Category: Health

Bunny Problems

why did it have to be bunnies?

As some of you may know, the first pet Nate and I had as a couple was our rabbit Zoey, pictured below.

Zoey’s favorite pastime was hanging out under the coffee table passing judgement on all, as seen in the second photo. She had a permanent hutch and play area that was tucked behind a couch and then when we were home, we would let her out to run around the house. She categorically refused to take even one hop onto the wood floors which meant she kept herself contained to the carpeted living room. If she knew Nate and I were home but hadn’t let her out of her permanent area yet she would rattle her cage (she would grab one of the horizontal pieces with her mouth and shake that thing for all she was worth) until we would open it up – at which point she would continue to hangout right in the threshold of her permanent area making it clear that she was there by her choice, not ours. She was a bunny after my own heart.

I tell you this because we currently have a rabbit living in our hay shed. Which wouldn’t bother me except that it likes to hop up, and on, and over, all the bales and seems to be using all of them as one giant litter box. There is bunny poop, and I can only assume pee, on almost every bale that has an exposed top and I want it to stop.

Though I’m not one of those people who cannot handle the though of killing an animal I don’t like doing it. I felt really bad every time one of our water traps took out a thirteen-lined ground squirrel and I hated them. I’m not sure I can make myself kill a bunny. There’s also the issue of not knowing how to go about doing it. As outlined in this post I am unwilling to use poison and if we use a live trap what am I going to do once we catch it?

I know cats can be a deterrent (or end) to things like the ground squirrels and rabbits, but my concern with outdoor cats is they also kill a lot of birds, and birds eat the bugs which I hate even more than the rodents. If we had the time for a dog, I would be tempted to get one and train it to hunt nuisance animals but that isn’t a project I have the energy for right now.

Any other suggestions for discouraging the bunny from using all of the hay as a giant litter box?

Stupid Weather

Honey-Lemon-Ginger Tea Time!

We seem to have sped past fall again and jumped into winter with its blustery, cold, icky weather; and though the rain is very much needed, going directly from muddy and gross into frozen is not going to be fun. Leeloo still doesn’t have her full winter coat yet either, so she has been extra grumpy to everybody. To make up for this I fed them some hay in their shelters which they proceeded to make a giant mess of. This is why the hay needs to go in hay boxes! (Still working on the last six – and still trying to figure out a hay-net-lid solution.)

I have been making up for the cold weather chores for myself by making honey–lemon–ginger tea since those ingredients can supposedly help with all sorts of health things – and it tastes good and warms me up after being wet and cold. Here is my very inexact “recipe”:

  • Fill a mug with water and then put that water in a small saucepan (What size mug you ask? Whatever you have on hand – I did warn you this was an inexact recipe)
  • Add the juice of half a lemon (don’t worry about the seeds you can fish them out or just ignore them)
  • Grate in some ginger using a microplane (I keep my ginger in the freezer and just grate off however much I want and I don’t bother peeling it). How much? However much you feel like, if you put in too much you can always add more honey, if you don’t put in enough you can always grate in some more as you drink it, if you use the microplane you don’t need to cook it to get the flavor
  • Simmer for 5-10 minutes
  • Let sit in the saucepan to cool down to somewhere around 105-100 degrees (and if you wander away and forget for an hour or two you can always reheat it and let it cool down again, not that I do that of course)
  • Pour it all back into the mug and add local raw honey to taste (some of the good things in raw honey can be killed by temperatures much higher than 105 degrees which is why you want to let it cool down first)

When I am actually sick and my throat hurts I really up the honey, when I’m feeling fine I use a lot less honey and up the ginger.

We haven’t gotten much done this week because I have been focused on getting my presentations done for the AMATYC Conference in Toronto next week. I did manage to get them done with four days to spare! That means this weekend can be dedicated to projects (just like every other weekend – someday we’ll be caught up)

 

No Rest for the Wicked

or for those of us who chronically overcommit

This has been one crazy week. I did manage to get both my papers written and turned in on time for my classes, though that last one was submitted with less than two hours to spare. Of course, the class itself keeps on going so I still had more readings and assignments to do for Wednesday of this week.

In addition to taking these two classes, I am also the Get Out The Vote faculty coordinator for our campus this fall and I had two Get Out The Vote events to run this week – one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. The Tuesday event was on and off all day so I had to shift one of my two normal Fleet Farm days to Monday. I hope everyone reading this who is eligible to vote has already voted (you can still vote early through Monday if you live in Minnesota, not sure about other state’s early voting options) or will be voting on Tuesday.

Image is from this article about why every vote matters

ELECTIONS MATTER!!!!

Both events went relatively well though turnout was lower than hoped for; if nothing else I hope the invitations to them and reminders about them got people thinking about voting and when they will do it.

In addition to the Get Out The Vote events both Juniper and I had dentist appointments this week. They both went well though my teeth are in much better condition than Juniper’s. Juniper needed a lot of work done and some of what they vet found has probably been causing her a fair amount of pain for who knows how long. Though nothing was seriously wrong in terms of long-term dental health she does apparently have a few quirks that will require annual dental work (she’s lucky she’s cute).

We’re hoping that some of the issues with her teeth were the cause of (or at least part of) her hatred of receiving oral meds. The way she expressed those feelings was to rear which is not safe for anyone. I’m very glad I waited to work on that because we have hopefully eliminated some of our issues. We hadn’t started that process because I wanted to get through the eye meds before we dealt with anything else but we’re in the homestretch on the eye so hopefully we can turn our attention to that soon; being able to give oral meds is important and I can’t have a pony who rears the moment you put anything in her mouth. This of course is also a good reminder that horses/ponies are never naughty or unsafe just because, there is always something more going on that is the real cause of the issue.

I also had what will hopefully be my second to last physical therapy appointment for my neck issues from the slip down the stairs. Overall, my arms/hands/wrists have been doing much better but I still need to figure out a way to extend my handles on, well the vast majority of our yard tools, but the poop fork in particular. Any suggestions for how to extend my handle?

Lastly I had a meeting with a new group for a side job I did this past spring writing feedback for math homework questions for an online homework system. The first time around I felt like the amount of time I put in to writing the feedback was disproportionately high compared to the amount of pay I got. Thankfully those in charge took our feedback and this new group is putting together what will hopefully be a far more efficient and consistent process that will make the amount of work proportionate to the pay.

All of this coalesced this week to make me realize I really don’t have the time for two days a week at Fleet Farm. Ten hours a week doesn’t sound like much, but with this other side job starting back up for the sake of my mental health I need to cut back on something so I’m cutting back to just one day a week at Fleet Farm – though I did agree to be flexible and work on whatever day of the week they needed me most at whatever time they needed me – you just can’t beat that 20% discount!

Now I just need to get through the rest of the semester with these two classes, balance this new side gig with everything else, and actually put together the two presentations I will be giving at the AMATYC conference in Toronto – which have to be done and submitted by November 14.

Are we seeing a pattern here?

Maybe I can work on the presentations while I’m waiting in line to vote…

This image taken from this article on why voting matters for racial justice – GO VOTE!

Steroids

the good, the bad, and the sleep deprived

As I mentioned in this post, they put my on steroids for my neck, they were a mixed bag. Absolutely helped with my neck and arm issues; there was an immediate improvement in symptoms, which was great. Now that they are done (Tuesday morning was the last dose) the issues in my neck are definitely making themselves known, but overall they are still better than they were and my left arm is significantly better. However, steroids also compromise your body’s ability to fight off infection and for me they made it impossible to sleep. For over a week now I haven’t gotten more than two consecutive hours at a time. Those two things combined to weaken my immune system and now I find myself with a cold on top of everything else; just when we have what may be our last string of nice weather for the year my body decides it doesn’t want to do anything but be in bed. For once I am trying to actually rest at the onset of a cold, instead of pushing through like nothing is wrong, which is my normal method. That method almost always leads to the cold turning into either a sinus infection, or an ear infection, or strep throat, or that really fun winter break when I got a double ear infection and strep throat – good times. I’m trying to be smarter this time around. I actually called in sick to work on Wednesday (!), have been napping (I never nap!) and going to bed early, and generally trying to let my body rest. It has been a struggle – I am not good at resting.

The other fun side affect of terrible sleep is the impact it has on my mental health. Even the most minor things feel like disasters and things that are genuinely not good are cause for a complete meltdown. The biggest of which was Leeloo deciding she didn’t want me to touch her anymore. On Monday a friend came over to drop something off and meet the horses and as we were by Leeloo I went to touch her side and she pinned her ears and made an aggressive head swing at me. She has never done that to anyone, much less me, in her life. My first thought was that something might be wrong physically, but we watched her, and she was eating, drinking, and pooping just fine. That doesn’t eliminate every medical cause, but I am not concerned about anything being immediately life threatening. It also means the cause may just be me, or more likely the fact that our relationship has changed drastically and neither of us is handling it well. I am now out in her space 6+ times a day, but never spending time with her. I’m always doing chores or dealing with Juniper’s **** eye, I’m never spending time with Leeloo, other than to occasionally yell at her when she takes two bites of the hay we just put out and then steps forward and is about to pee in it! (This is why we need to get those hay boxes done!) But Leeloo not wanting attention and being aggressive instead is like the sun rising in the west; it is absolutely unheard of.  I was very upset. I would have been upset no matter what, but that combined with extreme sleep deprivation meant I really, really did not take it well. I know that what we need to do is spend some quality time with just Leeloo and I, outside of the “horse space” and in a “human/horse space.”  The problem is I don’t have such a space, and I won’t for weeks yet. But I cannot just ignore this, so I have been intentionally making time to be with Leeloo every day; going up to her first every morning, instead of going directly to give Juniper her medicine, and spending the time waiting between eye meds with Leeloo when she wants to, which she doesn’t always want to (which is so abnormal – I just cannot explain how unusual it is for Leeloo to not want attention). We are starting to see some improvement, and Thursday she let me pet her neck and her back without pinning her ears and moving away, so I am hopeful that this fracture in our relationship can be repaired relatively quickly; but it has been heartbreaking.

Luckily (for my sleep, we’ll see about my neck/arm) the steroids are done which means I should start getting more than two consecutive hours of sleep at a time – which will be a huge boost for my mental health. Then we just need these eye meds to wrap up (3-5 more weeks) and the hay shed to get here (4ish weeks) – just need to survive until then!

Thank you to my friend Cara for taking this photo of Leeloo and I – realizing I have very few photos of the two of us since usually I’m the one taking the pictures. We’ll need to add a photo shoot to our endless to-do list.

