood right up and seemed fine, other than being a little stiff and sore. I took her to the vet just to be sure, although she came out of being “shocky” very quickly. She was fine other than a couple bloody rub marks along her wither and some pressure points. So note to self, always keep the sawzall where you can find it.
Less than a year later, my hunter who had been rehabbing a broken coffin bone, I had just started riding him again when I went out one evening to find himself hung from a corral panel. He had apparently been playing with another horse over the panels, reared up and put his left front down between two panels at the corner (I’m a stickler for keeping joints super tight, so I have no idea how he got it his pastern in there), rotated to the left, and fell on his back with his leg wedged down in the corner. I don’t know how long he was there. I guessed maybe an hour? Theres no telling. At first glance, I thought he was cast and dead (legs straight up in the air). I ran to his side and found he was still alive and EXTREMELY grateful that mom was there. Again I screamed for help and a sawzall, while I tried to free the chain and talked to him. He was wallowing in a muddle puddle and his head was covered. But every time he lifted his head to see if i was still there, I would talk to him and he’d put his head back down and wait (he’s a mommas boy and very personable, luckily). There was no way to free the chain by hand; it was SO jammed. I called the fire department, because I was certain I didn’t have anything to cut through my Priefert panels. Well sure enough, that handy little saw was able to cut right through the panel on my test attempt. I was ready to hack that whole panel apart, piece by piece. Then my mom was like “why don’t you just cut the chain?”. Duh. I cut one link and his 16.3 hand-ness was free. He stood up, non weight bearing on the leg that had been stuck, but that didn’t stop him from trying to run around like a maniac. I brought him up in to a stall to dry him off and warm up (January and headed towards upper 20s for the night, and he was soaked with mud), within 15 minutes he was completely weight bearing. He really didn’t have much for cuts but has several pressure-related trauma scars. Took him to the chiropractor and he had very little out of alignment.
Third one, a couple weeks later. A meanie chased a 2 year old gelding through a board fence corner, right where it meets the run in shed. The board broke from the post at the shed, but not the next post. So the horse nearly impaled himself on the splintered piece of board, right at his girth, and pinned himself between the horizontal board and the shed. First order of business was get the meanie out of there before he made things worse, while my mom fetched the sawzall from its easy-to-get-to location. I was sprinting back from where I put meanie at while my mom was running the extension cord when the horse flopped forward and freed himself. He walked away with only a couple superficial dings to his girth. Didn’t actually have to cut anything on this one but we were ready and had the saw employed quickly.
Morale of the story: ALWAYS have something you can use to cut away wood and even metal bars. And yes, a standard wood blade will work just fine on metal if you need. Just be careful changing blades as I have burned myself pretty badly doing so. These three horses are sound, happy, and healthy, just have some cosmetic blemishes that come with some interesting stories.
Also, a word against panels that have pins. The ones that are secured with pins usually have a gap that a foot can come down in. Which is why I’ve always sworn by Priefert panels that have no gap at the top. Well my train wreck will always find a way. If he had gotten his leg stuck in a panel that closed with pins, his leg would have come down on top of the pin with no way to remove the pin. I would have had to cut the panel away piece by piece. Which would have only taken longer, and still would have had panel pieces affixed to his leg until I found a way to cut out the pin, which 9 months later, I still can’t fathom how I would have been able to do that…
He was euthanized where he lay and I guess the special horse ambulance, with a winch, got him out and took him away. By then I had walked away.
