never a dull moment...

well. i had an unexpected, exciting afternoon. and not in the good way, necessarily.

chris and i started the morning off rough with a little disagreement before church that basically left me in the church parking lot and him leaving in a huff. when i bummed a ride home after church, chris was already gone to the property in trinity with one of the horses and the 2 cow dogs. i wasn't surprised, i pretty much figured he would do that. well, i did some stuff around the house and was outside reading when my dad called. he told me chris had had an "accident" and i needed to head out to trinity. at that point, all i was told was that he was okay, but had been thrown from the horse and had been very confused and disoriented after it initially happened. somehow, he had managed to get my dad on the phone who in turn had managed to get our neighbor over to check on chris. we also knew that chris had managed to call a friend, wesley, that was supposed to be meeting him on the property. wesley and a couple other guys from chris' office were headed out to trinity also. i was able to talk to wesley on their way (flying, apparently, at about 90 miles an hour) who confirmed that chris was completely disoriented and had no clue where he was following the fall. chris apparently called him and said, "i'm hurt and i need you to come help me." when wesley asked him where he was, he said "i don't know, i think on my ranch."

i had called vivian by this point and we started to head the direction of trinity ourselves.

we were able to piece together what happened by comparing the phone conversations chris had. chris was not much help because he had absolutely no memory of what happened. chris had unloaded the dogs and the horse and was about to head out to bay up the cows. the new cow dog is a young dog that wanted nothing but to attack the horse. the barking and nipping at the horse's feet caused the horse to buck and jump around. chris rode it out and was trying to control the dog with a shock collar, but there was no stopping the dog. eventually, he was thrown from the horse and slammed into the steel cattle trailer. whether he was knocked out or the wind was knocked out of him or whatever happened he doesn't know. but, he somehow came around, loaded the dogs into the cattle trailer (even separating them by a gate inside the trailer) and proceeded to back the truck and trailer up and move it as if he was going to leave. by the way, the horse has run off and he hasn't even attempted to go after her. at some point he got out of the truck and layed down on the ground. he tried to call wesley, but didn't get a hold of him. so he called my dad. once my dad realized he was seriously hurt and not being silly, he got on another phone (so that he wouldn't have to hang with chris -- because he was telling my dad he was going to hang up and go to sleep) to call a neighbor. when the neighbor arrived, chris didn't know who he was and "whose dogs were in that strange trailer, and where was he?" he slowly came around and got his bearings. shortly after this, wesley and the other guys arrived. everyone agreed that he needed to go to the hospital. but, in typical male form, chris did not want to go. of course, he finally was convinced. :)

in the mean time, vivian and i are headed to huntsville. once we all arrived, we waited for quite awhile in the ER. finally, he was called back to check his vitals. everything was normal there, which chris thought constituted a ticket home. ha! we insisted he stay and allow them to do a ct scan and neck xray. of course, i called casey (who is a trauma nurse in an austin ER) and she absolutely insisted that he had to stay and get the tests done. after much waiting and sitting, the results from the scan and the xray came back just fine. the ER doctor determined he most likely had a minor concussion and would be fine as long as no other symptoms came up. so we were allowed to leave.

he's really sore and will probably be barely able to move tomorrow morning. he is still confused about what exactly happened. he has no idea how he was able to get the dogs in the trailer and move his truck. frankly, all of us are. which is kind of scary... at least he didn't get out on the main road and start really driving off somewhere.

he'll be home tomorrow "taking it easy," so feel free to call him and chastise him for going out by himself today. :)