Sunday I thought perhaps there was a flea on me. Oh god, do I hate fleas. So yesterday I gave Cersei her heartguard, plus flea treatment. (The kind in the tube that goes between her shoulder blades; I forget the brand.) And I gave Curtis the last tube of cat flea treatment - apparently I only had one left! But hopefully any fleas on Jerome will go exploring to Curtis or Cersei and die a horrible death.
Also I'm a sucker and I had to rescue two kittens. One of the young black cats at the barn had three kittens last month - a grey, a grey-and-white, and a black. They were hanging in there pretty well - small, with raging URIs, but stubbornly alive. All the women at the barn took turns taking them into the roundhouse, cleaning them up, feeding them a little wet food, and taking them back out to momma. But yesterday the grey died. I think he succumbed to the URI - he was just dead in the hall, no obvious trauma. So I took the two survivors home. They're just fighting so hard to stay alive, and I can't just watch them die. Momma is very very thin and I don't think she's got any milk left for them, and they're too small to scrap for cheap dry food with the rest of the big ones.
They are possibly FeLV+ so they're in quarantine. In a dog crate, actually - it's usually Cersei's toy box. Every day I go pick up all the toys and chewies and throw them in the crate, then vacuum, and Cersei goes in and picks out which toys she wants to play with. Well, I evicted the toys, laid down a towel, a sweatshirt for snuggling in, a piepan of litter, and a little dish of dry food soaked in water. I've got some antibiotics left from when Curtis was sick so I'm dosing each kitten with 1/4 of a Curtis-sized dose.
Nobody has the money to take them to the vet. Nobody actually even wants them, but... they're fighters. They want to live. I'm just trying to give them a shot. If they make it - and I'm more hopeful today than I was last night - I'll see if the AC lady will speuter them and take them to my uncle's barn in Como. They'll catch some of his mice and he'll feed them, and it's not a great life but it's better than what they've got now.
I don't know how old they are. Their eyes opened about 7-10 days ago. They've got canines and their incisors are trying to come through. But they're TINY - I can hold both in one hand. They've figured out how to eat, and they're figuring out how to use the bathroom.
Last night they ate a bit then squalled til I took them out of the crate and stuck them on my lap under a blanket, then they slept under that blanket all night. I wasn't sure if they'd make it overnight, but this morning they seemed perkier. They were eating when I left.
Curtis and Jerome are reacting pretty well. Curtis is kinda "what the fuck" and Jerome is just fascinated. Neither is poofy-tail howling, so that's good.
After I handle the kittens, I wash my hands. And empty dishes that come out of their crate
go straight into the dishwasher. C & J have had all their shots, including the FeLV vaccine, so I think the risk to my cats is low. The vaccine's not 100% but if I keep up the precautions I'm taking right now, it should work out.
Also my laptop is in the shop :( My Macbook Pro had a fan start to die so I took it in to the Mac Store. The extended warranty just paid for itself - it's major surgery to replace the fan. But they're getting me a new keyboard too - I'll have a left arrow key again, YAY! 48-72 hours before I get my laptop back :(
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Horsie heaven and FHOTD fodder
Heaven:
Went down this morning to see my uncle's place in Como. He is giving my three horses a 40 acre field, with plenty of good grass, some trees, a cow pond, and good cow fencing. They are going to horse heaven. I made that high pitched girlie "squeeee" noise most of the way back to Memphis.
FHOTD:
I was sitting in the roundhouse this afternoon with a buncha fellow boarders, talking about pets. (One of the barn cats just had kittens; cute little buggers but I hope the AC lady gets the other cats fixed soon.) One of the other boarders said:
"At one time I had 29 cats and 19 dogs in the house."
We all kinda boggled at her.
"The damn things just kept breeding!"
Went down this morning to see my uncle's place in Como. He is giving my three horses a 40 acre field, with plenty of good grass, some trees, a cow pond, and good cow fencing. They are going to horse heaven. I made that high pitched girlie "squeeee" noise most of the way back to Memphis.
