Life on an Arabian breeding farm in Capitan, NM.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Who says there’s nothing to write about…


 
Just when you think life might be getting a little boring life says no way Jose. I should have known that things were going to get dicey when George said he couldn’t come over for the water pump. Our pump is doing double duty these days. While I was feeding April called to see if George was here, and of course he wasn’t, he had already left to go get water. I told him the other day that he was leaking transmission fluid big time. He said his seal was bad, and all he had to do was to put in some stop leak. I had my reservations as to how that would help when the leak was so bad, but hey what do I know.  Well evidently it didn’t work, and that was why he was late getting back to the house. He had to take April back to her apt, which is why she was freaking. At any rate, the long, and the short of it was his transmission was toast so I told him to use out truck. They were totally out of water, and he had to get April back to town. I’m not sure how we’re going to work this out, but we’ll figure it out later.
 
That was the beginning of my day. The day continued for a while as planned. I got the front stalls cleaned, let the girls out to munch on our local grasses (I’m so mean they much prefer alfalfa poor things), and started on the back stalls. I’m afraid I will have difficulty cleaning the back stalls from now till spring when things warm up again. I’ve already got horse popsicles instead of horse apples. The barn faces north/south, and in the winter it’s almost impossible to keep the back stalls clean. That’s why they are always in the worst shape. I didn’t get all four of them completely clean, but two, and a half ain’t bad. Anyway I had to hurry so I only got the first stall done.
 
 
Before Father left for CA I had to get the rest of our feed for two weeks from the Mercantile. I also wanted to take Sherry some eggs. When hens first start laying, they really get into it. I gave Sherry five dozen, and I still had a dozen plus in the refrigerator. I’m getting 4 – 6 eggs a day. They add up fast, and I always share with Sherry. The timing was perfect since her Father is coming for his Christmas visit. Off I go to Sherry’s. As luck would have it she had only been home for about five minutes, and her neighbor was coming over in about 15 minutes to take her somewhere (don’t ask me where, I claim the “O” thing). I got to see her new rescue pup, and heard her story. You see there was this little 2-year-old Beagle with a problem (Sherry’s a worse sucker than Rudy or I). The poor little thing had seizures so bad that either she had surgery, and Sherry adopted her, or they had to put her down. Well we all know the end to that story, of course Sherry would take her. She had the surgery, and came out blind, and paralyzed. Sherry thought oh my God, what have I done to this poor creature. She’s telling me this as the puppy was racing around the back yard even jumping over one of her other Beagles. Obviously she came out of it just fine, it just took a while for her to heal.
 
So I leave Sherry to her neighbors, and off I go to the Mercantile. I look at the clock, and I’m right on time. I get what I need from the Mercantile, and head for home. I unload the feed, and get to the house, to find Father frothing at the bit (or he would be if he were a horse). He put all his stuff in the car (couldn’t wait for Rudy to help), while I updated his medical history, and filled his pillboxes. I didn’t get his hair cut so he’ll just have to get it cut in CA. It’s 2:30, and off he, and Rudy go (Rudy’s driving of course).
 
It’s been a rush of a morning so I take my pills, and sit in front of the TV to relax, big mistake. At 4:00 I go down to put the girls away, and feed everyone. One of the worst parts of winter is the days are so short. Marina, and Sadie are waiting at the barn door as usual, and for a change Lizzie is waiting by her stall. Star I have to go get. She’s by the stallions on the south side. Her stall naturally is on the north side, so round I go to get her, and put her in her stall. Hopefully one of these days she’ll figure it out. I get everyone their hay, but when I get to Sierra (aka LBM), I see a lot of blood caked on his foot. The only thing I can figure is he got his leg caught between the paddock gate, and the post. I can’t see how bad it is, but I know it isn’t good.  I go into high gear to get everyone fed, get a halter on him, and move him from his stall in back to the front stall where he is more isolated, and confined. Then I run up to the house in the gator. When I floor it the gator goes quite fast, in fact it was a little too fast when l turned to go into the garage. I picked up needles, and syringes back at the barn. At the least I need to get him a shot of Banamine.  I get hot water, a clean bucket, gauze, and whatever else I think I might need, and race back to the barn. He’s a little anxious after all he has been in that stall since he was weaned. Now not only is he in a strange place, but he can’t see his buds. He could see Marina if she didn’t have her nose buried in her hay. He keeps looking for her feeling very insecure in this strange place.
 
