THE BURRO BURRITO RUN YESTERDAY WAS A ROUSING SUCCESS

Have had nothing but rave reviews of the fun run with the donkeys yesterday.  The donkeys all loaded pretty good in the dark, got to the park, got set up and were ready to run by 8AM.  There were plenty of people wanting to run with them, some of the donkeys went out 2 or 3 times.

The Running Shop has a facebook page with pictures and comments from some of the participants.  This morning some of the people came out here to practice with the donkeys and to choose their running partner for the pack burro race in Tombstone, March 9th.  I guess it will be first come first serve, Linda has already lost her running buddy to one of the women that was here this morning I think.  LOL

The Running shop is talking about having a Doughnut Burro fun day in January.  Wonder where we could get some more donkeys......... we're going to have more runners than donkeys again probably.  LOL

Leo, Levi and maybe Coquette strutting their stuff

Justin, BlackJack and cute little Cheyenne in the front doing her thing.  She was a big hit, everyone always thinks she's so cute.  She's already been spoken for when the Tombstone race is ran.  She is so little maybe people think she's safer than the larger donkeys.  I don't think so, I've seen her back up any of the other donkeys large or small. She can make those hind feet really fly if she wants to. 

This is the herd waiting for the fun to start, still a little early in the morning.

While they were busy in Tucson yesterday with the Burro Burrito fun race, I was holding down the fort here.  Tyler and Dr. Jeremy both came out in the morning to work with the ones with bad feet.  Gus is always first and they decided to put casting material back on his feet, since he hasn't been as comfortable this time as he has been in the past.  The bones inside his hooves are probably loose, and the casting material gives his hooves some extra strength.  I know from looking at x-rays the bones aren't lined up properly.  

Tyler is talking about having a symposium for professional farriers and trimmers.  He said he sees so many donkeys that are not being trimmed properly.  By now everyone should know that donkeys are not little horses physically, but a lot of farriers, try to trim their feet like horse feet.  He said I have enough interesting feet to be used as a training area, so if he gets it organized, that's what we'll do.  Poor Gus will probably be the star of the show.

Tyler did Big Gus and Rambo's feet.  Remember I thought Big Gus had canker and they both had thrush.  They might have had thrush, but Linda has been spraying their feet with bleach and Tyler found no evidence of thrush and they decided what I thought was canker was actually overgrown sole that looked like popcorn.  Dr. Jeremy had us put fresh gravel in Big Gus' pen and he's also been going out roaming in the rocks and sand, to hopefully break down that overgrowth.  Guess it helped because other than having extremely thick hoof walls, trims completed  on both of them and their feet look so much better.  

BUT.........they both were brats, Rambo insisted he wasn't going into the stocks, but 3 men changed his mind, in he went and out the other end he went, squashing Tyler on the way......  That would have been a Kodak moment, if I had my camera.  

Big Gus wasn't much better, in fact he was pretty adamant about not cooperating, until Dr. Jeremy and drugs changed his mind.  

When we picked them up, Big Gus has a nasty looking cut, slice whatever you want to call it, on the inside of his butt, close to his tail.  Linda had been doctoring it, but it didn't seem to be healing in a timely manner.  

He's got the long hair of a French Poitou and it was caught up in the flap of skin with serum, scabs the area looked like a science project.  Dr. Jeremy clipped the hair and cut off the flap of skin about an inch by 3 inches.  It should heal quickly now that it doesn't have all that stuff on it.  We can't figure out how he got such a wound in such a place, very weird.

The general guess on Big Gus' age from Dr. Jeremy and Tyler was around 25.  My guess had been early 20's so I was in the ball park.  I was going by what little I know of his history and adding years for what I didn't know.........LOL   Also looking at his front teeth, as equine age the front teeth grow longer and instead of top and bottom lining up with each other, as they grow longer the teeth angle out in front.  That's where the old saying, "long in the tooth" came from.