Forever Home Donkey Rescue

 

Poor Boaz, what he has to go thru, just because he wasn't taught to lead & never had his feet trimmed.  Courtney & I both were afraid the wide open cracks running vertical on his hooves, might get caught on limbs or something & damage the coronets even worse than they already are.  He actually was a pretty good boy, although when it was time to load him this morning, he let us know that wasn't what he had planned for the day.  He wasn't mean about it, but once his feet were firmly planted, we couldn't change his mind couldn't even push him off balance.  We don't like to use a come-a-long but he wasn't budging & we didn't want to be late for our appointment with Courtney at the vet.  

When John uses a come-a-long he doesn't pull them in the trailer, he just tightens the cable when they move forward a little bit.  Once they get close enough to the trailer, I will put a front foot in the trailer & "try" to hold it there.  Usually about this time, they figure out it's a losing battle & will hop in the trailer.  It didn't take long for Boaz to figure out the jig was up & in he went. 

I was surprised to see how much of a tummy he has, he looks much more svelte when he's standing up.......!!!!  (G)

Once he was on the ground the vet noticed that his gelding area hadn't healed properly & had yellow "yuck" in it.  So she cleaned it up & wants to see it again in 2 weeks.  He hadn't acted like anything was wrong & I assumed it had healed after 10 days of antibiotics.  I hadn't bothered to grope him to see...........!!!!  LOL  She said instead of the cut ends of skin healing to each other, they have adhered to the tissue underneath, so there is an open area down the middle.  Poor little guy, I'm glad she noticed.

In the picture Courtney had already cleaned all the trash off his hooves & his front feet are getting soaked in White Lightening.  There is no telling what gunk is trapped in all the cracks & crevices in those feet, & since White Lightening makes a gas, it hopefully got in all of them.  

When he got home, he came out of the trailer like his tail was on fire, & ran to find the other donkeys, so I guess getting his feet trimmed wasn't too traumatic.  He had muscle spasms the whole time he was on the ground, & we were afraid his muscles would really be sore, but if they were it certainly isn't bothering him. 

The vet also thinks the place on his leg might be proud flesh rather than a sarcoid.  It doesn't look like proud flesh to me, but then again, I didn't go to vet school, so I have to bow to the expert.  She wants me to use Wonder Dust on it for a couple of weeks & see what happens.  I HATE WONDER DUST, almost as much as I HATE xxterra.  Both of them are caustic so you have to be very careful to not get "good" skin involved.  Of course where the place is on his leg he can rub it if he wants to, which will probably smear it around.  So we'll see how it goes. 

I called Bill this morning to see how Maddie & Zorro were doing.  He said they come by the house frequently to see what he's doing, which is really neat.  He said he hasn't had to use the bell at all.  While we were talking Maddie was trying to figure out how to get on the porch.   Hmmm..........that seems to be the MO of most donkeys, if they know their people are in the house, they really want to know what the heck people do in there.  A friend that had a donkey years ago, said the donkey got out one night & went over to the neighbor's to visit.  When the neighbors woke up that morning the donkey was looking in the bedroom patio door.  That's not really a problem, except the bedroom was on the 2nd floor.  The donkey had climbed steps to get up to the patio area outside the door.  As I recall, they had a heck of a time getting him down.  It's much easier to climb up than down I guess.