Ode to Chester

I have to tell a story about my friend who raises horses and is wheelchair-bound. It was his colt I struggled to save during the rainstorm. The colt died, by the way, but that's another story. This friend (I won't mention his name) lives in Texas, but maintains mares, foals and stallions on some land that is only about 40 miles from my ranch.
He planned to drive from his home in Texas to Wyoming, arriving late Friday. He had bought airplane tickets for a woman horse trainer to come help him load and haul a mare he wanted to take back to Texas. This college-aged woman, went out on the town with friends on Friday night and wound up spending the night in jail, thus missing her flight to Denver and leaving my friend with no help on the return trip.
Don't you think most people confined to a wheelchair would have abandoned the plan? Not my friend. I hardly believe he did this myself, but he hooked up his trailer, loaded the mare and headed back to Texas, driving non-stop except to fuel his van. He said he found some nice people at a gas station that helped him water his mare partway through the trip.
The alternator went out of his van about 30 miles from his destination!
I tried to drive straight through to Mineral Wells, Texas, when my daughter lived there, but was unable to make it. I had to pull over and sleep a while. My friend continues to be an inspiration.
Now, about the dead colt--the little guy had problems from the start. His mama didn't want him, and he started following another mare that had lost her foal, but had already stolen another foal from another mare. Now the "robber" mare had two foals following her. We corralled them and paired the colt back up with his dam. She still really didn't want him, and had to be haltered and made to stand while he nursed as she tried to bite and kick him. My friend thought they would mother up in a few hours, but that wasn't happening. I needed to get home, so I offered to take them both back to my place and continue the process there.
The mare did start accepting the foal more and more, but something just didn't seem right with this foal from the start. He was not jittery as most are, and was not aggressive about nursing, either. Then he was straining to eliminate. I thought he was compacted, so I gave him some mineral oil by mouth. Nothing happened. I called my daughter, who has a Master's Degree in Equine Reproduction, and she said to give him an enema. This was a new one for me. I had never given anything an enema before, but here I was giving a colt an enema! Still nothing passed.
He got a little stronger for a few days, and then the rain hit in. Over half our annual average precipitation fell from the sky in two days and three nights. My corrals turned to soup, so I had to shut him and his dam in my tiny little barn so he would have a dry place to lie down. After I confined him to the small area, I noticed he was eliminating, however, his urine was dribbling out in a strange way, so I looked under his belly, and there were no male parts, to speak of. He had a little nodule with a couple little holes in it where the urine was coming out. I called my daughter and my friend in alarm. My friend asked me to inspect his apparatus to help pinpoint the problem. It felt like he had a penis, but it was turned inward and encased.
He was becoming weaker and lying down a lot of the time, only standing to nurse occasionally. Then his hind leg swelled. I thought the mare had stepped on him. By now, there was no possible way to get him to a vet because the creek was flooding and my road was so muddy, I could not have gotten to the county road with my trailer. My friend asked if I had any Bantamine and I gave him some of that. That seemed to help a little, as the swelling subsided and he was able to stand better. My daughter said the swelling in the leg and joint was probably rather related to the waste material going throughout his body than to his being stepped on by the mare. I'm sure she is correct. My friend thought that since he did have some urine coming out and it seemed clear and not cloudy, the situation might solve itself.
"Chester," as I had begun calling him, gave up his fight for life on Saturday night. I fully expected to find him dead that morning, but it still hit me like a ton of bricks. I cried as if he had been my own colt. I couldn't go to church Sunday because I knew I would be crying like a baby during services and everyone would think I was a lunatic. All this just makes me know I should not try to run a horse breeding operation.
Chester was nobody's fault, just a freak of nature. His dam knew all along and that is why she tried to reject him. Horses just know. Yet it tore me up to lose him after I had fought so hard to save his life. RIP, Chester. You were a good little colt, and I know I will see you in heaven. Somebody close the gate while I wipe my eyes again.

Oh Lord, I think I want my drought back!

I now officially declare the seven-year drought over. Five or six inches of rain, one flooded creek, water in the basement, and mud everywhere testifies to that fact. What wild weather. I haven't seen anything like this since I was a kid. That's a long time ago. My friend from Texas just asked me if I ever had to worry about the creek getting up to the house. I told him only every 50 years or so do we have a flood that would threaten the house. This must be the year.
The weather service predicted it, as it was coming in almost a straight line down the center of Wyoming starting on Wednesday, May 21. As I drifted off to sleep, I watched a phenomenal light show going on outside my window, and the thunder literally rocked me to sleep. Unbeknownst to me, the lightening was as close as to strike a tree down on the creek about a quarter mile from the house. It knocked a big chunk of the tree to the ground and set it on fire. Fortunately, the rain put the fire out. Two or more inches fell that first night.
I went out the next morning to check my babies and see if they weathered the storm. They did; luckily, we didn't get the hail along with it that other areas got. The corrals had turned to soup, and there was not a dry place for them to lie down, as I had a colt belonging to a friend in the sick bay, my barn. The storm continued all day Thursday, Thursday night, and Friday. I hovered over the sick baby in the barn and prayed for the storm to end and the baby to live. The rain finally stopped early Saturday morning. Everyone is still alive, including me, but just barely. This seems like a never-ending nightmare. My fence washed out in only one place where the creek crosses it, so I'll have fencing to do when the water recedes.
If I live to be 100, I will remember the winter and spring of 2007-2008. Here are some photos of the creek flooding.

Sick Babies and Me

After my marathon foaling, I jumped on a plane to head to North Carolina to visit my other baby, my six-month old grandson. I had to scramble to get thing arranged so I could be at my son's for Mother's Day. Friends from church volunteered to keep my stallion at their place to keep him out of trouble. A neighbor would check the rest of my livestock on his way by every day. I had to build some fence to be sure there would be no wrecks. The storm and the foaling, along with getting ready for the trip had so stressed me, I came down with a terrible cold.
It was horrible on the flight. I was coughing and sneezing and blowing my nose until I thought my seatmates would ask for a particle mask. My grandson already had a cold, so I didn't worry about infecting him. He was all smiles. What a good baby. The only time he fusses is when he is hungry. He watches TV already, and not just glances. He watches intently for up to 20 minutes at a time and he actually giggles when something funny happens on TV. One of the children's DVDs his parents have for him has a duck puppet that reaches out with its beak to grab a dog puppet's nose and then there is a honking noise, and that baby giggles every time he sees that. Here's a picture of him watching TV from his "office," a little place for him to sit that has a swivel seat with stimulating toys surrounding him.

He's not crawling yet, but did learn to flip from his back to his stomach while I was there, then his first tooth erupted a day after I left. I knew he was teething, not because he was cranky, because he wasn't, but he was slobbering and chewing on everything in sight, including his toes after his bath, as in this picture. So I was there, basically, for two "firsts" in his life.

My cold got a little better on Saturday and Mother's day. My daughter-in-law took me for two "firsts" in my life on Saturday--a professional manicure and pedicure. This was quite different, because my feet are so ticklish, but the results were great. Not sure I would ever do that again, however. Too urbane for this country chick.
The cold came roaring back on Monday just in time for the flight home. I was very ill when the plane touched down in Cheyenne. My friend insisted I stay the night with her, and I was grateful, because I didn't think I could drive the three hours home with every part of my body aching--even my teeth.
When I did get home, I had sick babies here, of the equine variety. I had turned the mares and new foals out on the meadow and two of them had foal-heat diarrhea. The palomino paint baby was the worst. She had it so badly she should have died. I corralled the mares and foals and went to doctoring them, even though I should probably have been seeing a doctor myself. I poked some large doses of Pepto Bismol down them and cleaned the paint filly's behind so I could put some ointment on it. The acid from the diarrhea had already eaten a lot of her hair coat off and the skin below her tail dock was just raw.
I went and retrieved my stallion then fell into bed, seriously thinking I might die in my sleep. Although I'm not afraid to die, I didn't know how long it might be before someone missed me, so I said some prayers for both my fillies and me. The good news is that all of us are better, although the cold is still with me. Palomino paint was feeling so much better today, she even struggled a little when I gave her more Pepto. I followed that with some plain yogurt, as recommended by my daughter, to replace the good flora in her stomach. She rather liked the yogurt, I think. She swished it around in her mouth awhile before swallowing, probably to get rid of that bad Pepto taste. I don't blame her, I don't like Pepto Bismol, either, but it works.