FHOTD:
I was sitting in the roundhouse this afternoon with a buncha fellow boarders, talking about pets. (One of the barn cats just had kittens; cute little buggers but I hope the AC lady gets the other cats fixed soon.) One of the other boarders said:
"At one time I had 29 cats and 19 dogs in the house."
We all kinda boggled at her.
"The damn things just kept breeding!"
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Champ the playa
When I went out to hay my guys this afternoon, I gave everybody the once-over eyeballing. I noticed Quinn had some weird dirt ruffles on her flanks - she's a mostly white horse with a thick underlayment of dust, so anything that disurbs her fur leaves dirt marks on her. I petted her briefly to make sure she wasn't cut or bruised, then went back to putting out hay. Dumped everybody's hay, played with Cersei for a while, and as I went to leave I noticed Champ had white fuzz stuck to the insides of his front legs. I looked at the white fur and realized in about two seconds that he'd been hittin' it with Quinn.
I've always suspected that he's proud-cut because he is so possessive of Silky. He gets really agitated if I take her away from him for any reason, pacing the fence and hollering, and when I put her back out with him he runs up and smells her all over, like he's making sure she wasn't out dallying with another stud.
Honestly, I suspect that most geldings are, to some extent, proud cut. In the spring when the mares come into season really strongly, lots of otherwise "normal" geldings are seen gettin' it on. I think the mares tease the normally uninterested geldings into givin them a little lovin. And really, as long as Champ isn't making a spectacle of himself or mounting other people's mares, that's fine with me.
I didn't get to do anything fun with the horses today. Thursday Cersei chewed through the stereo wiring in my truck - she ate the ipod cable and the speaker cable for the subwoofer. Last year when I installed the stereo, I'd meant to hide those cables under the floorboard somehow but I never got around to it. Sigh. Well, today I got to solder all the wires together and hide them under the floorboard like I should've done orginally. The subwoofer wire wasn't hard, just two strands of twisted copper and one separate ground wire. The ipod cable - ugh. One thick black cable with an inner sheathing of woven wire, a layer of paper insulation, and 12 separate very small colored wires. Two of the small wires were actually double wires.
I got all the inner wires soldered and wrapped and plugged it in for a test-drive, and the ipod would play for 20-30 seconds at a time and then the display would say "error-1" and quit. If I unplugged it and plugged it back in, it'd play.
Got mad and went to a local car stereo place to buy a new cable. The (really nice!) owner said he didn't deal in Alpine, but he could probably order one. Then he unwrapped a few of my soldered wires and checked them. He said I did a good job (yaaa!). He thought about it for a minute, then suggested that the woven wire sheathing might actually be the ground wire - try running a separate ground connected to the sheathing. He gave me a length of wire and off I went.
More soldering, more wrapping, and one more test - and it worked! It's as good as new - I can play, pause, skip tracks, skip playlists, everything! I'm so very happy. I fixed something, all by myself, and I did it right.
I cut a slit in the floorboard cover and ran the wires under it, too. I haven't figured out how I'm going to close the slit. Probably duct tape, ghetto as that will look.
I've always suspected that he's proud-cut because he is so possessive of Silky. He gets really agitated if I take her away from him for any reason, pacing the fence and hollering, and when I put her back out with him he runs up and smells her all over, like he's making sure she wasn't out dallying with another stud.
Honestly, I suspect that most geldings are, to some extent, proud cut. In the spring when the mares come into season really strongly, lots of otherwise "normal" geldings are seen gettin' it on. I think the mares tease the normally uninterested geldings into givin them a little lovin. And really, as long as Champ isn't making a spectacle of himself or mounting other people's mares, that's fine with me.
I didn't get to do anything fun with the horses today. Thursday Cersei chewed through the stereo wiring in my truck - she ate the ipod cable and the speaker cable for the subwoofer. Last year when I installed the stereo, I'd meant to hide those cables under the floorboard somehow but I never got around to it. Sigh. Well, today I got to solder all the wires together and hide them under the floorboard like I should've done orginally. The subwoofer wire wasn't hard, just two strands of twisted copper and one separate ground wire. The ipod cable - ugh. One thick black cable with an inner sheathing of woven wire, a layer of paper insulation, and 12 separate very small colored wires. Two of the small wires were actually double wires.