Know When To Fold Them

Apparently, my body can read my posts, because after the last post where I mentioned that I had hurt myself but wasn’t going to be able to get to a doctor for at least a week I woke up in the middle of the night in a bad way. You know that feeling when you hit your funny bone on something? The radiating, buzzy, pain, like a terrible current. Now imagine that feeling radiating from your shoulder, down through your elbow, down through your wrist, and into your hand; and it won’t stop. That is what I woke up to at 1:30 AM and stayed awake to for over an hour. It was not fun. The next morning I canceled the Get Out The Vote Event I was supposed to run and made a doctors appointment instead.

The doctor is pretty sure I did something to my very upper back/neck when I slipped down those stairs so she prescribed a week of steroids, muscle relaxers as needed for a month, and some physical therapy. If that doesn’t take care of it we’ll do some imaging. Of course now I need to find a new physical therapist because my long term one retired. I went on Thursday to my first new PT appointment, and she was pretty good, I think I’ll stick with her, at least for now. She agrees it’s most likely something in my upper back/neck and assigned some very low key exercises to do for a few days and I will be going back next week. The PT also thought it would be worth going to acupuncture for the increased carpal tunnel issues in my right hand; which have been steadily getting worse all summer and that I have been meaning to do something about but never prioritized. We’ll see if I actually get that appointment made; I’m very good at addressing my horses’ medical needs, not so much my own.

Overall though, I am doing better. This is a combination of the drugs and the fact that Nate has stepped up in a HUGE way in helping with the horse chores. The horses and having a horse hobby farm has always been my dream; one that Nate has supported, but hasn’t shared. I also always said from the very beginning that I knew we both hated physical labor and being hot, cold, buggy, sweaty, and/or tired and that if we didn’t have the money to do this thing right, we wouldn’t do it. Something went sideways on that path and here we are, without the money to do anything even remotely right. Despite that, Nate has continued to be amazingly supportive and helpful getting this whole thing up and running and continues to be.

At some point Nate will have to take care of the horses while I am gone (either to conferences or to Wisconsin to visit family and friends) and he has agreed to do everything but dealing with the poop. He drew the line at horse poop. Which is totally fair because I long ago drew the line and cleaning the toilet. I will clean everything else in the house and do any of the yardwork, but I categorically refuse to clean a toilet. I never have and I never will. I will pay a cleaning service to come regularly to do that one single task for me. Therefore, I was totally understanding at Nate drawing the line at poop. Since the horses came home Nate has helped with all the chores (except for poop) once a week, because having help makes the job better, but also so he would feel more comfortable about taking care of them while I’m gone. As I said in the previous post my pain in my hands/arms was steadily getting worse all week, so Nate started helping more with the chores and did everything but Juniper’s eye meds and the poop on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. But then the morning after that horrible nighttime arm pain of awfulness Nate came out to help as he has been but when I went to start picking up poop, he took the pitchfork away from me and did it himself. I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful of anything ever. Because I’m tall and have had so many back issues, the pitchfork handles are just too short for me, so I have developed a poop picking method that saves my back but is really hard on my hands and wrists, and of all things I have to do that is the task that hurts the most – or rather that hurts the most that I have to do the most. Other things hurt as much but I only have to do them for a minute or two, not the twenty to forty minutes every day it takes to pick up poop.

Between the medications and Nate giving my body a chance to rest I am feeling much better. We did however sit down and have a long conversation about the f***ing hay shed and the fact that my body is just not currently up to the labor and Nate has a fulltime job and we just don’t have the resources here to get the job done in the time it needs to get done. Plus get done the million other things we really need to get done before winter is truly here. So, we are admitting defeat and purchasing another pre-made shelter. Of course the company we got the first shelters from are booked out until the end of December so we’re going with a different company and its not going to match. But as Nate pointed out, the one we would have made wouldn’t have matched either. Plus – PLUS! – this company does the anchoring for you!!! Which is a huge relief, because that process sucked! Of course the money for this hay shed needs to come from somewhere, not sure the Fleet Farm job is going to bring in enough, so something else will probably have to give. 

Now we will turn our attention back to the hay boxes! And the mats, and the mud control grids, and getting the gates up on the soon to be “barn” shelter, and getting the solar light hooked up in said “barn” shelter, and fixing the gate latches on the actual gates (which were cheap work-arounds that aren’t working around that much), and building another compost bay or three, and why did I think this was a good idea?!

At least I have one amazing spouse!

Left Hand Down

Why does my body forsake me?

This will be a relatively short post; though I have said that to Nate before I started writing the last four posts, we’ll see if this one is actually short. This time I think it will be because my hands/wrists/forearms have been really bothering me; steadily getting worse all week and today they’ve been pretty much non-stop pins and needles and achy/sore.

This may be because we running out of room for poop and I haven’t had a chance to go get more free pallets to make more compost bays because all my free time is taken up with trying to build this hay shed plus the working 10 hours a week at Fleet Farm (seemed like a great idea, but wow that eats up more of my actual time than I thought it would!). Anyway – we didn’t have any place to put any more poop so Friday I just had it and decided to unload the oldest poop from the first compost bay so we could line it with chicken wire and start using it again. We do not have any equipment yet for dealing with, well anything, so that meant I shoveled it all into the poop cart, then shoveled it all back out again to its new location.

Of course my hands/wrists/arms may also be bothering me because all these mats and mud-control grids arrived and I started unloading them and placing them in their various homes. We got a super great deal from Cashman’s and with the freight shipping it worked out better getting them all at once than getting some now and waiting and getting more later. I know I will use them all eventually, even if they don’t all have 100% certain homes yet. I am also nowhere close to being done with that project (shocker).

Or the issue may be because I sort of fell down the stairs a little bit on Monday. I mean, it was more of a slip and slide down three or four steps before catching myself on the railing, but it wrenched the heck out of my arm and shoulder.

Regardless everything I do hurts at this point: cooking, typing, playing on my phone, using the mouse on my computer, picking up poop, laying down in bed. I should probably go see a doctor, but I don’t have time this week because I have two shifts and Fleet Farm and I have two days of Get Out The Vote events to run at my regular job at North Hennepin Community College and I’m trying to build this F***ing hay shed.

Remind me again why I wanted to have my horse at home?!

Oh yeah – this is why:

Can’t beat breakfast in bed. Also this is why we need to get those hay boxes built! The hay is for eating Leeloo, not sleeping!

Sugar is Evil!

Leeloo decided Juniper was getting too much attention

Sugar is evil, truly evil. No matter what type of health issue you are dealing with, mental health, physical health, chronic, acute, whatever, sugar makes it worse. I’m not talking carbs, I’m not talking fruit, I’m talking sugar. If you are dealing with any health anything, but particularly any mental health things, I would really encourage you to consider giving up sugar for two or three weeks and see if you notice a difference. Of course, you will need to be very careful to read EVERY label of EVERY food or drink you put in your mouth because they put sugar in EVERYTHING!

In 2011 Nate and I totally changed the way we eat and now follow the paleo diet, or at least we usually do, and one of the biggest things about that is cutting out sugar. Again, I’m not saying no carbs, we get plenty of carbs (probably too many), but we are pretty careful about actual sugar intake. Anytime we are not careful about our sugar intake many things go wrong. We’re both more physically tired, mentally tired, unfocused, cranky, short-tempered, and headachy. Even worse for me, is that sugar makes my depression and anxiety so much worse. SO MUCH WORSE. You would think knowing all that, we would be good about not eating sugar. But sugar is evil – EVIL! – and so tasty, so very, very tasty, and is so very, very, addicting. And the reality is “willpower” (which some argue isn’t even a thing the way many people define it) is severely hampered when you are stressed and tired and we’ve been working so hard on getting this hay shelter built and giving Juniper two different meds that both have to be given six times a day, but not at the same time, we are exhausted. All of that combined to work against us and we broke Saturday and got some desserts. That meant Sunday morning I was suffering from a major sugar hangover and my mental health, which has already been under pressure for the above-mentioned reasons, was just not up to what I found in the pasture.

Nate has been helping me with chores on Sunday mornings, mostly so that when I am gone and he has to do them himself he feels more comfortable, but also because things are always better with a buddy. I was dealing with Juniper and her five million different medications and not really paying attention to Leeloo, other than thinking it was odd she wasn’t coming over for her breakfast like normal. Nate asked if he should go get her and I said yes and went on to step one thousand of Juniper’s morning routine. It took them forever to get over to us and then I handed Nate Leeloo’s feed to give her. As she’s eating I finally LOOK at her and realize her back left leg is really swollen from about halfway down the cannon bone to her hoof. I palpate it, and it is very tender and warm, but there is no obvious injury. Then I realize her front left leg is also really swollen from about halfway down the cannon bone to her hoof and she also doesn’t want me touching that leg. And so is her front right leg, though to a lesser extent. Then I touch her chest and she is hot, which considering she was just standing in the shelter doing nothing and it was relatively cool outside made no sense (I didn’t take her actual temperature because I couldn’t find my horse specific thermometer and I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice our human one yet; once a thermometer is used on a horse, it can never go back). She also had discharge from both nostrils and I remembered that I had found two coughed up mucus things in the pasture the last two days. Great.

I decide to give her some bute and call the vet on Monday (because of course it was Sunday so any vet call will be an emergency call which costs significantly more money – sometimes I think Leeloo has a calendar and specifically waits for the weekend to have health emergencies). Unfortunately, my bute was just a bit expired (2016) but I did have some powdered aspirin and decided to try that. She ate about two bites and stopped, so she didn’t get much aspirin. As I walked away with the uneaten aspirin, I actually saw Leeloo move for the first time that morning and I immediately got teary eyed and went to call the vet. For those of you new to Leeloo, Leeloo has been lame a lot. A LOT. It would fill a LOTR length book to talk about the many different ways Leeloo has been lame and the number of different vets and farriers and equine health specialists we have seen. I used to call the vet out pretty frequently, but at this point I’m pretty good at recognizing most things and I’ve also learned that many things just need to heal on their own (hoof abscesses – I know people have very different opinions than me on dealing with hoof abscesses, but after dealing with an untold number of them I have found that most of Leeloo’s didn’t heal any faster or better when we messed with them than when we didn’t mess with them, so unless the pain is unmanageable I let them work themselves out) or can’t be fixed, only managed (arthritis). This was none of those things, Leeloo looked like she was drunk and in pain, her limbs didn’t seem to be moving in a coordinated fashion and every step seemed to hurt. My brain instantly went into this super helpful train of thought “of f*ing course, you finally, FINALLY, get Leeloo home and you manage to kill her in less than a month – way to go!”

