Unicorn Tales & Eyes

My unicorn can get himself into some mess. It is no wonder he is afraid of his own shadow.

Two days ago, I arrived home from work to a big fluffy marshmallow standing at the gate with a weepy, swollen but beautiful blue eye.

"What have you done to your eye, bud?!" I ask.

"Has boo boo...needs tweats to fix it," he implies, while nuzzling me.

My mind immediately flashed back to two years ago, almost to the day. I was on day two of my current career coordinating boat construction when I arrived home for lunch to find what appeared to be Quasimodo in my pasture. (Truly, it looked like he was smuggling a softball under his eyelid.)

"What have you done, T!?" I ask, while panic-dialing the vet.

The vet arrived a few short hours later, cleaned his eye to be sure it wasn't scratched and left us with strict instructions to apply ointment directly to the eyeball daily.

After a few hours of attempting to doctor the unicorn's boo boo, I call reinforcement into the barn. (Unicorns play by their own rules and on this day, there was no rule in Tristan's rulebook that said he had to stand still for goopy-yucky-stuff in his eyeball.)

"Okay...so I need you to hold his head down- and I'm going to swipe this goop into his eye," I tell my husband, who takes my instruction very serious and bears down on the halter.

Tristan, the almighty unicorn feels the pressure and immediately begins to pull slightly back right about the time I jam (gently) my goopy finger into his eye. Tristan then rears up and shoves my sweet cowboy through the stall wall. (Through the wall...like from inside the stall- through the wall into the outdoors.) 

Now, let me stop here and say this- none of this was Tristan's fault. (My horse people will understand...it is never the horses fault.) He made a valiant attempt to avoid trampling his cowboy-father to death mid-rear. And truly, he didn't get hurt so...it's a win, in my book. #itisneverthehorsesfault

As the dust settled and my sweet, very pale husband rose to his feet, I squawked something asking if he was okay. 

"HIS PAWS!!! They were right here and shoved me THROUGH the wall!!" he yelled, placing his hands on his chest.

"Hooves. Horses have hooves."

"Never again," he said, giving me the look.

I chuckled to myself as I looked at Tristan's current swollen eye.

"It's just me and you with the eye-meds this round, T...be easy on your mama," I told him.

He was a complete gentleman and his eye is on the mend. I think he just wanted a little extra loving and to be honest, I did too. A little extra snuggle time was just what the doctor ordered for us both.