The Finleys

I really don’t think that normal, un-educated in the medical field farmers should be allowed to give shots and such to their animals ….

Friday we decided to take Jaguar to the vet and have him gelded … After getting him back from the trainers it was pretty obvious that Jag is not a performance horse. He has a very quiet disposition and in fact will make a awesome children’s horse. So off to the vet we decided to go.

Being gelded is a fairly normal procedure usually performed at a early age and still normal for older horses (you just need bigger clamps:) We had noticed that Jag had had a bit of a cold and informed the vet. It wasn’t a big deal she just suggested we perhaps give him a shot of penicillian twice a day for a couple days to ward off any infections etc.

Well Saturday I realized that the penicillian we had in the fridge was expired so Sunday I slipped into town and picked up a new batch. Dan was away at work but I’d given lots of needles before so no sweat.

I am sure we have all realized by now that I am leading up to a not so normal procedure. The vet had said to give him 25cc twice a day which is a fairly large dose. Well I did I inserted the needle no problem and injected the drug. Pulled it out and rubbed the spot and that is when all H!!!! broke loose . He went totally bezerk … started prancing and rearing and falling over and getting up and snorting and falling over some more and basically going balistic … My head is racing … oh my goodness what did I give him … he’s going to die on me … what have I done … what should I do … what can I do …

I honestly expected that he would give a few more jumps and die … It was the one of worst 2 minutes of my life … Well he didn’t die … Thank God for that. It took him about 5 more minutes to settle down and go back to eating … He started licking his lips like he was thirsty so I ran and got him a pail of water. When I came back though he really didn’t want to have anything to do with me … Not that I blamed him. But I left the water and then went to call the vet … She’s very good and knows how to handle people as well as animals.. I find out that since this was Jag’s 3rd shot in the last little while that it most likely wasn’t an allergic reation but it could be so best not give him any more penicillian. What she thinks happened is that I got into the blood stream and fed him intervenously. The penicillian is to be shaken and mixed well before injected and I may not have mixed it properly and he got a little bit more of part A than part B. But I am not a vet … I do not know if I stopped mixing it early … I am not sure if I got into his blood stream because their was a little blood when I pulled the needle out but not a lot … All I know is that I never want to go through that experience twice.

I went back out to Jag and I hung around him for quite a bit afterwards because I wanted to pet him and hopefully win back some of his love … He would allow me to touch his nose but he was constantly trying to back away from me … He knows that I did it too him and I don’t think he understands that I didn’t know that he would get an reation from what I did.

Anyway just a typical day in our LIfe in Spedden

Wow … We have had such nice weather … A whole 3 days of it. Yesterday I stayed home from work to get caught up on my books ( so I guess I stayed home to work) and took a stroll outside. When we moved here in November there was no snow on the ground but there was no promise of green things to come. Yesterday the trees were getting small buds on some of them … I could look and see my new garden area and try to figure out what perennials would be coming up. Dan was with me at the time and we guessed at a lot of them. So as soon as the florwers start to bloom Guess what I can show you pictures.

Alex, the dog that came to the place, is letting me pet him more and more but after 5 months Dan has still not been able to touch him. I told him all he had to do was feed him everyday and he’d turn real quick. When we moved here we brought home 3 barn cats … surprise the only place they don’t stay is in the barn!!! Well the mama cat broke her leg somehow so we decided to put a splint on her … I’m still not sure why she bit me … I was only holding her Dan was the one trying to bandage her up. Anyway we got her all pretty … used some nice pretty blue vet wrap and were quite proud of our veterinairian skills … Only things is 1/2 hour later we noticed the pretty blue bandage on the ground and no cat to be found. …

Otherthan that we are hoping to go riding soon … I’m a little nervous about that as we havn’t had time to ride our horses last winter so they could be a little skittish. Cinnamon in perfect appaloosa tradition who at 5 years of age was a nice dark brown with spotted blanket decided this year she wanted to go a light almost white with spots so I guess it will be just like riding a new horse

Talk to you later