I got all the inner wires soldered and wrapped and plugged it in for a test-drive, and the ipod would play for 20-30 seconds at a time and then the display would say "error-1" and quit. If I unplugged it and plugged it back in, it'd play.
Got mad and went to a local car stereo place to buy a new cable. The (really nice!) owner said he didn't deal in Alpine, but he could probably order one. Then he unwrapped a few of my soldered wires and checked them. He said I did a good job (yaaa!). He thought about it for a minute, then suggested that the woven wire sheathing might actually be the ground wire - try running a separate ground connected to the sheathing. He gave me a length of wire and off I went.
More soldering, more wrapping, and one more test - and it worked! It's as good as new - I can play, pause, skip tracks, skip playlists, everything! I'm so very happy. I fixed something, all by myself, and I did it right.
I cut a slit in the floorboard cover and ran the wires under it, too. I haven't figured out how I'm going to close the slit. Probably duct tape, ghetto as that will look.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
More weirdness.
So this morning I parked my truck, noted the ghetto sled w/Earnhardt plate, went in to class and posted the previous entry. After class I told my friend about the car. He's also about to graduate law school, and he's a Christian rocker / band manager. He's got ear spacers, and his main crisis right now is having to take them out and look "normal." Anyway, I described the ghetto sled and he said, mysteriously, "Nascar fans are everywhere."
Maybe he watches race cars go around in circles on TV. Who woulda thought.
Anyway (Yes, I say that all the time and I probably should've named the blog "Anyway..."), my friend was telling me a story about her horse from years ago. He was "being ridden into mud that came up to his belly and he got stuck. I'm not sure how they got him out, but he hasn't been a huge fan of mud since." That reminded me of another Weird Redneck Story.
Jessica (I'd call her J, but I've got too many other J's in my Redneck Chronicles already, and I'm not organized enough to think up individual nicknames and keep track of them) had seven horses. One of them was a *really* fucked up padded stud, Power.* I mean, she'd jacked with his feet so bad that he couldn't walk normally much less gait. His rear pasterns would buckle with every fourth stride. I'm serious, he was constantly stumbling on his back legs. Before I started boarding, in the summer of '06 or '07, she took Power on a trail ride. In his pads.
You can't take a padded horse trail riding. You just CANNOT. If your padded horse walks through the mud there is a very real chance that he'll get stuck, and if he gets stuck and tries to pull his legs out he might YANK THE HOOF CAPSULE OFF. Padded classes at local horse shows are cancelled if the arena's at all wet, because this has happened too often.
Jessica went trail riding on her padded stud anyway. Just to prove that he's tougher than we think (1st alternate runner-up name: "Tougher than we think"), Power did not pull his hooves off in the mud. He sank instead. Power sank up to his stomach in some mud near the soybean field. Jessica jumped off before she sank with him and waited for him to yank himself out of the mud, then got back on and rode home. She hasn't, afaik, taken Power on a trail ride since then. Of course, she hardly rides him because he's a real dick of a stallion and she can't really handle him, but that's par for the course.
*Jessica, as far as I know, never deliberately hurt her horses. He was one of those "clean" padded horses, not a sored one. But she always got the cheapest padded farrier she could find, and she hardly ever rode Power. When she did, it was a full on cheap english saddle, gojo-on-the-legs, chains-on-all-fours SHOW. The cheap farriers kept doing weird things to his hoof angles and he ended up really high-heeled in the rear. I think. It's pretty hard to look at a padded horse and evaluate the hoof angles; they're all such slipper-toed Frankensteins in the front that it's hard to look at the rear feet objectively. Anyway - either from the (atypical) chains on the back legs or from the weird angles on the back hooves, Power gaited worse than any TWH I've ever seen, and he stumbled all the time. When he wasn't stumbling, he was hollering at other horses or trying to rear. Poor crazy stud.
