Suzanne, Mikaela and Richelle left this morning about 4am, at least that was the plan. I'll assume they got off on time.......LOL Suzanne is going to be on the road for the next week, she said she likes to drive, but she might change her mind by the time she gets back.
John and I actually managed to do chores by ourselves this morning in a timely manner. Well not by donkeys standards, I think they judged us and found us lacking, since they have had access to more "servants" and also younger and quicker ones. I told them to get use to it, but the vocal ones didn't seem to care. I think they might be a little bit spoiled........!!!
Wednesday Indy and Jerome will bring Carlos and Nellie out for a week at Longears Camp and get to try out their new trailer. They found a good deal on a used horse trailer, but most donkeys don't like horse trailers, too confining and in Nellie's case she wouldn't be able to see anything in a "normal" horse trailer. She's a little bit "height" challenged........!! The man they bought it from, had an idea and it turned out great.......!!! Thanks for the video Indy.
Big Gus got over whatever was making him sluggish for a couple of days. Don't know what it was, but once it was over he was back to his usual "helpful" obnoxious self. Between him and Bella, very rarely does John get to work up at the garage without "help". He said they usually just stand and watch him do whatever he's doing. Occasionally they move in for a closer look, but for the most part they just watch. BlackJack use to come in the garage and walk around the car where John was working. Usually John was under the car with his legs out where they could get stepped on, but BJ never stepped on him.
Friday we took Bella up to the Equine Clinic in Gilbert south of Phoenix. They are always so glad to see us, I guess they don't get that many donkeys. They always have 3 or 4 interns in training, so it's good experience for them.
Here is Bella with a couple of the interns. Notice her chubby butt, we thought it would go away when she lost the extra weight she was carrying when she got here a few months ago. She's lost the weight, but still had the "bubble" butt and of course the reason we took her up there was her inability to get up off the ground like an equine usually does. She sits up on her butt and then basically heaves herself up, sometimes she has to try 2 or 3 times to actually get up. And has calluses on her hocks from getting up like that probably for most of her life.
Also lately we had noticed she had hard areas in her butt, that didn't feel like squishy fat so we wanted to find out what that was.
The 1st thing Dr. Howard noticed was she has no muscle development in the area of the gaskin muscle, which would be the area her tail is covering in the above picture. The bone in that area is the stifle, at least I think it is....!! I'm not that good at anatomy.......!!! You should not be able to feel the stifle bone very well because of a heavy muscle cover. Well she doesn't have very much muscle there at all. We will be giving her steroid shots once a week for a month to see if it makes a difference, but I have a feeling she was born this way.
On the to hard places in her bubble butt. I have never heard of fatty necrosis before. We were not given an option for treatment, but I ran across the link above, and found it fascinating, and also found a real name for the problem.
They did a CBC blood test, nothing remarkable, but we did get sent home with a goody bag of assorted supplements.
About half way home on the interstate the truck started hicupping, as in "the fuel pump might be failing". One of the 1st signs is, the speed starts dropping and of course thru that area there isn't any frontage road. John managed to keep it above 40mph, which is scary when everyone else is going 80 or more and we limped almost to our son's house on the NW side of Tucson before it finally quit. Our son Rod had to tow us the last 1/2 mile or so.
Lisa actually has a horse and pens, but we tied Bella under this tree, not sure Sassy has ever seen a donkey. The tree turned out to be a mesquite tree, with ripe beans on it. Bella thought she had died and gone to heaven, until I noticed all the beans and started throwing them out of her area. She still enjoyed the dried grass though.
One of the pleasures of having racers and mechanics in the family is, they know how to take a truck apart. Unless you've had a fuel pump go out you might not know in a lot of vehicles it is in the gas tank. In the case of a pickup the bed has to be raised, to get to the gas tank. Our grandson J.R. said he had changed a few where he use to work, O'Reilly had a fuel pump, so they went at it. We've had a fuel pump put in this truck before by a shop and they charge a fortune, so I'd just as soon pay J.R. It took less than 3 hours.
We had discussed all sorts of "what do we do" scenarios, renting a car, staying in Tucson. Our primary problem was Bella. When we came off the freeway towards Rod's house, the truck had died on the railroad tracks that run along side the freeway. I was in the process of grabbing a lead rope and getting her out of the trailer, when John managed to get it started again. Whew........!!
We were still planning, when the guys started on the truck, didn't know if they could get it done that night or how long it would take if they did. I called Suzanne and she and the girls came in to haul Bella home. They also took John because he didn't have his medication with him, we hadn't planned on making a night of it. It was done in time for me to get home before midnight, which was great........!!!
John said the 1st think Bella did when she got in her pen was bury her nose in the bunk, like she hadn't been eating dried grass and what mesquite beans she could find the last 3 hours.
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| Mikaela telling Cisco bye, he is one of her favorites, along with Penny. |
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