Tuesday, October 1

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A sunny day, and not horribly cold. More in line with what you'd expect for Fall weather.

Having the vets out to do a bunch of things all together. Dandy needed to be castrated, so we did that. I was pretty uncomfortable with the whole thing, it's not easy to watch an animal go under general anesthetic and there's always risks. It feels scary to see a pony laid out on the grass unconscious, and though I wasn't looking, you could literally hear gristly crunching sounds as they crushed the blood vessels and ducts from the testicles with a clamp. I didn't think I was so upset, but I found myself feeling...far away. I recognised that I was going to faint, so I handed the rope holding his hind legs to one of the interns and sat down. I felt better after that, but it was a weird sensation. So far, things look okay. There's some risks in the next few days, so we have to keep a close eye on things.

The next thing was to take blood from Ursula, to see if she's pregnant, because you really can't tell for sure just by looking. I need to know if she's going to drop a winter foal, because if she is, we have to build a pen with some kind of heat source for the foal in the barn. The test is only conclusive if she has low progesterone levels, and is inconclusive if she has high levels, because it could just be a heat cycle.

Then, we floated Hollywood's teeth. She's had some issues in the last few years, and now they get sharp and uneven really quickly. I wanted her to have her teeth done as late as possible in the fall, so they are in as good a shape as possible for winter when she'll only have access to hay, not grass (which is easier to chew). That seemed to go pretty well.

My husband went and helped our friend again, with some demolition of his old house. Mostly tearing out drywall today. It sucks that our project is stalled a bit, but at least my sweetie can help our friend, who has already done so much work on our house project. With any luck, we can have our friend's old place torn down this fall too (they already have the new house finished, and have been living in it for years. This tear down is over due).

I'm grateful to have access to veterinarians that will come out and do this kind of services. They were kind, courteous, and knowledgeable. It's interesting how many women become vets, maybe even more than half of the vets around here now are women, and lots of female farriers too. I'm grateful to have the means to give my animals the care they need.