The Last Week of the Year

I don't think I could have predicted the events of this week if I'd tried.  I've rewritten this post in my head at least three times this week.  I really thought I'd found the unifying theme of the week by Wednesday, but by Thursday, that was all shot to hell.  And by Friday morning, I realized there was not going to be some kind of year-end epiphany or even a cohesive lesson learned for me to write about.  If I thought last week was a hot mess...well, this week unbelievably topped it.

It all started off innocently enough.  I had planned to ride Layla (Donut's mom) again on Sunday morning.  That all went off without a hitch.  The horses loaded and unloaded uneventfully, and we had them groomed and saddled and ready for the trail in short order.  

I also had a different bit to try with Layla.  You may remember that I'd ridden her in a curb bit last time, and I didn't feel like that was an appropriate bit, given her lack of education under saddle.  This one was a snaffle type with a two-jointed mouthpiece that my friend used on a different horse in competitions.  The middle part was a flat, rectangular plate instead of the more typical links I've seen that have more dimension.  Luckily, I had just started learning about this type of bit in an online class I'm taking (more on that in another post), so I had a clue about how it was supposed to work, and I knew from the way it sat in Layla's mouth that it was actually a fairly severe bit.  The plate sat at an angle so the edge of the plate made contact first, rather than having the plate sit flat on the tongue.  

I wasn't crazy about putting a severe bit in her mouth, but I figured as long as I didn't need to use much contact, it would be OK.  And given how quiet she'd been during the last ride, I didn't expect any issues.  (cue off camera laughing please...)

My friend was riding a different horse this time.  There was nothing wrong with this horse.  To anyone looking at him, it would seem like he was just walking along the trail.  Layla, however, saw something much different.  He had a different energy - a more active, assertive energy - than the horse my friend had ridden last week.  And Layla picked up on that.  She was a completely different horse than what I'd ridden the week before.  She was anxious, excitable, and not comfortable in her own skin.  My friend said she'd noticed that about Layla in the past.  She seemed to change her personality under saddle based on which horse my friend was riding.  (BTW, that is a huge indicator to me that Layla needs a lot more time working alone with a person, so she learns that she can rely on her rider for guidance.  Right now, she is almost exclusively operating off of the other horses around her, which has the potential to create unsafe situations for everyone.)

It took about 2 minutes for me to be happy that I hadn't insisted on a softer bit for Layla.  I was going to need every tool I could muster to ride her.  The good news was that she was more responsive in this new bit than she had been in the curb bit.  I was actually able to use a direct rein and leg and get something out of her.  It wasn't necessarily pretty, but if I needed to move her over, I could, which was a significant improvement over the week before.

The footing was downright awful.  We'd had rain and a little snow the previous week, so the ground was a combination of frozen ground covered by a thin layer of melted and slick mud, or actual ice, or actual snow, or some kind of icy grassy snowy muddy mess.  In short, it was not a great idea to do anything other than walk the horses.

Which was totally OK with me, because I had my hands full.  I spent the ride working with Layla on not walking with her nose up the butt of the horse in front of her.  We practiced riding next to the said horse at a safe distance or behind said horse at a safe distance.  It was not without some effort on my part, and every once in a while I would let Layla go back to her comfort zone to take a break from the mental work I was asking from her.  And she did actually have a full-blown panic attack at one point.  My friend decided to change directions and take a different trail and so she walked back past Layla and up a hill.  Layla lost her mind because she didn't change direction as quickly and got a little behind.  She threw her head up and started acting like she was going to bolt or buck or just go crazy.  I basically tried to steer a little to keep her from running into the other horse that was riding with us and keep her from running, which would have been bad given the footing.  Once she got near my friend's horse again, she settled a little, but it took her a long time to get her brain back.

A little later in the ride, I started tackling another issue.  On the previous ride, Layla had a tendency to be bent slightly to the left.  I didn't worry about it then because it was our first ride and because it wasn't really bothering me.  On this ride, though, she was constantly leaning on my left leg to the point that it was making me uncomfortable.  So I finally insisted that she yield a little through her rib cage and travel straighter.  I used a lot of leg and moderate pressure on the bit to get my message across and I had to repeat it a few times, but I was able to communicate what I wanted and she did figure it out.