I get him tied, and give him about 6 – 7 ml of Banamine. He’s such a good boy he behaves magnificently. I put some Betadine solution in the bucket of water (which is now just the right temperature), and proceed to wash his leg. He has more of a chunk taken out of the outside of his leg, while the inside has a deep cut down the cannon bone to his ankle. There are actually two cuts, one worse than the other. Since the only light I have is from the gator headlights, I can’t really tell if he has cut into a tendon, but I can see that it goes down to the bone. There’s really not a lot of meat on that part of the leg so it doesn’t take much to go down to bone.
 
What I really want to know is why these things happen when no one is around to help out. Rudy was in Roswell, April in Ruidoso, and even Becky was out of town. Once I see how bad it is, I stop to call first Becky (who didn’t answer) then Sherry. I leave messages on both of Becky’s numbers explaining what I can see in my limited light then call Sherry to see what I need to do until I hear back from Becky. The only thing she told me to do that I hadn’t done was to wrap the leg to protect it from debris. That’s when I got another call. Thinking it was Becky I let Sherry go, and answer to discover it is actually Rudy wanting me to call Robert (my brother), and let him know that Father is going to be late. The plane (which was supposed to have left already) hadn’t arrived yet. I tell him about Sierra, and promise to call Robert in-between.
 
There’s nothing more to do till I hear from Becky so I go back up to the house, I have to, my phone is down to 15% on the battery. I plug in my phone to charge while I talk to Sherry. We talk some more about Sierra, and other things. Eventually Tom (Becky’s husband) calls me. He says Becky is in Carona with her mother who is in ill health, and he wasn’t sure when she’d be back. I in turn tell him everything I’ve done, ask him about antibiotics telling him I have Penicillin. He tells me to give him 30 cc’s. I remind him that we have Arabians, and Sierra is only about 750 – 800 lbs, so he revises it to 20 cc’s which personally I think is still too high. He says I’ve done everything I can do, and asks if I would take some pics in the morning (when there’s good light), and send them to Becky’s cell. He also tells me that sutures on the cannon bone never work. There’s just not enough meat to secure them, and they just end up tearing through the skin. Ok I can see his point, so I thank him, and promise to send pics in the morning when I change his dressing.
 
Next morning Sierra lets me know he is not at all pleased with this new set up. He’s prancing around like a little idiot showing no signs of lameness. The only good thing (in his mind) is he now gets to be fed first instead of last. That calms him down a bit, but not much. I get everyone fed then go to change his dressing. He’s being a real brat, and won’t stand still. I’m just starting to loosen the bandage with warm water when Rudy comes down to help, and look at the damage. There’s no swelling, which is a good thing, and not too much dried blood. Rudy holds him while I get the bandage off. Now I can see how bad it really is. I can also see that sutures are totally out of the question, in fact it looks a lot like Jeri’s booboo when he tore up his ankle after we got back home after the fire. That means at least 2 – 3 months of doctoring before it is completely healed. I take pics, and proceed to pack the wounds with triple antibiotic. I have non-stick gauze, and this really cool stretch gauze wrap from Father’s many booboo’s which works much better than vet wrap. I try giving him a shot of penicillin, but he is not cooperative, and neither are my hands. I get about 10 cc’s in before my hands give out. At least it’s better than nothing.
 
I send the pics to both Becky, and Sherry. They both say the same thing, there’s no way anything can be stitched up (which I already figured out). I also tell Becky I have some powder antibiotic left over from when I had to give Espree some antibiotics. She says that will work just fine. She has some tabs, but wont have any powder till Wed. I can crush the tabs so I’ll pick some up on Monday. Meanwhile I’ll use what I have, and the Banamine for pain, and swelling. I send Rudy into town to pick up more gauze pads, wrap, and triple antibiotic. I’m going to need a lot of it before all this is done with. I’ll keep Sierra in the front stall for a couple of days then put him back in his old stall. As bad as it is in the long run this will be very good for Sierra. He needs to be taught to behave himself in strange settings, and being doctored will teach him a little patience. He’s a good boy, but he has not been exposed to a lot of different situations. While it’s never a good thing doctoring a young horse always pays off in the long run.
 
Like I said just when you think things are getting boring something happens to disrupt your blissful peace. To quote a very dear friend "Ain’t life wonderful"?
 

No comments:

Post a Comment