I know my attitude toward other peoples' horses seems cold. I had to accept, really early on, that I could not save all the horses I saw. It's a hard moral choice, and I still wither on the inside when I see "mistreated" horses, but I cannot save them. It's like... if you really loved cats and really thought declawing was inhumane, but your friends were all getting cats and kittens and having them declawed. Do you alienate everybody around you by ranting about how declawing is evil? You can't rescue all those cats. Your friends cut their cats' toes off, yet they're taking adequate care of the cats - aren't the friends' cats better off than the scrawny disease-ridden stray cats you see? Yeah, I know people who sore their gaited horses. I know people who "just" pad their gaited horses. But those horses are adequately provided for, and they're not sold to the killers for $200. I save what I can save (Silky, Quinn) and I try to lead by example, and that's all I can do.
PS My two cats have forty evil claws of doom.
Maybe he watches race cars go around in circles on TV. Who woulda thought.
Anyway (Yes, I say that all the time and I probably should've named the blog "Anyway..."), my friend was telling me a story about her horse from years ago. He was "being ridden into mud that came up to his belly and he got stuck. I'm not sure how they got him out, but he hasn't been a huge fan of mud since." That reminded me of another Weird Redneck Story.
Jessica (I'd call her J, but I've got too many other J's in my Redneck Chronicles already, and I'm not organized enough to think up individual nicknames and keep track of them) had seven horses. One of them was a *really* fucked up padded stud, Power.* I mean, she'd jacked with his feet so bad that he couldn't walk normally much less gait. His rear pasterns would buckle with every fourth stride. I'm serious, he was constantly stumbling on his back legs. Before I started boarding, in the summer of '06 or '07, she took Power on a trail ride. In his pads.
You can't take a padded horse trail riding. You just CANNOT. If your padded horse walks through the mud there is a very real chance that he'll get stuck, and if he gets stuck and tries to pull his legs out he might YANK THE HOOF CAPSULE OFF. Padded classes at local horse shows are cancelled if the arena's at all wet, because this has happened too often.
Jessica went trail riding on her padded stud anyway. Just to prove that he's tougher than we think (1st alternate runner-up name: "Tougher than we think"), Power did not pull his hooves off in the mud. He sank instead. Power sank up to his stomach in some mud near the soybean field. Jessica jumped off before she sank with him and waited for him to yank himself out of the mud, then got back on and rode home. She hasn't, afaik, taken Power on a trail ride since then. Of course, she hardly rides him because he's a real dick of a stallion and she can't really handle him, but that's par for the course.
*Jessica, as far as I know, never deliberately hurt her horses. He was one of those "clean" padded horses, not a sored one. But she always got the cheapest padded farrier she could find, and she hardly ever rode Power. When she did, it was a full on cheap english saddle, gojo-on-the-legs, chains-on-all-fours SHOW. The cheap farriers kept doing weird things to his hoof angles and he ended up really high-heeled in the rear. I think. It's pretty hard to look at a padded horse and evaluate the hoof angles; they're all such slipper-toed Frankensteins in the front that it's hard to look at the rear feet objectively. Anyway - either from the (atypical) chains on the back legs or from the weird angles on the back hooves, Power gaited worse than any TWH I've ever seen, and he stumbled all the time. When he wasn't stumbling, he was hollering at other horses or trying to rear. Poor crazy stud.
I know my attitude toward other peoples' horses seems cold. I had to accept, really early on, that I could not save all the horses I saw. It's a hard moral choice, and I still wither on the inside when I see "mistreated" horses, but I cannot save them. It's like... if you really loved cats and really thought declawing was inhumane, but your friends were all getting cats and kittens and having them declawed. Do you alienate everybody around you by ranting about how declawing is evil? You can't rescue all those cats. Your friends cut their cats' toes off, yet they're taking adequate care of the cats - aren't the friends' cats better off than the scrawny disease-ridden stray cats you see? Yeah, I know people who sore their gaited horses. I know people who "just" pad their gaited horses. But those horses are adequately provided for, and they're not sold to the killers for $200. I save what I can save (Silky, Quinn) and I try to lead by example, and that's all I can do.
