World According To Kafka

"Everyone who walks about here on earth feels a tickling in his heels:  from the tiny chimpanzee to the great Achilles."

Franz Kafka

For humor and insight there's Goethe's Faust (Walter Arndt Translation).  If on the other hand you want to jump off a cliff, read Kafka, the strange gentleman in the photo. I'm currently half way through Kafka's selected short stories, to wit: "A Report To An Academy".  An ape who is part of a vaudville act does the reporting of conditions, which include confinement in a small cage were the ape is unable to stand up to his full height or sit down without his back cutting into the back of the cage.  Dog racing anyone?

"Later I was told that I had made unusually little noise, from which others concluded that either I would soon expire or that, should I succeed in surviving the first critical period, I would be eminently trainable."

Got about half way through the ape's depressing "A Report To An Academy" and had to quit reading.  This is going to end badly.

Txs. to Lazar Simic for commenting on the hock, and Anonymous whose comment was accidentally erased.  Training Center--was it Camden, SC?--I got the same impression at the nice facility in Opeloussas--u can train a horse here.

L. Simic commented to treat the hock aggressively.  We coincidentaly had just reached that conclusion. Called the Vet back--Dr. Jackson, Jackson Animal Clinic--on day 14.  Insisted the swelling be drained.  This did little good.  Agreed on aggressive treatment of bute, anti-biotics, sweating with furazone and saran wrap to create heat, vitamin C and glucasomine to aid tissue regeneration, and will X-ray after new year.

Unfortunately, my analysis is that this little barely one inch across wound, a narrow gash from barbed wire, likely will spell the end for the talented #148 as a race horse.  Over the cliff.  This is logical based on analysis.  Post vids of wound soon.  There's a small orange size soft swelling over the wound that is failing to recede.  Why?  Seems fairly obvious to me.  One of the three or four ligamentous bands that holds the hock together has been severed.  This allows the swelling of the joint over the injury because there's nothing there now to hold it in.  In fact there's a little chunk of hard material just under the wound. Doc thinks it may be sliver of bone. My take is more that this is the remains of the severed ligament.

Doc's gut feeling is the situation is minor and will heal.  Mine is pessimism. Will see.