Back to business

Having taken a week off for my Aunt Kat's funeral in Texas, I am now trying to get back into the pattern of writing you again. The week in Texas was wonderful, even if it was for a funeral. To see all the family again, be back in Seguin, eat real Texas food... Kat will be sorely missed though. She was a wonderful, caring person. Here's a couple of pictures from Texas;

Mother and Chip waiting to eat at Casa Rio

Kim celebrating her birthday!

Casa Rio on the River walk, San Antonio

Pear Cactus Margarita



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Today was spent relaxing some, getting a few things done. I had to go to the clinic this morning - dogs and cat in the treatment area to be taken care of. We were over booked so I decided to do it this way. I had also promised Larry, Max's owner, I would let him pick up his dog this morning. I'm not supposed to do it but Larry travels as a travel guide and was gone for 2 weeks in Alaska. He leaves in a week again for 2 weeks and Max is his only family. One more day with his buddy home with him makes me feel good. It also helps keep clients coming back!

Back at home I made a great lunch - spaghetti with homemade sauce and meat from my coworker's steer, eggplant parmesan made with fairytale eggplants straight from the garden today (I picked 10 today and used 7), followed by fresh peach pie with peaches from Colorado...Yum!

Tomorrow is my dog training class so I spent part of the day figuring out what to do. We're coming to the end of class so I want to introduce something fun. Trixie thinks this piece of agility equipment will work just fine!

Traeh and Trixie knew right away what was up. I couldn't keep them out of it! I tried to get Bryn through but the other two kept running in. I did finally succeed and also got Candy in who had never done it before. 

This is the start of fair week so Emma is super busy getting her goats and lambs ready. They have to be clipped just so and tonight was the lambs' turn. Her boyfriend, Lee, is helping her. He showed lambs for years and is now too old to...

The garden is crazy right now and it's not weeds making it crazy - it's growing vegetables!!! Unfortunately it seems a raccoon has also discovered our sweet corn that is getting close to harvest. We discovered 2 ears shredded. I'm hoping the dogs will discourage this behavior!

Look at these pictures of the garden - beautiful! Can't wait for more veggies to be ready to harvest. Today I picked 10 eggplants, 2 tomatoes, 1 yellow crookneck squash (the first). But I saw butternut squash, lots of watermelons, loads of tomatoes, potatoes,....Beans haven't even flowered yet but I'm hoping some day...

Wednesday

Busy, busy day. Seems to be the pattern doesn't it? Megan was gone since her daughter is getting married on Saturday (actually she's already married but they're having the church ceremony). Therefore, I had to be appointment today. Pooh! I hate being appointment!! That's 4 days within the past week!
Well, the first appointment was kind of fun (although not for the animal). It was a chicken!!!!! Yep, a couple brought in a hen wrapped up in a towel - for limping. Before the doctor got there, I examined the bird and thought she had "bumblefoot" - a foot condition where manure builds up and causes inflammation and infection on the feet.I wanted to check that there was no string or twine wrapped around a toe, since feedsacks are abundant in barns. The couple was what was interesting. The woman was all concerned for this hen - one of 12 that the grandchildren just love. This hen had no name (the grandchildren got tired of thinking of names - plus the hens were all the same breed and looked the same). The man however came in with a big grin on his face. He couldn't believe he was bringing a chicken to the vet!
Tom examined the hen and found a large abscess that he opened up. The woman couldn't watch but the man held onto the hen and watched everything. He was going to try to treat another chicken who was limping at home. Henny Penny was an excellent patient and I wish the dogs and cats that came in were as well behaved!

This is the type of chicken we saw - a Red Star hen, a breed for laying eggs.

This is exactly what her foot looked like! (the round lump in the middle is not normal)

We also had a dog come in for a C-Section. Yes, we do those on dogs too. This Golden Retriever went into labor on Monday, had 2 dead puppies yesterday and x-rays from another vet yesterday that showed 2 more puppies. For whatever reason, they brought her to us today. Once Jen was able to put her under, she found the 2 puppies but they were also dead. Not a happy outcome, but it saved the dog's life. The toxins build up if the puppies don't come out. I guess, just like with some people, the puppies couldn't get through the birth canal so they couldn't have been born naturally. The people will spay the dog when she is better since she probably can never have puppies. The dog is so fat though that Jen said she would not spay the dog until she lost some weight.

Mike had a calf come in with what they thought was an umbilical hernia. I didn't get to help but when Mike sedated the calf and got a good look, he found an abscess instead. Hopefully the calf will do ok - it's worth $2000  according to the owner. They raise show dairy cattle. Here's a similar calf for you to see. There was a lot of mooing in the barn when she woke up! That went along with the bleating of the goat there to be castrated....

