Leap Day!

I just had to do a little post about "Leap Year Day." I love how it only comes once every four years. I was working all day so didn't get a chance to do much fun stuff, but I still enjoyed the "rarity" of this particular day. :-D


L

Updates

I don't seem to have any time for regular blog posts the last few days, I've had so much work to do. The horses aren't really any different, including the eye. I'll call the vet in a few days and see where we go from here. Right now I'm not really that upset, I guess I'm just sort of numb from this long haul. I really do believe that she will recover well if we do have to operate, and it's almost to the point where I would like to get it over with just so she doesn't have to deal with constant discomfort from the eye. This ordeal has aged her visibly, to me anyway. I want her to bounce back and not have anything irritating to deal with.

I do feel depressed overall for various reasons, especially in that it seems like everything around me is either broken or sick. Including my wallet! :-D So, I don't have the energy for a bunch of cheerful posts right now, but please don't think I am wallowing in misery if I don't post much for awhile. I just need time to myself to try to regain energy. I need to sleep and read fluffy books and ride Anatolian. :-)

Ciao for now.


L

Mira's Eye Update: 10

I'm getting kinda tired of these updates. Oh well! Bottom line, the vet was just as unhappy with her eye as I was. There is some scar tissue building on the eye, and a slight amount of stain uptake still. Meaning, it's really not healing like it should. I'm going to do ointment on it a couple times a day for the next few weeks, and try to give it a chance. At some point, though, I'm pretty much expecting to have to remove it. My mom keeps telling me not to feel guilty for not shelling out for the whole 12-16 weeks of treatment, and I'm trying to keep that in mind, and tell myself that Mira really won't care very much about being blind compared to how much I'll care. At this stage in my life, and hers, it really wouldn't be sensible to spend thousands more on trying to fix a stubborn infection that probably wouldn't clear up anyway. I just hate having it not respond to everything we've done already. In the future, if I ever have any injuries like this again to any of my horses, I will ask the vet for an antifungal prescription for the first week, as well as the antibiotics and serum, to prevent any possible complications like this. I know this kind of complication is pretty rare, but I would rather spend the money and prevent all this.

On the other hand, he did remove the lavage catheter from her eye, so any discomfort that might have been causing is gone now. She never did seem bothered by it. I think those are fabulous inventions! Now that it's gone, I can clean her face and mane without interference :-D

Anyway, that is where things stand right now. I had technical issues with my typing job today, so I got a bit of an unintentional break this afternoon, which was nice. :-)

Ciao for now!


L

Conformation Critique Time!

First, a (horrible, spur of the moment, dusk) photo of Anatolian just a couple weeks after I got him. This is a compare & contrast thing I've wanted to show you guys for a while now. When I first went to look at him, he had a slight bump over his loin area. I believe this is probably the sacroiliac joint. Anyway, the trainer that was examining him for me agreed with me that it looked like a very slight hereditary roach back. It was very slight, not in the saddle area, and there was no pain/discomfort, which would suggest it to be a trauma issue rather than an inherited anomaly. At the price he was, I decided to chance future unsoundness issues related to that or to his racing history.

The really odd thing was that after several weeks here, I noticed the "bump" was disappearing. I don't think it is completely due to his being wormed and thus rounding out a bit more on top, and it is not totally accounted for by general roundness. He has a normal back now! Being me, I'm not sure whether to be happy or not. If it was an injury type thing, it could recur. If it doesn't recur, though, then it is very cool that it went away, and I'll just chalk it up to not having had his feet trimmed in a YEAR before I got him. Anyway, if you have any knowledge or similar experiences, please let me know!

And now, for a photo with lines drawn on it. Hopefully it is done correctly - this is my first time doing this kind of diagram myself!

The blue lines on his neck: The top one is not quite twice as long as the bottom one, which would be ideal. His neck is not perfectly positioned in this shot so it looks short, but the ratio is about right. He has a decent neck, but not great.

The middle black line on the shoulder is not quite at 45 degrees, meaning his shoulder is a bit more upright than is desired in a riding horse. That can affect athleticism and comfort in riding somewhat. However, I don't think it's bad. On his front legs, his legs look behind at the knee to me. Experienced horse people: Am I right? To me, that is his worst fault. I didn't buy him for jumping, though, so I'll just keep an eye on his front legs to prevent soundness problems!

He has a nice deep heartgirth, and his back is a good length. His hindquarters have plenty of muscling and are angled about right. He does tend to park out behind the vertical a tad, but I don't think he will have too much trouble doing medium collection.

