Monday, August 20, 2012

Well Pepper is "up & at'um" seems no worse for wear from his incident Saturday.  In fact he is eating better than he's eaten recently.  Hope he isn't burning his "flame" out, the old buzzard.
 
 
 
He tried to knock John down with his head, which is his usual weapon of choice, Saturday night when John tried to get him headed towards his pen. Nope, not going, headed out to Burroland with 3 of the geldings when the wind started blowing & the few beans left started falling. We went ahead & fed the others, then John went looking for him. Found him all the way over against the far fence, eating grasses & green stuff, guess he ran out of beans. So he got to be a wild donkey for the evening, it wasn't worth the fight to drag him all the way across 20 acres to make him go in his pen to eat his mush. I wouldn't have given a plug nickel for him making it Saturday morning, in fact the neighbor thought he quit breathing twice. 
 
He returned quite quickly to his usual cranky old man routine. He had some kind of incident, I’m just not sure what it was. He was confused & disorientated for about an hour or so after we found him. Don't know how long he had been down. Usually when we get him up we loop ropes around front & rear feet, pull him over to his good side & he either pops up or if he's been down awhile, rests on his breast bone & pops up. We had to reflip him at least 3 times, because he kept flopping back on his bad right side almost spasmodically, never did that before. 
 
Patti & Claire have been coming up with ideas for herbs & things that might help keep him going, if he is having heart or circulatory problems. He's usually pretty perky, so we'll have to be careful, I don't want to rev him up, his legs won't take it. His right hip has been cracked & his right knee has been blown out, he walks sorta of like John Wayne on a cheap drunk. Don't want to make him think he's Superman? This old guy tries to chase the girls, & spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to get up on their back, if he actually gets close enough without them escaping. If he ever does make it up there, we'll have to extricate him, to keep him from collapsing when he falls off. I don’t think he can make it, but it sure keeps his eyes bright & his ears alert, silly old fool. 
 
The Vet office finally checked in today, to see how he was.  Hmmmm, I realize Vet's have to have time off, but from Saturday to Monday without returning a call, isn't very helpful.  I told the tech what happened & what I did, asked her to ask the vet if she had any ideas.  Called me back & said no ideas, just to watch him until it's time.  I envy people that live in a area that has 24/7, weekend Vet coverage.  Of course Saturday if I had got hold of the vet, & she came out it would have been to euthanize him.......so perhaps this is the way it was suppose to happen.  The world would be very dull without Pepper in it & we'd really miss his quirky personality. 
 
Finally got the yard sale going Sunday morning.  I was quite surprised at how many people we had & how much "stuff" they carried out of there.  Unfortunately they didn't carry it all off............so we're going to have another go at it, next Saturday.  

No comments: