Saturday, July 21, 2012

Big Animal -- BIG Expenses!!

Let me preface this with I LOVE my animals.  They are like my kids, since I don't have any.  I have had the two horses, Showby and Remy since they were two years old.  They are now 24 and 21.  I haven't ridden in quite some time, other than just around the corral.  Cowboys and Indians are a thing of the past ... it's hard to find anyone still interested, except for the rodeo and cutting big time.  Talk about pricey ... that past-time is out of my league!!!  That said, I discovered my realtor's daughter loves to ride, especially in the mountains.  That's who I went horse camping with.  YAY!!  So I set off to get my youngest horse back in shape.  It lasted two days when one morning I discovered him limping.  It's usually a kick or bang on the leg, but since he wasn't healing up, I called the Vet to come take a look.
Not really finding anything, she thought it might be an abscess in his rear foot.  The remedy was to soak his foot in epsom salts and iodine every day for a week.  Well let me tell you, it's pretty hard to get a horse to step in a bucket in the first place ... but to hold it there for 15 minutes??  A big chunk of alfalfa hay solved the problem ... he just keep eating while I held his leg.  Only once did I get totally soaked with that smelly solution when he decided to walk off!!

Unfortunately it did not work and he's now worse.  A trip to the Vet's office for x-rays is the next step.  Hmmmm ... I have a great horse trailer but I need new tires.  The original tires are still on the trailer and it is 16 years old.
After airing up the tires (hoping they would stay that way until I got to the tire shop), I drove very slowly on all the back roads.  $589.00 later I had new tires, but the electric brakes didn't seem to be working.  I went directly to Merced Truck and Trailer to have them checked out.  "Just leave it here .. can you back it into that (very very tiny) space there between the fire truck and the school bus??  I can have someone do it for you!"   Are you kidding me??  No one drives my truck and trailer but me!!!  I squeezed it in.  I'm always up for a dare!!!  Another $570.00 to replace the brakes that were totally locked up with rust and I'm set to take the horse for x-rays.  But I'm not done yet.

My boots are as old as the horse trailer, so I went on-line to find another pair just like them.
Okay, so I admitted they were old ... but the only pair I can find on-line says "Vintage" boots!!!  I guess I should be happy it didn't say "Antique" boots.  After hours of looking, I found they don't make them any more.  The one pair of replacement boots I found were $169.00  Hopefully these will last at least 16 years too!!!

At this point I'm a little over $1500 (sounds like an RV tale) and I don't know what else may need to be done for the horse.  I'll let you know how it goes after our Monday appointment.


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