Stupid Owner, Bad Diego

First of all, I'm okay. Diego's training has been on hold for a couple weeks now due to the following incident that occurred on Friday 1/16:

Took Diego for a hand walk today and he was feeling really frisky and glad to be out. We came to this long dirt road with really nice footing and I lunged him around me a few times in a circle to try to get his attention back. He was feeling really fresh and had only ever been here twice before, so was kind of bouncing around. I left him on a pretty long lead rope and took off running with him (on foot). He got a bit a head of me, then spooked at the neighbor's dogs when they came running up to the fence and scooted forward more. I was just trying to pull him down when he cut over directly in front of me, ducked his head, and I thought "I'm going to get kicked" and POW! right to the face/chin. Very poor horse handling on my part, and it got me.

=(

I didn't pass out or fall down, but face was bleeding profusely. I started walking toward the nearest house, where I could see they had a back gate. Their fence was wrought iron, so you could see to the house really easily. The neighbor lady came out, she had seen Diego go running by (I dropped his lead). She asked if I was okay and I told her "No, I need you to call my husband." Poor lady was pretty flustered, I was more calm than she was. We couldn't reach AJ by phone, he was working in the garage that afternoon and didn't have his cell with him (we've decided to put a phone in the garage, there is already a jack). I could feel that my teeth were all jacked up and NOT where they should be, plus I was still bleeding pretty good.

Diego had initially ran off down the road, but then came back and stood outside the lady's fence while I was sitting in her back yard (I didn't want to bleed all over her nice house). Once she convinced me to come inside, Diego looked kind of lost for a moment and then started heading for home. I was worried because I had crossed a street that has a pretty small buy steady flow of traffic. Didn't want him getting hit by a car... Thankfully there is a big church on the same side of the street we were already on, and they have a big lawn. So Diggy got sidetracked and started to graze. Someone caught Diego and tied him to a tree. She didn't really know about horses, she had him double-knotted to the very base of the tree, but at least he wasn't going to get hit by a car.

The nice neighbor lady drove me home. We stopped where Diggy was real quick and I asked the other lady if she could just move the rope up a bit higher so he wouldn't step over it. AJ was coming out of the garage right as I was walking up to the house, bloody towel wrapped around my face. I asked him to please go get Diego (He later gave me a hard time for telling him to go get the HORSE and not to do anything for ME). I called my dentist at him home and he met us at his office (close by our house). I was in his chair within 30 minutes of getting kicked.

I spent 2 hours with AJ as the dental assistant getting my teeth straightened out and putting more or less "tooth bondo" on them to hold them in place for now. My dentist put in a few temporary stitches to stop the bleeding enough so he could somewhat work on my mouth. Having an advanced digital office was a problem, since he didn't have access to his xray or my electronic files, but my hard-copy file had a picture of my teeth and they put that on my chest and more or less "matched things back to where they were." Thankfully I was numb for all of this (I went numb when kicked and then had the shots by the time the adrenaline was wearing off, so very little pain).

We went to the ER where I got 5 stitches on my outer chin and I think 6 or 7 in my inner lip, I'm split from canine to canine on the bottom lip. The cut on my chin goes all the way through the skin. My jaw's also fractured, but not broke all the way through and not displaced - so thankfully I'm not wired shut.

I'm alright though, thank GOD that I caught the hoof toward the end of the kick, not right in the power band. I won't know if my teeth are going to make it or not for several months (great). I'll also probably end up with a pretty nice scar on my chin. Lots of good drugs and soft foods for the immediate future.... Ugh.

Pic from the morning after.