Animal Husbandry

There are times, as you go around owning animals, when you end up with a sick horse.

This is a sick horse.  Jedda is recovering here from “pigeon fever,” named not because you get it from pigeons but because when you get it, you puff up like one.  And if you will look closely at the picture above, you will see a very professional graphing out of how Jedda looked the first day I found her with the disease, swollen up all across her stomach with really, really, really nasty abscesses and edema.  This is when your trailering skills come into play.  But you do not take the camera to the vet’s because what happens there with this malady is grosser than you could ever imagine.  I hope. I hope you can’t imagine all of the – yeah.  I hope you can’t.After the vet, you come home and other skills come into play.  This man shows you the tools we use to help our horse get better: we are willing to use them in your benefit some day when you get sick and there is national healthcare and you can’t get in to see a doctor before you are scheduled to die of something.

30 ccs of Pen, to be administered in neck or hip.  18 gauge needle.  1 1/2 inches of it.  Just call us.  We’ll take care of you.  Really.

Part two: The Puppies at Home.

Why did we clean the carpets BEFORE we got the puppies?

Here I am the first morning after getting up with puppies three times during the night.  The puppies are having a great time.  This is, like, early in the morning, and I am in my moose nightshirt that I bought in Canada at Epcot and my fish jammy pants that I bought at Target and my comfortable, warm, sloppy sweater, fresh out of bed.  Again. G is also fresh out of bed, because he is the one taking this shot.  But he is more dressed than I am, and thus, makes a less interesting picture.

These shots are too big.  But I like them this way.

This is a rotten flash shot (my house is dark inside morning and evening), just to show you that things are going well with the Old Men.  Here, they repose on one of my best bath towels.  (not really.  Not best)

This section explained in an excerpt from a letter I wrote, reporting to JoJo, the amazing breeder:

“As expected.  My puppies are insane.  We just made up a game: the sliding puppies.  You buy a baby play yard (I now own three) and take it out of the box, reinforce the box by stuffing it with things, lean the box against something the approximate height of a bottom step, then you pick up a puppy, place the puppy at the top of the slope and let go (the first time, you don’t let go – but you let him slide slowly).  When the puppy comes right back to you for more, you know it’s a good game.  And when the other puppy figures out he can run UP the slide (all children being the same), and the two puppies collide in the middle, then slide down together, they can already get their fight at the bottom started in mid slide.  It’s a really good game.  Except when a very large dog interrupts rudely.  But the very large dog can be locked into the house, then the game can go on in earnest.”

Tell me this isn’t familiar – you just get somebody used to going down a slide, and the next thing, they’ve got to be running back up it.

Trying really hard to run back up it.

Two puppies slide, fighting all the way down.  And when they do get down, it will be mayhem.

And at the end of the game, the obligatory dismantling of the equipment.  I have become very adept at retrieving large and dangerous parts of things from Tucker’s mouth.  And disgusting things, too.  Toby favors dead grasshoppers.

Beautiful Piper.  He’s looking at a dog pile –  not the kind you shift with a shovel, but the kind that’s all teeth and loud noises.  Thus the distance between dog and pile.

One of three or four favorite places.  They chase each other around this huge stump like crazy – like a cartoon.  Until the front one becomes suddenly fascinated with some rotten bit of the ancient stump and stops dead.  The second one then piles directly into the back of the first, and they settle down together to chew up the yucky old wood.  So they can throw it up later.

Do you envy me yet?

Maybe now?

I like to end with Tucker’s exuberance.   Here is the sad part: I cannot remember any times in the last decade when I have felt for even one minute the way this puppy feels all day long.  

Bless him.