I call the vet and get the weekend emergency receptionist who says “How can I help you today?” at which point my teary-eyed went into full on crying and I’m trying to talk through the crying, which never goes well, and explain what is wrong with Leeloo. We agree the vet should come out and look at her and I go back outside to finish morning chores, which is 90% picking up poop.

As I’m picking up poop and trying not to cry, Nate is raking up the various hay piles from this past week so I can scoop them together to create Leeloo’s rolling pile of hay. Leeloo prefers rolling, and sleeping, in hay, which is annoying because I would like her to eat said hay. I’ve been trying to compromise by collecting the older hay into a suitable rolling/sleeping pile and hoping she’ll leave the new, for eating hay, alone (this is reason number one I need hay boxes). It is sort of working, sometimes. However, after a week as a rolling/sleeping pile I like to take that hay out to use as mulch for our trees. So, I’m picking up poop, and Nate is raking up hay and dumping out the two hay boxes to get all the little hay crumbs out and to move the boxes to a different position so we’re not making any one spot too muddy/dead. As he’s doing that, I see Leeloo very slowly follow behind, picking over every newly raked up hay pile and newly exposed tasty hay crumb from the hay boxes. I also watch her drink some water, and pee, and realize that maybe I overreacted just a tiny bit. She’s still not sound, she’s still very clearly in pain, and there is still the fact that three of her four limbs are stocked up and sore to the touch which is not normal, but she’s not dying. The call to the vet could maybe have waited until Monday but it wasn’t unreasonable to have called today, however the crying was unnecessary as was the super fun mental diatribe of “this is why we don’t ever try anything and just sit around and read books because you finally bring your horse home and manage to kill her” both of which were absolutely the fault of that sugar from the previous day. SUGAR IS EVIL!

The vet calls, we talk about what I’m seeing, and she agrees Leeloo should probably be looked at today. Of course by the time the vet gets to us Leeloo is doing better, still swollen in three of the four legs, still clearly uncomfortable and not as coordinated as normal when moving, but definitely better, and had I found Leeloo in the condition she was in when the vet arrived I would have waited to call said vet on Monday. We talk through possible causes: could be an allergic reaction to something she ate or experienced in her environment, could be an infectious disease, could be a tick-born illness (great). There is an in-the-field blood test they can do for infections, if the result is over 50 it means that there is some sort of infection present and antibiotics should be started. Leeloo scored a 48. We opted to do more blood work and give her some banamine for the day, and I’m going to continue to give her banamine for the next few days. Neither of us thought it was enough of an emergency to pay the through-the-nose cost of having the blood analyzed on a weekend so we’ll get the results late Monday or early Tuesday.

As we were doing that last blood draw and administering the banamine I noticed a bee flying around Leeloo’s chest. We have had a ton of bees and wasps around our house the last few weeks. I asked if it was possible that this could be a reaction from a bee or wasp sting and the vet said it could be, she could have gotten stung on her left side which is why that side is having more of a reaction, and had she just gotten stung that morning it would be why she was so bad then and why it was already getting better.

By the end of the day Leeloo was looking much better and moving more comfortably. I saw her trotting around a bit as well, mostly to herd Juniper to wherever Leeloo wanted them to be. We’ll get the results of the bloodwork soon but my current working theory is that Leeloo heard me tell Nate this morning that at least we didn’t have to pay board this month so that saved us some money and she decided to fix that for us.

 

Photo of Leeloo taken at Elysium Farm, in Maple Plain MN
I didn’t think of taking any photos of Leeloo this morning (sugar makes you mentally foggy too – nothing good comes from sugar!) so enjoy this photo of her taken at one of our previous boarding facilities. 

Mish Mash

What a Week

This week has been a lot. I started two new side jobs in an effort to earn that barn money (anyone sitting on a pile of cash they aren’t using?). One of those is cashiering at Fleet Farm. I’ve had three days of training so far and start my first day as an actual cashier next week. I decided to get a job at Fleet Farm because you get a twenty percent discount (on most stuff) and they sell almost everything I need; from toilet paper, to horse feed, to lumber, you name it, Fleet Farm probably sells it. I’m a little worried about how my back will handle standing for 5-hour shifts but we’ll see how it goes; worse case I’ll just ask for shorter shifts.

The hay shed project is going VERY slowly which has me worried we won’t get it done in time but we’re chipping away at it. One of the 11-foot 6×6 beams is done and one of the 36-foot 6×6 beams is mostly done. We have to fully assemble it at its final location because it would be too heavy for us to move. Nate has declared that we are never building anything ourselves ever again. I chose not to remind him that we still have at least four more hay boxes to make; and since Juniper, Leeloo, and I all agree we need one more horse it is actually six more hay boxes that we need. And we still need a lid for box number two. But at least that FF discount has already come in handy!

Glue and screwed cut-offs to make a big beam

Used bigger boards – went much faster!

On another front – we FINALLY got the last medication we needed to really attack Juniper’s eye abscess. We are treating this thing with three drugs: an oral antifungal, an antifungal eye ointment, and an antibiotic eye drop. The oral antifungal and the antibiotic eye drop came in two weeks ago and we’ve been giving them daily, but we didn’t get the antifungal eye ointment until Tuesday night so this past Wednesday was our official first day of the full treatment plan; which we’ll need to do for six-eight weeks.

