Pony Infirmary and Other Happenings

Poco is home! After six days in the clinic Poco came home on Thursday afternoon. He still isn't back to 100% yet. Most of the time his breathing is very normal but his respiratory rate is still higher than it should be at times. He came home with six different medications and a chart to help us keep it all straight.

Poco in his stall at the clinic; although he looks pathetic here he looked a lot more pathetic when he had his IV lines attached

I gave Poco a bath when we got back to the farm. He just had that hospital smell about him and we took care of that right away. Poco does not like to be groomed and he really doesn't like having a bath. I'm sure he felt I was kicking him while he was down! Poco has lots of company in the barn as we are apparently running a pony infirmary around here. We go for long periods where we never need to have the vet out which is pretty impressive since we have quite a few horses here. However the wheels seem to have fallen off in the last week!

Poco especially hates having his face washed so I did show some mercy and left his head alone but washed the rest of him

The adorable Cuff Links had a runny eye and wasn't holding it open all the way so he saw the vet for that. He had a tiny boo boo on his cornea so he is getting eye meds four times a day. Missy suddenly had these big patches of gross skin crud that seemed to come out of nowhere. Literally one day she was the same as always and the next day crusty, yucky skin crud all along her mane on both sides of the neck and patches on both shoulders. So I had the vet look at her as well and take a skin scraping just to make sure she didn't have some type of nasty bacterial infection or a fungus or something. She didn't so we are scrubbing daily with betadine and keeping her in as well so she won't get sunburned and also since the first few flies have started to make their appearance.

On top of the three ponies Lexi had her left hind stifle injected and had to stay in for three days. She started slightly dragging her toe on the left hind so I had the vet exam her as well. She flexed positive on the left hind stifle which did not make my day. So we did several x-rays and thankfully I now know her stifle joint is perfectly clean! However the vet said he thought he could feel some extra fluid around the joint when he palpated so we think she banged it on something or did some random thing to her leg and maybe had some slight inflammation.

If all of that wasn't enough Sparky the donkey had a swollen hind leg yesterday. Sparky is the most accident prone animal on this farm! Sparky had cut on his hock and a bit of heat in his leg so he is now on SMZ's twice a day and a daily betadine scrub. I keep a dry erase board in the aisle of the barn for special instructions as needed. It is usually blank - now it is full! Mostly with Poco's zillion different medications.

I get a headache just looking at it

Needless to say none of us have been looking for things to do this week. When I was feeding this morning I was looking at the grass in the alley between a couple of the pastures. It is think and tall and way past time to be mowed. I really don't even want to think about mowing the alley and I have no doubt Jason feels the same. So I chose the lazy (or maybe it is redneck) option of opening the gates from the pasture where the big boys live and letting them graze it down. The big boys already share a fence line with the pastures on both sides of the alley so decided they could simply share a slightly different fence line and let them graze it down and save some mowing.

Dustin grazing in the alley

Of course the boys acted like they had been transported to a foreign country as they ran up and down the alley several times. The other horses stood and watched them as they raced up and down and up and down. Finally one of them looked down and said "oh my gosh look at this thick, gorgeous grass" and they suddenly stopped running and started eating. They've been eating their heads off ever since.

Teddy and Lucky got tired just watching the boys going back and forth

Levendi looking around and realizing everything looks very familiar, just from a slightly different view

Racing down the alley and back out into their pasture; Tony (left) and Leo (right) are bringing up the rear
Racing back up the alley; L-R Baby, Leo, Elfin, Chance

The Don was striking a pose in the flower bed in front of the barn

I asked Jason to hold my purse for a minute and he went out to check on Mina and Jo. I had to take a picture of him striding along with a purpose holding my purse. It went with his outfit. He begged me not to post this picture and I said I wouldn't. But being the kind of person I am here it is.