As we neared the end of our hour and a half ride, Layla finally fully settled and we reached the point where if we'd been in an arena, I would have felt like I could finally get some schooling done.  As it was, we were about 10-15 minutes from the end of the trail, so I just enjoyed the peace.  Warwick Schiller would say that Layla had become present.  That is, she wasn't worrying so much about what the other horse was doing.  She was paying attention to her own body and where her feet were going.  And she had a connection to me through a gentle contact on the bit.  It felt especially good after over an hour of us being out of sync and her paying a lot more attention to where my friend's horse was in relationship to her and me having to be really insistent whenever I wanted to communicate with her  because she kept forgetting I was there.  It was good to end the ride that way, I think.  And I'm hoping that maybe next time it won't take us so long to get to that point.

This is my first between-the-ears photo since Nimo died, and I miss seeing the curved tips of his ears so much.

 

After I was done riding Layla, I headed over to the barn to take care of Donut.  And when I got there, I had a terrible shock.  I realized that Mini was gone.  Her owner had decided to move her early.

I've been leasing Mini for my daughter since the beginning of March.  However, Mini has heaves.  And without going into too much detail, it has become clear that this barn is probably not the best place for Mini to be.  Gemma and I have been doing our best to care for her every day (even though our lease is only for two days a week), but her condition has been deteriorating.  Her owner had moved her other horse to another barn a few months ago.  Her original plan had been to keep Mini where she was because her young daughter, who she'd gotten Mini for, wasn't riding much, and she could see that Gemma adored her and we could help care for her.  But there has been some drama at my barn, and the owner decided that keeping Mini there wasn't the best choice for her.  So our lease would be over at the end of December.

I wasn't sure exactly when Mini was leaving, but I had felt certain that her owner would give us enough notice so we could say goodbye.  That all changed the night before.  I had brought Mini in from her field to check on her, and I'd noticed she seemed a little lethargic.  She isn't a quick mover to begin with, but she seemed to be moving slower than usual.  It could have been because she was tired from moving through all the mud, which had reached significant levels.  Or it could have been that she was tired from battling her breathing problems, because she was wheezing again.  I gave her medicine and let her owner know.  Her owner responded by saying she was thinking maybe she should move Mini the next day instead of waiting for the end of the month.  And would Gemma be able to say goodbye on Sunday?  Well, I couldn't figure out how to make that happen.  I told the owner that it would be really hard for me to coordinate that and the only possibility would be that my husband could bring her out in the morning, but that wasn't ideal because Gemma would be upset and dealing with crying 8-year-olds is not my husband's strongest skill.  It would be better if I could be there.  

When I never heard back from the owner, I assumed she had decided against moving Mini so suddenly.  But I was wrong.  She had sent me a message about two hours before she came to get Mini, but I didn't get it because I was out on the trail and it probably wouldn't have been enough time for my husband to get Gemma to the barn anyway.  

Once I realized what had happened, it is not an exaggeration to say that I was filled with a terrible rage.  I felt sick to my stomach to think that once again I had to give Gemma really awful news.  (With the pandemic cancelling so many things and Gemma's guinea pig dying and her fish dying and Nimo dying and losing her beloved riding instructor and finding out that Mini would be moving at the end of the month, I was getting damn tired of delivering bad news to my kid.  And now I had to tell her she wouldn't be able to have the last ride she'd planned with Mini and that Mini was gone.)  I did not do a good job of controlling my feelings, and I had the worst time handling Donut because I was so upset about what had happened with Mini.  Somehow, though, I managed to send a really reasonable and adult-sounding message to Mini's owner conveying my disappointment about what had happened.

Being a parent actually sucks a lot of the time.  But I've always felt that owning a horse is good preparation.  When you have a horse, you spend a lot of time working to pay all the bills associated with said horse.  And then you spend a lot of time grooming and taking lessons and practicing and falling off and struggling and being confused and trying to figure out what to do.  All so that every once in a while, for three seconds, you get this amazing connection with your horse and the feeling is so wondrous that you would go through the 100 hours of work all over again just so you can feel that connection again for three seconds.

