Tempus Fugit

Loosely translated from the Latin as "time flies". It is a very appropriate name for the height dog on our flyball team, and a succinct description of my weekend. Today Willow and I played in our first tournament since November and our team placed first in the S2 U-Fli division.

I have been captaining this team for three years now, and I suck at the job in some important ways. Beyond forgetting to set my alarm this morning (unprofessional at worst and embarrassing at best) I have never, ever cared about winning. What makes me happy is seeing our dogs running cleanly and our humans having fun -- end of story. I understand that winning is important to the rest of the team so I force myself to take an interest, but I can't bring myself to believe that it matters if we ran our best and had a good time.

Several horse bloggers have been posting answers to an enormous meme over the past week. In considering my own responses I have been forced to acknowledge how much I have changed since I was riding competitively in my teenage years. Winning was everything back then -- in school, in sports, in social life. I was never an unkind person or driven to cut-throat tactics, but beating others was my quiet motivation right through university. I can't say whether my attitude changed as a function of age, experience or relationships (probably all three), but sometime over the past decade my benchmark became entirely internal. While I love reading eventing and dressage blogs, the thought of doing anything competitive with my horses is completely abhorrent to me now. As with my flyball team, I just want them to be happy, healthy and doing their level best. Given the skinny, neurotic mare who showed up at Farcical Farm one year ago, I'm as happy as a clam.

Bed Sweet Bed

Getting to bed is at the top of my priority list right now, so that's what I'm posting about. Daun recently mentioned that her pharaoh hound scorns any human who attempts to sleep in the bed whilst she is there, and it made me realize that Tilley, Willow and Watson (plus Pepper) have it pretty rough compared to the dogs of some FFF readers. They have a couch to themselves in our mud room and several dog beds scattered around, but they are not allowed on the furniture or in the human bed. (Or not by me, anyhow...who knows what they get up to when I'm not around.) We used to have a regular bed with dog beds on the floor beside it, but I got tired of tripping on them a couple of years ago and ordered this instead. The dogs get the bottom bunk with a queen-sized futon in a vinyl cover, and we get the top bunk complete with heated mattress pad. Nighty night!

Hell in a Handbasket

You need to understand that it has been pouring in Deroche for the last 36 hours. The batteries are dead in our rain gauge, but I would estimate that at least 15 cm of rain have melted at least 30 cm of snow. Everything I am about to describe takes place under ridiculously wet conditions.

David left for work around 3 this afternoon and I got home around 8 this evening. I was met at the door by two piles of dog manure that appeared to be nothing more than redigested horse manure. Willow is the definite culprit, and she must have eaten A LOT if she was desperate enough to relieve herself in the house.

After cleaning that up and feeding the dogs I suited up to feed Titan and the livestock. David had called earlier to say that Titan was moping under the goat van and, sure enough, he was still under there. He greeted me with a pathetic whine and abject refusal to move. I was so worried about him that I crawled in with his dinner, which he proceeded to eat with gusto. Under the van is his go-to place when something scares him, so I assume that he was weirded out by the endless rain. He followed me when I crawled out, and I lay an ex-pen under there to make it uncomfortable. Hopefully he will choose his dog house or the inside of the van tonight.

Onto the horses. When Tonka's sheath first flared up I removed the leg straps from his rain sheet to prevent any rubbing. It has stayed in place all week without them, but this evening he was wearing it like a bib, swinging his forelegs to the sides to avoid walking in it. Miraculously both he and the sheet are undamaged -- have I mentioned how much I love the Schneiders products? Poor Raven was moving very stiffly on both hinds. I suspect it's because she has spent most of the day just standing in the shelter -- there is no heat or swelling in either.

We'll see what tomorrow brings, but I am very happy to be in bed now. I would be even happier if the rain died down.

I Resolve to Resolve My Vet Bills

Welcome to 2009. We managed to keep the kids awake with back-to-back episodes of Most Extreme Elimination (one of my many guilty pleasures in life) and some rousing rounds of Stamp Stamp Revolution (thanks Daun -- that one is going to stick). It was all very pleasant.

I'm sad to report that 2008 went out with another big vet bill. Yesterday morning David was playing in the crunchy snow with the dogs and Willow started to bleed from abrasions on all of her legs. She is thin-skinned and I didn't worry too much about it until one of her forelegs swelled up like a baseball bat. I feared that something was broken and called the vet who was able to see us in the afternoon.

We stopped at the beach en route to the vet so that my sister, brother-in-law and nephews could do some eagle watching. Willow was waiting in a crate in the truck, but Tilley and Watson were out with us. We noticed that Watson's urine appeared bloody, so I just phoned the vet and asked if she could test him for a urinary infection while I was there.

When I got to the vet she looked at Willow's swelling and abrasions and asked me almost immediately if she had been into any kind of blood thinning agent -- aspirin, ibuprofen or warfarin. Then we brought Watson in and she drew a urine sample with a catheter. It was not blood in his urine but bilirubin, indicating a problem with his liver function. When I got Willow home she immediately took a big, red pee.

Much brain-wracking and discussion ensued. The vet is quite sure that Willow and Watsom must have eaten something killed by warfarin, which is possible as our neighbor across the street has a rat problem and they like to explore in her field. Tilley is fine, but she doesn't eat unusual things off the ground. This morning's test results indicated that liver function is fine in both cases so they have managed to detoxify the poison and dodge the bullet. We did not dodge the $400+ bill.

In horse news Tonka's sheath took a turn for the worse two days ago, and this morning the tips were swollen up like a couple of baseballs. I could have knocked them around a little with Willow's leg. Kerstin is on holiday now, but some online research suggest that this problem is semi-common for older geldings in winter. Others suggested that a gram of bute would go a long way, so he got that with his dinner. Keep your fingers crossed for the poor guy.

And in goat news we trimmed hooves again this afternoon. It went pretty well, except that I cut too much off of Roland McNugget's hind right and he bled like a stuck pig (sorry Jean). A sock full of corn starch staunched the bleeding, but he is limping quite badly. I'm hoping that he will heal up before we have to get another vet involved...

Man Hands

It's getting chilly (i.e. 2 degrees Celsius -- don't laugh) through the nights now and I find my fingers getting cold during morning and evening chores. Wearing gloves while working is a challenge for me, mostly because I have ridiculously square hands.

My maternal grandmother was tall and slim with the long, elegant hands of a model or a movie star. My mother and sister are very petite with tiny little hands that require child-sized jewelery and gloves. My hands are exactly like my father's, only 2/3 of the size. The fingers of any glove made for women are too narrow, and their tips inevitably extend half an inch beyond my own. The fingers of small gloves made for men are still too wide so that my hands flop around inside. Beyond Farcical Farm I am happy in mittens or those stretchy one-size-fits-most gloves, but neither is ideal for doing chores. Today I found these nitrile-coated nylon beauties. They are tight through the fingers but they are the right length and they make me look like the Incredible Hulk.

It was beautiful here today and I am finally feeling confident enough about Raven to voluntarily leave her unattended for hours at a time. David and I took the dogs down to the river for a walk in the chill wind and I snapped this picture around 15:30. Daylight hours are getting short and sweet.

And some more of the dogs, because it was too dark to take any of the horses by the time we got home: