Honey, we’re home!

 

After Gilbert packed his crap and left without telling anyone (*sigh*), we had to come home for a couple of days to initiate the new guy.  However, once we were home to the disastrously filthy house (again), a few of the horses looking worse than when I rescued them (again), and a warrant for my arrest (thank you for writing that bad check on the farm account, Lee) we finally had a stroke of good luck.  Yes, really!  A friend of ours called us one night to tell us about a local driving job.  The job pays great (more than Glenn was making on the road) and he’d be home every night!  Woohoo!  More importantly, they are so desperate for drivers that they may even stoop to hiring me, even though I only have a few months experience.  Suckers!

Kidding.  I’m a good driver (said in my best Rain Main voice).

So, we’re home.  Home for good, I might add.  No matter what, I just can’t leave this farm again.  Thanks to the losers that we hired, we’ve lost two dogs, have a house that needs major cleaning and repairs, a truck that is drivable but still won’t pass inspection, horses that were once pocket ponies are now skittish, and a couple of the horses have been starved.  When we came home on the 7th, Don Juan was in the main herd instead of in the stud pen, so we’re also looking at Lutalyse shots for all the mares in a couple of months (you have to wait at least 45 days after exposure before giving them the shot).

I thought I couldn’t afford to NOT go out on the road, but it turns out that I couldn’t afford to leave the farm in the hands of lazy incompetent idiots, either!  The horses are already gaining weight and should be back to normal in a few weeks.  Poor Sketches is the worst, so I hug her several times a day while she’s eating and apologize for leaving her.  She seems to understand when I cry into her mane and stands quietly for the extra attention.  Quill and Sky were skittish when I returned, but have already reverted to the pocket ponies that I remember.  Maggie and Matilda still haven’t forgiven me and want nothing to do with me unless I have food in my hand.  Jethro ran away every time he saw me, but today he and I took a nap in the hay together, with his muzzle resting on my shoulder.

Oh, and let’s not forget the 10k worth of tools that are now missing out of the garage.  If you happen to see a tool for sale at a pawn shop with the initials G.W. etched in to the handle, please let us know.  I hope Gilbert got more than the price of his plane ticket home out of those tools.  They were certainly worth a lot more.

Then there’s Timmy, who somehow got frostbite on his penis, of all places.  Doc came out and explained to Gilbert what he needed to do to take care of the horse and said that if he didn’t start right away, Timmy might lose his wanker.  I talked to Gilbert on the phone that day and he said “don’t worry, he’s just like my horse, I’ll take care of him”.  Then he packed his shit and left the next day without taking care of Timmy’s wanker once.  We got Timmy into a foster home within a day or two, with someone that would take the time to take care of him properly.  It’s still up in the air, but he’s finally looking a little better now that the penicillin shots are over.  I’m hoping we don’t have to put the old man down, but I certainly don’t want him to suffer any more than he already has!

And I keep looking for Thor and Xena to come running home from the back pasture.  I look for them while driving down the back roads.  I listen every night for Xena’s whimper at the door, wanting to come in.   Sometimes Heidi sits, gazing into the distance, as still as a statue, and whimpers.  I think she’s waiting for them to come home, too.

Miracles

As you know by now, I’m an atheist.  I don’t believe in a higher power because no one has ever proven it to me.  I can’t see, smell, touch, hear, or taste this divine being everyone talks about.  Faith?  I have plenty of faith.  I have faith in myself and the creatures around me.  Miracles, in my opinion, don’t happen because of an all-powerful being.  They happen because of science, or the hard work, intelligence, and ingenuity of humans.

I’m not trying to offend anyone here, so please don’t take me the wrong way.  I’m not trying to preach from my soapbox or start a debate, either.  Religion and an invisible divinity certainly have their places in the world and I think that some people need faith in a higher power in order to get through their lives.  We’re all different and that’s what makes the world go ‘round, right?

Having said all of that, the fact that this horse is still alive is a miracle.  Her organs should have given up way before she got to this point.  Renal or heart failure should have put her at peace weeks ago, and the fact that her blood tests show no sign of either is simply unbelievable.  Man certainly had nothing to do with this mare still being alive when she was rescued, although some asshat had everything to do with letting her get to this condition in the first place!  Dare I say that the mare had faith that she’d be saved?  Do horses think like that?  Who are we to say what and how an animal thinks?  Was she hanging on to a thin hope that some human would come along and save her?  Or that the asshat that did this to her would suddenly love and feed her again?  Or was her will to survive, that instinct passed down from generation to generation, so strong that she just couldn’t give up?