Parenting feels the same to me.  I have to clean the house and wash the clothes and cook the meals and go to work and teach the child, all so that we can have these brief moments of connection or I can watch my child having fun and enjoying life.  This was not one of those moments.

I don't think I've dreaded something as much as telling Gemma about Mini for a very long time.  I couldn't figure out how to do it.  I'd just have to tell her straight out.  Which is what I did.  And she was super upset and so I sat with her for a couple hours while she worked through her grief.

While that was going on, Mini's owner sent me a message saying that we were welcome to come see Mini any time at her new home and she suggested Wednesday of the coming week.  On the one hand, that was a very nice offer that certainly helped mitigate the damage done by moving Mini early.  On the other hand, I had my life planned for Wednesday, and it didn't include driving an hour and a half to see a pony.  But what choice did I have?  My daughter was so upset and if I'm honest, I was upset about not being able to say goodbye to Mini too.  I have been taking care of her as if she was my own for 9 months.  She is a sweet pony and I had come to love her.  So we made plans to go see Mini on Wednesday.

Meanwhile I still had Monday and Tuesday to get through.  I had recently cleaned all the algae off the sides of one of my fish tanks and in doing so, I remembered how much I love that tank.  It only had two fish in it because a plague had decimated my fish population over a year ago, and I had felt like I shouldn't get more fish because I worried they would die too.  But the two that had been in there did look kind of lonely, and I got it in my head that I wanted to get three male guppies (no breeding that way!) to see how they did.

But you may remember that our washing machine died very inconveniently right before Christmas.  My husband had decided that before we got the machine delivered, he wanted to have a plumber check out the connections as well as a couple of other lingering plumbing issues we have had.  So the plumber was coming at some point on Monday between 7:30 am and 8 pm.  (I mean, that is even less convenient than waiting for the cable company!  But we were glad to get a plumber to come out on short notice.)  My husband and I decided to split the time waiting for the plumber to arrive.  I normally don't work on Mondays, so I agreed to take the morning shift.  I had to get Gemma out to the barn in the afternoon for her riding lesson, and I also wanted to go look for guppies, so my husband came home from work at noon to take the afternoon shift.  (The plumber came at about 4 pm, and made minor repairs, so everything was now set for the delivery of a much-anticipated washing machine!)

We did get three guppies and they are quite delightful.  I really wish I'd gotten them sooner, because watching them literally makes me feel less stressed.

Gemma had her riding lesson that afternoon without Mini and it went well (she has other ponies that she can ride, but she'd just had her heart set on one last lesson with Mini).  I didn't get the time to spend with Donut that I'd been counting on because I kept getting waylaid by other people who wanted to talk.  (Yes, I know what you are thinking.  More on this topic in a bit.)  One thing that I did notice when I brought her in, though, was that she seemed to be breathing hard.  And I thought that was weird.  And then I thought maybe it was because of all the mud.  Walking through mud definitely makes me breathe harder than normal.  Or maybe she always breathed like that I had just never noticed.  Or maybe it was my imagination.  So I watched her once she got in her stall and she seemed fine.  Her breathing seemed back to normal.  I chalked it up to One of Those Things That Is Not a Big Deal.

On Tuesday, I just generally spent the day hating life.  I hate Tuesdays.  I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before, but I hate Tuesdays.  More than any other day of the week.  Part of it is that Tuesdays are kind of like Mondays for me because they are my first work day of the week.  But I'm also trying to manage work, homeschooling, general life things like laundry and cooking and cleaning, and getting out to the barn in enough time, so that we can leave by 4:30 and be home by 5:00 so my husband can take Gemma to her climbing team practice.  Then my husband and I typically have Date Night.  I know Date Night is supposed to be fun, but our options are much more limited now, and I always feel so rushed to fit one more thing in that it has started to feel like a chore.  My husband is pretty easy going about what we do, and mostly it's just been dinner at home for this year.  Which is, of course, not stressful at all.  But it feels more like a thing to check off my To-Do list instead of something fun.  So I should probably address that.  But then that is one more thing for me to do, so I don't.  Anyway, I made it through Tuesday.  And normally, Wednesday would be a little more relaxed with no evening commitments.  (It used to be that my husband would take Gemma climbing after we got back from the barn, but I finally had the good sense to stop that.  It stresses me out to have a definitive time that I need to leave the barn.  As you know, barn time and regular time are not the same, and having to try to make them the same just about gives me a panic attack.  I HATE feeling like I need to leave the barn by a certain time.  So now, Gemma and I can be at the barn as long as we like on Wednesdays, and that works much better.)

