Loose Ends

I've been a bit busy and scattered lately, and I realize that there are things that I've started to talk about that I haven't finished with. So I'll tidy things up a bit around here today.

First, this patient that I talked about here. I've been afraid to write anything, but she is indeed pregnant with one baby, due in early October. We're all really happy about this, and hoping that she has a smooth pregnancy and easy delivery. Luckily she still has some embryos frozen, so hopefully they'll be able to try for #2 in a year or so.

Kaswyn's hives are gone. He's also completely off of the dexamethasone, but still on the full dose of the hydroxyzine. I've emailed the OSU vet who has been helping me out with this hive issue and I'm waiting to hear what the next steps are. I think I'll be starting up with his allergy shots again, and then reducing the dose of the hydroxyzine. When he's been off of the hydroxyzine for two weeks with no (or very few) hives then he'll go back to OSU for an allergy re-test. Even though I know it will be an expensive trip, not only in vet procedures but also in gas, I love going down there because there are so many interesting things to see and I always learn something while I'm there.

More good news is that Kaswyn has been sound! His leg looks great - it's very tight and cool with no swelling anywhere. With all of his hives I haven't been able to ride him much so he has gotten a lot of hand walking, light lunging, and turnout. I think all of that helped to heal up his leg. Even now that he's hive-free, I haven't been riding him for more than 15 minutes because of the footing in the arena. When I have been riding him he's felt very good to the right, but fairly stiff to the left. I have the feeling that we're going to have a lot of suppleing and strengthening to do when we finally go back to work.

And we won't be doing any serious training work until the arena gets fixed. I called Mr. K and he will be coming out this week to work on the arena. I'm so excited! I know that he's going to run into a few problems. The first one is going to be the boards that make the sides of the arena. They are just plywood that is nailed to a rail and runs at a slight angle down to the ground . The footing is deep in many places along the wall and I know that it's covering some big holes at the bottom of those boards. This means that when he removes the deep footing that these holes will be exposed and the horses will be at risk for putting a foot through them. Not a good situation. So once we get the footing fixed I know we're going to have to replace some of those boards. I don't think it will be hard, but we'll just need to get it done. What scares me is that we'll be pulling nails out of the old boards. Since I don't know who "we" is going to be, I can't be sure that anyone else will be as careful as Susan and I would be about making certain we collect all the nails and don't drop any. Also we're going to have to convince Marge to put even more money into the arena for the boards. I don't know how well that's going to go over, but it's really a safety issue. I guess we'll just have to see how bad it is and go from there.

The next problem is going to be where to put all of the extra footing. I asked Marge where she wanted it, and she never gave me an answer. Right now she is out of town and told me just to handle Mr. K and the arena thing. Which is great, unless I do something that she doesn't like. I scoped out the back of the barn and thought that the extra footing could go behind the arena to one side of the big door. However, someone dumped a bunch of firewood right in that place two days ago. Susan told me who did it and we're going to have to get that moved tomorrow. If we got all that wood moved Mr. K will be able to make a nice pile of the extra footing. If not... well I guess we'll get creative about it.

The last thing - the manure pile is in back of the barn. Someone really needs to get out there with a front end loader and push the pile back about 30 feet or so. We don't get it hauled away because every spring Marge's son uses almost all of it for his landscaping. However, over the winter the pile creeps too close to the barn and then we need someone to push it back. Marge's son is happy to use the manure but he doesn't really want to do any extra work, which sucks because he won't let us use any of his equipment to move it ourselves. So, so frustrating! Anyhow, the manure pile is about 20 feet from the barn and I'm afraid that Mr. K won't have room to maneuver his equipment back there to make a pile of the extra footing. I'm just crossing my fingers that he can work with what we've got.

That seems to be the story of my life right now - making the best with what I have.