This picture of Tula was taken in 2011. She's actually lightened over the years and hasn't been this dark in a long time.
Today was an interesting day. Tyler came out to change out shoes on Gus, Rosie and Gigi. Gus had been gimping around the last couple of weeks and had way too much hoof growth. His feet are kept long with fairly high heels, because he is more comfortable that way. But for some reason his feet had really gotten long or in his case high and we haven't even had a drop of rain.....!!.
He also trimmed Jasper for the 2nd time since he's been here. Out of the 4 he worked on I must say they were all brats. The stock helps a lot, but they all still threw tantrums and tried to be as difficult as possible. That's OK, between Tyler and his helper, the donkeys didn't stand a chance.......!!
Jasper's actually been walking really well and is becoming one of the star attractions when we have people come out to see the donkeys. He's learned to "present" himself for inspection......!!! LOL But his feet really need a lot of work and he needs to learn that people can pick up his feet and actually give them back in a few minutes.
Dr. Jeremy came out to check on Tula's hock and Jasper got a happy shot for being such a jerk. We didn't even check on Penny, Tyler got here earlier than we expected and once she hears his truck she's in the "come and get me" mode and she doesn't really mind letting you see how quick she is with her feet.......!!! LOL Since the other donkeys were already POed I figured she can be responsible for self trimming until Tyler comes back in 6 weeks.
Once the pedicures were all done, we all moved onto Tula. We are so lucky, both Tyler and Dr. Jeremy are genuinely interested in our "throw away" herd and do their best to help keep them in good shape and show up at the same time quite often.
Tula, on the other hand is not the least bit interested in interacting with people she doesn't know. They were very surprised that we've never put a halter on her. Anytime we have to work with her is so traumatic, we figured out early on in this relationship that the best way to work with her was to leave her alone as much as possible. Thankfully she has always been healthy and we've not had to insist that she let us handle her..........until now.
They decided to put her behind a corral panel so Dr. Jeremy could examine her hock and she also got a happy shot. He probably felt of her hock and surrounding area 5 minutes or more and finally found....."the spot", on the back of the pointy part. I'm sure it has a nice long name, Dr. Jeremy said there are 14 different bones in the hock, but pointy part works for me.
We discussed, putting a halter on her and opening up the redneck squeeze, but Dr. Jeremy said he'd take a chance with taking an x-ray with her behind the corral panel. She was drugged, but still not cooperative. He and Tyler managed to get an x-ray without Dr. Jeremy losing a hand, or getting his x-ray plate banged up.
The diagnosis is, the little bone right below the pointy part of her hock, is cracked. I asked him how this could happen, he said probably a kick or stepping in a hole. As head jenny I'm pretty sure no one kicked her and she came in one morning lame. So stepping in a hole sounded like the most logical diagnosis.
Treatment: 8 weeks of pen rest, because in this particular situation, the more she moves around the more stress is put on the cracked area, which keeps it from healing. For soft tissue swelling and lameness moving is usually good for them.
She is not use to being in a pen all the time, so we'll have to see how this goes. If we had room in the hay barn we'd put her in there, out of the weather and soft ground. That's where Jenny was after her hoof resection and Penny after her colic surgery a couple of years ago. Not sure Tula would be comfortable in an enclosed area like that anyway, so we'll see how she does in her 20x24 pen.
We kept Frijolita in with her yesterday, but today we turned her out with the rest of the herd. She spent most of the day standing beside Tula's pen. I guess we'll find out just how strong their bond is, in 8 weeks. After a few days she might decide that staying with a crippled friend isn't much fun....!!! Poor Tula, wouldn't appreciate us trying to "buddy" up with her, she'd think we were up to something, so she will probably just be by herself most of the time......!!!
This picture was taken in 2013 during her "reddish" phase. The roans do a lot of color changing over time.
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