PS My two cats have forty evil claws of doom.
Memphis is so weird.
There's a ghetto Crown Vic in the parking lot - two tone, 22" chrome rims, and a Dale Earnhardt license plate. The mind boggles.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Too many, too much?
I'm broke. Money is *so* tight right now. I'm so broke that if I thought it was going to go on like this I'd sell at least two of my horses. But the thing is, it's not going to go on like this. In less than a month I'll have graduated law school. (Now that's a scary thought - both for the exams that are coming up, and the thought of me as an almost-lawyer!) Anyway, it's a bit of an ethical quandary. Or at least a thought exercise in ethics!
Every horse hoarder you see on FHOTD has thought "I can take better care of my horses than anybody else." Hell, every responsible horse owner has thought the same. (Or maybe that's just me, because I'm surrounded by crazies who feed bread to their horses?) The point is that we all think we're doing the right thing, and sometimes we're not.
I honestly think I'm still ok. Still have to make my April stall rent, but I'm getting there. And the end is in sight, it really is. One more month of stall rent on four horses and hay for four horses, then I'm moving the three dark ones to Como for the summer. They'll have acres of grass to play on, and I'll visit them a couple of times a week. The spotted one stays in Frayser, where Jen will feed her (hay and grain only, no bread thank you) and I'll come up on the weekends and ride her.
Speaking of the spotted one... Yesterday I went out to brush some more winter fuzz off of the beasties. They were playing musical hay piles, so I actually got to brush whichever horse I wanted to brush. (If there's no food to distract him, Poppy will follow me around and beg to be brushed. He's such a hedonist - food, scritches, food, scritches.) I brushed Champ for a long time, then tried to brush Quinn.
I always try to brush her at liberty when I'm brushing the rest of them - I walk up and she's sort of excited but nervous to see me. I touch her neck, then gently swipe her a few times with the brush, then she gets nervous and backs away. I always let her go, because it's not a big deal. If she's not enjoying it, I'm not enjoying it.
So yesterday I brushed Champ, then tried to brush Quinn and she moved away. I went and brushed Silky for a long time, then Poppy for a bit. Quinn was so busy staring at me that she was barely eating. Ears forward, wouldn't stop looking at me, but couldn't come over because I was too near another horse. I went back to her and scritched the crest of her neck, then slowly started brushing her. She dropped her nose and started eating hay again, so I kept brushing! All over! Her shoulders, her back, her flanks, her butt! It was a big breakthrough for us. She's never let me brush anything except her neck and shoulders at liberty. We made a blizzard of white hair.
I need to take new pictures of everybody. Quinn's roaning out a lot. She's mostly white, but the bay parts are very typically roan. Chocolate colored head and chest, some white in her shoulder spots, 50% white on her flank spots. Poppy is a giant black monster. Silky looks great for her age, and Champ is, of course, ribby. (I suspect he is ribby just to piss me off.)
Silky still hates Quinn, and Champ is accepting but ambivalent. But Poppy has decided to be her friend! Last week I turned everybody out in the big pasture. Champ and Silky went off together, and Poppy stuck with Quinn. Buck the proud-cut Icelandic gelding (whose nickname rhymes with "buck") came sniffing up to Quinn, who was in heat. POPPY ALMOST KICKED BUCK IN THE HEAD! I'm so proud! XD If only he were faster...
Every horse hoarder you see on FHOTD has thought "I can take better care of my horses than anybody else." Hell, every responsible horse owner has thought the same. (Or maybe that's just me, because I'm surrounded by crazies who feed bread to their horses?) The point is that we all think we're doing the right thing, and sometimes we're not.
