Thursday, December 17, 2009

Traveler – 12/17/09

Traveler isn’t recovering nearly as quickly as Summer, but she doesn’t have the heart murmur, wasn’t castrated, and isn’t now sick with a cold.  The poor guy has goopy eyes and a runny nose, but no temp yet.  I’ve got him on SMZ for his sniffles and it seems to be helping, but he’s only been on it for two days now.

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He’s finally starting to fill in a little and looks better than he did, but still not great.

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The first time I put a blanket on him, he just stood there looking at me as I did up the buckles.  Like he’d worn a blanket all his life and couldn’t figure out why I was just now getting around to it.  When I take it off in the mornings he sometimes tries to move away as I’m undoing the buckles as if to say “Hey!  It’s still cold out, what are you doing???”  But he always stands still when I put the blanket back on in the evenings.  Hmmm… smart little bugger!

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He’s still a bit crotchety and pins his ears back at me when I feed, but he hasn’t tried to kick me again since that first week.  We now play a little chase game at feeding time because he refuses to just put his head in his halter and make life easy on me.  Oh no.  I have to go into the pasture and walk a few circles after him until he finally gives in and lets me get his halter on.  This is a new development and I think it’s because he knows that if he’s not tied up, he can eat faster than Sky and go steal his food.  Little turd!

Summer – 12/17/09

Summer is just about done with the weight gain.  In fact, if that belly gets much larger, I might have to poke a few holes to let all the air out.

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Please forgive the horribly haphazard fence job.  I gave her her own pen behind the garage over a month ago, so she could be closer to the house and have her own shelter.  I couldn’t electrify the fence, so ended up just stringing it up nice and tight and crossing my fingers.  It didn’t take her long to realize that she could just walk right in between the strands and wander about the yard.  So now the fence is mainly just for show, since I took one side down and she just comes and goes as she pleases anyway.

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Her top line is just about perfect now, but it’s hard to tell under all that hair and rain rot.  The rain rot is finally healing up and coming off in big gobs without causing her any pain.  In fact, she loves having me scratch and peel it off.  She’ll stand in one place forever with her upper lip sticking out and quivering whenever I find a particularly itchy spot.  I’m on call for work this weekend and hopefully I can spend a couple of hours scrubbing all that nastiness off of her.  I have a blanket for her in case she ends up bald afterwards!

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Check out that cute little bum, all filled out and round!

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Brannon gave her a trim last time he was out -- he left the heal alone and took off as much toe as he could to try and straighten out those pasterns.  If we don’t get a decent angle on those pasterns soon, he’ll try putting some extended shoes on her to help out.  Fortunately, she’s still young enough that we can get her fixed now without a lot of discomfort.

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I don’t think she’ll need the shoes because she already looks a lot better up front!  And you should have seen how well she behaved for him!  I doubt she’s ever had her feet trimmed before, but she was awesome!  Except for losing her balance a time or two, she was almost as good as Maverick!