Alright ladies, I have had quite the day. It was long (still not over), hot, and very eventful.
First off, this morning I brought Murphy into a neurologist to see what he had to say. To him things are looking really good, but he said the only option from this point on is surgery- otherwise I will just have to watch and wait for Murphy to get worse and eventually be totally paralyzed.
The surgery is expensive, but not as much as the other vet quoted me. And, the neurologist does payment plans- so right now we are considering surgery. I just have to come up with 1/3 of the total cost before I can schedule it- and luckily I think I will have it by this weekend. Hopefully next Monday, Murphy will be in surgery getting all fixed up
the neurologist gave me a 95% chance of full recovery- and that is good enough for me! Plus, part of the surgery involves removing the other discs even though they haven't ruptured, to eliminate the possibility of them rupturing in the future. Apparently my 6 year old mini dachshund is a perfect candidate. Keep your fingers crossed!
Now on the rest of my eventful day......after the four hours it took to get to the neurologist, see him and drive home, I was pretty exhausted.....and as soon as we pulled in the driveway I was in for a surprise!
I could hear Mary whinnying like CRAZY so I jumped out of the car before pulling all the way in the driveway and ran over to her. I was expecting to see a baby still in the birth sack and her totally distraught- BUT what I did see freaked me out even more!
..there was Mary, standing in a corner looking up the road....and Rowdy? Well, he was nowhere to be found! I immediately paniced and started running to the pasture that I put him in this morning- and I was in for another surprise!!
Backstory real quick- I put Rowdy in a one acre pen every morning so he can eat all the grass he wants and get some exercise. The gate is a dog kennel gate and has 2 latches, one on top and one on bottom. I always put a clip in the top latch so he can't open it with his nose- which he has tried to do.
Anyways, I get to the pen I put Rowdy in and the gate is WIDE OPEN!! I am one hundred percent, no I am one billion percent sure I closed the gate AND put the locking pin in the latch this morning. That only leaves one explanation- someone came onto our property and opened the gate and LET MY STALLION OUT!!! I have no idea who would have done it, why they would have done it or when they did it- he was probably out for at least 2 hours.
After I saw the gate open I paniced even more. Up the road behind our house is where Mary was acting like Rowdy went- and when I ran up there everyone was standing on the road looking down at our property. I was almost certain someone had hit him or something- but I couldn't find him anywhere.
So I run back down to the house and go over to the neighbors house- she has QH mares, so I'm thinking he ran over there to try and "get some" haha- but once again, I couldn't find him and my neighbor hadn't seen him.
At this point I figured he made his way to a road and was trotting down it somewhere- a mile or two away at least. Luckily my mom is in town so she started driving down all the streets looking for a mini stallion.
While she was doing that I went and got some grain, his halter and lead and started calling him. Then, out of nowhere, he pops up in our back field (about 6 acres and UNFENCED) and starts running and bucking around. The grass is taller than he is, so I'm not surprised I couldn't see him laying down out there! (I'm assuming he was laying down out there somewhere)
As soon as he saw me and I saw him, I called out his name and he came right up to me. He put his head down into the halter, almost like saying, "where have you been? Just take me home please."
I am so happy and totally relieved to have found him. That would have been horrible with any other outcome!
I am also so very proud of him. One, for staying near the house. Two, for coming when called and basically haltering himself. When I first got him he wouldn't let anyone touch his head, ears, feet, and he was incredibley hard to catch. Now, he is like my 350 pound, hooved puppy dog
I can't take all the credit- I think his previous owners (not the ones I got him from, but the ones before that) did quite a bit of training with him. He seems to know commands, very good on a lunge line, and I've even got him to do some in hand jumping. I would love to think it was all from me just giving him more attention, but I've never trained a horse and he seems to just do whatever I am trying to get him to do.
I've been really trying to get him to trust me- and today proved that I am on the right direction. I couldn't be happier
Lastly- at least for now, I still have a couple hours left in my day to fit in more excitement so there could be more to come- Mary's udder is twice as full as yesterday's, but has gone down some since this morning. She is still testing at a 7.0ish, so we still have some waiting to do. I will post pictures when I feed her dinner- her belly seems to have changed, and I want to hear what you all have to say about her hooha and udder.
Ok so the last one wasn't very crazy or exciting, but it was something. Haha
Well, I'm off to take a nap before I do my other chores- then im going to buy some bike chains or something with LOCKS to prevent this from ever happening again.
I'll post pics later
