All Better

Zoe's eye is all better.  I can't find the place where she poked it.  It took about 1 week.

Here I could still see the ulcer and the pupil was still dilated but getting better.    

All better...where's the food mom?!?

Lupine and "OMG the water's going to eat me"

 Today it was a slow canal trail ride.  I felt like I was riding Zoe when she was 5 years old and just getting used to the canal trail.  At that time she was scared of the rocks, today it was the water.  The water was lapping the edge of the trail.  For the first half of the canal - every time we went around a curve I could feel her shudder underneath me.  "Just look where you want to go" I kept telling her.  She probably thought I was nuts asking her to keep going.  At one point the water splashed her hind legs and she crow hopped forwards.  Jim asked if I wanted Skippy to go first but I said no.  I wanted her to get more experience with the trail like this.  So I kept her in front the whole time.  But we hardly did any trotting, mostly walking.  I wasn't sure how she would be at a trot if she was so nervous at a walk.  So we were slow, like I said this ride reminded me of Zoe at 5 years old.  So a walk meant she had to deal with the water even longer.  I got to thinking that the trail isn't like this very often.  Sure I could take her down here alot when the water is close to the trail but that would be for a few weeks.  Then the trail will be covered and unusable for 9+ months-then when it cleared up we would start the whole process over again.  Not sure it's worth it.  So maybe I don't need to take her down to Folsom Lake when it's like this.  Maybe to trailer to other places and get more exposure to water that "moves" would be helpful and a little more consistent.  I guess I'll have to work on that.  We are good at other things but "moving" water apparently isn't one of them.

Anyway it was nice down there because the lupine was beautiful.  So it wasn't so bad doing the canal at a walk because at every turn there was a carpet of purple.  These pictures don't do it justice but here they are...

Corneal ulcer

This morning I was going to ride my horse but plans changed.  She met me at the gate to her paddock, head down-almost as if to say "My eye hurts".  Her left eye was swollen shut and tearing.  Hmmmm...no ride today. It was just getting light outside so we went into the barn to see better.  But the only thing I could see was the outside of her eye.  She would let me touch it but wouldn't let me open it.  The outside seemed to be ok, everything in one piece.  So it must be something inside.  Her conjuctiva was red and swollen-angry looking.  But I was unable to see her eyeball.  It wouldn't have helped anyway because I lack the proper tools to look into an eye.  The only thing I was hoping not to find was a foreign object in her eye and I was unable to get that far.  So the only thing to do was to call the vet.  I did wait until they opened and got a 1pm appointment.  We had some time till the vet opened so she got a good grooming.  After that the only thing to do was put a fly mask on her and put her back into her pasture.  She was acting normal otherwise.  I was thinking that she scratched it somehow trying to get to the grass on the other side of the fence.

Before the vet came

Before the vet came 

Dr S came from where I work.  She was great with Zoe and Zoe let her examine her eye without any sedation.  The outside was fine, the conjunctiva was irritated and Zoe didn't mind the opthamlascope.  Dr S stained her eye and we could see a corneal ulcer-a poke in her eye.  A bit worse than a scratch but at least she didn't poke into the globe of the eye.  Dr S showed me the ulcer.  I learned what a corneal ulcer looks like after the eye has been stained.  A scratch will show up as a line, an ulcer like Zoe's will show up as a dot, a puncture into the globe would show up as a donut shape.  Dr S said that she should heal up just fine.  She also checked inside the upper and lower eye lids for any foreign objects.  This was interesting.  Dr S put a glob of sterile lube on her finger and literally stuck her finger into the eye socket and felt around-and Zoe let her do it-she did raise her head a bit but didn't pull away.  Then she rinsed out the eye with sterile saline.  Zoe seemed to mind this the most, raising her head to try and get away, but didn't pull back.  Zoe hates it when I give her a bath and sprinkle her face with the hose.  This probably felt like that.  Triple antibiotic eye ointment in the eye twice a day for a week, 750 lb dose of banamine once a day for 3 days, a fly mask on and we should be fine.   She said eyes heal quickly and showed me a neat trick for getting the ointment into Zoe's eye.  We aren't sure how she did this.  There are no wires/nails poking out on her fencing or in and around her feeder.  It could have been just a poke from some hay too.  Dr S said I could ride her as long as she was comfortable and could see.  So we will see what she looks like on Sunday-I might be able to ride her.  A while back Zoe tore her bottom eye lid on the head of a nail sticking out of the barn wall-it was a very small tear and I remember how fast that healed up.  So without any complications this should heal up quickly too.

After the vet came

After the vet came

Turkeys and other riders

Yesterday's ride was full of turkeys.  It is mating season and the turkeys are everywhere.  The toms are out to impress the hens with their feathers spread out and rattling.  Seem to me like the hens usually ignore the toms however they must decide to like a tom since we have soooo many turkeys around.  Soon we will have little turkeys following their moms all over the place.

