Animal Welfare

1. The health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group.

Or, in my case, animals.  People who know me know I love and try to take the best care of my zoo the best I can.  I’ve had and still have days where it’s top ramen for dinner because I had to buy feed for horses or dogs.

January is always the month I dread as we always seem to have something expensive go wrong every January.  This January did not disappoint but it hasn’t been as bad as past years.  On top of all the ongoing vet care for my mare Oakie (who’s injury I wrote about in the last post) we’ve dealt with more odd animal injuries/treatments this month.

First, let me tell you about Zippa.  Zippa is my older trusty mare who I’ve had since before she was born.  I had her mom and her grandmom.  Zippa turns 20 this year and in those years she has been the one who ends up with weirdest injuries.  I’ve thought many times about bubble wrapping her and never letting her outside of a stall but that’s probably considered inhumane because trying to keep her from killing herself is inhumane I guess.  When Zippa was born she was healthy and huge.  She however had inverted eyelids so her eyelashes were actually turned under and rubbing on her eyes.  She had her eyelids stapled right side out, I learned how to remove staples then.  She made it to age 3 before she managed some more weird stuff.   While running through her pasture that contained big fir trees she forgot she’s tall and managed to not duck enough and got a stick from a branch stuck in her head.  It went in under her ear and came out the back of her ear.  Of course this was a Friday night and an emergency vet visit was necessary.  I still have that stick somewhere.  Not long after that she got her chin stuck under the twine of a hay bale that I thought was out of her reach but she’s also part giraffe apparently.  That injury got glued.  The very  next week she cut her knee wide open in the pasture that I spent hours walking through trying to figure out what she ran into and never could figure it out.  That required more stitches and several weeks of recovery.  It got to where when the vet saw it was me on the phone he asked what Zippa had done now.  She went along ok for a couple years until she  had a bad case of colic and spent 5 days in the equine hospital to the tune of a few thousand dollars.  No surgery was required and a cause was never determined except she was very dehydrated.  Since then I make sure she has constant access to fresh water at all times.  She has had a few belly aches since but luckily it’s been nothing a little banamine and water don’t fix.  A few years later she found an old roll of barbed wire in the pasture I was keeping her in.  The wire was buried under the long grass and we didn’t see it when we walked the pasture looking for unsafe things.  She found the only effing roll of buried wire in a 20 acre pasture and managed to just about cut her foot off.  When I found her that evening I looked at the injury and told Scott we needed to probably put her down, it was that severe and now I wish I had pictures but I can see it so clearly in my head.  Scott looked at it and said I think we can fix this but he’d need to do some “operating” on that foot.  We lived in a different area at this time and the local vet was more of a cow vet but we needed sedation so we hauled her in.  We get to vets and they sedated her and took a look at the injuries and handed Scott the scalpel and said “you do it, I don’t know where/how to cut on this”.  So, Scott did and then we spent weeks keeping her confined and changing wraps.  Scott built special shoes that had a removable plat on the bottom so we could take the plate on and off to access the bottom of her foot to treat it.  She had to have shoes for support as she had nothing to stand on.  This was a my big introduction into therapeutic shoeing.  Unless I pointed out the scar  near that foot now, you’d not know that happened.  She managed to go a few years without any incidents but I knew that wouldn’t last forever.  Last September she banged her head into her shelter wall causing a severe nose bleed.  That also required an urgent trip to the vet to make sure there was no fracture in her giant head.  No broken bones but a sore head a blood stain on the wall.  Then, a couple days ago I found her with excess drooling.  Not a little extra drool, it was like a drool spigot had got turned on in her head.  She didn’t have the classic signs of choke but I knew that obviously this was very not right but she was bright and alert otherwise.  Few hours later I check on her and her breathing is a bit distressed, she’s dehydrated and barely running a fever.  Of course, it’s now well into the evening so we were at the emergency vet clinic until 10:30 pm.  She had a piece of wire stuck in her tongue.  How in the hell that happened I have no idea.  Vet said they see it 2 or 3 times a year and it’s always the same size and type of wire.  Numerous x-rays were taken to try and pinpoint exactly where it was so it could be removed while trying to keep from cutting her tongue up too badly.  Two hours and lots of drugs later the vets were able to get it removed.  Leave it to Zippa.  In fact, she has such a reputation of doing stupid stuff that when friends heard about it they said “oh well, that’s so Zippa”.  What a great reputation to have right?  At the bottom is a pic of drunk Zippa after the wire removal and a pic of wire.  If you want to know what and $1150 piece of wire looks like, this is it.

And also being the responsible horse/dog owners we try to be we had our two year old colt gelded.  That went well but it was still an expense.  We also took our year old Border Collie Banner, in to get neutered.  Since it’s our dog of course it couldn’t be a nice routine neuter.  He had a nut that didn’t drop way up in his abdomen requiring surgery to remove and thus costing us three times what it normally would have.  Now he’s in a cone of shame and feeling very sad that he’s not allowed to run or play or do much of anything for 10 days.  It’s basically prison for him when he’s normally like a tasmanian devil.    Poor old heeler dog Elly had to have some teeth removed and that’s not cheap.  We are so lucky that our dog vet is also a friend and we get discounts but having all these things happen within a few weeks of each other is quite costly.

I made the mistake of adding up vet costs since Oakie got hurt in November…..any guesses as to how much we have given to the credit cards gods for all this??  Anyone?? 8,000 effing dollars!  That’s not including the gelding since we knew that was coming.  Holy crap, I’m going need to lose 50 pounds and start pole dancing to make some dollars to pay these animals.

While my animals well being is always taken seriously, I feel like I’m the bank when they monthly welfare checks come out and this bank is outta money.  Let’s hope this is all the crap that January will throw at us and February won’t be a continuation.  Good vibes, thoughts, prayers, whatever your choice, are appreciated.  I have brown hair that has developed quite a bit of gray lately.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Love your animals and love your spouse and friends who understand and sympathize with your love of them.