Jack, Jack, Jack.

What to do with Jack.  This morning he changed.  He was not himself and couldn’t settle.  Obviously ancient, he sleeps all day.

I returned from my weekly flute lesson having decided to make The Decision.  I fed the horses and while Taktur was mucking around with his food, I put Jack on his lead, fitted his manly coat and off we went for the daily walk.

It didn’t take long for me to see Jack was not happy.  He was existing and not enjoying life.  That is not what I want for him.  Time to call it a day.  So, having discussed it with my OH, I phoned the vet and booked him in at “the back of 4” (10 minutes past four, give or take – Shetland-speak).

Then my OH was talking to Jack and found smelly goo coming out of his neck.  Upon investigation there, unbeknownst to us, was a revolting abscess.  I cut the fur back, washed the wound in dilute iodine, had a good squeeze and phoned the vet to put off the putting to sleep.

A slug of Rescue Remedy all round, plus a large dose of antibiotics I just happened to have and Jack seemed settled and happier.

OH then found two more holes – how had we missed these?  We investigated and decided that this needed to all be looked at by the vet.  Jack’s neck was solid, swollen with pus/blood and obviously painful.

So, I phoned the vet back (3rd time) and explained that we wanted our original appointment back and would be coming in with Jack now with his abscess.  I explained what treatment we had given to date and OH went off with Jack in the car.  I did give him the dreaded option if necessary.  My priority is Jack lives and enjoys life for Jack and not for us.

I spent the next hour watching the front door.  They came back.  Jack was shaved and the vet had pretty much done what we had.

Jack is still not himself – so blind, so deaf and still existing.

I am not sure we have done the right thing.  I will give him 24 hours.  If there is no improvement in his head, i.e. he starts to enjoy life again, then we will think again and go back to Plan A.

Healing vibes please for my little Jack(et Potato) though I will admit I think I am kidding myself.

I looked out of my bedroom window this morning and there were no horses.  My vista covers 98% of the field I put the horses in yesterday.  They had vanished.  Not a horse to be seen. 

Then I noticed something.  The gate to the next field (only about 30 acres small) was open – PANIC!

As I had two NHS appointments today, one in Lerwick and one at my local Health Centre, I did not really have enough time to go traipsing around looking for hidden horses.

Luckily the Gods smiled.  Aha!  I found them snoring behind the shed, the only blind spot.

Taktur was removed and taken to his food and I left the lads to get on with their morning snooze.

Sadly once up, they all had other ideas.  Begging.  This is the garden gate.  So I set BeAnne onto them.  I do not tolerate standing by fences trying to look thin.  They are not convincing.

Fat chance of food with the emphasis on the word FAT!

Taktur was eating his Handsome Prince food.  The tyre is to stop him putting his foot in it and tipping the world’s most expensive horse feed all over the place (that is boring and very irritating).

Bjørn, his trainer, has also asked that Taktur has a haynet.  So I left him with his tied up on the shed door.  He ate about half of it and then wandered off unenthusiastically.

I found him asleep outside my front door.  I give up – I can’t force him to eat or put on weight.  I am holding out for the spring grass.

Zzzzzzz

While the bebbies had a duvet day, Jo and I :-

• Moved a bale of silage up to the mares’ field
• Made sure everyone had their fair share
• Dished out wormer in some hard feed to Andy, Charlie and Hammy while making sure Indy didn’t have any, as he was wormed with our last bit of wormer a few weeks’ back.
• Removed a bucket from Indy’s whiskers (how?), collected up the finished buckets and told Indy he was speshul.
• Mucked out three stables and bebbies shed.
• Fed the bebbies their Sunday lunch – they said thank you very much, ate it all up and nodded off for their Sunday afternoon snooze.
• Had a cup of tea and a cheese sarnie.

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Then I drove home and luckily found Taktur lurking around the garden gate asking to be fed.  So I fashioned a rough head collar from some sash window cord that I found and led him through the garden (sssh, don’t tell OH.  It is the quickest non-muddiest route) to feed him his grub.  A small hoover-type dog helped too.

I put out Taktur’s haynet which takes about 4 hours for him to finish.  Taktur is the slowest eater ever and so I removed hoover-type dog who is a fast eater, funnily enough.

When I find Taktur by the front door, I will give him a carrot and quickly/silently nip back through the garden to let him out into his field!

A day of shite – Wind = gusting 50mph with horizontal rain.  Temp is cold = Icelandic gansey on plus the fire is lit in the sitting room.  I ran outside before it started shitting down and threw everyone their food (fatties get haynets full of straw) and Taktur got his hard feed and a real haynet.  I will go back later, when the rain has stopped, and collect everything back up and let Taktur back out into the big field with the others.

So, of course, no one else wants to go out, ever.  They are all glued to their beds.

(especially Jack)

I can’t say I blame them. I am feeling a bit wibbly about various future hospital visits and particularly uninspired by today.

One thing I did do, however, was to bite the bullet, pick up Wu (not a decision I makes lightly unless I have a hankering for hospital food) and put him in the sitting room with everyone else.  I wanted to show him that no one was going to chase him.  I gave Loki “The Look” (my girls will know what that is) and he was as good as gold.  Wu had to accept that no one wanted to eat him anymore.

Wu did grudgingly admit that he was still alive and he did stay for a little while which is a huge improvement.  I will win this battle eventually.  We just need to keep telling him (and Loki).

Another thing I did was to design myself a stable.  I keep being told (read nagged) that I need one and so I am looking into the possibility, logistics and what I actually want or need.  I found a superb piece of free software called Sweet Home 3D (Mac, Win-doze, etc) and had a good play with it.  I don’t think I quite mastered some of its finer features, but I created the general gist.

There is a thing going round Facebook called #NeighNominations.  Unbeknownst to me, I was NeighNominated.

The gist is (I think) that, once nominated, you put up a photo of your favourite horse that has taught you so much or you love(d) more than life itself, write a bit of blurb and then you NeighNominated three more people who have 24 hours in which to put up their photo of their favourite horse, yada, yada…….. and so onwards the chain goes.

I am not a fan of chain stuff but this was a nice idea and so I thought I would participate.

Feeling particularly wafty and generous about Haakon, I put up a favourite photo of mine that Daisy took where we look young and in love.  (It was taken quite a few years back, I might add)

Everyone duly oooh-ed and ahhhh-ed and I felt like a fraud.  Neither of us look like that anymore.  So phone camera in hand, I decided to catch my old knacker and take a more realistic photo of us together.

The Results (and these are the best of a very bad bunch)

Rejected – me = triple chin, Haakon = mad eyes, ears back, uncooperative.

Rejected – Me = slightly less triple chins, Haakon now looks bored and half asleep.

Rejected – too blurry and we look like we are having a discussion about this posing business (we are)

Well, vaguely ok, but Haakon hardly looks like he has any relationship with me.  More like his hay net (he’d probably nominate that)

BeAnne gets in on the act.  I look “wonky”.  She looks like a parrot.

Rejected – Blurred parrot and blurred me and wrong animal anyway.

Rejected – my neck looks like a turtle and BeAnne looks like she loathes me and is there under duress.

Another bored parrot shot

Last one after a ride.  Oh gosh, we all look awful now.  My chins are contained by a helmet strap too.

I have totally given up at this stage.   The pair of them can nominate each other.