Miracles and Setbacks

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

See that up there? That was what we spent the afternoon doing. We spent the morning holding horses for X-rays.

Yes, ankle and all. I torqued it again, too, but good. Now I'm sitting with it back up again, hideously uncomfortably. But shit's gotta get done.

Today was marked by miracles and setbacks, expensive ones.

First off, Griffin's in bad shape. It'll pass, but the longer it takes, the longer his condition continues like this, and everything's working against everything else. He's in the throes of his annual spring CVS flare, and unless and until the promised storm hits, either tomorrow night or Saturday, he'll get no relief. He can barely stand, much less walk; he hasn't been able to eat for more than 48 hours; he's weak, dizzy, and absolutely exhausted. And so am I, trying to cope.

Then there are Cree and Shade. The miracle continues to be Cree, overall, although she wasn't doing well this morning. The setback (in addition to Grif) is Shade.

The details are all over the jump, along with today's request for shares.

Today's vet visit was to get films of both mares' forefeet. Plural, in each case. It took several tries, because the vet was having trouble with her X-ray machine; all we'll be billed for are the four good X-rays, and I still have no idea what THAT's going to set us back. Likely our last three sales.

At any rate, Cree: It's her left that's been so bad; that's the hoof she went through at the end of last year. For those who don't know just how terrible those words truly are, here's what it means: As a result of a condition called laminitis, she foundered completely, and the coffin bone of the hoof that sits at the end of the leg bone "rotated," meaning that it shifted position so that it was no longer supporting her weight properly — and continued to shift, until the bone came through her sole. Time was, even within the last year or two, that would've been a death sentence.

Times have changed.

And so for three and a half months, we've been busting our asses to correct the rotation and help her build new sole. None of this is a given, and when she produced somewhere around a quarter-inch the first month, we were ecstatic. Well, she's up to three-quarters of an inch now, and the coffin bone is slowly coming back into partial alignment. Emphasis on slowly. This is a very, VERY long-haul process, and there are still no guarantees. We'd been able to limit her clog changes once a week, but now we'll back to every four days or so. Her right forefoot has some slight rotation, but it's nowhere near as bad, and we're going to try correcting it with trimming methods for now.

Shade, on the other hand . . . . We've been worried for months that Shade was laminitic, and in recent weeks, she's come up sufficiently lame to raise the spectre of rotation and full founder (in her case, in her right front; her mother's worst is the left front). 

Our fears were realized.

She's got rotation in both front feet, although the left is very mild by comparison. The right, though, is significant, and she's got a little bit of a problem with the coffin bone dropping, although it's nowhere near the point where Cree's was; she still has sole left. She does, however, have abscesses up in the sole around the entire line of the coffin bone. Tomorrow, she gets trimmed drastically on both feet, and she gets both soles packed with SMZ paste, then clogged like her mother. She also gets a five-day course of orals (also SMZ, which is a sulfa compound with an anti-inflammatory agent, and since it's sulfa, to which I am HORRIBLY allergic, I cannot even touch it with my bare hands; it's either gloves or Wings handles it). She gets both changed every four days, too. 

So what this means is that our workload with regard to these two has just about trebled, and we are apparently not going to get our helper back from his battle with addiction.

Now, the photo: That internal line of ProPanel fencing is what we set up today. Yes, just us, and me with the gimpy ankle. Why? Because last night, Ice kicked Cree in the jaw. Now, Ice is not wholly to blame here; they both go at it, although in the past the kicking has been basically at air, all storm and fury, signifying not much more than Cree's screeching to put him in his place. But the last two days, he's suddenly meant it. It may be the rapid-fire changes in barometric pressure; this time of year is horrible on horses' digestive systems and feet, and it's one reason why Cree and Shade are so lame right now. It's also why spring is known in places like this as colic season. But the last few days have been especially drastic (hence Grif's condition), and Ice is still battling that near-fatal case of sand colic, as he likely will for life. And so, the horses are now segregated by gender during eating hours.

At least we didn't have to buy the ProPanels. Wings dismantled the round pen and hauled the panels up to the main pen where the stalls are.

Joe T was also here this morning to spec dates and times to start irrigation. This is spring here, hands down the absolute worst, most difficult time of the year all the way around.

Now, as I said, the last three sales we made are what's gonna pay for today's vet visit (I hope; I don't have the bill yet). Which is simply that much less available to pay other bills (like the outrageous power bill that we coughed up too much scratch for yesterday) and just keep everything going. The house money has to stay segregated, because we're getting to about a week out. Which brings me to the share request.

Everyone knows the drill by now. I'm at the point where I'll start typing this in my sleep; it's already giving me nightmares. But here we go again: Please share the link to our YouCaring page, via the widgets and/or the page link itself. Please copy the widget code from the button on the lower right-hand side of the page, and post it wherever you can that might make a difference. That widget will give you this image, which updates automatically:

Many thanks to everyone who has helped us with the process thus far. We're currently at $4,500 out of a total goal of $15K for this stage; I'd like to get us half-way there when it's time to break ground in the next week or two, which means another $3K, so every bit of help, including shares, is important and valuable right now. Please also spread the link to Wings's Web site around, because we need to make sales just to cover ordinary expenses, and we always prefer selling valuable Native art to a requesting donations anyway.

And now, I have at least four other tasks yet this evening, and I need to turn my attention to them. Well, not counting the four or five OTHER tasks that are getting back-burnered until tomorrow, or, more likely, the weekend (at which point we are supposed to be in the throes of four straight days of rain and snow, and I can only hope they're right, both because the land is as dry as ash and because I need to time indoors to get these things done). But there's only so much I can do right now with one foot up.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.