As Chicago walked past me the other night, on his way to the hay flakes in the field, I noticed a bump on his belly. I followed him until he stopped at his preferred pile, inspected the lump and found a few more irregularly shaped swellings on his stomach.

Standing in the moonlit pasture at eight o’clock on a Sunday evening, I faced my dreaded animal owner dilemma – Sunday night emergency vet call or wait and see how things look in the morning?

I ran through my standard checklist – he’d been a little quiet lately, but by the end of February we all get a little quiet, as we wish away the rest of the winter. His movement was still sound by 28-year-old horse standards. He was eating and drinking with output proportionate to input, his temperature was normal, and his reaction to the poking and prodding of my amateur examination was complete disinterest.

I opted for the Scarlett O’Hara approach, and in the morning the big bump had mostly disappeared, but was replaced by several patches of puffiness, none of which seemed to bother him a bit, nor did the 5 small weepy sores that now dotted his left side between his shoulder and his hip.

Time for a professional opinion.

Dr Taylor arrived in the afternoon and given the localized area affected, she best-guessed that he’d contracted a bacterial skin infection. I moved him from his stall into the barn aisle, snapped the crossties to his halter as she whispered just the right sweet nothings, so the slightly suspicious Chicago didn’t even feel the sting of the steroids she injected in his neck.

Chicago on steroids – there’s a phrase that would’ve struck fear in my heart back in our riding days when his response to any request he deemed unpleasant or unreasonable was to send me somersaulting over his left shoulder. But the medication worked wonders and within an hour or two the welts were shrinking, and the weeping sores were drying up.

We’re halfway through the 10-day treatment of anti-inflammatory pills (4 tiny green tablets that pair well with his senior feed mash) and antibiotic cream to smear on the sores, well on our way down Recovery Road.

We’re also well into mud season, so before I spread on the salve, I scrape off the sludge. Then, because I’m there with the grooming tools, I give Chicago a full-body cursory curry. Then, because I’m there with the grooming tools, I run a quick sweep over Moe’s coat of many mud clumps and pasture sprigs – remnants of his multiple daily siestas.

Both horses agreeably accept the brushing and extended stall time. Ruff and Rowdy are on spring break from the barn until the frost breaks and the muck dries, so it’s quiet except for their contented sighs and their crunching of the apple-oat treats.

For me, the added time has turned out to be a bit of a blessing, a buffer to the chaos, a boost to the belief that life goes on despite the bluster.

There are things that need doing. Things I can do, must do, want to do. Things that matter; that make a difference, at least to those in my little wedge of the world.

Caring for my horses helps me clean the clutter and calm the confusion in my mind. They are antibiotics for anxiety, sulfa drugs for the soul.

Even with hot spots and hives.