I would love to know what was going on in her head as she slowly starved to the point where most horses would have given up and died, but I never will.  I do hope, that at some point, we all know what was going on inside the human’s tiny little brain to let this happen in the first place.  And call me hypocritical if you will, but I see nothing wrong with “an eye for an eye” type of justice here.  Nope, nothing at all wrong with that!

 

*****Please consider donating to the 501c3 rescue that saved this mare.  It’s going to take a very long time for her to recover and I’m sure they could use anything you can spare.

Holy Crap

I’m not even sure I have anything to say about this.

 

http://blogs.dogtime.com/animal-hoarding-news-and-info/by-tag/humane%20sanctuary%20inc

 

Other than, WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE THINKING???

If you’re tougher than I am and think you can handle the pictures and videos, click here.

Go read the article then take your time vomiting afterwards.  I’ll still be here trying to figure out why it took authorities so long to do something.  And why, oh WHY, would someone submit not only the animals to that kind of neglect, but their own 97 year old mother as well???

As mad as this makes me, I know I can’t lay all the blame on Kathy Witzman.  Because let’s face it… if it wasn’t for the wanton breeding of dogs for the almighty dollar, and the ignorance of people that don’t get their dogs neutered/spayed and let them roam the neighborhood, she probably never would have ended up with so many dogs in the first place.

Unfortunately, I’m facing a similar challenge with Cattle Baron and his sisters.  They started with one unspayed German Shepard female who found herself a boyfriend next door at Drunken Neighbor’s place in 2008.  The first litter of puppies froze to death on the front porch.  The next litter was lucky enough to be born in the summer.  Of course, none of those puppies were ever spayed or neutered, because no way would the sons breed with mom or their sisters.  Their God would not allow that!!  Drunken Neighbor’s dog has since died, but oddly enough, those females just keep pumping out the puppies.  So much for deity intervention.  Six out of eight born last month froze to death.  The girls finally got a clue and brought the next litter into the house.   Last I had heard, there were 10 puppies from two different litters, with more on the way.  There are at least four females over there of breeding age.

I wonder how long it will take for them to have over 160 dogs? 

TICKED OFF!

This has got me so riled up that I’m ready to throttle someone.  This is one reason why it’s so difficult to do any good rescue work here in WV!

http://www.animallawcoalition.com/public-shelters/article/1136

 

There are so many counties here without an animal control officer that many complaints of neglect and abuse are ignored and the horses continue to suffer.   But to actually have an animal control officer AND a county-controlled shelter for horses that is neglecting the horses is just going way too far!!

No shelter for the horses??  Leaving a halter on a horse that’s so tight it’s leaving imprints??  How can you call yourself an animal shelter?  And why in the world are Jackson County people putting up with this?  Your tax dollars are paying for these idiots to neglect horses and toss dead dogs in the trash bin and you’re not doing anything about it?

I am a private rescuer by all accounts.  I’m not a 501© charity, nor have I ever pretended to be one.  I do not whine and complain about how much of my hard-earned salary is spent keeping these guys fed and vetted.  I do not beg for donations.  I have three barns for all these horses, with ample room for everyone of them to get in out of the weather.  Both of my troughs have working heaters in them and are kept full all year round, even though I have to travel 12 miles one way to town to haul water several times a week.   There is hay in my pastures 365 days a year.  Any horse that needs a blanket, gets one.  Not one horse on this property wears an ill-fitting halter.  I even have two horses living in my yard right now so that I can keep a close eye on them and make sure they are fed five times a day.

I’m not trying to blow my own horn here.  But if one person with a separate full time job can do all of this, WHY THE HELL CAN’T A COUNTY-RUN SHELTER TAKE PROPER CARE OF TWO HORSES??

The Last Frontier

First, a rant. Then the guineas.