The vet says progress is being made. The first picture (on the left or on the top depending on what size screen you are on) is from 9/15, the second picture (right or bottom) is from 9/29. The vet says the blood vessels you can see within the abscess in the second picture are a good thing because that means the body is able to get the things it needs to heal to the site that needs healing, and that overall the eye looks more comfortable than when she was here to see it. We’ll be doing a follow up appointment sometime in the next few weeks.

Taken on September 15

Taken September 29

Juniper remains a willing patient and I am getting better at the eye-drops. Partly because we dropped down to giving an anti-inflammatory just once a day and a tiny bit of swelling came back. This isn’t great, but it makes it MUCH easier to actually get her eyelid open enough to get the drops in and the swelling is very minor. For any horse owners reading this we are giving banamine because it apparently works more effectively on the muscles in and around the eye than bute does; but we’re giving injectable banamine orally with her food since that is a thing you can do. We went this route because the injectable stuff is much cheaper than the paste in the tube and Juniper rears when you try to give her an oral paste. We will be working on the rearing issue as soon as we’re done dealing with the eye. Rearing to avoid stuff is not an acceptable behavior.

Juniper remains a willing patient because we’ve been using the clicker training (treats – with a purpose); however an unintended consequence is that Juniper is getting VERY possessive of me. She is learning that the blue fanny pack that holds the medicine also holds the treats. Nate randomly got an obnoxiously blue fanny pack as a promotional thing, and I instantly stole it to use to hold the various eye ointments and drops and treats. I highly recommend one if you need to give these types of meds because you don’t have enough hands to hold everything and if you put the ointments in your pocket they get too warm and melt, making them very hard to apply. However, Juniper now recognizes the obnoxiously blue fanny pack and comes trotting up to me (which is great) and then immediately pins her ears and tries to bite at Leeloo (which is not great). This is ridiculous on two counts because first – Juniper is wearing a grazing muzzle so that threat is utterly meaningless, and second – if she actually did make contact with Leeloo, Leeloo would hand her a** to her so quickly her head would spin. Usually, Leeloo doesn’t take offense, but it is hard to give eye drops and ointments to a pony who is constantly trying to attack another horse. Which means we’re still having to separate them in the round pen to medicate, unless I happen to have a helper available who can distract Leeloo for a minute.

This will pretty much be my life for the next six to eight weeks. All the normal life stuff I have to do, plus working on the hay shed, working at Fleet Farm, and giving medicine to a jealous pony four to six times a day. Remind me again why I wanted to do this?

The Joys of Medicating Ponies

The Eyes Have It

Juniper came to us with an eye injury. Unfortunately it was healing very slowly and developed an abscess over the top of it that is preventing any medication from getting to the actual injury, so the original injury is still not healed and now we also have to heal the abscess itself.

Some of the new drugs for fighting Juniper’s eye abscess arrived late last Tuesday, so Wednesday was day one with the stronger antibiotic for her eye itself and a broad-spectrum oral antifungal. The drugs we had been using were ointments that were pretty easy to apply. They have enough substance to stay on your finger until you position yourself and the horse (or pony) and wipe it along the eyelid, and you didn’t have to be perfect about placement. My vet was able to find the eye antifungal as an ointment (which we are still waiting for), but unfortunately the stronger eye antibiotics could only be found as eyedrops. The old medications were also given only three times a day and the new meds have to be given 4-6 times a day. So far we’ve managed five doses a day. Sort of. It turns out I suck at giving eye drops. I need one hand to hold Juniper, one hand to hold her top eyelid open, another hand to hold her bottom eyelid open, and yet another hand to squeeze the dropper. That is two more hands than I currently possess. Things have gotten a tiny big better, mostly in terms of not having to actually hold Juniper because she stands relatively still on her own. That is due entirely to positive reinforcement training, also known as clicker-training, also known as bribery, but like, intentional, well thought out, bribery.

Small digression – if people are interested, I can write more about this in a future post. A while ago I discovered Mustang Maddy and started down a clicker-training rabbit hole. I got some books and clickers for the holidays and have been working on it off-and-on with Leeloo for about two years. Super simplified summary for those of you not familiar with clicker-training: you teach your horse (or dog or dolphin or elephant or whatever) to associate a certain sound with a reward of some sort (hence “positive reinforcement training”). Then when you ask them to do a thing you use the sound as a way to communicate with them that they did the right thing. This is great because you can get the sound out IMMEDIATELY so they know exactly what the right thing is, whereas the reward might take more time to give them, and meanwhile they can get distracted and forget or not realize why they got a reward at all.

My concern was that Leeloo and I are still beginners at clicker-training and I didn’t know what she would do if she heard her clicker sound and then didn’t get a reward. I also didn’t know how I could use the clicker with one hand during this eyedrop process when the biggest issue is that I need more hands. I decided to make a random noise that I personally have never used with a horse before so Leeloo would never have heard it and hopefully neither had Juniper. There are very important guidelines and rules that should be followed when first introducing clicker-training to a horse and unfortunately Juniper and I didn’t have time or a physical location to do them in so we skipped right over them; this may be an issue long term but for now I’m hoping for the best. I started by making my sound and just giving Juniper a treat the day before we got the meds. Then on our first day with the meds I started by standing next to her and putting my hand by her eye and waiting until she stood still, then I made the sound and gave her a treat. Then I pulled the eyelid apart, waited till she stood still, made the sound, gave her a treat. Then I pulled the eyelid apart, placed the eyedropper near her eye, waited till she stood still, made the sound, gave her a treat. Then we did the actual eye drop. We are doing this every time I attempt the drops and for the first few days I would randomly go back a few steps in the middle and the end so we don’t end our time together with a drop in her eye.

