Anna lost her first tooth on July 1st. It's been loose since April actually but she was a little afraid to just yank it out. Kaysha helped her work on it daily all this time and finally last week it was hanging by a thread. Anna asked Kaysha to pull it for her because she was scared it would hurt. Anna screamed and Kaysha got it out. I asked Anna if it hurt. She said no. I asked why all the screaming then and she said she was waiting for it to hurt.
We haven't had a child lose their first tooth since Daniel was six, so five years have passed. Kaysha has lost all her baby teeth. Daniel has lost all but one; a canine tooth that has no adult tooth behind it. So the hope on that one is that it will stay put until he is 18 and at that time they will pull it and make him a fake tooth to fill the spot.
Samuel never lost his baby teeth. None were loose either. His six year molars came in while he was on morphine so he never noticed them. Anna definitely noticed hers come in. I feel a little sad that Samuel never got to lose his first tooth before going to Heaven but I am pretty sure he would have just found it all very annoying. When he was a toddler, he slipped in the tub and hit a top front tooth in the edge of the tub. He ended up chipping it and we ended up with an impromptu trip to the dentist over it. The dentist said it was not loose nor a big chip so nothing transpired. We just looked forward to the day when that tooth would be lost. No need now.
The kids are enjoying the finally summer weather we are having. Swimming is always on the agenda. That and playing with the neighbors.
So, we made it to Summit Lake last weekend....well sort of. It was iced over and snowed in.
July 3rd was Mark and my 16th anniversary (of the day we met.) We like this anniversary and look forward to it simply because nothing bad has tainted it. (Knock on wood) The weather wasn't as nice as the previous weekend when we just made it to Twin Lake before turning back but we did the five mile round trip walk anyway. We left the parking lot with partly cloudy skies but ended up first hiking into the clouds which looked really strange and made me want to clean my contacts. And then after a 1200 ft. elevation gain, we were ready to descend to the lake and this happened.
The trail turned into a winter wonderland. Suddenly we were hiking through five feet of snow downhill. I took one look at this and said NO WAY. Nevermind that I was in shorts and a tank top at the time. I did pack a light jacket and pants but I just knew I was going to make it to the lake the quick way. Mark decided that we should at least try to make it down after coming that far and we did make to to a point where we could see a cloud covered iced over lake. But then the trail disappeared and since we were uncertain where it should be, we went back up and called it quits. And the whole time, Mark is walking in front of me holding my hand so I don't fall and I am not looking too far ahead at all the snow I still have to walk through and the big cliffs I might fall off. I put all my effort into putting my feet in the exact spots his were in and asked over and over if we really walked through all this before and I didn't fall off. As soon as we hit solid ground, I was thrilled!
We agreed that this anniversary is Sweet Sixteen. Our relationship just gets better and better with each passing year. This hike on this day felt symbolic of our life together thus far.. There's always an uphill climb that we can enjoy as long as we are together. One gets tired, the other doesn't mind stopping for a rest. When the terrain gets rough, Mark takes my hand to be certain I do not fall. He leads, I follow. He holds me up and I trust him fully to do so. When the rough spot has passed and I look back in amazement that we made it through, he reassures me that it wasn't just my imagination and we really DID do that. No matter what the rough spot, I always look back with a good sense of accomplishment because I know we made it together. And after all is said and done and the trail heads downhill, we enjoy catching our breath, stopping to share a meal, and all the visiting we do along the way. I am convinced that we can have fun doing most anything and even if it is not that fun at the time, we will later look back at it and still find the good parts.
Hiking together has become a very special time for us and I look forward to it very much. It is so different than my everyday mundane and a great escape. Somehow it feels like I am walking away from the things that went wrong here and yet Samuel is always on my mind. We talked on this hike, about how he goes with us wherever we go and when we go to sleep, he plays in Heaven. I look forward to the day where he leads us around Heaven's trails and mountainsides.
We had a REALLY good hike on Saturday. This week our weather is finally heating up and in another week or two, all that snow there will be melted. We definitely want to go back again and see what was hidden by snow. I have seen pictures and it looks beautiful; an awesome place to spend the day with the one you love.
Bud's restless. That's a good thing because it means he is feeling a lot better. It's also a bad thing because he is spending his time in the paddock destroying the tent, which is his shelter. He has ripped one side about a foot up from the ground. I went out a few days back and he had moved one of the posts, you know the ones that support the roof, about three feet off center. I was shocked it didn't fall over. He also pulls things out of the tack room by sticking his face under the side. We have found extra fence posts in his bedding area as well as my camp chair, pieces of the fencing, the garbage and anything else he can get a hold of. Back to his old tricks, he is.
