Monday, September 15, 2008

MAX IS HAVING PROBLEMS...........!!

Everyone's favorite room.........the FEED room..!!!

This unfortunately is what we live with, in exchange for taking in the ones with chronic health problems. Max has been here about 6 years. He was suppose to have EPM although he was never tested for it. He's done pretty good all these years, moving around being a horse, although he sometimes isn't sure where his right rear leg is. A couple of years ago he had a bad spell & we took him to Gilbert. They x-rayed his neck & found that he had an old broken vertebra at C-7. Whether he ever had EPM we don't know, but the untreated broken neck with accompanying arthritis, makes his hind quarters unstable.

The last 2 or 3 days he's really been having a hard time. Not only is the right rear very unstable, so is the left. He's still perky, hungry, all those horsey things, but is in danger of falling at all times. Max is a big horse, 17 hands & probably 1100-1200 pounds, so if he fell & couldn't get up it would be a hard situation to handle. I have a call into the vet to come out & see what she thinks. Our primary objective is their comfort & ability to behave like a donkey or in Max's case a horse. Hopefully this is just a bad spell that will get better over the next few days.

Pepper praying to the gate gods @ the replacement gate..........!!!

Everyone else is doing good. Pepper is the only one having to stay in now, everyone else is getting to go out at least during the day. Pepper really is upset. Yesterday he destroyed the gate, there's certainly nothing wrong with his determination. John had double latched it, but Pepper managed to tear out the chain link enough to get his scrawny little body out & away to eat beans.........!!!! Chain link isn't a good material for equine, but we've never had anyone challenge the gate before. Pepper knows inequality when he sees it, & is determined to "fix" it...........!!!!

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