Indelicate Matters

So much about caring for horses and chickens is commonplace for me, I forget that others might not get references to why my dog was continually shooed from under the horse while the farrier was here.  What was that reference to "treats"?   Dogs find nothing so tasty as the trimmings from the smelly hoof of a horse.  Daisy will wait to steal each one, run off with it for later chewing.  She will eat them until she is sick, so I must tie her up, gather the trimmings which will dry and can be doled out one at time.

But hoof trimming is actually one of the easier jobs.  You can read here about one of the nastier ones that I wrote about sometime back.  It is an important job, helping Okie to quit rubbing his tail in a desperate attempt to itch a spot he cannot reach.  I am asked, "So how is it cleaned in the wild?"  Well, a man-made problem, as in the wild, it gets a regular workout.  Catch my drift?  Jorgen still does not think I am trying to help him and will pull himself inside so tightly, that I'm sure one day I'll see it come out his back end.  I can, however, now do the task for him without sedation.

Overheard:
William leaned in close and gave me a nice hug.  "Mom, you smell like a horse."

Notes:
It rained so hard this morning, that a fledgling bird nearly drowned on our driveway.  It is a starling, which is too bad for they crap all over my barn and I'd just as soon it drown.  But it's a baby.  So, we are again living a contradiction - saving a starling while cursing its parents.  Cooing and coddling chickens, while eating their eggs and their cousins who ended up at the grocery.   The near drowning seems to have taken its toll - it cannot hold it's head up though certainly it is old enough to do so.  Be our luck to raise a brain damaged bird we'll have to keep for life.

Whitney (dog) has made a miraculous recovery.  Email suggestions that she might be gluten intolerant (celiac) seem to be dead on.  There are many references on the web to it.  It is said that Irish Setters are prone to it, and because most all commercial dog food contains gluten of some sort, the breed is nearly extinct.  I never heard that before and wonder if that is true.