Sunrise Sunset

 

Thanksgiving Holiday Pics

Turns out the dogs like reading on the couch with Owen’s parents too!  Mahzi very politely asked Susan to slide over a smidgen so she could come snuggle with them while they were here for thanksgiving.

Rizzo continues to adapt well to house dog life. She laid down under the tree to remind us all that she’s a gift.

The gluten free gingerbread houses turned out really cute! So far I’m the only one who has been eating them, but that’s not for lack of trying on the part of a certain small canine.

This is a sunset photo over the water

And this is sunrise over the barn

Despite being at the beginning of December, some of the trees are still turning colors.  I do love that yellow!

 S

Taking Saturday Off

 

A Very Rural Morning

We have a neighbor across the lower pond who came by a few weeks ago asking about the property line, since there were some big trees that needed to come down before they fell down and potentially damaged their house. Then in the storm here one night this week, one of them DID come down, thankfully missing all important structures.  But we both needed to determine where the property line was for some additional trees, as well as a small shed he wanted to put up which is technically supposed to be a certain distance from the property line.

I contacted one of the realtors who helped us get this property, who specializes in agriculture things as well.  He was amazing and came right over with a plat map, a metal detector, and a compass with a mirror to figure it out. 

I walked through the very small section of woods between our houses and ended up in my neighbor’s back yard to help. As I emerged from the trees both my neighbor and the realtor asked if I was ok? Was I sure? I answered of course, but why were they asking? They replied I absolutely MUST wear orange or neon hunting gear if I’m going to be in the woods, so I don’t get shot!  

I said that we’re in a neighborhood, it’s a tiny section of trees, and we have no trespassing and no hunting signs up all over.  They replied it doesn’t matter, and people don’t read.  Later another acquaintance confirmed to me that indeed people will drive around and even just shoot out their car windows into the woods if they think they might see a deer.  I knew we were in a rural area, but being 3 minutes from the grocery store and with neighborhoods and culdesacs all over it never occurred to me that people would just drive through and shoot into the trees.  

Now that I knew I needed to don all my neon orange hunting gear (which fortunately I already have for myself, the horses, and my dogs from trail riding in the mountains in CO), we moved on to the task at hand- locating the property line. Our realtor (talk about a full service realtor!) also dabbles in forestry and some surveying so he was going to be able to find it as long as we could find a marker from which to start. The plat map was from 1953.  According to that, the corner was delineated by a rock, off of which all the other measurements were based.  Noting that we were standing at the edge of the woods, I asked what kind of rock, to which he responded that we’d know it when we saw it.  

This left me feeling somewhat skeptical…  here the three of us were, stomping around in the fallen leaves looking for The Rock off of which we’d determine latitude and longitude and the direction of the property boundaries. I dutifully looked with them for The Rock for perhaps 20 minutes with no luck.  

However, eventually we did literally stumble upon a 2” diameter rusty metal pipe sticking perhaps six inches out of the ground. This made everyone quite excited because apparently in the 1970s a switch was made from using The Rock to using these pipes driven into the ground.  Having found this, our realtor stood directly over it, sighting with his compass and mirror in the specified direction from the plat map, and sent me walking in the general direction of where we should find the next pipe.  

Some judicious use of a metal detector in the indicated direction led to the discovery of a second lead pipe sticking very slightly out of the ground. Now we were really getting somewhere. After accidentally digging up some old buried metal fencing, and then accidentally locating the septic tank pipes, we did eventually find all the pertinent pipes and thus the property line.  As it turned out, all the trees that were likely to come down and potentially hit my neighbors house were on his side, so he could dispose of them as he saw fit. We all chatted a bit and then dispersed to the various other tasks we had on our schedules for the day.  

Between being counseled to wear hunting orange in my on back yard so I don’t get shot, and spending an inordinate amount of time looking for The Rock, it felt like it had been a very rural morning, indeed. 

House Dog Life & A Swollen Face

Mostly Rizzo and Mahzi are getting along ok in the house. I’m happy with polite indifference.  Occasionally Rizzo goes after Mahzi when there’s any confusion over toys, food, or attention. They did get in a fight yesterday because Owen tried to pet them both and say they were both good dogs…. Rizzo was having none of that and lunged at Mahzi. 

