Calvin Will Never Be the Same

Calvin is normally the BIGGEST feline wimp in the world.  When in the house he stays on a shelf in the kitchen.  He never moves.  Never.  He’s afraid to get down because there are monsters lurking on the floor, just waiting to crunch him up into little monster kibble.  Every morning I have to pick him up and throw his furry butt out the door -- just so he can climb up onto the roof and stay there all day until I come to get him and put him back in.  I’ve tried letting him stay there for days until he comes down on his own, but he just won’t budge until he sees me coming to get him.

Who says cats aren’t high maintenance??

Surprisingly, he actually came out to the garden to help me yesterday.  I was shocked, amazed, and slightly worried.  Was he sick?  Injured?  What could possibly persuade him to leave the relative safety of the roof to walk on the ground?

Then it all became clear.  Calvin had discovered catnip. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s hope this new bravado of his isn’t just a fluke and he starts acting like the mighty hunter that he was born to be.

Because you just never know where the real monsters are hiding.

Signs of Spring

Everyone else can watch for Robins in their yards, but I have a whole different set of signs that indicate Spring is on it’s way.

Like the Bronze Fennel,

 

garlic,

 

bee balm,

 

and Oregano that’s starting to grow.

 

And Stormy, preferring to bask in the sun, rather than snooze on the couch. Please note the fat rolls.  This dog has been a complete couch potato for months.  I’m hoping with the warm weather she’ll be a little more motivated to watch her girlish figure.

 

 

But the surest sign that Spring is near?

 

Being able to go barefoot all day. :)

Timmy Goes Home

Just when I think a horse will be here for the rest of his life, he gets himself adopted.  I mean seriously, who was going to want an old TB that could eat a person out of house and home and was only sound for easy walk/trot trail rides?

 

Well, this guy wanted a nice older horse that was quiet and enjoys attention.

 

 

Match made in heaven?  Quite possibly. :)

Spring Fever

Spring fever is starting to hit the herd and there’s been a lot of running around and play fighting.  Even the long-eared beast is getting into the fun.

 

 

 

Mick and Milo did a little play fighting yesterday, pretending that they were big bad wild mustangs fighting for their herd of mares.

 

 

 

When in reality, they’re just a couple of dirty little geldings that get bossed around by the mares on a daily basis. 

 

Just keep dreaming, boys!

Lakota and Thunder

The Fairmont saga is still continuing.  The deputy and vet that went to check out the horses did nothing, other than tell the guy to worm his horses and fix up the shelter.  I’m sure the asshat has jumped right on that and those horses will be picking up weight in no time. 

NOT.

Crazy breeder down the road still had blankets on today, even though it was almost 70 degrees and sunny.  I guess the next deaths will be caused by a combination of starvation and heat stroke.  Perhaps if enough of them die she’ll eventually be down to a number that she can actually take care of.  That seems to be the only option since Tyler county has no one in authority that actually gives a flying fig.

In the good news section of the blog, these two horses were successfully rescued about two months ago.   They were skeletons then and still have a couple of hundred pounds to go.  The person that rescued them originally was having trouble handling them as they grew healthier and would really prefer a nice, well broke older horse instead of these two young hooligans.   He’s adopting Timmy in another few weeks and I picked up Lakota and Thunder from him yesterday. 

Thunder was a stallion when he was originally rescued and was just castrated about eight weeks ago.  Of course he and the mare had been turned out together before being rescued.  Ugh.  Let’s hope the Lutalyse shot works on Lakota better than it worked on Willow!

 

That’s most of Thunder above, and Lakota is below.  She’s going to be a stunning mare once she’s cleaned up and fatter.

 

 

These two are supposed to be fairly well broke trail horses, so once they’re back up to a healthy weight I’ll be getting on them for evaluation. 

I apologize for the crappy pictures.  I was trying to hold on to an excited and nervous Thunder and work the camera at the same time.  I wanted to get better pictures today, but it just never happened. 

 

Once I have better pictures of Lakota I’ll post about her over on Rescue Recoveries.  She’s a big mare and needs at least another 250lbs before she’s back up to where she should be.  Judging from what she looked like when she was originally rescued, she’s already put on about 200lbs!  Poor girl!

Mystery Solved

For months I’ve been wondering why I keep finding the salt blocks dumped in the mud and their holders yards away, upside down, and stomped into the mud.  Today I caught the culprit in the act!

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t me!  Sky did it!

 

And you just know if I spend money on a real horse toy, he probably wouldn’t touch it. 

Updates

Marilyn the pig was killed in her pen last Tuesday.  She had long clean gashes in her sides and her haunches had been chewed on.  There were no wounds around her head or neck.  I’m thinking our friendly neighborhood big cat that attacked Sadie last year is back.  Something had to have jumped the 6’ dog kennel panels that had surrounded the pigs.  Bacon Butt escaped by breaking one of the boards on their shelter.  I found him loose with the main herd on Wednesday morning.  Until yesterday, he’d been hanging out in the yard with Timmy.  Then I came home from town yesterday to find the neighbor’s starving inbred pack of dogs surrounding Bacon Butt, who was lying on the ground grunting, twitching, and bleeding out.  The dogs took off when I got out of the truck and I used one of Glenn’s rifles to put poor piggie out of his misery. 