Her standing is getting much better, but somehow I must have a tell for when I’m just holding the eye dropper near her eye versus planning on actually putting a drop in because she stands much better when I’m just holding it than when I plan on putting a drop in. She is also nickering for her treat as soon as she hears her “you did it right” sound, which is great because she is definitely associating the sound with the treat. She’s also associating the blue fanny pack the treats are in with treats and is trying to get them on her own (being polite about treats is one of those foundational steps we kind of skipped…).

The issue remains that I personally suck at giving eyedrops. Even with Juniper standing pretty quietly, I can’t seem to squeeze the eyedrop tube and keep it still enough to actually drop the liquid where I want it to drop. When I squeeze the tube, it moves, and the drop goes on my finger or down her face instead of in her eye. I am not the only person to suck at giving eyedrops, so the vet also sent some very tiny syringes with the idea being I could get some of the drops in the syringe and kind of spray it at her eye. We tried that on day three and somehow I suck even worse with that method than with the actual eye dropper so we’re going to stick with the eye dropper for a few more days and see if I can get any better.

The oral antifungal medication is going a little better at least. Day one we had to give a loading dose of 19 pills which I mixed in her food, added half a chopped-up apple to, and fed her, hoping she’d fall for it. She did not. She took a bite, spit it out, tried a second bite, spit that out, and then wandered away to eat grass. I went inside for molasses and added some, then added a little more, then added a little more. Sugar is as bad for horses as it is for people, and because Juniper most likely has Equine Cushing’s disease (more accurately called pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction or PPID) she may have some insulin issues, which is why sugar is extra not good for her. However, if I tried and failed too many times to get her to eat her meds she would just stop trying and then I would be out 19 very expensive pills. Luckily the overload of molasses was enough, and she ate it all up on the second try. She only needs seven pills a day for the rest of the time (three weeks for this med) and I was hoping the apple alone would be enough; it was not. I didn’t have to use as much molasses the second day, but still more than I liked. I started measuring it on day three instead of just pouring it out until it looks like enough. Having tried several times, I have it down to just a half tablespoon of molasses. The best variation so far is to let the pills soften up first (Juniper’s food is soaked so there is enough water in there to soften up the pills), but keep them spaced apart from each other, then put a little molasses directly on each of the softened up pills, then mush them around with everything else.

Complicating everything is that Leeloo thinks that when I’m in their space, I’m there for her, and nobody else. To be fair, that has been true for the last 13 years. She’s not mean to Juniper, but when I go up to Juniper, Leeloo comes up to me and Juniper moves away a few steps. I then step closer to Juniper, Leeloo then steps closer to me, and then Juniper moves away a few steps. The result is a ridiculous slow-motion chase around the shelter area which is where they are usually hanging out during the day.

I don’t have a barn (yet) and I still haven’t gotten my hay shelter built so my make-shift barn isn’t actually useable as such, being currently full of hay. This means the only place where I can actually separate the two of them is the round pen. That would be okay, except (A) there is no shelter so if it’s raining that means I’m attempting to put in eyedrops in the rain (B) there is ton of grass in there so Juniper is pretty distracted by all the food and (C) it is SUPER extra buggy in the front of our house where the round pen is. I have no idea why, but every single kind of bug is worse up there. The mosquitoes, the flies, and those stupid f*ing midges or gnats. I am coming to hate them more than any other bug (other than ticks which will always remain enemy number one) because they love to divebomb my face, and actively fly into my nose, my ears, my eyes, and my mouth. I have had at least three fly into my mouth while I was trying to blow them out of my eyes. They drive all of us crazy! As if trying to give eyedrops to a pony wasn’t hard enough trying to do it while you are both being swarmed by gnats is miserable. This, along with the rapidly shortening days, is why I feel very strongly that I need a barn. Nate keeps reminding me that I don’t actually *need* a barn, I *want* a barn, but after the last few days of giving eye meds it feels like a need to me!

 

Video proof that the bugs are awful! 

Leeloo and Juniper feel the same way I do about the bugs and would also like a barn.  Now we just need one of us to win the lottery!

First Interlude

Now for a brief interlude whereupon I hurt myself (the first time) and contemplate murder (of rodent kind)

Looking at overhead shots of land is all well and good, but I needed to actually get out and walk the yard to visualize the swirling thoughts in my head and decide if this was really possible. I walked and stood around a lot by myself thinking – which from the outside looks like you’re just staring off into space for long periods of time – I’m sure the neighbors thought I had lost my mind. Then I took Nate out and walked him around while I explained what I was thinking.