Keep in mind Rizzo is 4 years old and 37 lbs, and Mahzi is almost 9 years old and 75 lbs. Mahzi  truly doesn’t care if she’s on the bottom of the pack order, but please, Rizzo, don’t beleaguer the point by constantly putting her down.  She’ll not tolerate that kind of bullying.

Rizzo, who understands both levers and door knobs, also opened the back door and ran to the barn to see Pascal yesterday morning while I was putting my shoes on.  She’s not supposed to be running hard on that knee, but she hadn’t talked to Pascal for a few days and needed to fill him in about her lifestyle changes.

Rizzo came back when she was done discussing with Pascal, and now all the back does are locked.  I did catch Rizzo trying to turn the handle of the deadbolt when she realized the back door was locked, but I called her and distracted her before she completed her task.  Those doors are a little tricky since you have to lift the door lever way up and then turn the deadbolt to get it to lock or unlock, so we’ll see how long it takes Rizzo to figure that out.

In other news, Note somehow clobbered his head.  On Tuesday evening he was a little tender to the touch on the right side of his forehead, and despite getting pain meds by Thursday afternoon his face was quite swollen from the base of his right ear through his upper right eyelid. 

I called the vet and made an appointment for him to get checked out, and ended up driving to their clinic this morning since none of the large animal vets were out my way.  She thought he probably had been kicked or clocked himself in the head on a fence post or something, and fortunately there doesn’t seem to be any infection or damage to the eyeball itself.  So we loaded up and headed home, with a word of caution about not aggravating Highboy, his roommate, more than is tolerable.

Fall Swimming

 

Pascal had a busy morning with me doing barn chores and going for a short ride.  Lots of rain last night created plenty of water for lying in!  Pascal says he’ll lead the swimming expeditions and if you ask nicely he’ll show you the huge deer leg he found and then buried under a fallen log for safe keeping. 

Miles, my old border collie, did a similar thing in irrigation ditches when he was younger, we called it “playing alligator” because only the top of his head and eyes would be out of the water. 

Rizzo Retires

 Rizzo says, “Shh, don’t tell anyone I’m a house dog now!”

Rizzo has been intermittently lame on her right hind through the summer and fall, but each time I hoped she had just stepped on a thorn or pulled a muscle since doggie pain meds helped.  During the last two weeks she’s been more regularly lame, so we went to the vet to get her checked out.  

Unfortunately, as I had feared, she has a partially torn cranial cruciate ligament (like an ACL tear in a human knee) in her right hind stifle.  She is young (only four), very fit, and not a big dog, so we did additional xrays to try and determine why that knee developed the issue.  Looking at hip xrays we discovered she has severe hip dysplasia and arthritis in both hips.  She probably injured her knee because she was compensating for sore hips.

We’re not able to do the expensive surgeries to repair/replace all the joints, and three major surgeries would be quite traumatic for her as well.  So the treatment plan is a month of rest, anti-inflammatories, and hoping that enough scar tissue will develop in the knee to stabilize the joint.  With both of her hips being so bad as well, the vet said Rizzo definitely needed to retire from her working dog career.  You would never have known she was in pain, animals hide it so well, she had been working just as hard as always prior to the vet visit. 

So now Rizzo has had a bath, I’ve brought her crate and dog bed inside, and we’re reviewing house training as she starts to acclimate to being a house dog.  It will take a little adjusting for her and Mahzi to live together inside, but I’m sure they’ll sort it out as we carefully reintroduce them.  I’ll keep Rizzo as comfortable as I can for as long as I can, continuing her joint supplement and specialty food for her urine pH.  

I sure love this little dog and I’m really bummed about the xrays.  But now that we know we’ll just have to make adjustments and do the best we can for my little work-a-holic and hope she does ok in retirement.  I know Pascal will miss her outside too, it will be an adjustment for everyone.

Sunrise and Trail Ride

After I  eat breakfast and get dressed I head out to the barn to feed the horses.  This was my morning sunrise view walking from the house to the barn.  It's quiet, the light is soft, and I know I'm going to be eagerly greeted by feline, canine, and equine friends in just moments.  This is such a special place to live.

 

 

Earlier this week Kathy came over and we went trail riding on all three loops in the woods behind the house.  This time I rode Daisy while Kathy was on Dylan, which actually worked out nicely since Daisy is only a couple inches taller than Dylan rather than Highboy or Miss Pea being hands taller!  We also decided we'll have to do a pairs class at some point with the two of them, since Daisy and Dylan are both the same shade of sorrel and quite similar looking.