Except this Wednesday I had to take Gemma out to see Mini.  To make the timing of everything work, I would have to leave just after I finished up work at 1.  This was also the day the washing machine was going to be delivered.  We had a 7:30 - 11:30 window of time set for the delivery, and I'd asked my husband to stay home from work, because I delegated this issue to him and I get tired of people (aka my husband) thinking that because I work from home, it's not a big deal to handle appointments like that.  It actually is.  Just like it would be if I was in the office and I had to try to manage some kind of regular life thing.  So I've gotten to the point where I either take leave from work or ask my husband to take leave.

When I woke up on Wednesday, I could tell that my body was just about done.  I had never gotten any days to really relax and not have extra obligations after Christmas and my body was about to remind me that I needed to.  I had a nice back spasm going and a migraine coming on.  I was also flat-out exhausted.  I hadn't been sleeping well, and everything was starting to catch up to me.  I wanted nothing more than to snuggle up in bed with some good TV show going and doze for the rest of the day.  It finally occurred to me that I should be able to do just that, at least until 1.  So I sent an email to my boss telling her I was taking the day off.  I didn't have any meetings scheduled or deadlines to meet, so I wouldn't be leaving anyone hanging.  

Then I told my husband my plan.  He agreed that it sounded great and since I was just going to be resting, I could take the first turn on the new washing machine and wash the loads I wanted to wash and he could do his laundry in the afternoon while I was carting Gemma all over the state.  Because doing laundry and resting are totally the same thing.

My first reaction was to picture myself burying his body in the woods behind our house.  But there has been a lot of rain and the terrain is hilly, so maybe there would be too much run-off that would expose the body and I should go through the extra trouble of burying it out at our acreage, where everything is flat and the body would be less likely to be disturbed...(I am convinced that no jury of my peers - peers being stressed out and exhausted wives and mothers who have just managed to survive almost 9 months of a pandemic and Christmas - would convict me.)

On second thought, there really was no way around it.  We had piles of laundry accumulating everywhere and there was no way I could trust my husband to wash my clothes.  He does his clothes and things like towels and bedding just fine, but I had three loads that I really needed to handle myself.  Also, we've had a front-loading machine our whole married life and our new machine was a top-loading machine with significantly more advanced features than our old one.  Someone was going to need to read the manual and advise my husband on how to use the machine and my daughter doesn't know all the words yet.  

I'm pleased to say that the washing machine arrived and was hooked up with no problems by 8 am, so I spent Wednesday morning learning how to use it and admiring its features.  I also taught my husband and daughter how to use it.  (Gemma blessedly loves doing her own laundry, so I knew teaching her was well worth the effort.)

Then after lunch, Gemma and I headed out to visit Mini.  If we lived in a normal place, there would be a road that would take us directly from our house to the barn.  Alas, we live in Virginia, where all the roads are based on animal trails.  And not normal animals.  Animals that are directionally-challenged and have no concept of how to most efficiently get from point A to point B.  And so began the hour and a half extravaganza of 257 turns.  We would go for 9 miles on one road and then 3 miles on another road and then half a mile on another road and then 4 miles on another road and then 2 miles on another road...You get the idea.  It was absolutely nuts.  Gemma started to get car sick because of all the twisting roads and turns.  I vowed to never do the drive again, and I spent a lot of time cursing the situation I was in while the pain pulsed in my right eye from my burgeoning migraine.

We finally made it to the address I'd been given.  There was no barn sign, but the address looked right and the entrance fit the description I had.  So we turned on to the driveway, which was paved.  And we drove and drove and drove and drove.  I think it was about a mile before we saw a couple of buildings.  But they looked like storage buildings, not barns.  So we kept going.  Finally I saw some horse fencing, an indoor arena, and a barn.  Also the Potomac River.  A lot of the Potomac River.

