Things No One Told Me, 2

I have another item to add to the “things no one told me” list when it comes to running a farm. I knew that horses loved to get sick or injured, and I knew that they all have a self destruct button that they like to push from time to time. What no one told me is that all want to get sick or injured at the same time. About once a year we seem to hit one of these periods where all of the horses realize “hey, I’ve only seen the vet for routine vaccinations the last couple of years, time to change that, stat.”

So far this week we are having a 100% success rate at seeing a vet. We’ve seen a vet at the farm or at the clinic every day this week. Every. single. day. Last week was almost as bad. When I’m not face to face with a vet either at the farm or the clinic I’m talking to a vet on the phone, or texting with a vet. If one didn’t know me well one could look at all of the recent phone calls and text messages on my phone and wonder if I was involved in an inappropriate relationship. I promise I’m not, I just live with a bunch of horses that want to make sure their vet’s kids have a fully funded college tuition fund.

We are running the gamut of veterinary needs. We’ve had a puncture wound, a swollen eye, a horse exhibiting neurological symptoms, a horse with a fat leg, one horse had a partial phallectomy due to squamous cell carcinoma on his penis, and of the grey horses had to have a melanoma removed from his eye . . I could keep going. I can also add that last item to the list of things I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago – that horses can get melanomas in their eyes. I’ve seen them on tails, sheaths, legs, chests . . . but I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that they could get them in their eye.

I find all of these things stressful. The vast majority of the time most issues can be addressed in a reasonable manner. However I’ve been around the block enough times over the last decade that I know all too well that you can never predict when something that appears to be perfectly treatable will blow up into a huge deal. So it would be an understatement to say that I don’t like it when I have to see a vet every day.

My meds list is much longer than I would like at the moment. However I’m grateful that all of our horses come with owners that allow us to handle these things. As Jason and I were driving back to the farm this afternoon – from the vet clinic of course – I took a few minutes to scroll Facebook on my phone. Humans of New York is currently doing a series of posts about some of the Syrian refugees who have been waiting for 2 to 3 years for permission to come live in the United States.

Reading their stories are heartbreaking. I read some of them to Jason and we both teared up thinking about the horrors these people have lived through. I can’t imagine being 14 years old and carrying my mom’s body parts out of my just bombed house. So I’m grateful for my first world problems and first world stresses and horse owners that care about their horses. But I still wish all of our residents would kindly put the vet visits on hold, or at least space them out some. If we have to see the vet let’s try not to cram all of the visits into the same week, or even the same month, ok?

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This picture should be captioned “life is hard.” Murphy, Sam, Lighty, Mick and Happy napping; Blu, Wasabi, B-Rad, Sebastian and Johnny upright.