When he was about two, I boarded him in a place where he had a stall for the night and pasture turn out in the day. Well, he hates confinement. He would stand there and kick the walls of the stall. He pooped in his food and water buckets like it was a sport. We got him some toys thinking this would help. Mark hung a road cone in the middle of the stall. I got him a nerf soccer ball which he shredded like a dog would. I got him another that had stuffing instead and he would toss that over the top of his stall into the stall next door. I always knew where to find it. When I would take him out of the stall, if anyone was around that witnessed him kicking the walls, they would move FAR away and tell whomever didn't know that Bud likes to kick. Now Bud is one of the sweetest gentlest horses I have ever known excluding the year he was a stallion and the time he bit Mark when he was jealous that I was walking another horse. Bud doesn't kick people. He hasn't kicked anyone since he was a yearling and made the mistake of kicking me, making contact and then running under his Mommy for shelter. I chased him around the field with the long whip for an hour. I never caught him but he got the point. He doesn't kick. Bud doesn't bite either. At least not since he bit Mark out of jealousy anyway. He was a bit over two years old at that time. He bit Mark right on the forearm and left a softball size welt. Mark smacked him. That seemed to have no effect. Then Mark kicked him in the side. That also had no effect. Then Mark grabbed his nose and bit him back. Now THAT had a gigantic effect. Bud could not back up fast enough and he has never forgotten it. Bud doesn't bite people. He knows better.
Bud has no problem destroying things when he is bored and it would be cute and clever if it wasn't something he could do serious damage to, like his shelter which is on it's last legs literally. We haven't found a way to outsmart him in this regard either. Nor have I found a place to move him but one with a real wood barn is a must have at this point. So since he is doing better and by that I mean he is gingerly walking at a normal speed and on soft ground, you don't see any favoring, I decided to start turning him out on the pasture overnight bringing him back into the paddock for the day. The grass glucose issue is fairly nil when the sun isn't on it at full strength. This next stretch of hot days will help dry it out more and that will be a good thing too. As you might imagine, he loves that idea. The first time we opened the paddock, he marched out as fast as he could go, which was almost a trot. As you might also expect, he is not impressed when I come in the morning to lock him up again. This morning he wouldn't come and I had to go get him. But he is leading just like always with a simple grab of the mane and a stern "Come on." The picture below is as far as he came in on his own.
Having him penned in for ten days gave me a chance to pay close attention to his poop. Everything always comes back to the poop around here. Keeping the paddock free of poop is a must and I noticed right away that his piles didn't look right nor smell right. So I have been working on his diet to see what improvements can be made to get his gut on track. Laminitis, some believe, stems from a gut issue, so obviously getting the gut right should be a huge benefit.
Horses, like people (and other animals) need omega 3's and probiotics. You can buy processed foods with omega 3's and spend a fortune on probiotics that are powdered and unrefrigerated meaning virtually dead products. I know better obviously from experience and it's nearly free to make your own. So I started adding whole flax seeds to his food as well as started to ferment his grains similar to the way I made them into food for Samuel. Instead of dry grains, processed horse feeds, just make your own "fresh" mix and feed with live probiotics. I should not be surprised because this worked so well for Samuel but within two days, TWO DAYS, his poop is normal looking and smelling and suddenly I see new growth on the front hooves and he is walking much better. Yeah! Sometimes I do these kinds of things and see amazing results and wonder why nobody else thought of it. Seriously, I could not find one article on making your horse grain fermented probiotics. Or using kefir water as part of the feed.
His food is now considered a mash because it is wet and watery and I am still working on the ingredients because several of the herbs I am using now won't be used long term. Once the bitters are eliminated the food will be even that much better tasting. But, guess what? He loves it. Slurps it up as fast as he can. Even with all the herbs mixed in (the ones he turns his nose up to) he loves it. No nose faces. I think I could put dog turds in it and he would eat that too....just kidding!
Mmmm! Yummy.
Check out the tongue action!
My farrier comes tomorrow and I am excited to see what he thinks. I found an excellent Laminitis article that outlines the recovery period and what to expect. Between the 2nd and 4th month after the incident, you can expect your horse to spend most of it's time on it's feet and walking carefully but at a normal pace. It has been one month since this began so Bud is ahead of schedule as far as how well he is moving at this point. The left front foot is still the worst for tenderness and it is hard for him to stand on it while I work on the right front. But the right front seems to be doing really well because I can work on the left front for quite some time before he asks for it back. I am hopeful that means he can get a good trimming on these feet tomorrow with a little pain reliever on board.
I'll let you know!
