The Glamour of it all!



Oslo, Peach and the bus in the snow.

 Unexpected  "days off" just before Christmas- snowy mornings with 2 hour delays, afternoons of snow with early dismissal- an exercise in riding around on a school bus in the snow. We even got a call from the school district yesterday, late morning, to assure us that all the buses actually made it to school! What I should be doing is sending the packages off to the 7 close-relative destinations. To Florida and Arkansas, Chicago and Connecticut, Virginia and Maryland- post office here we come! But, with the roads a mess, that will wait. So as the grey light came up to reveal the slowly falling snow, I headed out to the barn to do morning chores. Notably, there is almost no wind! Perfect day to walk the horses out to the front pasture for a day of poking around in the drifts freezing their muzzles in a hopeful attempt to find greenstuff. As I walked out of the barn to put a halter on Peaches I was horrified by the sight of her south end! Diarrhea had completely frozen her tail to her bottom and legs, attached the blanket straps to her with a 3 inch casing of frozen poo water. Guessing my morning agenda had changed, I then had to figure out how to melt my horse. It was 4 degrees. Hot water, obviously. But, the barn does not have hot running water- the cold water pump was my birthday present to myself a few years back, and I am still not carrying heavy buckets, especially up slippery slopes of snow. So, I decided to take the horse to water. I am blessed with a mudroom. Just inside the mudroom door, we wisely built a "dogwash", boot area with hot and cold water, a sink for hand washing, and my solution to melting Peaches' mess. So, with bare hands and hot water, I worked at getting the tail unstuck and the poopsicles removed. Unfortunately, at 4 degrees all water freezes on contact with the ground, so my ministrations were forming a nice little brown ice rink right outside the back door. Periodically new additions to the party would issue forth, causing me to slip while I moved out of the way. With my right sleeve soaked to the armpit with fragrant horse digestives, I finished my clean up and gingerly walked the horse away from the ice. She seemed to have rather enjoyed getting a clean up, and was cooperative and still for the whole procedure. Considerate, as there is no safe place to tie a pony on the patio. She trotted out into the field to join Oslo, looking like she felt just fine. My good fortune that a ram with a tendency towards rumen acidosis caused me to stock up on Pepto Bismol. Peaches, you're gonna love the pink stuff! A check of the Veterinary Drug Manual told me her dose came to about 45 ounces, three times daily. Each large bottle of pepto is 16 oz. Three bottles, thrice daily. Great! Add pink stuff flying through the air to a diarrhea soaked armpit. As I say regularly "This is a glamorous job".
Two days of poop washing and pepto later, one large tube of dewormer- just in case (normally I would do a fecal egg count before dosing, but this was an emergency!) later, seeing some solid. So, we went riding. Hey, there has to be an "Up" side...



Our barn is the red thing in the back.