 

Raven's Left Hind Infection and Cellulitis

Thursday this week I went out to feed the horses in the afternoon and found Raven three legged lame with only barely toe-touching on her left hind in her paddock with Daisy.  She was so painful I immediately was concerned that she'd been kicked and something was broken.  

It was rapidly swelling, so I put a pressure bandage on it with no-bows and a standing wrap to try to control the swelling while I waited for the veterinarian to come out.  Thankfully Dr Erwin was able to come out as an emergency call to look at her for me.  He felt it looked more like a cellulitis than trauma, though it was hard to say.  There is a relatively new test that can be done in the field to look for infection and inflammation, called a Serum Amyloid A, or SAA.  A normal healthy horse will have a number of up to 20 mg/L but Raven's was 68.  Not outrageously high, but not normal either.  We decided to use that as a baseline number to see how this progressed.  

I put Raven in the stall in the barn where she could still see her friends but was isolated since she had a fever, and she was extremely lethargic, lame, and dull in affect with no appetite at all.  It was so bizarre to see my hot feisty mare acting like a sedated stock horse.  

This is the treatment sheet from the first two days.  I record vital signs because fever indicates infection (or possibly pain), elevated heart rate can indicate pain, as can increased respiratory rate.  Raven got SMZ tablets for antibiotic, sucralfate to coat her stomach prior to getting bute to try to prevent ulcers.  She is prone to them when stressed and NSAIDS are often a trigger for ulcers to form so I wanted to get ahead of it.  The dexamethasone was to decrease inflammation, omeprazole and outlast for ulcer prevention.  I also have been using the cold laser therapy on her.  The notes section is for any other details about what we did that day and how she was responding.

By the next day Raven's leg was much more swollen, and she was still extremely painful.  Dr. Erwin came out again and we radiographed her left hind to rule out any fractures, and thankfully there were none.  When we repeated the SAA test it was 888 mg/l which told us that it was likely an infection.  It wasn't responding to the SMZ antibiotics I was giving her, so we switched to injectable antibiotics.  One was a long acting drug that lasted for 4 days, so I'll give her that one Tuesday evening as her second dose.  The other was an IV medication that I've been giving her daily.  I was a technician at vet clinics for years before going to training horses full time, so thankfully this is not an issue to have the variety of medications administered differently, and to track all the progress with my treatment sheets.

By Halloween, Raven's leg was looking significantly better.  The swelling had gone down a lot, and she's putting weight on it normally.  Her vital signs are normal, and her feisty and hot attitude is back with a voracious appetite, so I know she's feeling better.  The photos show how much the swelling has gone down as well.  I did switch her to less bute and added in BL pellets (easier on her stomach and have herbal anti-inflamatories, but not as powerful as bute so I didn't start with this).  

I'm so grateful the medications are working, and that I have the laser to use.  It was a good purchase to have in Colorado because of all the PT and rehab I did with horses as referrals from veterinarians there, and it really has made a difference with Raven's leg.  Usually cellulitis like this lasts for weeks, and if it fills the horse's lower leg for an extended period of time a recurrence is likely months later.  To have the swelling go down this quickly with an infection/cellulitis case is unusual.  I do think the laser has affected how well this has progressed.

It is suspected that a recurrence of cellulitis happens because with that level of swelling for an extended period of time in the lower leg, the lymphatic system may be compromised.  If that's the case, the horse is less likely to be able to clear swelling and cellulitis in the future.  To try to head this off I've kept Raven's lower leg wrapped with a standing pressure wrap to prevent pooling of lymph in her lower leg and hopefully preserving the lymphatic system so it will work correctly in the future.  I have also wrapped her right hind at night since it was the main supporting leg.  Keeping it unwrapped during the day allows the skin to breathe and diminishes the likelihood of skin issues.

Hopefully her leg will continue to improve and she'll be back to full turnout and riding again soon.  There's no time constraints on this since we're not currently competing, but it's comforting to know that my friend will likely make a full recovery, and she's improving quickly due to the supportive therapy in addition to the main medications. I'm really grateful to Chatham Animal Clinic and Dr. Erwin for coming out on an emergency call and especially for the attention to detail and follow up.  I love this mare and am so glad she's recovering well from something that was initially very stressful!