Summer is vastly overrated in the desert. And it isn't even June yet, which historically is our hottest month, lots of days over 100 degrees.
John just put up some camo netting on the back porch this morning. It has 2 uses. Originally I ordered it to help keep the doves from flying into the windows. The feeders are in the back yard and if they get scared, they take off in a panic and don't pay attention to where they are going.
Years ago we talked about screening in the porch, to keep the birds from hitting the windows, but that really doesn't go with our type of house. The camo netting should work out good for the birds, and as an added feature, keep the afternoon sun off the west side of the house.
Julius, the indoor/outdoor cat isn't too impressed. He was in the house this morning, when the "changes" occurred. He just wanted out, I opened the door, he took one look at the changes, made a u-turn and is in the house someplace. Wonder how long it will take for him to get brave enough to confront this situation.......?? LOL
I noticed a couple of days ago, that Tula is roughing up her knees, when she lays down in her pen. She's walking really well and is off pain meds. I knew we couldn't put socks on her legs. That entails putting a plastic sandwich bag over the hoof, and then pulling a long sock over the hoof and up the leg. Not something she would accept, she doesn't even like to be touched.
A friend made some knee covers for some of my old guys that laid down a lot and their knees got scraped up. The covers are held on with Velcro straps top and bottom and don't require picking up a foot. But it does require touching......!!
Yesterday morning John and I prepared for battle. We got her behind a corral panel and squeezed her between the panel and the side of the corral. She actually did pretty good, I managed to get them on both knees without getting a broken arm......!!! LOL With the 2nd one I had to go outside the pen because we couldn't get her turned around in the "redneck" squeeze.
This was before we fixed the pad that slid down in the afternoon
This is after we fixed it. You can see, she is still in the "alert" mode, she is always on alert when we are around her. She has been here about 10 years and is still not comfortable around people. A couple of years ago she started taking animal crackers from visitors, IF they are on the other side of a corral panel, IF they stretch their arm out as far as it will go and IF she can get her neck long enough to reach it. She's not taking any chances although recently she has been getting a little more comfortable with their arm not being quite so long. But if they move or do anything she sees as dangerous, she backs off immediately.
After putting her in the squeeze and her squirming and digging her feet in trying to gain position, I was afraid she would start limping on her right rear leg. But it hasn't seemed to bother her at all. I might plead her case with Dr. Jeremy and if she continues to walk without limping, see if she can come off of "pen" arrest. Donkeys are tough and it is just a crack in a small bone, although I don't know how important that bone is, I'll ask him. It doesn't look like it is load bearing or anything like that.
Heard from Lynn and Linda today, she sent videos and pictures taken at the Ragnar team marathon run this last week-end. I assumed they finished, but she didn't say how they did.
This is a screenshot of a panoramic video they sent. There were a lot of people in this race from the way it looked. This is just a few of them.
 |
| Where's a donkey when you need to haul in your supplies? |
 |
| Lynn ready for his night run |
 |
| Beautiful country.....!! |
 |
| My,my,my, doesn't this just look like loads of fun..........? NOT....!!! I'm so glad they share pictures.....!!! LOL |
 |
| Looks like they picked up a new member of the team.....!! |
Boaz and I are fighting the good fight with his habronema larvae in his lip. Every morning, John helps me with him, although he is so good to let me root around in the corner of his mouth with tweezers and pull out things I find interesting.
It looks like a mass of raw hamburger, BUT I do believe we are getting ahead of the fight. I had forgotten I had Renee at Colorful Equine make a couple of crusader masks for him this year. She special makes them to cover the edge of his mouth, so the flies can't just fly in at will. A couple of days ago, his mouth was swollen and I wasn't really making much headway at eradicating the flies. The mask has made a world of difference and we are also putting wormer on the area 3 times a day, which kills the any larvae that hatch out and I can remove them the next morning. It's not as swollen, and angry looking, so hopefully we are making progress.
I've also finally found some socks that seem to stay up better. This spring we bought some white socks to dye green, so Lynn and Linda could wear them on their arms and look like cactus at one of the races they ran. We found out the socks had too much polyester in them to soak up the dye, not only that but after you tried to dye them 2 or 3 times and gave up, all you had to do was soak them in a bucket and then wash them in the washer and they were as white as they were when we bought them. I took them out to the feed room to cover legs, and have found out they cling much better than the regular crew socks we've been using. So far we've got 4 in socks and as of this morning they all have on these socks except for Penny. I'll change her out in a couple of days. They are really long too, so they cover more of the leg.
I'm suppose to race this Saturday, I really hope the car will stay in gear. It's very disheartening to be doing pretty good and have it jump out of gear which it has done in 3 of the 4 races so far this year. John says he's done everything he knows to do, so we'll see how it goes. We're talking about building a new car for next year, that's assuming I am still competitive by then. LOL My Neon is getting beat by Chevrolet Cavaliers on a regular basis, so John wants a Cavalier..........of course.........!!! LOL
No comments:
Post a Comment