The green line, and light blue line going from knees to hocks, show that he is slightly downhill, also making it harder for him to achieve high levels of collection.

Overall, I still think he is a lot better than a lot of OTTBs I have seen, and has potential to be a very useful mount.

I welcome your comments on what you see in his conformation! I mean, try not to rip him to shreds, (tee hee) but do give me your thoughts. If you look at his sire, Rahy, there are a lot of similarities...

L

Favorite Old Photos

The top two are from exactly one year ago. The bottom one is six months ago. It was fun going back and even seeing some photos from when I went to look at her the first time.

I'm tired of all the drama lately, so here's hoping things settle down and the horses can get back to this type of peacefull scene! :-)

General Update

Sorry it took me so long to update! I've been literally working just about every waking moment this week. A bit exhausting, but starting yesterday I can actually sleep through the night again, which is very exciting!

Mira's eye is looking a little better, so who knows how things will eventually end up? The vet is coming to look at it on Tuesday...

My car is acting better, so I've been able to drive it without being afraid I'm killing the engine. It is still a little too hot, but otherwise normal. Maybe it heard me say there was just no way I could afford to repair it right now, and decided to shape up for now!

I don't really have anything interesting to say, and I've had no time for organizing photos, but I will try to post again tomorrow with a better post. By the way, I've really appreciated all the supportive comments during this time. You guys are good encouragers. :-)

Ciao for now...


L

Mira's Eye Update: 9

Today was another gorgeous day, as you can see. It started out rather interesting though, with car trouble before dawn. I had to borrow a family member's car to get to work. My car was making interesting grinding noises, that sounded expensive... We'll see what it is, but if it is something we can't fix ourselves, then I'll just have to make do with borrowing cars for now. I can't afford repair bills now after all the vet bills! It was just so classic that I was hardly surprised, although I was grumpy because I just recently checked all the fluid levels, etc. in an effort to keep something like this from happening due to neglect or business. :-P I do prefer car trouble to horse problems, though.

Mira is still eating and drinking well and she is basically on a normal diet again now. She keeps rolling and getting filthy, so today there is just a photo of the Racehorse Dude for you all. He actually stayed cleaner than her today, for once!

I like the fiery glow in this photo.

Anyway, I am still hoping and praying that Mira's eye will recover all the way, but it looks worse today. I don't like how it seems to be regressing and getting more painful again. There really isn't anything more I can do right now, though. Hopefully by the end of this course of meds she will be much better.

On a fun note, the lady I got the Chinese herbs from not only knows Mira's previous owner well, but also has gone on camping trips with her & Mira! She remembers "the little gray Arab" well, and said she remembers her having a fast walk and being able to go on all day, and being a GREAT trail horse. I told her "That's right, nothing ever phases her, and she just likes to trundle along forever if you let her." It was fun chatting a bit with her about that. :-D I do miss riding Mira, but I hope to be able to pony her along with us when Andolu is settled in a good riding routine and I know him a little better. She really does love getting out and doing things.

L

Saving

Wow, talk about a tearjerker blog.

Saving Argus

This is all about a horse rescued from horrible, prisonlike conditions. I am so touched by this lady's writing. Reading the blog reminded me, for some reason, that as a Christian this is what was done for me. I was born into sin, meaning I was already messed up, and didn't need any urging to do bad things and get more messed up. Sin sometimes appears nice to us, but the more we do it, the smaller our trap gets. We can't jump out because we have an evil prison guard. It requires somebody to come and rescue us. That is what Jesus did for me. I don't always think about the enormity of my rescue, but I should. If reading about this one horse getting a new life, a chance to be the horse he was meant to be, gives me such goosebumps, then...

I think I'm going to go listen to "Martyr's Song" again. Ciao for tonight, and blessings! See you tomorrow for more pics (hopefully!).


L

Mira's Eye Update: 8

The Mira-mare is still eating & drinking and feeling great. Very nice to be able to relax a bit! We're almost back to full feed now.

Her eye wasn't looking quite as good today, but I'm hoping that is just because she was squinting in the bright sun (both eyes) every time I went out today. She seems to prefer the sun almost all the time, rather than the shade. So does the Dude, actually. Soaking it up...

Tomorrow I will be picking up some herbs from the Chinese Medicine Practitioner I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure what all the different herbs are in it, but I'll let you guys know when I get it. Hopefully these will also help her body heal. We shall see!


