Well, this week has been an adventure! While trying to help a veterinarian I work for get an x-ray on a horse named Whiskey I got kicked! Well really I should say that the scatter plate I was holding got kicked and the scatter plate kicked me!

I had my thumb through the plate’s handle weird and my thumb got bent back WAY beyond where it was meant to go. So now I have a thumb that won’t bend all the way, bruises on both my legs, one on my back (where I fell backward into a door frame), and another on my left hand. I’m not really sure how I got that one.

And I can’t wait to go back Monday.

My Passion

Horses are genuinely my passion and I love almost every moment I spend with them, even the ones where I’m getting kicked. The whole purpose of working with the vets is to learn more about them. And that includes what makes them kick…

All of this comes on the heels of losing my horse Sunny. It’s been several months since Sunny passed away from a Cecum rupture and I wish I had known as much as what I do now.

Sunny

Perspective

I don’t really write that for sympathy. I write that as a reminder to myself that our tolerance for what we go through is all shaded by passion. Passion provides perspective, or some clever saying along those lines.

After Whiskey kicked me, I gave him a lot of love. He was drugged, acting on instinct. Likely didn’t have a clue what he had done. His head was inches off the floor he was so drunk. I love horses and I want to understand them and I understand that a drugged horse feeling something cold by its flank may react in unpredictable ways.

Will I check sensitivity to the plate before getting close in the future… yes. But that’s a secondary lesson to the lesson I’ve learned about what I’m willing to endure for my passions.

What About You?

How about you, has passion gotten you through something that would otherwise be a dealbreaker? Made you pet a horse that just kicked you? Even if your horse was not a horse?