I came to learn that Mini now lives on some of the most expensive real estate in the state of Virginia.  The estate is something like 1,000 acres with a ton of frontage along the Potomac River.  And not crappy, rocky frontage either.  Nice, sand beachy frontage.  I caught a glimpse of the main house (there are others) and I'm pretty sure about 20 of my houses could fit inside it.

The details of the property and Mini's owner's arrangement are private, but suffice it to say that I was reassured that Mini would have a very nice home and the owner had clearly made plans to give her the best care possible.  I can't tell you how much of a weight that lifted off of me.  A huge part of my stress had been worrying that Mini would not have the care she needed, and I realized that was not going to be the case.

Gemma had a great time riding Mini and playing with the owner's young daughter.  We started out in the indoor arena, which has that gorgeous fiber-based dustless footing, and then rode around some of the property by the barn with a view of the Potomac.

Heading out from the indoor arena

Testing the outdoor arena

Exploring

Enjoying the beautiful afternoon sun

Heading back to the barn

It was actually a really fun afternoon.  It was so quiet out at the farm, and Mini's owner and I talked about the difference between the activity level here and back at the farm where I keep Donut.  She had boarded there for over 10 years and I've been there for over 7 years.  We discussed the changes we've seen, and a big one is how much activity there is now.  The boarders used to be older and many of them didn't ride.  There was always some kind of lesson program, but it used to be much smaller.  Now it is pretty big, with lots of young kids and teenagers and more horses.  That really affects the energy level at the barn.  And it finally occurred to me how much that energy level was impacting me.

I'm sure last Saturday's post gave some pretty good indications of how I was feeling about some of the drama at the barn, and that level of drama has been pretty uncommon until the past year or so.  I realized that I was probably overreacting to some things simply because there was so much going on.  While I used to appreciate the opportunity for interacting with actual live human beings at the start of the pandemic, that constant interaction was wearing thin for me now.  I spend a lot of time aggravated because I either don't get to work with Donut at all or when I do work with her, I'm constantly interrupted (and not by just my own child).

Don't get me wrong.  I like all the people I board with.  They are, for the most part, genuinely good people.  But the timing, frequency, and length of the interactions has gotten to the point that they are maybe not doing me as much good anymore.  And it wasn't until I was out in the quiet stillness of Mini's new home that I could finally see that.  So it turns out that the hour and a half of twisting, turning roads was worth a whole lot for me to come to that realization.  I don't know if I would have figured it out otherwise.

I realized that I needed to do some thinking about how to address the interactions.  But a couple of things happened later that night that helped.  When Gemma and I got to the barn, it was later than it normally would have been.  But there were still people.  I talked to three people over the course of 15 minutes before I even laid eyes on my horse, who was already in her stall eating.  The first of those three people was the owner of the horse I'd hauled to the hospital the previous week.  She thanked me profusely for taking her horse and explained the circumstances of why she wasn't there and what was going on in her life.  And that allowed me to let go of the irritation I'd felt about that situation.

Another person chatted with me about her older horse who I'd been worried about because she is clearly near the end of her life.  And as we talked, I realized she was trying her best to do right by that horse.  We probably had different philosophies about what the right thing was, but that didn't make the horse's owner's perspective less valid or less right.  It was just different.  And I was able to let go of my worry about that situation.

One thing that I have tried to do a lot of as I've gotten older is to see things from another person's perspective.  I think I've gotten better at it over the years, but recently, I've been having trouble doing that.  I knew that I was having trouble, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it.  Well, apparently having a little quiet time with a special pony did the trick.  (Or maybe money really can buy happiness!  Being on all the expensive, quiet waterfront property did something good for my soul - lol!) Because all of a sudden, I was able to start seeing other perspectives again and let go of my worry about situations that weren't my responsibility or in my control anyway.

