Desert Horses

Welcome to my horse blog, Desert Horses. We live in the desert southwest, near Palm Springs, CA, but board our horses up in our local mountains where it is cooler in the summer. I have 4 horses, all rescues. Here is the ranch up the mountains where the horses stay.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Farrier and vet visits













Both the vet and farrier came up to the ranch yesterday. Cathy needed the vet to sedate a couple of her horses so that they could be trimmed and all of mine needed their shots and a trim. Sunni was a good boy and let the farrier trim all of his feet. YEAH, Sunni! I've been working with him on lifting his back feet. He will now do it on command. He's still insecure around "strangers", but at least he got his big old feet done! Quad and Gigondas were "ho hum" about the whole thing, but even Scout cooperated! I pointed out to the vet that Cali had "goopy" eyes and a bump under one of them and he said fly larvae had gotten in there and he had to sedate her and clean out BOTH of her eyes! ACK! I put a fly mask on her after we got back from vacation, but, unfortunately, her neighbor pulled it off in 5 minues and destroyed it...sigh...so I tried another one. The vet said that horses with a suppressed immune system seem to be the most likely to have fly problems and Cali has always been the most delicate of all our horses. She got so drowsy after the sedative that she nearly feel over! Hoooooooohhhhhuuuuummmmmmm! She is such a sweetheart. I decided that since she has to keep her fly mask on now for the rest of the summer, to move her out of the big corral into her own corral, so I moved Scout down by Quad and Sunni, moved Gigondas into the big corral so that she can run, and moved Cali into Gigo's corral where she will also have some shade. You should have heard all the screaming! Gigo's neighbor screamed for her, Scout screamed for Cali...it was quite noisy! I have to give Cali some Ivermectin in a couple of days to help clean her out and I have to give her eye cream twice a day for the next 2 days. I'll drive up this morning and take pics of them in their new corrals. I just didn't get many pics yesterday because I had to hold horses and I didn't want my camera in the way while the ferrier and vet were working on the horses. I did take these "after" pics, however! Look at Sunni showing off his beautiful, big, old feet! He is part draft, being a PMU horse. I noticed that his head is big, too, especially if I take a halter off Quad and put it on Sunni!


4 comments:

Cactus Jack Splash said...

Nice they were all good for the farrier and the vet. Your hard work is paying off.

Anonymous said...

So glad all were good - every time they have a good experience will reinforce all your good work.

Barb said...

Well, I'm pleased it all went well for you. Sorry poor little Cali has some issues but I'm sure she'll be bouncing back soon.

sandy said...

I love horses and although I've never had one, I will follow along and read about yours so I learn a lot. I take photos of them every chance I get (we live in an area that is zoned for horses).

So I learned something today about the fly masks, the compromised immune systems, etc.

thanks for the education.