L

Mira's Melodrama: Life & Death Adventures of The Spoiled One

As promised, here is a photo of Mira eating from a lawn chair. :-) This was requested as a funny "look how (not) spooky the Arab is!" example. I think I'd better get some pictures of Andolu following the plastic and paper feed carrying bags around, too. I'm afraid he would puzzle a lot of Natural Horsemanship trainers - they wouldn't be able to sack him out with it!

I am glad to have had a chance to take this picture. This week was definitely a scary whirlwind, and at one point I was afraid I might never be able to get this photo.


On Monday, for the first time ever, Mira colicked. Colic in horses is by far their biggest killer, and there are many kinds of colic (stomach pain) caused by many different things. Colic is a life-threatening emergency, whereas the eye injury is not. In her case, the factors that could have contributed to colic include the weather FINALLY changing to sunny, (any dramatic weather change can trigger it) chronic low-level pain from the eye, the fact that I couldn't get her to drink enough for several days before, (no matter how much liquid I put in her wet food - she kept spilling the extra), a recent new hay purchase, and probably sleep deprivation from all the storms and hail. No matter what caused it, when I got home from work she was lying down in the sun.

At first I thought she was sleeping, but she didn't get up when I got her food ready. I went over and tried to get her up, but she kept looking at me and then drooping her head down again, in a very lethargic way. I started to really freak out. Right away I knew this was very bad.

I called the vet, and he came out about 45 minutes later and tubed her (inserting a nasogastric tube and flushing water and DSS, a lubricant, into her stomach) and gave her some Banamine to help with pain.

Unfortunately, her colic did not resolve with that one treatment. Over the next four days we had a rollercoaster ride trying to get her insides moving again, get her interested in eating again, and keep her from getting dehydrated. This is probably the most scared I've ever been about her. She never did sweat or roll from pain, or even look around at her sides, but you could tell she felt totally lousy.

Meanwhile, she started opening her eye and using it to look around a lot. It was MUCH less painful, and the vet said he was very happy with it. Since it was responding this quickly to the new meds, it's possible she didn't have a fungal infection after all; she might just have needed the stronger antibiotics to be able to absorb them. She doesn't even have as much blue ulcer area covering the eye as we were expecting - you can see quite a bit of brown iris! She was so sick though that that just made me feel worse, almost. I didn't want to win the battle but lose the war...

She was eating some grass and some alfalfa, but I could not get her to eat her wet food, which both horses usually think is the best stuff ever. I also kept squirting the inside of her mouth with a syringe which had warm water and molasses in it to try to remind her to take a drink! Finally, on Thursday after another tubing she started eating even her wet food, the gut seems to be working again, and she is drinking normal amounts! She is still restricted to small amounts of food for several days, until we can be sure things are working like they should, but I am SOO relieved. Hallelujah! Phew...



Now, I just need to get her cleaned up. No time lately for proper grooming for the dahlings, but at least I was able to brush them both thoroughly today. Compared to the photo from last post, she has definitely lost weight. I'm glad she had a little extra on as reserves during her illness... Here is Anatolian today... He's such a good boy, and he is getting rretty frisky. VERY athletic when he gets in the zooming mode!




















L

New Pictures

You can see the mud on Andolu's legs - I took the photo when I was about half done grooming him. He likes to roll even when it is really cold mud, which I keep telling him is crazy. Oh well! In Mira's pic you can't really tell anything is wrong, which is nice. Both horses have definitely, uh, put on the pounds, though! Hopefully I'll be able to find some time to start riding him before long. Ha ha... Well, we can always hope, right? :-D


L

Mira's Eye Update: 7

Sorry it took me so long to update this. What we decided on is this. We're going to treat it aggressively with the antifungals and antibiotics for 2 weeks. That probably is not enough time to make much of a difference, but it's the best I can do. After that, I will continue treating the eye with gentocin and any herbs the Chinese Medicine practitioner feels might help. We will do that for several weeks, unless the eye worsens, and at the end of that time we will re-evaluate and see if there is any progress at all. If it doesn't work, we'll have to enucleate. I am hoping and praying it won't come to that, because I will mourn it. I've heard that horses often don't really seem to care, and I figure she would be the same, but she has such gorgeous eyes, and I would really hate to have to do that. Anyway, we'll see. I am going to continue to make as much of an effort as possible to build her immune system to help fight the infection a little.

We had more rain and snow last night, but now for the next 2 weeks it is supposed to be sunny and clear. I sure hope so!

I hope you are all having a good weekend.


L