So by the time I made it to Donut, I was starting to feel a bit better.  I gave her the first dose of the Panacur PowerPac dewormer.  She's been having intermittent loose stools and diarrhea for the past couple of months, and I've been working my way through a list of most likely causes.  I was at the point on my list where I wanted to treat for roundworms (ascarids).  I had done a 3-dose schedule of ivermectin back in September, but I had learned that young horses sometimes have trouble fighting off all the parasites and that it is a good idea to treat them as if they have a significant worm load until they are 2 years old or so.  I had also discovered that roundworms have developed a resistance to ivermectin, and that the Panacur PowerPac is more effective.  So I decided to treat her for the roundworms to see if that resolved the loose stools.

Then I mixed up her beet pulp mash with her supplements and gave it to her and I was surprised to see that she didn't dig right in to it.  I wondered if maybe the dewormer I'd given had made her not want to eat.  I sprinkled some of her grain on top of the mash, and then she started eating, although not with quite the same gusto I'm used to seeing.  She did finish all of her food, though, so I took her out for a few minutes of hand-grazing (we still have green grass!) and then turned her out before heading home for the night.

For the last day of the year, I was scheduled to work a full day.  That kind of sucked (normally I work part-time, but I work one full day a week to get Mondays off), but I had stuff to do, especially since I'd taken the previous day off.  I wasn't super motivated, but I forced myself to work on my projects.  By mid-afternoon, I was wondering if I was going to be able to stay awake long enough to get out to the barn, and I was fantasizing about going to bed at 7 pm.  (I know, my life is just too exciting - lol!)

Somehow I made it through the day, and then Gemma and I headed out to the barn for what I hoped would be a quick check on Donut.  When we got there, a vet's truck was parked in front of the barn.  As I walked in, I saw who the vet was there for.  It was a horse that was getting a little older (late teens) and had an assortment of minor issues, so it didn't occur to me that it was a big deal at first.  And then I saw the owner's face.  I asked what was on.  She said he was colicking.

You guys, that is the third colic in less than two weeks.  In fact, this horse is in the same herd as the horse that I took to the hospital last week.  Not good.

I decided to check on Donut while the vet finished her exam of the colicking horse.  I gave Donut her second dose of the Panacur PowerPac and then mixed up her mash.  She took one look at it and went to the corner of her stall.  I think my heart stopped beating for a second.  Could she be colicking too?  What was going on?  I went in the stall with Donut and it was clear she wasn't herself.  Normally she is a bit of a pocket pony and she is constantly sticking things in her mouth.  My hat, her brushes, my coat, the edge of a bucket.  She explores the world with her mouth.  And she was doing none of that.  In fact, she was sort of acting like a normal horse, and for about 1 second, I enjoyed that.  And then I snapped myself out of my reverie and continued to evaluate her condition.  Lack of appetite, although it looked like she had eaten almost all of her hay and her grain meal.  Lethargy.  What else?  I checked her temperature.  When the thermometer hit 101.6, I pulled it out and headed over to the vet.  Donut's temperature is always 100 degrees.  I was scared.

I asked the vet if she check Donut too once she had completed her exam.  As it turned out, her assistant was actually a vet too, but recently graduated and doing an internship.  So she was able to get started with Donut's vital signs.  The good news was that her gut sounds were OK.  The bad news was that her lung sounds were not.  The vet came over then and listened to, and she agreed that Donut's lungs didn't sound normal and she wanted to do a rebreathing test.  I learned about the rebreathing test after taking care of Mini, who has heaves (more correctly known as equine asthma now).  The vet sticks a bag over the horse's nose and basically tries to suffocate it so she can hear what the horse sounds like when it takes a really deep breath once the bag is taken off the nose.  I can't watch it - the test horrifies me.  The horses don't seem to be all that fussed about it though.

So I went over to the colicking horse's owner to get an update.  The horse definitely did not look that great, but also not as bad as I'd seen.  The current status was that the owner was on the fence about whether to take him to the hospital or not.  The vet had said watching him through the night at the barn was an option, but taking him to the hospital would not be a bad idea.