We found turkeys at almost every turn we took in the forest.  Zoe is getting used to them.  I've heard stories of some of the toms being aggressive towards the horses but have never experience this-and never hope to.  I remember a few years ago I was riding Skippy, came around a corner and I stopped.  I heard a rattling sound on the other side of a large rock.  I wanted to go past the rock to get home otherwise it would have been a long ride home to turn around and go back the way I came.  I discovered that it was a tom turkey trying to impress a hen.  Those toms can sure make those feathers rattle.  It almost sounded like a rattlesnake!

We met 2 riders on our way back.  They were also riding back towards Lomida.  I didn't want to follow them the whole time so after following them for some distance, I took a different trail that lead in the home direction.  I was curious...would Zoe do ok?  It was like we were doing a separation game.  Only we didn't really know these horses.  We met up with them again, this time passing each other on the same trail.  We continued on towards home and they "appeared" to be leaving us.  This was a different kind of separation.  We kept meeting them but eventually left them to go home by ourselves.  This was what I was curious about...would Zoe do ok?  Her ears told me she was paying attention to where the other horses were, her feet were moving at a steady pace-she didn't speed up to find them or to get home faster.  We did come around a corner and saw some horses in a pasture grazing and I guess she couldn't help it...she called out.  But the pasture horses didn't know her and the 2 other horses were too far away now to answer, so she didn't get any call backs.  We kept moving towards home and to keep her mind busy I asked her to sidepass right and left as we traveled down the wider trails towards home.  She did ok, not super calm but she worked thru it and we got home just fine.  

Skippy and Zoe at the vet

So today was the day to take care of Skippy's cavities.  We last had her teeth checked and done on 3/1/13 - see blog on that day to catch up with this blog - http://a-view-between-the-ears.blogspot.com/2013/03/vaccinationteeth-visit.html  So we had to be at the vet at 8am.  It didn't help that I put my back out the day before.  My husband, Jim, was great.  He did all the leg work to make this work.  I could only be an "observer".  We took both Skippy and Zoe to the vet.  Maybe not the best choice in retrospect, but at the time seemed like the thing to do.  We knew Skippy would be really nervous at the vet and would appreciate the "support" of a friend.  And we needed another horse in our 3 horse trailer to even out the load.  So we ended up with Skippy in the stocks getting her teeth done and Zoe was on her lead next to her in the treatment room.  Jim and I took turns holding Zoe.  I did most of my holding sitting down.

Dr P was our equine dentist.  In my previous blog I mentioned that Skippy's #9's needed to be filled.  But after super cleaning her teeth and taking xrays it was determined that her #8 on the left side was more critical.  The #9's could wait (they were in Stage 1) but the hole in that #8 was in stage 2-entering the enamel of the tooth.  There are 4 stages, #4 being the worst.  Stage 3 enters the pulp of the tooth.  Stage 4 is a fracture of the tooth.  So we were told we could wait and monitor it or fill it today.  Dr P said he could not tell how deep the hole was until he started drilling.  We decided to have it filled today.
It turned out the the hole was 3/4" deep-almost to Stage 3.  I also learned that horses teeth continue to erupt as they age,  I thought the term was they continued to grow.  So Skippy's cavity would be filled, her tooth would continue to erupt, her teeth would continue to be floated every year and the filling would eventually be filed off when her teeth were floated.  The cavity would grow out.  The cavity would cease to grow thru all the enamel, into the pulp and fracture the tooth.  This is the hope.  The tooth is made of stronger stuff than the filling.  Just like in human dentistry a filling can have problems.  They can crack and need to be replaced, or just bother the horse for a few days, or nothing can happen.  So we are hoping for nothing to happen.  He says most horses usually have no problems.  To help relieve the pressure on that tooth he floated it up a bit.  Skippy has a wave mouth.  The top wave curve fits into the bottom wave curve.  A float attempts to make all surfaces flat for grinding food but for a wave mouth there is always some wave left afterwards.  Anyway Dr P flattened her wave up on the #8 so now the #8 on top doesn't quite meet the #8 on the bottom.  This will alleviate some of the pressure on the filling but will also cause some quidding with her food.  Dr P said this problem should be very slight and to keep an eye on her weight to make sure she doesn't start loosing weight.  He doesn't think it will be a problem.   She got some banamine to help with the discomfort from today's proceedure and we were done.  The whole process took 2 hours.

In the meantime Zoe was standing around in the treatment room next to Skippy.  Jim had her at first, then I had her while the drilling and filling was being done.  Zoe reminded us of a dog.  She wanted to investigate things, mouth things, try to eat the floor, interested in all the people walking in and out of the room.  She didn't spook at anything, didn't want to run out of the room and had good manners.  The only thing she did sometimes was paw at the ground but I quickly got on her case about that and she stopped.  I think she was hungry because we left the barn before the horses were fed.  We fed them in the trailer and that was it until we got home.  And even at home Skippy had to wait a bit to make sure the sedation was worn off so she wouldn't choke on her food.

The trip home was uneventful.  Back at the barn Jim did my horse chores for me.  We fed Zoe, tied Skippy up 'cause she wasn't allowed to eat yet.  Eventually Skippy could eat so we put her back.  I bet she will be hungry at dinner time.

Still sleepy...yawn

Back home waking up all the way