Garden!

Just a quick post today. Spent some of the morning filling up water for everyone and taking pictures of our beautiful garden. We've never had such a good garden here. Even as hot as it's been we've been keeping it watered, weeded and loved. And it shows! I picked about 7 small eggplants and another handful of cherry tomatoes. But there's lots to come. I have no more room for zucchini in the fridge, even though there's more to be picked. Here's a few pics of the wonderful veggies;

Of course I had the dogs with me this morning. It was getting a little warm, as you can see from the panting. Uli has his own way of keeping cool - ear flaps! Trixie likes to keep cool with a dust bath.

Also the flowers by the house are in bloom - don't know what they are - and my tiger lilly is blooming. We had to keep the snow fence up just to keep the geese from eating the lilly blooms. Must be a goose delicacy.

Finally - RAIN!

Friday - but not the end of my week. I still have to work tomorrow.
The clinic was very busy, just like every day this week! Emily took the day off so I was appointment. Plus I had to do the schedule for the kennel and I had to fill out all the boarding sheets for tomorrow. I have about 10 dogs coming in so it's quite a bit of paper work. I'm not going to bore you with the appointments, just say there were a LOT of them. 3 doctors unitl 12 and then 2. I did set up a urine culture for Jen, an 11 week old boxer puppy. First you have to set up the plates to see if you can grow an organism. The next day, if something grew on the plates, you set up a sensitivity plate to see what antibiotics the organism is sensitive to. I actually set up the sensitivity plate. Tomorrow we will read it to see what antibiotic will work for this boxer puppy.

This is the initial growth from the urine. Look at the yellow spots on the top one.

This shows the original culture and the sensitivity plate I set up. Each white dot is made of something

similar to cardstock with a different antibiotic impregnated in each. The doctor tells me which

antibiotics to try. The tubes on the right hold the circles of antibiotics.

I didn't have to stay too much past 5. Once home took a break and then  went out to put the horses in the bottom pasture. It had rained some with even a little lightning and I wanted to get the horses set for the night in case more storm came through. The nice thing was the great clouds and sky. 

This is actually how it looked with a perfect line down the clouds. The view is right over my head.

In between rain drops, we walked by the garden on the way back to the house. The zucchini had gone ballistic and I picked 5 zucchini! Plus a few cherry tomatoes. The rest of the garden is doing good but a little ways off from harvesting. This rain is fantastic for the corn and beans. The row crop corn growing around us was really starting to suffer from drought. In Iowa farmers were worried they would have no corn at all! Hopefully everyone's getting some of this much needed moisutre.

A quick visit to the chickens since I haven't been out there in a few days. My 2 baby chicks are outside now with the flock and I wanted to see how they were doing. They really surprised me - Piccadilly ran out to me when I walked into the hen coop. When I was bent down trying to pick them up (a broody hen kept attacking me when the chicks made noise), Piccadilly actually jumped up on my shoulder. I lifted Beetlejuice up to join her. As you can see, Beetlejuice liked this new activity. I guess I'll have to bring them a treat of hard boiled egg tomorrow -

To finish off, I have a picture of the broody hen setting on a mess of eggs hoping to hatch them. She has to set for 3 weeks. This is one of my footless hens - whose feet literally froze off one winter. She gets around ok though. No, I actually don't have a name for her. Listening to the rain off and on all evening. Lots of lightning again as well as a little pea sized hail. The poor llamas are getting wet but I'm not coaxing them in now!

Forestville State Park

Anna and I spent this past weekend in Forestville State Park with our horses Piper and SueBee. What a fun time! Anna had to  kind of make all the arrangements to get her mother to go but I am so glad she did. I was worried about how SueBee would be in the woods - she always thinks there's bears hiding behind the trees - but Piper was there to comfort her mother and Anna was there to comfort hers!
This is how the horses stay when you're not doing something with them. It's an old fashioned hitching post and the horses seem very calm tied to it. They stay there all through the night too:

The horses have their fly masks on to help with those pesky things. The flies seem to really bother Piper but both horses are more comfortable and don't seem to be bothered about looking through a mesh.

It was REALLY hot Friday when we got there. The temp and humidity combined to make it quite uncomfortable. We went for a short ride and then put everyone to bed. Anna and I were so hot we didn't feel like eating anything but went to bed. In the trailer it was hot too and we just laid there listening to the horses move. You don't get much rest this way, hot and worrying about the horses, but the front came through and cooled things off a bit.

