Liz Howell

Every year Jim and I participate in the Haunted House for the community put on by the Forest Advisory Council with help from the Eagles.  It is free to the community and benefits those in the area. This years theme was a haunted pirate ship.  Diana a local artist did a fabulous job on the backgrounds and creating the rooms. I went as a vampire pirate and Jim went as Hammerhead from the Pirates of the Caribbean. I wasn't scary enough to scare anyone but Jim got a whole lot of screams.  We did not have as many victims this year as we did last year but it was still a lot of fun.

We came home that night only to find that someone has tried to break into our house.  They busted the window and twisted out the whole frame in my computer room.  We will have to replace the entire window now which was an expense we had not planned for.  We filed a police report but were told that the charges will only be for misdemeanor vandalism since it did not appear anyone got in.  We have an idea of who it was because only a few people knew we would both be gone for the event and the times that we would be gone.

Well it has been a week yesterday since I started feeding Mariachi and all the other things that needed to be done to him.  He has not foundered, died or had a colic episode so I think we are on the road to recovery.  He is getting only slightly more feed than Sudden who is supposed to be on a diet as per the vet. (Sudden gets fat on air) I give him 1/2 scoop feed, 2 flakes of alfalfa and 1 flake of coastal two times per day. Extra coastal is given as needed plus I turn them out for a couple of hours a day to pick at what ever grass is left in the pasture.

I never did start Mariachi on antibiotics as I just felt that would have been too much on his system. His runny nose has left but his eye is still swollen. A lady named Rhonda that runs a local Horse rescue came over yesterday and said to just keep a fly mask on him and that it would probably clear up on its own. I have flushed it a couple of times this week with clear eyes.  I still have him on the daily wormer and the probiotics.

Today I moved my round pen panels up front and will let them graze a couple of hours up there. We don't have the front fenced so I will just move the panels around as needed. Here are a few pics, I do think mariachi has put on just a little bit of weight (might be my imagination though). Sudden really loves him and they get along perfectly which is really nice.  Check the pics and see what you think. If you click on the pictures it makes them larger.

Well Revy left and now I already have my next horse project.  He is a little Paso Fino about 10 years old that is skin and bones. He has a long shaggy coat, a runny nose and eye and cribs (which I did not know about until I brought him home). I was so excited to get him and give him a new home just to be shattered that he was a cribber. I contacted the previous owner to see if he would take him back (which I really did not want to do) but of course he denied knowing anything about the horse being a cribber so now I am stuck.

I considered putting him down but instead went ahead and purchased one of the Miracle Collars for him. It seems to control the problem although it kills me to have to put it on him as they have to be extremely tight to actually work.  If I am going to be able to get any weight on him though he is just going to have to wear it.  The problem with some cribbers is they will spend so much time hitting the wood and sucking air that they don't eat well and their food does not digest properly resulting in colic and weight loss.  Also they tend to develop a crusty neck, wear their teeth down and have multiples of other problems.  I don't care what the experts or my friends that own cribbers say, I do believe it is a vice that CAN be learned from other horses just like wood chewing and I certainly don't want Sudden to start doing it.

Here is my plan of attack with him:

1. Control the cribbing - Done with a Miracle Collar
2. Start him on Probios - Started yesterday will continue for the next couple of months. I am also considering Ulcer meds in the event there are any problems.
3. Worm him - Will do that today with Ivermectin to follow up in 2 weeks with another dose of  Zimectrin Gold.
4. Start him on Antibiotics - Will start that tomorrow if no problems are seen from the worming. Two weeks SMZ two times a day should fix the runny nose and eye. If not will have tested for allergies. Cleaned out eye with Clear Eyes.
5. Start Sand Prevention Treatment - Started yesterday will continue for 7 days as per instructions.
6. Turn out as much as possible during the day without the collar, unfortunately he will have to come up at night to the barn as I live in the Forest and am too afraid to leave them out at night.
7. Feed a good quality feed and hay - I am not so concerned about the feed but feel he needs the roughage so I have started him on alfalfa and coastal hay with only about 1 pound of Seminole Perform Safe two times daily.

Here are a few pics, his back bone and hip bones are protruding. He has what I imagine is a wormy stomach as you can see his ribs but his belly is big and his coat is long and shaggy. He has no muscle mass and even the fat that should be over his eyes is absent.  Poor guy has a lot wrong with him, crossing my fingers he pulls out of this ok.

