Tuesday, August 05, 2014

PEPPER IS STARTING TO SCARE US...!!


He was down again last night when John went out to let everyone out.  John had taken down the wall that got in the way last time.  This time he was positioned in such a way that if we turned him over his hind legs would be up against the back wall of the shelter.  

So we had to use ropes again to get him scooted around.  He had been down quite awhile, which of course is really hard on his bones and legs.  It took him a lot longer to finally stagger to his feet.  Then he seemed disorientated and really was moving slow, didn't seem particularly lame, but not interested in walking either.  He finally got down to one of the pens a couple of gates down and stood facing the panel where his gate would have been.  I think he was confused on where he was.  We tried to figure out the shortest route to get him out of the pens and I used animal crackers to motivate him.  He moved for awhile and then laid down again.  I think both of us were thinking the same thing about that time.  

We came in the house for awhile, went back out and he was out eating weeds.  Of course that leaves us wondering what would transpire this morning, would he be up or would he be down someplace.  This morning, he came toddling in with the Tula group, slower than a snail, but hanging in there. 

His pen is one of the smallest pens, so we've moved Coquette into that pen and he will be using her larger pen, so hopefully if he gets down, at least he won't have to contend with walls and posts.  

Everyone else is doing pretty good.  Still got skin problems on quite a few of them.  The other day I sent John out to find something for skin problems.  He called me from the feed store and said he was looking at MTG, which stands for Mane, Tail, Groom. I had used it years ago, but had forgotten about it.  It really is pretty good stuff, so I told him to bring it home.  It's really helping with the dry, flaky, scaly stuff that eventually will break out in wet hairless sores.  So between that and the Underwood Horse Medicine, I think we are starting to get ahead of the skin problems.

Still have the stable flies on their legs, which I'm using the men's crew socks and polo wraps for.  No one has any great big nasty sores, so I'm not complaining.

I put out a new fly trap this morning.  It's a solar fly trap made by Arbico.  I was amazed at how flimsy it is and rather disappointed.  Then I read the instructions and after mixing up the bait, you have to let it work for 7 days before using the trap.  Jeesh!  I just want to kill flies, not learn new skills......!!!  This morning I poured the bait into the little cup in the bottom and had about 4 or 5 flies helping me........hmmmm that's promising.  Checked on it about an hour later and there were already about 20 flies dying in the sun.  Well, maybe this is going to be a good deal after all.  One thing they said is, if the temperature is above 95 degrees, the metal is too hot for the flies to land on, so you have to set it in partial shade.  I have it in the sun now, but probably should go out and move it into shade, because I'm sure it will be above 95 this afternoon.

Tomorrow we will take Penny to have her teeth looked at.  She is missing a lot of teeth and has teeth growing every which way in her mouth.  This should be fun, Dr. Debra has drugs which will help, I hope.  We have been trying to get Penny use to fly spray.  That has been interesting, she is not bothered by either kicking with her hind feet or striking out with both front feet.  She has been so abused that I doubt that she will ever be trustworthy, but she does need to learn not to be quite so reactive.  She is much better than when we got her, but she does bear watching.


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