Saturday we had planned for our longest ride. Started out before 9 so it was a little cooler. The campground was fairly quiet and not much stirring when we left. Of course most people were plugged into air conditioning and snug as bugs. Oh well, we had a beautiful morning ride. To get to the trail loop we wanted, we had to make our first water crossing. It was a doozy, with steps leading down to the water, a bridge right next to the crossing, and fast moving water. It took us about 15 minutes to convince the horses they weren't going to die if they went in. After that, all the crossings were a piece of cake. In fact I had to push SueBee to keep crossing at one place because she felt like laying down in the water and rolling over with me. I'm sure the water would have felt wonderful but not with me on her!

This is the place we had lunch - ritz crackers with tuna! The horses were tied at the hitching post there and we had a lovely meal at "Big Spring". Right now this is at the end of the trail and you have to turn around and backtrack to return. They are working on making it a loop so I guess we'll have to go back some day.

Anna and I saw a few deer and fawns on the rides. The deer are pretty unafraid around horses, even with people on top, so we were able to get quite close. The horses were not very cooperative though and refused to stand still for picture taking. I guess I need to work on that with SueBee.

Both Anna and I tried to take pictures of each other riding but since the horses were not cooperating I had to delete a number o f blurry ones. The woods were lovely though and each trail loop was a little different topography. I think Fall would be a beautiful time at this park. We may have to come back then too.

Saturday night was cooler and we were hungry enough to have chili and Fritos. Good! Lots more people tonight and it was definitely noisier. The horses handled it ok though. Trying to go to bed early didn't work, we woke up around 11:00 hearing something gnawing on wood. The horses weren't upset but Anna and I decided to pick up everything on the picnic table. I put the propane stove up against the trailer for the night.
The next morning around 6:00, I heard noises outside. I opened the door and there were 3 creatures outside the trailer - 1 big and 2 small. A mother raccoon and her 2 babies! That is what had been making all the noise around camp. They scurried off, the mother calling to her her children who were in no hurry to follow her. It was still fairly dark so I couldn't get any pictures (drat). When I got up again a little later, I could see that the baby raccoon's had been trying to stick their tiny long fingers in the holes in the propane stove. They left behind the evidence;

Sunday we had time for one more ride. The park had 15 miles of horse trails and we hit almost every one. The horses got very sweaty and were rewarded after the rides with a cooling off. As you can see, they love water!

Eventually we had to go though. SueBee was bushed - every trail had lots of ups and downs. It was really hard work for the horses - really hard work. Piper was a little sore on her back and SueBee had a couple of sores from the tack. But we all had a good time and I thank my wonderful daughter for this fantastic trip. I hope we can go again sometime!

July 10

Well, day off again. Lots to do at home but that never changes! This is real quick as it is already 10:00 p.m.
I thought I'd have a relaxing day at home instead of going to town to get shopping done. As I sat on the sofa (yes, but I had just finished shaving Gertie and I was taking a short break) someone drove up. Now, we don't get many visitors out here. Usually it's just friends of the kids. This time it was our neighbors from down the road. They had a load of hay they'd been trying to sell and they wondered if we needed any. After talking to them, I decided to buy it. They brought it right over and helped us put the hay in the barn even.
Luckily it was 4:30 when they left to bring the hay over so I had Jacky come home early, Anna got home and Emma was already here. 130 bales later, we were done in record time with all this help. Often it's just Jacky and I alone. Last time I even had to ask my kennel helper to come over and help since both girls were gone!
 So much for my lazy day. I also made an observation about the birds outside. The juvenal starlings were outside making all kinds of noise, trying to get the adults to feed them my expensive bird food. As I watched, I saw these young birds get onto the oriole feeders and gobble up the grape jelly! I had never seen this in the adults but I know my jelly has been disappearing like crazy. Now I know, I'm feeding the starlings this too! Wish there was some way to keep the starlings away, short of shooting them!


Made stir-fry tonight. The chicken was caramelized - turned out wonderful. For the vegies, I picked fresh broccoli, baby eggplants, and zucchini. Added one spring onion from the garden and some store sugar snap peas, mushrooms and garlic. It really turned out good. I love getting food from the garden and eating it right away! I did freeze the rest of the broccoli. Can't eat it fast enough!

Back to Work

Thursday, two days off and back to work. This week will feel weird. No surgeries so I didn't have anything to do there. However, I had to meet with our new intern. Mike neglected to tell me before he left for Montana that he had agreed to have a vet tech intern from Rochester School come for 4 weeks. And he told Holly I was in charge. Well, that's all fine and good, but it would have been nice for him to tell ME!
Anyway, I met with Kim today for the first time. I let her stay for a couple of hours and observe. Next week she will be with me for 3 full days and on Saturday. This will go on the rest of July. I will gradually have her do more things as she gets more comfortable with how we do things. This girl is older and has 3 children - 2 of which are old enough to drive. She is going back to school to do what she really loves.
There's a lot of people out there who just want to work with animals. Unfortunately they often aren't  good with people and you HAVE to be good with people. They are the clients, they are the ones you have to talk to, inform, convince to do things for the good of their pets. They pay your wages. I think Kim will do ok in this respect.
She had a rough beginning today. With the high temperature (90's) plus super high humidity, heat stroke is a real possibility. We had a golden retriever come in with heat stroke while Kim was with me. The owners had simply taken him for a walk around the block. I guess they realized he was too hot and started cooling him down, but then he went into seizures. Oh boy. They brought him in and Pam and Jen soaked him down. His temperature gradually came down but Jen had to give phenobarbital to stop the seizures. When I left to come home, he was awake but twitching and Jen is afraid he had brain damage from the high body temp.
This past weekend, my Bryn had overheated while I was out with the ponies. I immediately hosed her down for a while, then set her in front of the fan inside the house. I was lucky. Pam had the same thing happen last week with one of her labs. It doesn't take any time at all.
Then we had a cat come in 'bleeding from the mouth'. Dennis decided to keep the cat and he sedated her to look in her mouth. She started vomiting and vomited up a huge amount of blood. We didn't know if she would make it or not. Dennis gave her Vitamin K to clot the blood and she looked ok when I left.
That was Kim's first couple of hours with us!


Anna had some friends over tonight. Would you believe they decided to have a bonfire? One of her friends, Heather, is spending the summer working at a llama backpacking outfit in Wyoming. What a cool job!!!! I love the pictures she posts on facebook. Jacky and I are wondering about the wisdom of our daughter - to have a hot bonfire when the temperature outside is 91 degrees and the RH is  76%. Here they are...

Anna, Heather, and Emily had to make smores, roasting marshmallows over the flames. As you can see by this picture, it was a little tricky getting close to the fire -

Time spent filling up all the water buckets and troughs. Anna and I are leaving right after work tomorrow to take the horses to Forrestville State Park where we will camp for a couple of nights. The forecast for tomorrow is 95 degrees and muggy.

On that note, I leave you with this picture. Enjoy.

Happy 4th of July!

Well, everyone here has the day off from work. Anna and I got up early to ride before it got too hot to do anything. I let Anna warm SueBee up on the ground and a little on her back. I got up after that while Anna got up on Piper and we went for a short ride. I started sticking to the saddle ..but it was all good. The horses seemed to walk fine with their new shoes on and SueBee even gave me a short jog-trot. She was tense the whole time but she managed. You would have thought I asked her to jump a 6 foot high fence! (which her daughter would love to do).
Anna left to go to a friend's cabin to sunburn on a lake and Emma went with us to Owatonna for a few things. It was hot. Heat index of 104 degrees.
After chilling (literally) for a while, I went out to check water for all the animals. We had moved the ponies back in the big bottom pasture so they could have shade. When I got down to the horse water trough there was a bird floundering in the half filled container. I hurriedly climbed over and fished out the sodden bird. Here is a picture of what I fished out;

I looked up in my Peterson guide and I believe this is a young male American Kestrel. Here is a picture of an adult , also called a Sparrow Hawk. This is the most common falcon found in the U.S. and has been used in the sport of falconry.

Emma said we've had one before in the trough. I don't remember. That's why I blog now - to remember! Anyway, I took him down to the bottom pasture, away from the cats, and found a spot to place him. He was pretty stressed, probably exhausted, and cold from being in the water so long. I don't know if he'll make it but he's better off in the pasture then stressed in my house. Wild birds are delicate and don't take stress very well. It's definitely warm out so he should dry out quickly.

While I was in the pasture I decided to go visit my horse. They look quite peaceful grazing under the trees - until they get close and you see all the mosquitoes and flies on them!

 Above me a blue jay was calling. As I walked towards the gate a baby jay fluttered in front of me and hid in the long grass. I took a quick picture of him before his parent came down on top of me. I also hurried away because the horses were following me and I didn't want them to step on this baby.

Can't see much but those white stripes! The grackles keep the jays away from the feeders by the house but that is probably protecting the jay's babies as they leave the nest. The cats are rough on fledglings. 

Back by the house, the cicadas had started singing. That is the sound of summer. It also always makes me think of Texas and Seguin. The drone of those insects is such a lovely song - just like the sound of crickets or frogs. I looked and looked for the shed exoskeletons but didn't find any. However, I did find lots of small crabapples and also (wormy) green apples.

No cicadas on the ground today but just in case you don't remember what they look like - 

Looks like it's cooling off. Temperature outside is now 87 degrees but the humidity is still fairly high. It's been in the 70's percentage. Guess I'll try to make the most of this holiday and take a nap.....