During said walks the ridiculous bumpy, lumpy, holey nature of our “yard” fully came into focus for me. A little side note about our so-called yard. The house was built in the middle of a corn field. At the time the farmer hadn’t left quite as much bare space as we had asked for so before we could build we had to physically knock down quite a few almost mature corn stalks so the surveyors could properly site the house. However, our contract only stipulated grading directly around the house and septic system, not the rest of the giant front yard, and we didn’t have any provisions for grass or sod. That meant when we moved in April 2019 we had a giant front space full of rutted up dirt and last year’s corn stalks and nothing else. We frantically planted grass but had to leave much of it because the septic system hadn’t been put in yet and we didn’t know exactly where it was going to go which meant the weeds took over VERY quickly. That lead to goats and all sorts of fun (see the Facebook Group LanternFarm page to learn more about the goats), but we did eventually get a “yard” of sorts that is green and mowable. Is it grass? No. Can the people driving by at 60 mph tell that? Also no. The following summer all those mostly mature corn cobs that got buried just under the surface of the yard suddenly become the most enticing thing in the world to the racoons who live in the area and they proceed to dig them up leaving giant holes scattered everywhere to go with the tractor tire ruts. Then the following summer a family of chipmunks UPDATE – turns out they are thirteen-lined ground squirrels decided the loosely packed dirt along the buried powerline is super easy to dig out and so they have a turnkey home just waiting for them to move into. Now we have ground squirrel holes to go with the racoon made holes to go with the tractor tire ruts – PGA quality it is not. Nate and I don’t do anything outside other than yardwork so we haven’t cared and haven’t dealt with it. But now I’m bringing my accident-prone horse home and am about to let her loose in my pot-hole filled yard. This is a vet bill waiting to happen.  How do I flatten my terrible yard and get the ground squirrels to leave?

The internet has many suggestions, most of them impractical (we will not be digging up the entire yard, regrading it, and replanting all the grass – we have neither the time nor the money for such an endeavor). One suggestion did seem doable even if I wasn’t confident it would work. A lawn roller.  The internet has mixed reviews of this option, and my overall sense was that it depended on the type of soil you have and when you try to roll it. If the ground isn’t soft enough, it won’t do anything at all; if it is too soft, you’re just going to get stuck – and some people insist it won’t ever work no matter what. Not wanting to invest money into something that might not work I decided to rent one from Menards first and test it out. This was a great idea in theory, but the timing was tricky. I needed to find a window of time when the ground was soft, but not too soft, and I had time to go to Menards, pick this thing up, drive it around my yard, clean it off, and then return it. Finding such a perfect convergence took longer than I wanted and even then the day I did it wasn’t ideal because Nate had a thing scheduled so I absolutely had to be done by a certain time so he could help me get it back in the car.

Let’s talk a little more about what a lawn roller is for those of you not familiar. It is a large steel cylinder that you fill with water to make super heavy and then drag it around your yard like a giant rolling pin. I had finished up as much as I was going to be able to do and needed to drain the water, clean it off, so we could load it into my car and the clock was ticking. I park the lawnmower and see that the drain plug is too low to get out. I go back and move the lawnmower up a bit only to overcorrect and now its hiding behind the frame; but it’s only off by a few inches and I don’t want to unhook it because I’ll need the lawnmower to roll it back to the bottom. I decided I can just move this myself. This giant, water-filled, steel lawn roller that is attached to my lawnmower. I got this! I did not, in fact, have it. I did manage to move it the few inches I needed, but at the expense of my back. It did not help that I proceeded to do a bunch of other physical things including wrestling the roller back into my car and then back out of my car. This led to two weeks of being laid up in the house in constant pain while the weather outside was gloriously perfect. I was not happy. I’ll post more about my ongoing back issues and how they have mostly (except in the case of my own sheer stupidity) gotten better.

During my time of enforced inaction, I spent a lot of time staring out the window being annoyed and saw that f***ing ground squirrels and his family digging horse killing holes all over the yard (second update, also turns out that the really big holes aren’t the ground squirrels but the snakes that hunt them – super fun!). *Shakes fist angrily* Get off my lawn! I started researching how to get rid of chipmunks. The internet was again full of lots of ideas, most of which seemed like crap. I tried a variety of non-lethal options first, including scents to scare them away like used kitty litter. I didn’t however wind up purchasing any commercial products. They either listed only a few active ingredients (2%) and everything else was just “other” (98%) and now that all our water is well water I am waaaaaay more cautious about what I put on the lawn (what goes on the lawn winds up in my water and I’m not drinking a bunch of unknown ingredients); or they were things that would be bad for Leeloo too. Unfortunately the used kitty litter and the like did not work. This meant we had to go into lethal options. I considered live-trapping, but where exactly was I going to take these critters and in what vehicle? By this time I was pretty frustrated so rodent murder it was. One of the options I had found online seemed kind of ridiculous but had the benefit of being cheap and best of all involved no poison of any kind (see previous statement about well water, putting poison all over the yard seems like a bad time). The plan – get a large bucket, fill it half-full with water, sprinkle sunflower seeds on top, and create a ramp up to it; the chipmunks see the sunflower seeds, think they found some sort of jackpot, jump in, and drown. Yes, I felt really, really, bad about this and it took me several days before I actually tried it. But every time I looked at those holes I thought, if my horse steps in one and breaks her leg she’s dead. Either my horse dies, or the chipmunks (ground squirrels) die, one of them has got to go. So, I put out my bucket and waited. It took a few days, but all total I managed to take out three ground squirrels! Which by the way are much bigger than you’d think (because they weren’t chipmunks they were ground squirrels!). I did feel bad, but Leeloo is more important and there are ground squirrels everywhere. Including possibly back in our yard because something has just started re-digging out some of the holes!