Thursday, July 17, 2014

Passing time

I have got to get Kat back to work, but since I am not planning on hitting any real events for the rest of the year, it seems kind of pointless to push him for much. Right now it is just hotter than hell. Add in a bit of humidity from the clouds that keep appearing and threatening to drench things and it is almost miserable.

I have been working him though so he is still in shape. I turn each horse out and clean their stall, then work them a bit before bringing them back in and switching horses. The order is always changed up and I can leave one out overnight so that's helping. Whenever the hormones finally clear his system and Kat no longer thinks he is the man about town, I can maybe rearrange things and make a bigger turnout/work arena for them all.

I did get in touch with a local girl though thru a sad chain of events that led us to meet. She lost her horse and it was one of the foals from my WB mare, before I got her. I offered to let her come meet my mare and see her and as horse people do, we got to talking about almost everything under the sun. Well it turns out that her family has mini's and all of the gear to drive them, but no idea where to start.

OF COURSE I offered to take her for a drive with Kat! I also offered to help her get their minis going in harness too. The thing about driving? It's like any other equine sport. Once you're hooked.... there's no going back.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Good for the goose

I had thought about not putting the last post up, but then I went ahead with it as someone out there may need an idea of how to flush a wound that is up and sort of out of reach. Gravity helps with some things, but flushing a wound is not always one of them.

In good news, Kat is healing up nicely again, the swelling has gone down to minimal, the hematoma under his belly is gone and hopefully before long this will all be a thing of the past. I had thought of buying a regular syringe, but they just didn't seem to be big enough and hold enough solution to do what I wanted to do and get it where it needed to go.

As Fern Valley said, she has an old Ivomec gun from the cattle that she uses. I used to have a few of the old paste wormer syringes for similar things. You can dissolve pills in them and squirt the goo back to the far reaches of the horses mouth. Let's face it, when the horses are healthy, we don't think about it. When things fall apart, we usually find ourselves wishing we had stuff on hand to do the job.

How many times have we gone to the horses' first aid box for band aids for our selves? Smeared on a little furazone, Cut Heal or triple wound care, wrapped it up with a gauze strip and some vet-wrap and went back to doing what needed to be done... How many of us know where everything is for treating the horses, but damned if we can find the Neosporin and ace bandages for ourselves? Ever add Vetrolin to the bathtub? I've known people who rubbed themselves down with Absorbine Jr. liniment or Bigeloil. In a pinch you look around for something that works. It might not be the original 'intended use' but when push comes to shove...