Then I checked in with the vet about Donut.  The vet diagnosed her with a mild respiratory infection.  (Remember how I thought Donut was breathing hard a couple of days ago?  Well, it probably wasn't the mud or my imagination.)  I was so relieved it wasn't colic, I almost fell down.  The vet recommended taking a blood sample to see if we could get a sense of how serious the infection was.  I agreed.  I'd been planning to call the vet the following week to set up an appointment to run a CBC anyway as part of my attempt to figure out what was going on with Donut's intermittent diarrhea.  The vet also wasn't sure whether the infection was viral or bacterial, so she left me a bottle of SMZ to start treating with antibiotics based on how Donut seemed to be doing over the next couple of days.  If she seemed to be fighting the infection off on her own, then the antibiotics probably weren't appropriate, especially given her diarrhea.  On the other hand, if she took a turn for the worse, I wouldn't have to wait on a holiday weekend to start treating her.  The vet also suggested I start Donut on a probiotic, partly because of the diarrhea and partly because it could help if we needed to start her on antibiotics.  As it happened, I already had an appropriate supplement sitting in my living room, because probiotics/prebiotics were next on my list of things to try if the dewormer didn't seem to help.  So I was all ready to go on that front. 

I checked in with the barn owner then to let her know what was going on with Donut and find out if she wanted me to keep Donut in her stall as a way of isolating her since we didn't know if the infection was viral.  Although, by that point, the other horses in the herd had already been exposed and the vet said that there probably wasn't much point in trying to isolate.  (Plus, remember Mini's lethargy from a few days ago?  Also, she didn't come out of her wheezing as fast as she normally does once she gets her medication.  I'm betting she had a minor infection too.  I'm kicking myself for not taking her temperature back then, but I made a mental note to send a message to her owner to let her know about the possible infection as soon as I had a chance.)  The barn owner said it would be fine to turn Donut back out, but before I did that, I had something I had to do.

Remember that colicking horse?  Yeah, the owner decided she wanted to take him to the hospital.  She had her truck at the barn, but her trailer was back home and hadn't been used for so long that she wasn't sure it was safe to be on the road.  Also, it was dark and she was worried and didn't feel comfortable driving.  So I offered to haul him.  I always drive my truck out to the barn, so I am ready to take Donut to the hospital if I need to, and that meant I could be ready to go in a few minutes.  

It was my first time hooking up the trailer in the dark with this particular truck.  (I got a new one back in April, but haven't had the opportunity to haul much since then.)  Because I wasn't hauling much, I kept a hitch cover on instead of the actual ball mount to prevent weathering and also to keep me from running into the hitch with my shin.  So I was trying to unlock my hitch cover and get the ridiculously heavy two-ball mount that I decided I had to have into the receiver in the dark.  After what felt like an hour, I finally had the trailer hooked up and ready to go, and I pulled up to the barn.

The horse loaded fine, although he was a little anxious.  His owner and her husband, plus me and my daughter all piled in the truck and we drove to the hospital.  Thankfully, we were going to the closest one, so it only took about half an hour.  The owner couldn't stay with him because of COVID restrictions, so I took the owner and her husband back to the barn.  I should note that if you are in a stressful situation, such as the deteriorating health of the horse you love more than life itself, riding with an 8-year-old who hasn't had any dinner is maybe not your best strategy.  You might be better off following in your own vehicle.  Otherwise you might be forced to endure fits of giggles and conversations about poop.  I'm just sayin'.

The hospital called while we were en route back to the barn.  They reported a distended colon but they weren't sure about whether there was an impaction yet.  More time was needed.  Surgery was an option at what sounded like a staggering price, but they weren't recommending it just yet.  They wanted to see if fluids and supportive care could help first.

I dropped off the owner and her husband at the barn and then drove my trailer back to the trailer parking section (which felt like it was in the middle of nowhere in the dark) and unhooked the trailer.  I left the hitch on my truck because I had already said I'd pick the horse up once he was ready to come home.  (It honestly never occurred to me that he wouldn't come back.  The other two horses that colicked were doing fine, even the one where the owner waited three days to get medical care.)

Then I checked on Donut, who was just hanging out in her stall waiting for me.  (One of the things I love about Donut is how she never stresses about being in her stall, even if it isn't the normal time for her to be in her stall.)  I let her eat some grass and then turned her out.

