The weather people who we know don't get paid for being right, say the next week is going to be 100 degrees. yada, yada, yada..........!!! Ever since they started saying that the weather has been gorgeous. The doves have migrated to Texas to be shot when dove season opens. We don't have as many hummingbirds, so I assume they are migrating also. We have bats in John's bat houses up by the garage. We also have lots and lots of bugs.
This all points to fall coming early this year. The monsoon isn't over according to the experts until the 15th of September, so we'll see.
This past week has been really busy for all of us. Suzanne and our neighbor Vic got the floor laid in the office/store building.
Mike has the electric in and operational. You might notice the ceiling fan in the picture, IT WORKS........!!! Don't have the air conditioner installed yet, but the weather has gotten cool enough it isn't really necessary.
The open door goes into our store room, that will have shelves and hopefully all of our supplies in one spot. Right now everything is strung from feedroom, my pantry, the hay barn, the shipping container/storage and what we call Cisco's room. Long story, years ago John built Cisco a room that could be air conditioned because of his skin problems. He had absolutely no interest in going in it. We finally dragged him in and he wouldn't move, wouldn't eat, drink or anything. Brought him out and he was happy to only be bothered by flies as long as he didn't have to go into that "cave"...........!! It became a storage area, but we've always called it Cisco's room, I don't think he was in it longer than5 or 6 hours.....!!! LOL
The short wall on the right is hiding the bathroom. It is going to be handicap accessible once we get the ramp coming in the outside door on the left. From that wall to the front of the building will be Suzanne's office and our merchandise area for our t-shirts and other burro related items. That will be 14'x22' of shared space for Suzanne's office and the store. We have a couple of display cases and Suzanne has everything for her office in storage.
Mike will get the A/C in and the plumbing in the bathroom probably this week. We'll get the baseboards in and should be able to start using it real soon. We're all really excited to have a designated area for burro business, we're getting real anxious......!!!! LOL
No, he's not dead, he's in REM sleep. I had always thought they only needed REM sleep every few days, but when I went into find an article on
REM sleep, I discovered that I've been giving out erroneous information all these years.
This is Cochise after he, Willie and I think it was Oscar didn't come in for the evening feed and we couldn't find them. So they got to stay out all night in Burroland probably eating everything in sight. We are trying to restrict their access to so much greenery they aren't use to and of course every time the wind blows it knocks more mesquite beans out of the trees. They've eaten all the ones on the ground that are edible, because of the rain the others have turned black and the donkeys won't eat them. They didn't have access to water, which is probably why they were ready to come in the next morning.
The first thing Cochise did was flop down for a nap.
We got the report on Roper's tumor and it is a soft tissue sarcoma. Even though they put chemo into the surgical area it is still there. I have sent pictures up to the clinic in Gilbert, but haven't heard back from them yet. He's only 4 years old, I hope they can do something to eradicate it. There is very little on the internet about soft tissue sarcoma in equine. I found this but if you want to read have a dictionary handy.......!!! He really is a nice donkey lots of personality and fun to be around. I hope we can find something to help him live a long quality life.
This is what happens when trees get trimmed and the limbs piled up. The donkeys are sure the best limbs are buried and think it is their job to drag the branches all over the place to find the best ones.
This time of year the "garden" spiders are really busy building webs to catch a winter supply of bugs I guess. They seem to like the gates to the pens, which is really fun in the morning when you're still half asleep and going thru a gate. Once it gets cold we'll take brooms and get rid of the webs, but for now we are just co-habituating with them.
This is little Mamacita, living the dream in California. Who would have thought she would take to pack burro racing, but she has. She and some of her friends went up to South Fork, Colorado this week-end for a pack burro race. Haven't heard how the race went yet. That was the first race held in South Fork, but it probably won't be the last. It seems like almost every year they add a new town to the schedule, which is great for highlighting burros and how much fun they can be.
Suzanne will be taking at least 9 donkeys to the Sandam Burro Jam Camp in Dewey, AZ the weekend of September 24-25. I think she took 10 last year and had a great time. A lot of people are getting interested in pack burro racing. The donkeys she's taking are the ones that do the shorter courses and are really good partners for people that want to try it or don't feel up to running 10 miles. Cochise and Koshare were available, but they have to have runners that do long distance and want to move faster than a walk/jog.
We had bloodwork done on some of the older donkeys. Cisco's showed he is in kidney failure, I asked Dr. Jeremy on a scale of 1-10 where would he be. He said about an 8, he's been losing weight and although he's never been really active, he's moving a lot slower than usual.
Cisco has been here almost as long as BlackJack, in fact Buddy Brat, and Cisco came in about the same time, within a year of BlackJack before we were a rescue. Cisco and I have a lot of time together, he's one of donkeys with horrible skin problems that have to be dealt with every summer.
I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks or months, but will make the decision when it is time to let him go.
BlackJack, John and Cisco as extras in a western during filming at
Gammon's Gulch
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