I gotta admit,... I had a big lump in my throat.... my wife was all tears.
We have this beautiful 5 yr old black Iberian (half T-bred half Andalusian) by the name of Trajan. A full 16.3 hands and 1,560 lbs of gentle giant. A pleasure to ride but seemed a bit,....scittish (sp?) at times. Nothing vicious, just that he would shy sometimes... we just thought he needed to mature a bit. Had the vet out to do teeth a couple of weeks ago and when he went to look at Trajans teeth, his flashlight flashed across Trajans eyes and he bolted. The vet, who specializes in eye surgery,... got curious. He examined both eyes and come to find out there was a cyst in one eye. Trajan has eyes like coal and a long wavy mane that drapes over his eyes. If the vet didn't point it out (need a flashlight to see it),... I would have never caught it. He could see peripherally, but was mostly blind in the one eye. My wife felt so bad that she didn't figure it out before,... and it just ate at her. We decided to take him to MSU Equine Veterinary in Lansing. They are one of the best in the world....and their facility is INCREDIBLE. We took him up yesterday and they examined him and said, yep,....we can fix that. We used to do it with a needle, but now we do it with a laser. They did the surgery this morning and told us we could pick him up around five. Grab the truck and trailer and off to Lansing we go. He was very mellow in his stall and we had to put a fly mask on him (horsey sunglasses). We walked him out to the trailer and when he got near the back he looked up all the big buildings of the MSU campus and stood dead still....for it seemed the longest time. Ears totally erect, that beautiful head and neck arched up,... and both nostrils flaring. My wife and I just stood there watching him...... then he started to nicker real low,.... guttural. Then quiet for about five seconds,..... then he just let out with the LOUDEST ,.....AND LONGEST whinny I have ever heard. He just stood there looking around and you could just tell that he was celebrating having vision in both eyes. Then he turned around to face the surgical staff that were watching from the building (surgeon, assistants and interns) and pawed the ground and did the most beautiful Lavad ( example picture below) along with another loud whinny. He wasn't mis-behaving,... he was celebrating!! If that wasn't a "Thank You",.... i don't what was. The surgeon had a big smile on his face (rather stoic young man) and the intern and assistant were all smiles. I look at my wife and she is smiling, but tears were running down her face. Me?..... I just was trying to swallow the huge lump in my throat.
Lavad