I called one of my friends on the drive home because I had to tell somebody about all the drama.  While I was talking to her, the vet called back with Donut's bloodwork results.  (Using a vet clinic that has its own hospital has its benefits!).  Her bloodwork was actually pretty normal, including the overall white blood cell count, indicating that whatever infection she had was probably not serious.  She did note two levels that were slightly elevated.  One was a protein marker for inflammation, which was very slightly elevated.  That wasn't unexpected, given the mild infection.  The other level was a type of white blood cell.  (I didn't know there types of white blood cells, did you?)  This type of blood cell was an indicator for allergies or parasites and it was very slightly elevated.  So my thoughts about deworming Donut may have been on the mark.  I don't even want to talk about the potential allergy issue.  I don't think that is a problem, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.  The vet said she'd call me the next day to check on Donut and we left it at that.

My husband had made dinner, expecting us home much earlier in the evening, and he thoughtfully warmed it up for us when we got home.  Gemma and I were starving by then, because it was after 9 pm.  My plan to go to bed at 7 pm was firmly squashed.

I ate and then spent some time updating various relevant people on the events of the evening, including sending a message to Mini's owner letting her know what Donut's symptoms were, so she could double-check Mini the next day.  And I was so worked up from everything that happened, I actually did manage to see the new year in, which is a first for me in quite a few years.

The next day, I headed out to the barn in the morning, so I could check on Donut.  Plus, I wanted to bring her in for the day, because it was supposed to be cold and raining, and I didn't want her out in that while she was trying to recover from an infection.  She seemed to be in good spirits and her temperature was back to normal.  She ate a little beet pulp, but she definitely was not quite back to normal on either the eating or energy front.  The vet called to check on her and I let her know the details.  The vet said to continue to hold off on the antibiotics and to call if her condition worsened over the weekend.

Then I got a text from the colicking horse's owner.  She said his condition was not good, and he was heading into surgery.  About an hour later, I got a message letting me know he didn't survive the surgery.  I don't know for sure why.  I'm sure the details will emerge over time, but it was a really crappy way to start the new year.  And once again I found myself giving Gemma bad news.  While she wasn't necessarily close to this horse, she had helped care for him many times.  She often helps out around the barn by cleaning stalls or bringing horses in, and he was one that she had handled more than once.  Which is kind of impressive because he was a 17 hand Thoroughbred.  Plus she was thinking of the two times we'd hauled horses to the hospital as rescue missions where like the shows she watches, everything turns out to be OK in the end.  But real life doesn't work that way sometimes.  So she spent the afternoon grieving for the loss of another horse.

I really wish that I could have gone to bed at 7 pm on New Year's Eve and awakened to a new year full of promise.  But the reality is that the world doesn't work that way.  There is no magical reset button on January 1.  Both good and bad things continue to happen on their own schedule, without regard for our hopes and dreams and resolutions.  I keep seeing so many people fervently wishing to see the last of 2020 and excited for the start of 2021.  But the calendar year is irrelevant to the universe.  The pandemic is still here.  All of the economic problems associated with it are still here.  And the loved ones that we lost in 2020 aren't going to reappear.  

But there is good too. There are things that would never have happened this past year if it hadn't been for the pandemic, and they helped people.  I know a lot of working moms whose lives are markedly better now than pre-pandemic.  There are families who are closer.  There are opportunities that would never have existed.

And there were good things that happened because bad things happened.  I have Donut because I lost Nimo.  Donut had a place to live, but she didn't have a home until she came to me.  That matters very much for her, and if Nimo's death could serve some kind of higher purpose, there is nothing better than giving another horse a home.  And I have a new perspective formed out of the perspective that I lost for awhile.

I don't expect 2021 to be any less of a challenge than 2020 was.  Some of the challenges may be different, but they will still be there.  My barn may have a serious problem - three horses colicking in less than two weeks warrants some investigation.  Which has already been started, but who knows where it will go.  Donut still isn't out of the woods with her infection, and I still need to figure out why she is having diarrhea.  Gemma lost the pony she was leasing, and we'll have to work something else out for her.  Actually, I know exactly what the solution is, which is buying a horse for her, but my husband is not convinced.  So I have a challenge there.  And there are probably some things that aren't horse related (like how many more guppies can I get?) that will come up, just like every year.

Regardless, I am hoping that all of you find your way through the quagmire that is life for another year and that I will see you on the other side!