The Equine Vet Kit

At my house a little bitty equine vet kit like this one just doesn't work. There is just not enough stuff in it for my horses needs. And if you have a horse like my Money Pit, you really need a big one.

I built up my own vet kit. first I went to Home Depot and got this really cool rolling tool box.

And then I stuffed it full of the majorly important stuff needed for a horse wound emergency. Unfortunately this tool box as big as it is, still isn't big enough for ALL the equine leg wraps, hock wraps, and knee wraps. Those all have a box of their own. This still has one package of roll cotton. 

Several rolls of roll gauze.

 

Tons of Vet wrap

 

Betadine Scrub

 

Gauze pads

And a bunch of other topical  ointments and wound care treatments. 

Then the neat thing about this tool box is the upper level, where I've put  things like bandage sissors

and Duct Tape, contractor grade tape is the best for wrapping hooves.

 

A hoof pick or two as well as some hoof knives.

 a flashlight

and clippers to shave around wounds

Then in the lit there are a couple really small compartments that are perfect for a second small flashlight with extra batteries and needles and syringes. 

So whats in your vet kit?

A Fox in the Hen House

At least that's what we think has been getting into the chicken pen. Thursday night I came home to 4 dead chickens all piled up in one corner of the chicken pen. One chicken was stuck in the fence where the offending creature had tried to pull it through the fence and failed. I didn't have time to fix the fence since it was already late and dark and Friday was another work day. Friday I didn't have time to fix the fence because we were dealing with Topper's injury, finding her a clean dry spot to stay and things like that.  So Saturday morning we wake up to find one more dead chicken in the same spot. So after driving to town to see the vet and getting hay, we went to the Home Depot and  got more chicken wire to fix the fence. 

At least the weather has been nice and the snow is really starting to melt. I can finally see bare patches of ground. It was nice and warm while I was out fixing the fence. I sure hope it stays that way for a while longer. Since our chicken killer doesn't come back every day, we will have to wait and see how well the fixed fence holds up to hungry creatures.

The horses came over to investigate what I was doing in the chicken pen since it borders the horse pasture. There are three kinds of horses when it comes to working in or near the pasture or barns.

1. The lookie-loos are the ones who come over look around and leave and go back to eating, sleeping or playing. Shy Monster falls into that category. She comes, she looks, she goes back to see what food everyone else left behind.

2. The inspectors come over look and test your work and make sure it's tight enough. Bug is the inspector of our herd. She comes over, flips the fence around a bit, nods her head in approval and leaves.

3. The assistant is the one who thinks you need help even if you don't. Help includes blowing in your face so that your glasses fog up, or sticking her nose in the area you are trying to pull a wire through the fence to tie it up, blowing in your ear to help keep you warm or any other number of helping duties. Baby Girl and Booger Butt are the helpers in this crowd.

The Money Pit is injured AGAIN

Yes that is her, and no she's not dead, dying or extremely seriously injured. She's just rolling in the snow. This happens just about every time that it's going to be nice or we want to ride. She finds more ways to get hurt than any other horse I've ever owned. We finally get a full week of predicted nice weather combined with a three day weekend and I come home to a hurt horse.

Judging by the next sets of photos you wouldn't even guess that she's injured.

 

But she sure is and it will require a trip to the vet this morning. She had managed to rip up her lower leg just above the coronet band. As you can see my pastures and pens are all full of snow and unfortunately where there is no snow there is mud.

I had to move her from the pasture to the round pen just to get her out of the mud. The good thing is that running and playing in the fresh pristine snow has cleaned the wound quite a bit. This was the best photo I got of the wound.  I had to shave her legs and clean her up in the snow. Then we moved her to a friends house to get her out of the snow and the mud. They still have a little bit of mud, but it's not nearly as bad as my house, and she has a stall that we can enclose her in if we need to. It looks like she's staying over there for several weeks until that heals up.

Don't Tax the Tortilla!!!

That is the big protest of the day here in New Mexico. Our State legislature is looking at repealing a law that prevents food items from being taxed. Items that may soon be taxed again include several New Mexico staple foods including white flour tortillas, salsa, chili pods and white rice.

The new bill in our legislature would only exempt from taxes the foods on the  Federal Womens, Infants, and Children food program (AKA WIC).  There was a big protest at the capitol today.  The legislature failed to pass a bill that would require large corporations that have stores in more than one state to pay their share of state taxes for the stores within the state and now they want to tax food again. In most states those large corporations are required to pay taxes on the income earned by the stores within that state, but not here in New Mexico.

According to the Legislature statement, the tax will be on NON-nutritional foods to help the residents of the State of New Mexico eat healthier. But included on the list of things that will be taxed include honey, yogart, potatos, and even nuts. That means our pecan and pistachio orchards will be taxed for selling their nuts. New Mexico is second only to Georgia in the production of pecans.

Watch out world, the tortilla war is coming. People in New Mexico are not happy tonight.

Don't Tax the Tortilla!!!!

Projects finished and still in progress

Two scarves finished. The blue and green one is my first finished project off the Knifty Knitter loom. I'm going to need a good hat pattern to go along with it so that I can use up the other skein of yarn and have a matching set. The multi-colored one is a crocheted ribbon yarn scarf.

 

Here are a couple of crochet coin purses and an eyeglass case made from some of the scrap yarns left over. The white and colored one was a combination of the ribbon yarns left over the the scarf and some white yarn left over from making my nephews Christmas blanket. The white and maroon one was the left over yarn from the hand warmers I made earlier. These are all finished except to find the right buttons to for each one.

My unfinished projects include a green boxed shell cape.  I've made this cape pattern before with a different yarn and liked it so much that I'm trying it again with this yarn. 

 

This triangle shawl is quite easy to make and I've just started it. I made a similar one out of different yarns for my sister for Christmas. This one I'm going to try and sell at the Arts and Crafts Fair in Town next winter. It still needs a few more rows to finish it off.

This purple and green item was intended to be a shawl or shrug. I'm a little worried that I'm running a bit short on yarn so I'll have to see. I do love the colors though and just may keep this one for myself.

Super Bowl Sunday

I'm not at all a football fan and I have a long history of finding something else to do on Superbowl Sunday. One year I enjoyed an awesome performance by the Lippizaner Stallions. 

 

 

This Sunday I went to see the farewell Tour of Riverdance.

I really enjoyed the performance, but I just wish I'd seen the show when Michael Flatley was still with the show. The show was definately worth seeing. This year is the 15th Anniversary of the show and the final year of performances. So if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to try and find out if they will be performing in your area.

There was a pretty big winter storm warning for the day and it snowed on us on the way to town. I was worried we would miss the show.  We were in fact almost late and were the last two people to arrived. We got to our seats just as the lights were being lowered. We bought our tickets in January and had tried to get the tickets for Saturday, but by mid-January, Saturday was already sold out. Our tickets for Sunday were also almost all sold out and I think we got the last two seats that were together.

When we left the theater, we were concerned about the travel home, but the roads were all clear on the way. It was a very good day even with the brief, but very heavy snow storm.

PS Congratulations to the Saints on their first ever Super Bowl win.

A dream girl comes home

That little filly I bought because of a nagging dream finally arrived at my house. The horse hauler unloaded her and we put her in her new pen to settle in. I go back down the hill with the horse hauler so that I can open the gate for him. When I walk back up the hill to the house, I see the baby girl standing beside Keith getting a good petting. Then she sees me, lifts her head and walks away from Keith toward me and whinnys as if to say, " Hi, I'm here!"

 

Baby girl here has so much in common with my old man Hobo. Over the last three years she's revealed more and more traits that do make me wonder sometimes. She has earned her name Hobo's Dream Girl and she was worth taking the risk of buying because of a dream.

Dreams and horses

Have you ever gone to bed at night and when you woke up you remembered a dream that just stuck with you for days or weeks on end? Have you ever had a dream that actually predicted some future event even partially? I have had several such dreams ever since I was in Junior High. I can remember dreaming about a camping trip that eventually took place a year later. I've dreamed about things like one of my friends getting into a car wreck and having a very similar even actually occur a few months later.


Have you ever purchased a horse based on on a dream?