I honestly think I'm still ok. Still have to make my April stall rent, but I'm getting there. And the end is in sight, it really is. One more month of stall rent on four horses and hay for four horses, then I'm moving the three dark ones to Como for the summer. They'll have acres of grass to play on, and I'll visit them a couple of times a week. The spotted one stays in Frayser, where Jen will feed her (hay and grain only, no bread thank you) and I'll come up on the weekends and ride her.
Speaking of the spotted one... Yesterday I went out to brush some more winter fuzz off of the beasties. They were playing musical hay piles, so I actually got to brush whichever horse I wanted to brush. (If there's no food to distract him, Poppy will follow me around and beg to be brushed. He's such a hedonist - food, scritches, food, scritches.) I brushed Champ for a long time, then tried to brush Quinn.
I always try to brush her at liberty when I'm brushing the rest of them - I walk up and she's sort of excited but nervous to see me. I touch her neck, then gently swipe her a few times with the brush, then she gets nervous and backs away. I always let her go, because it's not a big deal. If she's not enjoying it, I'm not enjoying it.
So yesterday I brushed Champ, then tried to brush Quinn and she moved away. I went and brushed Silky for a long time, then Poppy for a bit. Quinn was so busy staring at me that she was barely eating. Ears forward, wouldn't stop looking at me, but couldn't come over because I was too near another horse. I went back to her and scritched the crest of her neck, then slowly started brushing her. She dropped her nose and started eating hay again, so I kept brushing! All over! Her shoulders, her back, her flanks, her butt! It was a big breakthrough for us. She's never let me brush anything except her neck and shoulders at liberty. We made a blizzard of white hair.
I need to take new pictures of everybody. Quinn's roaning out a lot. She's mostly white, but the bay parts are very typically roan. Chocolate colored head and chest, some white in her shoulder spots, 50% white on her flank spots. Poppy is a giant black monster. Silky looks great for her age, and Champ is, of course, ribby. (I suspect he is ribby just to piss me off.)
Silky still hates Quinn, and Champ is accepting but ambivalent. But Poppy has decided to be her friend! Last week I turned everybody out in the big pasture. Champ and Silky went off together, and Poppy stuck with Quinn. Buck the proud-cut Icelandic gelding (whose nickname rhymes with "buck") came sniffing up to Quinn, who was in heat. POPPY ALMOST KICKED BUCK IN THE HEAD! I'm so proud! XD If only he were faster...
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The Bread Mania
For some reason, a lot of people at my barn have started feeding their horses stale bread. I don't mean "feeding" as in "treating," either; I mean these people are feeding multiple bags of stale wonder bread to their horses. It's pretty surreal. I keep noticing pickups half-full of bags of bread.
It's all Roger's fault (or Roger's brilliant idea, depending on what you think of bread). He swears he's been feeding his horses bread for years. It started with Roger, then spread to the big redneck family. I think the barn mgr is dabbling in bread, and I know the woman who works for Animal Control feeds bread. Memphis has a Wonder Bread factory, so we have a lot of Wonder Bread outlet stores where they sell almost-expired bread. I think they're getting the expired bread from the outlet stores.
I am not at all sure that bread is a good horse feed. It sounds like a good recipe for choke to me. It also sounds like one of those things you'd read about in an article about seized horses - "27 horses stood in filthy pens, with no water and no hay. They appeared to be clinging to life by eating stale white bread."
My barn is a weird place.
It's all Roger's fault (or Roger's brilliant idea, depending on what you think of bread). He swears he's been feeding his horses bread for years. It started with Roger, then spread to the big redneck family. I think the barn mgr is dabbling in bread, and I know the woman who works for Animal Control feeds bread. Memphis has a Wonder Bread factory, so we have a lot of Wonder Bread outlet stores where they sell almost-expired bread. I think they're getting the expired bread from the outlet stores.
I am not at all sure that bread is a good horse feed. It sounds like a good recipe for choke to me. It also sounds like one of those things you'd read about in an article about seized horses - "27 horses stood in filthy pens, with no water and no hay. They appeared to be clinging to life by eating stale white bread."
My barn is a weird place.
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