Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement

Thursday, March 5, 2015

March Madness

As much as I would like to get off this crazy train that has become the weather the last couple of weeks I am, unfortunately, still aboard. The last 36 hours were bizarre. We basically had four seasons packed into the span of one day yesterday.

This picture floating around facebook pretty much nails our weather over the last 36 hours. I think we had all of this in our forecast from Wednesday morning through Thursday.

Yesterday morning it started off quite pleasant. We reached our high temperature for the day at about 10am, I believe it was 68F/20C. There were occasional light rain showers but it was warm and not unpleasant. This was nice since we spent the first half of the day yesterday with the farrier.

In case you missed it I will repeat that we hit our high temperature for the day at about 10am, and the temperature continued to drop all day long. We finished up with the farrier right at lunchtime. We were watching the farrier truck drive away when the skies opened up and torrential rain began pounding down. If it had to happen at least it happened after we were done with the farrier.

I'm not exactly sure how much rain we got yesterday afternoon and through the early evening, but judging from the amount of water in the bucket I left outside of one of the barns I would say about two inches. The ground was so saturated it was crazy and the water was just running off.

The temperature continued to fall all day and through the night. At about 9pm the temperature dipped below the freezing mark. Thankfully the precipitation had become much more sporadic with no downpours by that point as things switched from rain to snow and sleet.

We woke up this morning to another winter wonderland. In March. In the south. What the what is going on here anyway?? Back on topic we had maybe an inch of snow (2.5cm) but I think it was actually less than that. Regardless it was cold and we had winter precipitation in March. When we were feeding this morning it was sleeting for a little awhile. Awesome.

Every cloud does have its silver lining and I will say the horses presented me with lots of photo ops today. My cheap point-and-shoot camera doesn't particularly like taking action shots when there is no sunlight so the picture quality isn't great. That is a real shame because the subject matter was wonderful. I will admit it was fun watching the horses act like a bunch of schoolkids excited to be skipping school for a snow day. Below is a small sampling of what we saw around the farm today. Enjoy the pictures, I took a lot of them!

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Remmy and Hesse

Gus, Asterik and Gibson

Donneur and Romeo

Merlin

Fabrizzio rolling while Walden and Duesy make preparations to roll

Walden rolling, Duesy getting ready to roll

Remmy and Bruno

Hesse and Lucky

Merlin and Fabrizzio

Bruno bucking, Remmy and Hesse rolling

Remmy and Hesse

Lighty, Dutch and Renny heading somewhere in a hurry

Taco and Lighty being wild

Murphy on the run

Sam and Africa on the run

Johnny

Oskar and Donovan

Oskar, Rubrico and Clayton were being hyper . . .

. . . Oskar and Rubrico both went up

Leo and Thomas

it is hard to see it but Thomas has all four feet off the ground in this picture; he was doing a spin jump

Leo and Tony

Moe and Grand

Hemi and Rip

Stormy and Johnny

River and Largo

Griselle and Sparky

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Three Legs

I feel like I am seeing too many animals walking around holding up a leg lately.

Most of you will recall we had some adventures with Oscar about three weeks ago. Oscar is our stray cat that we have been feeding for two years. Oscar is feral, wishes to remain feral, and has no interest in cultivating a relationship with us. He only wants us to feed him . . . canned food and table scraps only please.

When we noticed that Oscar was only using three legs we got lucky and managed to trap him. He went to the vet and had the works. He got long acting antibiotics and steroids for the puncture wounds on his leg. He was vaccinated. And of course he was "tutored." Oscar was not a willing participant in any of this and in fact had to be gassed in the live trap at the vet's office in order to be safely handled.

Once we brought Oscar home I thought we might never see him again. I feared I was right for awhile. However about five days ago he started coming around again, and he has come every night since. Of course this made me very happy.

Unfortunately we noticed last night that Oscar was holding up the same front leg again, and he was doing so again tonight. Since he is more skittish of us than ever I am 10000% positive that we have zero chance of trapping him again. I've already mentioned to Jason that maybe we should try setting the live trap again. He has already said the only thing we're likely to trap in it is an opossum. I know he is right and that realistically we've done what we can for Oscar.

In what feels like a parade of three legged critters I watched a skunk slowly make its way across our driveway on three legs yesterday. In fact he was holding up his left front leg just like Oscar. I waited patiently - and from a great distance - for the skunk to make his way across the driveway and into the woods. Then I hustled to the house and sent Jason off in search of the poor little guy with a rifle so he could shoot it. Unfortunately since the injured skunk was heading right into the woods when I saw him Jason was unable to find him. For anyone who is wondering I am no fan of skunks (although I do think they are kind of cute), but I am even less a fan of injured animals suffering.

Jason deserves lots of kudos. He is constantly getting volunteered to help me deal with things like feral cats and three legged skunks. I am absolutely positive that the last thing he was hoping to do yesterday was traipse around in the woods with a rifle looking for an injured skunk. However he is smart enough to realize that dealing with feral cats and skunks is far more pleasant than dealing with an unhappy Melissa. Sadly he knows that potentially taking a direct hit from a skunk is less troublesome than dealing with an unhappy wife. He is definitely right about that!

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waiting for breakfast; Apollo, Ritchie, Levendi, Rip, Moe, Thomas and Hemi