I went after a deal.

You know… you go to the feed store (or online) to get a nice fly mask for your older mare who needs  to shade her weary eyes from the sun…

…and then you see it:

THE DEAL!

You say to yourself that you should just get what you always get because you know that your regular brand fits her and you know she prefers the expensive kind with the soft edges, darts for her eyes and a hole for her forelock…

But, the ‘deal’ looks fine and it is half the price!  Heck, it says it has “heat reflecting gray material” and  “Ultra Durable Rip-Shield (patented) Construction.”

 

YUP… PLEASE LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE.

I arrived home and put the bargain flymask on MamaTess – and then left to do other things.

I didn’t check on Tess or the flymask because… I usually don’t have to.

Usually, I put all the flymasks on at breakfast and take them all off at dinner.

That’s what I did yesterday.

So, at dinner, when I removed the flymask –

AAAAAAAGGHHHHHH!

Her eyes were swollen and the tissue of her undereyes (where you put the eyeliner if it was us) was huge, red and inflamed.  It looked like hamburger.

I felt sick and horribly upset with myself.  Evidently, the fabric had inverted at some point and there were several spots where the fabric was rubbing on her eye.

I’m sure it felt like when you have an ingrown eyelash – except waaaay worse.

Clearly this purchase was not a good decision.

Poor girl.

THE VET

I ran and got my house phone so I could make a call and grabbed my cell phone to take a photo.

While on with the vet, he had me run back to the house so I could use the internet to send to him a photo of her eyes.

I did.

He asked if I had any of the “eye – fly ointment you use all summer for her”.

I ran back to the barn to rummage like a fool through my cupboard.

Yes!

(I have to label all of the eye ointments because I forget which ones are which – steroids are only good for one kind of eye issue, but not every kind so I have to be careful…  This one I called, “SAFE FLIES –  not for swollen eye”)

“Well, put that in both eyes and see what happens in the morning.  I want to make sure she didn’t scratch her corneas.”

And that was that.

In the morning, her eyes were both normal.

No cornea scratches.

Phew.

AND WHERE WAS THE FLY MASK?….

I could not find the darn thing.  I had removed it – but once I saw MamaTess’ eyes, I couldn’t  remember what I did with it.

I wanted to find it to see how it was shaped – so I could figure out how many points were touching her eyes.

And then I saw…

A PERFECT ENDING FOR THAT FLYMASK…

HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!

 

 

 

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