 

I have still not been able to get any answers from Marion County about those horses in Fairmont.  Has anyone else called the sheriff’s department and had any better luck?  I’ve asked PETA to get involved by putting pressure on the sheriff’s department and hopefully that will make a difference.

 

 

Crazy breeder down the road is keeping blankets on her horses in this beautifully warm and sunny weather, just to hide the fact that they’re starving.  Maybe I should throw a blanket on Jolie to hide the fact that she’s filthy.   Damned grays.  They always have to roll in the mud.

 

Doc is coming out next Tuesday to castrate Maverick and Sky, even if the weather sucks.   Mav is getting a little too horny with the warm weather coming on.

 

Traveler and Timmy finally have some updates over on Rescue Recoveries, so please go check them out.  Those will probably be the last updates until they shed out in another month or so. 

 

Fairmont Saga Continues

As usual, West Virginia police have astonished me by not lifting a finger to help horses in need.  I have still not heard from the Marion County Sheriff’s department about those starving horses.  I’ve called several times, but the dispatcher has transferred me to the records department voicemail each time.  Records?  Does that mean the deputy went out there, said everything looked good, then closed the case?  This is exactly what happened with the breeder down the road.  The deputy said the horses weren’t thin because “their eye sockets weren’t sunken in”.   You have got to be kidding me.

But wait, there’s more!  On the same road as crazy breeder you find this poor horse:

 

Old?  Maybe.  Sway backed?  Yup.  Poor thing still shouldn’t be that thin.  *sigh*

 

This week has been really tough on me mentally.  I feel the need to curl up around a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and suck my thumb for awhile.  But instead, I hugged a Sky pony.  By the way, he says Hi.

 

 

 

 

He would also like to know if you’d help me out and call the Fairmont Sheriff’s department.  The more people that call about this asshat, the better.   Maybe if enough of us complain, someone might actually take an interest in the wellbeing of those horses.  The Marion County Sheriff’s department non-emergency phone number is 304-367-5300.  Tell them you’d like to report horse neglect on Straight’s Run road near Barrackville and the name of the owner is Jimmy Simons.

Fairmont Horses

Back on the 27th I mentioned nine starving horses outside of Fairmont and was hopeful that the owner would give them up willingly since he constantly complained about how hard it was to feed them.   He is willing to give them up, but his drug addict girlfriend is not.  So I drove down there today to see for myself how bad things were and get pictures so we could go to the authorities (again) about these horses.  I’m just now getting home, and what I saw made me sick.

Out of the nine horses that are left, only three are starving.  The others look very good, considering how they are kept.  This is their only shelter, and not one horse has access to it.  Perhaps it’s just there to add some class to the landscaping.

 

Five of the nine horses are permenantly tied to the barbed wire fence.  Most of those five had no water buckets that I could see, or they had one, but couldn’t reach it.

 

This little guy was penned up behind the house and my camera could barely zoom in far enough to get a clear shot.  But you can clearly see he’s in need of help NOW! 

 

These guys were not tied, so they could at least get to the stream of snow melt coming down off the hill into their paddock.  The one in the middle is the worst of the bunch and also needs help ASAP.

 

 

Here’s another shot through my truck window.  Poor thing!

This youngster is thin and wormy, but not as bad as the other two.

 

There was a stack of about 15 poor quality square bales by the road, but I saw not one piece of hay in front of any of these horses.  There was one other horse tied up behind the house, but I couldn’t get a good enough angle for a picture.  He looked ok as far as weight, but I still didn’t see any buckets near him.

I just got off the phone with the Sheriff’s department and they knew exactly who I was talking about.  They have had many complaints before about this asshat, but no place to take the horses if they’re seized.  The dispatcher said he’d send a deputy out there today and give me a call back.  Keep your fingers crossed that we can at least get the two starving horses out of there!

Wouldn’t this be awesome???

California is the next state trying to create an animal abuse registry, much like the current sex offender online registry.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=7292221

 

Other states have tried and failed, so I’m crossing my fingers that California pulls it off.  If so, it may take root and spread across the country.  We can only hope!!  What a great tool that would be for shelters and rescues!

 

On a local note, the crazy breeder down the road has now lost SEVEN horses since December!   A friend and I did a drive by last week to get pictures, but most the horses had blankets on even though it was sunny and warm that day.  But you can still see hip and back bones sticking up under the blankets, and neither of us saw ANY hay in any of the paddocks.  A few of the paddocks had no shelter of any kind, nor did we see any water in some of the paddocks.  We’ve contacted the local Barney Fife that takes care of animal control issues (or pretends to), but he’s really not interested in doing anything about it.  He says he’ll talk to Doc and go out there himself, but we’ll see.  I’m not hopeful.  At least he’s on the bottom of the authority pile and there are plenty of people above him that we can harass until something is done.

 

This is one of her draft broodmares.  She had no shelter, hay, or water.

 

This is one of her stallions with a bad heart murmur.  Check out those hip bones!  He’s wearing two blankets and you can still see his back bone.  He also had no shelter, hay, or water.

 

These two had a trough, but we couldn’t see if it had any water in it.  They also had a cheesy shelter.  But hey, cheesy is better than nothing.  The horse in the background is still in pretty good shape, but you can see the back bone of the grey and there’s nothing much left of her neck.

 

I hate to think of how many more horses will die before this winter is over!