This is Noelle right after we put her in her pen. You will notice a white head on the right side. Rusty the mule went right over to check her out, which is unusual, he usually ignores the donkeys. Her most loyal admirer so far is Quilla, he latched onto her, & spent all night standing by her pen & yelling occasionally. John says he is probably telling us, "Hey stupid people, you forgot to open the new lady's gate". This morning when John went out to "start the dance", there was a line of guys at her corral including "Lounge Lizard Pepper" & diminutive Justin. And she was letting them know she was there & ready to party. Boy, we went from "shut down, very sad" to "hussy" in one trailer ride.......!!! LOL
Thankfully she is not shut down like the rescue thought she was. She is very aware of what is going on around her, she just chooses not to participate, up to & including not eating treats. She does look Cushings & is at least 100 pounds overweight, & I am being kind with that estimate. Because they did bloodwork on her, we know she is healthy as far as blood numbers go, they also checked her thyroid & it was within normal range.
She is not an advocate of bermuda hay.............hmmmm......makes me think she's another alfalfa type of gal. She will eat it, but not in large amounts, she just picks at it. That's fine, maybe she will lose a few pounds. The problem with these fatties & not eating is they can go into hyperlipidemia which can really cause problems. So we'll watch her & make sure she eats the nasty old bermuda. We'll let her out of the pen after a couple of days to adjust, then she can add to her diet if she wants.
We almost became a travelling sex show on the way home. Because they thought she was shut down, we took Cisco with us to be a buddy on the trip. He is about the most nonthreatening donkey we have. Got down there, loaded her & headed home. So far, so good. Had to stop at Wal-mart & when I got out & checked on them, she was trying to entice Cisco, by clacking her mouth & slobbering all over the place. Cisco has no memories of "before gelding", thank goodness, I can just see us flying down the road with 2 donkeys in the trailer..........well.......do your own visual......!!! When we were loading Cisco, & he wasn't interested in loading, Chester was trying to get in the trailer, & we joked about taking him instead, he's pretty mellow. Now I'm glad we didn't, he has memories & knows what to do with them, from beginning to end.
A couple of nights ago, when we were feeding Sha'ba was really acting strange. We usually, feed everyone their soaked feed, then go get the hay & bring it around. When we got down to Sha'ba's pen with the hay he was standing by the gate which is really weird, he's usually got his nose buried in his mush chomping away. We opened the gate & he flew into Rusty's pen, & chased the cart back into his pen. We dumped his hay & I started trying to put his blanket on him, & he was having an absolute fit, wouldn't stand still, kept circling me & really being a little pill. I checked his bucket & there wasn't any mush in it & all of a sudden a lightbulb went off in my little pea brain.........I had forgotten to bring the feed buckets down for Chester, Tula, Rusty & Sha'ba. He hadn't gotten his mush & was trying to tell me in every way he knew poor little guy. He almost turned wrong side out when I left to get the buckets, but sure was a happy little camper when I came back with HIS bucket.
Tomorrow we will go visit with Flora & Fauna & see just how "unhandled" they are & also how to get them in the trailer. We've been told we probably can't get the trailer up to the pen, so we'll have to look the situation over. Rebecca the foster home is getting ready for them, we'll probably move them this week-end.
Thursday we'll haul C.J. the little horse to her new home. It will be a good home, Ernie is a farrier, so she will get trimmed as often as she needs it. She'll have 2 horses a goat & about 6 dogs of assorted sizes & shapes as companions, & Ernie is absolutely smitten with her. The only cravat I have is there is oleander on the property. I said something about it, & Ernie said it's never been a problem with any of the animals. Unfortunately it only takes once & it only takes a leaf or two. I've printed out some horror stories to take to him. He's a horse person & has been all his life, so I'm sure he's heard stores before. Almost everything I've read points to accidental, starvation, or boredom, being the usual reasons for horses eating oleander, supposedly it isn't tasty. I'd sure be a lot happier if they were gone.
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