Here it is only Tuesday and I feel like a week has already passed.  Sunday some folks from Venezuela came out to try Revy and see if she was suitable for sending back to their country. Revy in her normal slow self did very well for everyone even though no one had spurs on. I rode her and three men rode her and she did just fine. I kept offering spurs to them but they all refused. Anyway they bought her and she will be in her new foreign country in about 3 weeks or so. She is going to have to learn to speak Spanish though as I don't know if they know English riding terms or not. I was sad to see her go but at least now she will have a job and not be a pasture pet.  Sudden threw an absolute fit about her leaving and I felt so bad for her.

Well Slick kitty is MIA.  The last time we saw him was Monday night for dinner, it is now Sunday the 27th and still no Slick. I went to Animal Control on Thursday to see if anyone had picked him up and turned him in but no luck.  We have searched the roadways in the event he was hit by a car but never found a body. If he was ok I am sure he would come back home, however he was our resident hunter and prone to investigating things that he had no business messing with to include getting in vehicles that didn't belong to him so who knows. I can only hope that perhaps he is at someones house and living the life of luxury as an indoor house cat.

Slick showed up on our doorstop as a young kitten, he was very sweet and very skinny. After about 1 month when it seemed he was here to stay I took him to get his shots and neutered. He brought home Black Kitty about 6 months later, they were always together play fighting, chasing each other and stalking small critters around the property. Slick has only missed one feeding in the entire two years he was here and that's because I accidentally locked him in the horse trailer, so he didn't really miss that feeding as I heard him crying and let him out.

The first couple of days that Slick was gone Black Kitty and Abbie seemed to be on edge so perhaps they know something I am better off not knowing. Black Kitty who has always been reserved and shy is now very active about coming to see us and sleeping on the porch. I have never been able to catch him so I can't let him in the house (even though I want too) as he might have something contagious and Naomi is fighting her own battles with bowl issues so we certainly can't take a chance on her getting sick with something else.

I will check the pound again next week and hope to find Slick but unfortunately my hopes are not high on finding him. We did have him micro-chipped so if he is scanned our address will show up and maybe he can come home. We all miss him terribly.

Revy went to the horse show 9-12-09 and this time actually got to show. She took two first and 3 seconds. I showed her in two halter classes and Audra showed her in three riding classes. I am glad Audra was riding her because twice she got so excited and bucked up a little. I have no doubt I would have come off but Audra rides so much that she just worked her right through it and kept on going. Thats the bad thing about babies ya just gotta keep riding and taking them places before they settle down and work properly. Unfortunately age and gravity have made that impossible for me to do anymore.

I don't know how Audra does it. She rode her mare to the high point English win, rode my horse in the show, went home and loaded up one of her other horses to take to the barrel race and Sunday is going on a trail ride with some friends.

Me, I am flat wore out and my feet are killing me today after all the cleaning and banding and walking and cleaning again that I had to do to Revy.  I swear she was laughing at me every time I would get her clean and she would go get dirty again. I had put a brand new maroon slinky on her the night before to help keep her bands down and hopefully keep her clean and much to my dismay the next morning I took it off and I had a pink horse with pink bands. I bathed her again the morning of the show to no avail, she was going in pink. One of the guys at the show asked me if I was trying to start a new fad, I just laughed and said "hadn't planned on it but guess so".

Here are some new pics of her, she really was a pretty good girl.

Jim's Firecracker Lilys bloomed and once again he was out of town so I took a picture for him. He was at his Mother's last year when they bloomed too. They are really pretty but multiply like crazy, I have already re-potted six of them this year and still have 2 more that need to be removed from thier original container. They are very beautiful but only bloom for a short amount of time before dying back to thier bulb.

We had three baby Armadillos visit us this year. They were so cute to watch, they rooted around the yard and jumped on the mower and if anyone tried to touch them they leaped up in the air. They looked like little pogo sticks jumping around. Armadillos must not be on the menu because Slick our resident hunter was content to just watch them. The older they got the darker grey they turned. We haven't seen them for a few weeks now so we don't know if they are still living under the shed or if they moved on to a quieter place in the forest. They are certainly distructive creatures when they become adults but we really enjoyed having them around as babys.