More like, the last straw with Frontier! Frontier is our phone/DSL provider and I've had it. I was so excited when we moved up here and DSL had come to the area just two weeks prior. No more satellite! Woohoo! We had satellite internet in VA and frankly, dial up was faster and more reliable. But the one thing I will say about satellite, is that after a thunderstorm it was usually back up within minutes. I only wish our DSL was that reliable! Our DSL goes out with every bad thunderstorm that comes through. And it seems like I'm the only one to ever report it. Inevitably, I end up getting on the phone with some college kid who, after I tell him the t-storm took it out, I've already done the diagnoses and rebooted my modem several times and it's probably a local outage, he still makes me reboot the darned modem. Then he's surprised that the magical and all powerful reboot didn't do the trick. Sometimes they think I'm even fibbing, just for the attention. The last time I went through this I asked to speak to a manager. The manager was incredibly patient and put a note on my account not to bug me with the usual rebooting routine, which can sometimes take as long as 30 min. This just depends on how far through college the tech on the other end of the phone made it before flunking out from beer bongs.

Eventually, the tech concedes that yes, perhaps it is an area wide outage and not just my modem. Then they put in a ticket and tell me to wait by the phone, a field technician will be calling me shortly. Hours pass, days pass, I keep calling in looking for an update. Sometime after the fourth or fifth call, someone tells me that hey, they found the problem! And guess what? It WASN'T my modem! They always seem so pleased with themselves at this point. Like, hey, I couldn't get your modem to work because it was an area wide outage -- not my fault! But it is your fault that you took days to figure this out instead of just listening to me in the first place. Grrrr! Our DSL went out Friday night, I reported it Saturday morning, and it just came back up around 8pm tonight. And rather than getting anything done today, since I couldn't work, I had to sit by the phone and wait for the technician call. Which never came. Because they found that lightening had taken out some doohickey at the DSL station. I only found this out because I called them again around 4pm (my third call of the day, since they said on Saturday that it should be up by noon today).

Thank you for reading. I feel much better now that I got that off my chest.

Guinea update: things are not well on the guinea front. We lost seven guineas Friday night in the storm!!!! WHY??? We did get an awful lot of rain during the night and there could have been a flash flood under the coop. But why weren't the guineas in the coop where they usually are at night?? Saturday morning I found seven dead, soaking wet, but otherwise untouched little guineas. The remaining six looked fine and were pecking around behind me as I crawled into the pen to pick up the dead ones. BUT, they were not touching the food I had gotten them! I ended up getting more of the same 22% chick grower that they had before because I couldn't find anything with a higher protein. I did buy some 31% fish food pellet that the feed store guy said people fed their fighting cocks. But I had it separated from the other food in the coop, so have no idea why they weren't eating either one.

Rather than have them starve to death, I made the executive decision to let them out today. I opened up a spot in the fence, called them over with my bug bottle, let them come out, then shooed them back in. Let them come out again, then shooed them back in. The breeder said to do this so they would know how to get back in at night. And no one was watching, so I did it five times. I watched them in the yard for about an hour and they seemed very happy and were tearing into the bugs. Then they moseyed into the horse pasture and disappeared for the rest of the day. I assume they went into the woods where it was cooler. Around 6pm they started heading back and stayed awhile in the backyard getting their fill of bugs kicked up from the lawn mower. But something seemed amiss with one of the white guineas. She was lying on the ground with her wings spread out while the others were happily eating. Uh Oh. She'd get up and walk around if we got too close and seemed to be walking fine. I stayed out in the garden and kept an eye on them to make sure none of the cats took the opportunity for a quick meal and to see if they'd head back to the coop for the night.

I was playing twister with one of the pineapple tomatillo plants, trying to get all the little berries without knocking any unripe ones off when I heard Thor sit down behind me. It was a minute or two before I unwound myself from the plant, straightened out my appendages, and turned around. Thor had brought me the white guinea and placed it on the ground behind me. She seemed untouched and very much alive, but she was just lying there. Thor gave me this look that said "Mom, I think it's broken. Can you fix it? (for dinner? with maybe a little gravy?)" I picked her up and she never even squawked. She lay her head on my hand and I felt her heart beat in my palm. Her heart wasn't racing and seemed to be thumping just a tad faster than mine. Here was another decision to be made. Do I take her to the coop for the night or do I find her buddies and put her back with them? She seemed weak and I doubted she'd make it through the night if her buddies decided not to come back to the coop. So into the coop she went. I dipped her beak in the water then placed her on the straw in the highest nesting box. A few minutes later she had hopped down and was at the doorway looking at me. Of course I have bugs for you, little guinea. She gobbled up the Japanese beetles as soon as they fell from the bottle. Dare I hope?