UPDATE ON KRIS AND ROPER

 Yesterday Suzanne and I went up to Gilbert to pick up Roper and bring him home.  He doesn't act like anything happened.  This morning he was out playing with some of the other geldings, he's eating and taking treats of course, treats are his favorite thing.  

He's on antibiotics and the external stitches will need to be taken out in about 10 days.  I assume that means the ones on the outside of his cheek, I think there are some inside his mouth too, hopefully they are dissolvable.  I should be able to take out the ones on the outside, but not sure I want to tackle inside his mouth.  I'll call them next week to make sure.  

They took large margins of surrounding tissue and injected the area with Cisplatin a type of chemotherapy, it's used for a number of human cancers also.  The tissue was sent off and we should get the results back this week.  Hopefully they got it all.

Dr. Howard, Roper and Suzanne doing Roper's pre-exam

We also asked them to check his lumbosacral spine, which is in the area of where his tail attaches.  His tail starts really low compared to most of the other donkeys and his hind legs move oddly.  They x-rayed him standing and after he was ready for surgery they took x-rays while he was on his back.  No abnormalities were seen, they it could either be a birth defect or a past injury that has healed.  He was a roping donkey, so it's possible he was hurt at some time and nothing was done, just no way of knowing.

Kris has had 3 days of treatments on his sheath and is really doing great.  The first day was a battle of wills and strength.  He won the strength, and we won the will.  Once we got him in the "redneck" squeeze his strength didn't make such a difference.  He was scared although the renters that were taking care of them tried trimming their feet, but I'm not sure how much they really messed with them.  

Yesterday morning before Suzanne and I headed for Gilbert we rushed his doctoring, and he did really good.  We didn't have to "crush" him in between the corral panels and he didn't kick at all.

I think this is Waylon checking out the gator

Both Waylon and Kris are a little "short for their weight".  This is Waylon, he doesn't have quite a much weight to lose as Kris.

Kris is still rather shy about getting a halter put on him, but this morning Suzanne got that done.  She led him into the squeeze and she stayed in there with him feeding carrots, while I doctored.  He just stood there never offered to kick and no squirming.  Tomorrow I might try to doctor him in his pen without a halter or the extra corral panel.  Or I might not...........!!! Depends on his level of participation.......LOL  

Kris is on the left and Waylon on the right.  You can see that Kris is pretty pudgy with pretty good-sized pones over his ribs.  Not sure who their friend is, it's hard to tell when they have on a fly mask and the picture doesn't show all the donkey.  We have quite a few grey roan ones.