As I posted yesterday, I had a very special horse who died. Well about a month after he died, I started having a very insistent dream. I see a field of green lined with large trees. In the field is a bay dun Appaloosa foal with minimal white markings. The foal was suppose to be a colt with a white star on the forehead and 4 generation all Appaloosa bloodline pedigree. This foal is supposed to be for me. In my dream, people are trying to sell me the foal or even just give him to me and telling me this foal carries a spirit that belongs to me. Basically the dream implies that this foal is the reincarnation of my old gelding Hobo. I tried to ignore this dream. I didn't actively search for any foals for sale. It just happened one day on a forum, a lady posted a foal for sale along with a few photos.






The first thing I thought was WOW that is the pasture I saw in my dreams! Then I thought no way, this just can't be the foal in my dreams because it's a filly and the white star is not there. But something kept nagging me. Something kept telling me to look past the differences. So I pulled up her pedigree and I was totally completely shocked! This filly had the 4 generation Appaloosa bloodline pedigree that kept being emphasized in my dream, but I couldn't figure out quite why until I saw the pedigree.

On her sire side was a horse named MISSOURI HOBO.  Then I looked at her dam side and found this PLAUDITS ANNABELLE. I just knew that this could not all be a coincidence. How many times to you run across a horse similar to what you have seen in a dream? Even more amazing, a horse that has YOUR name AND the name of your recently lost most favorite horse's name in the pedigree? Finally this filly was born just 3 days before the dreams started nagging my sleep.  I bought her almost right then and there.

In Loving Memory

I got Hobo when he was only a 6-8 month old colt. We went through all kinds of highs and lows during the next 22 years.

I was just starting high school when Hobo came home from the auction house with no paperwork, just a plain old grade dun colt with no name.  I named him Hobo in honor of another horse named Hobo owned by a famous wild horse advocate named “Wild Horse Annie”. 

Hobo came to stay with us and not long afterward he crushed the side of his face breaking multiple bones in his head. His life almost ended before it had really begun.  My mom and her business partner who’d bought him at the auction were talking about putting him down right then and there.  Bill had said, “Well we should just put him down because he’s not worth more than a dollar to me any more”.  So I got mad and stormed off to my room and gathered up a dollar’s worth of change. I stormed back into the kitchen, slammed the change on the table and told Bill, “ Well here’s your Damned dollar, he’s mine now and he’s not getting put to sleep” 

So that is how I came to have a wonderful horse named Hobo. I had to pay the vet bill for the surgery that removed all the broken bones and reset the bones in his head.

Hobo and I grew up together. I’d learned to ride and train horses with Hobo. Then I went away to college and left him behind for my younger sister to ride.  He was trained both English and western. My younger sister won a year-end award for High point in her age group riding Hobo in hunter-jumper classes.  After college I joined the Army and took Hobo to Ft. Huachuca, AZ with me. There we learned how to ride sidesaddle.

Hobo also loved all kinds of “ people” food. One day at the base riding stable, a young boy was walking around the horses carrying a bag of Doritos chips. Hobo untied himself and chased the boy back into the stable office trying to get some chips.  One of the other boarders at the stable had a little girl who would drop a piece of her treat daily just so she could feed it to him.  Hobo had such a gentle soul and was loved by almost everyone.

In his later years, Hobo was the baby sitter horse. You could put kids on his back and he would just plod along like very carefully.  If you were good at riding, he would still spark up.  We worked with Hobo in practice for Mounted Shooting events. He was also a great trail horse and an all around do what ever you asked of him type of horse.

I leased him out to a local girl two years in a row for a Queens Competition. He was also leased out to a family who had small children who wanted to learn how to ride.

In the pasture, Hobo was pretty much the “Boss Hoss”. He had one companion, Shy Ann the mule, who had been with him for all of her life. She was “allowed” to share his feed on rare occasions, but all the others were given stern warnings to stay away from his tub.

Today it has been three years since I lost my best friend. He’s been a bright spot in my life for 22 ½ years. He twisted his intestines during a bout of colic and it was decided that he was not a very good candidate for surgery. He spent two days in intensive care with IV drips and medication. I finally had to make that final extremely hard decision to end his life.

I saved hair from his mane and tail to have a keepsake bracelet made from the hair, but I’ve been so torn up about his loss that I’ve not been willing to send off the hair to an artist for the work.  It’s been three years, but the loss is still there. I miss walking out the back door and hearing him call out to me. I miss my friend.