A 72 Hour Blizzard and Foal-a-thon

I just survived seventy two hours of hell and I feel like I've run a marathon. I know I worked harder than I've ever worked in my life. I had three more mares to foal, all of them due last week. The National Weather Service began posting a winter storm watch for our area on Weds. One mare foaled mid-morning on Wednesday. That was Peggy. I was a little concerned about her, since I hadn't owned her when she foaled previously. She did fine, but now I had this little baby to worry about keeping warm and dry.
The storm began closing in. I got as ready as I could. I had all three mares in the corral due to the wreck I had with the first one foaling early and not surviving it (see earlier post). My barns are pretty drafty, though, and the corrals turn to soup whenever they get moisture of any kind. I worried how I would keep the new babies warm and dry.
I set up camp in the truck parked out by the barn. It was just easier than running in and out of the house, removing overboots, coats and hats, and getting in and out of a warm bed every hour. I have trouble making myself get out of a warm bed once or twice a night to go check, let alone every hour. Nacho and I dozed in the truck. I prayed to God to make the storm miss us. Listening to the radio in the truck, it sounded like it was going to do just that. The winter storm warning went back to a "watch." About 8:30 p.m. they said maybe just some flurries with high winds. About 9:30 the flurries and the wind began. Soon it looked like a scene from "Battlestar Galactica" and there were big snow flakes coming down sideways driven by about a 50 mph. wind. I got soaking wet when I got out to do the 10:30 check.
Each time I got out all three mares were in the barns, just blinking at me. The storm worsened. I went to the house at daybreak and napped a little. When I went back out, the wind had kicked up to about 60 mph and Peggy's poor little baby was cold, wet and shivering as the snow swirled around her in the barn. I fashioned a foal blanket for her out of a wool saddleblanket and strapped it around her middle with two small halters. I had to cinch them rather tight to keep the blanket on her. I held her ears and nose in my hands to melt the ice cicles out of them. When I turned her loose in the corral, she acted like a rodeo bronc because she didn't like the halter chinched tightly in her flanks. She squalled and bucked twice around the corral, slipping and falling in the mud. All the other horses came running to see what was happening. I was laughing very hard. The blanket served the purpose, and she remained warm enough.

The wind was just howling and driving the snow. It was the worst blizzard we'd had here in about nine years. By eleven a.m. when I went out to check mares, I couldn't see to get to the barn. The snow was swirling around in my face so hard I couldn't keep my eyes open. I prayed and waited for the wind to go down. The weather service said it would clear out about noon. It was 2:30 when the wind began to die down. Thankfully, neither of the other two mares foaled during all that.
I knew the one was getting very close, though, as she had started pushing a lot of wax out her teats. That's a sure sign they are going to foal soon. I also knew the temperature would drop like a rock when the storm cleared out. I prayed hard and cleaned the snow out of the barn so she would have a dry place to foal. Then I hunkered down for another night in the truck.
About midnight-thirty Friday night, the stallion, who was up in the stock trailer next to the truck for safe-keeping, and because I needed his stall, became very agitated. I went to check. I heard Lady grunting before I got to the barn. I shined the flashlight and could see the head and both front feet of the foal, so I knew things were going well. She gave another small push, then a great big one, and out came a large foal. Lady sighed and wanted to rest a minute. I could see the foal had the placenta over it's head, so I stepped in to tear it open so she could breathe. Then Lady jumped up and went to cleaning her foal. I went to the house to call my best friend who was awaiting news and get some towels to help dry the foal.

I looked at the thermometer. It was 18 degrees above zero. I didn't want a crop-eared horse, which would result if her ears froze. Lady had the foal pretty much cleaned off when I got back to the barn and she was floundering around, trying to stand. I dried her ears carefully, then rubbed the rest of her body as I tried to help her stand. Lady put up with me for a short time, then she started just sort of tapping a front foot on the ground in front of the foal, as if to say, "Enough already, I can take it from here." I went back to the truck for another half-hour. When I checked back in, the foal was standing and trying to nurse. It was a palomino paint filly-- just what I'd prayed for. I breathed a sigh of relief and went to a warm bed for some sleep.
Saturday dawned bright and beautiful, so I went back out and moved the other mare into the "birthing place" about eleven a.m. She foaled at noon that day all by herself. I think I was as relieved as the mares to be done foaling. It seemed like a nightmare that was never going to end. I called my friend and screamed for joy.