MULES ARE WEIRD........

Yesterday morning during poo detail, boots off, blankets off, a little doctoring here & there I noticed that Rusty the mule had goopy eyes.  He is pink skinned, a white appaloosa with not much "loosa" & has allergies most of the year that make his eyes run.  We try to clean them every day, & usually in his pen.  But he was already out yesterday when I noticed his eyes.  So I walked up to him & started to wipe his eye with my glove.............OH! MY! GOODNESS............you would have thought I was trying to pop his eyeball out, rather than just wiping underneath it.  He took off like a race horse.  For a 30 some year old overweight mule he can move pretty good.  I especially liked the bucking & the heels flying up in the air.  SIGH!  

I know the next thing is to walk him down until he lets me do his eyes, or the next time it will be worse.  John telling me "you know you can't walk down a mule" certainly didn't help.  He would run a little ways, stop & look back to make sure I was still there.  I was, I just wasn't staying very close.  He did one circle around the pens on the west & headed for his pen in the east.  Went in there & waited for John to shut the gates, while I'm still trying to catch up.  We both went in with him, I tried again & he spun & kicked out.  

That's when I went into "monster mode", yelling & telling him what I would do with his worthless hide if he didn't quit acting like an idiot.  Of course by this time he had checked all 3 gates & knew the jig was up.  So he came over & put his head over my shoulder.............BRAT!  Let me clean his eyes & even snuggled for awhile.  I"m not sure if he liked it or was just psyching out the human, either way his eyes got cleaned. 

I'm still working on Sha'ba's habronema on his sheath even though it's winter.  One of the problems with the habronema (stomach larvae) is they winter over.  So next spring they become active , making sores to draw the flies & start the whole cycle all over again.  My WAG (wild ass guess) is if I can get rid of all the hold overs maybe they won't get started up again maybe.  I recently read of a method I hadn't heard about before, so I'm trying that.  Our weather has been so warm so far, I'm still putting a fly mask on him.  There aren't a lot of flies, & they don't seem to be bothering the other guys, but he has always been a fly magnet, unfortunately.  

I guess the honeymoon is over for Rusty & CJ.  When she first came about a month ago, he was like glue, where she went, he went.  Lately he's not been quite as loyal & more often than not she comes in by herself.  I'm sure that makes Jack happy, he likes to hang with Rusty.  She doesn't seem to care.