The past 4 days....

WELL, I have had a very eventful past 4 days. So eventful, that I haven't been able to add an entry to my blog! Here's what happened:

Thursday night, I was watching a movie, and said to myself, " In 5 mins, ( at 10:30), I'm shutting off my movie and going to bed!"
About 1 minute later, the head tech comes into the clinic, and down to my room to say that there is a dummy foal coming in!! I thought that it would be a couple of hours kind of thing, help the foal and then going back to bed. Little did I know that these kind of situations make for an all night affair! This foal couldnt stand up on its own so we had to milk the mare out and then bottle feed the foal all night long. The vet also called it " dismature", where she was to term, however has pre term characteristics. One thing that was pretty cool, in a not cool at all kind of way, was that this foal had hernias, and its intestines were coming through! Very weird to get to feel! Also, while trying to help the foal stand, we noticed that she was walking on her pasterns. I've only ever seen those kind of things in text books. So also very interesting!

This little foal had spunk too! It clocked me TWICE in the throat when we were trying to help it stand! And when trying to restrain it on the ground, getting kicked (from it flailing) was a little inevitable. So I now have bruises all up my leg.....

Policy at the clinic is that if you work through the night, you get hour for hour off the next day. So at close to 9 am on friday I head off to my room for some well deserved shut eye! I slept all the following day. I only woke up at 3pm to get a glass of water for some tylenol, and then went back to bed. I woke up again around 1 am, only to wonder if it was 1 pm the next day, or if it was in fact 1 am.... When I got that all sorted out, I forced myself to sleep again! Woke up a few more times, but finally dragged myself out of bed at 9 am the following day! So I pretty much had 24 hours of sleep!! That's the most I've ever slept in my entire life I'm sure!

During the night the tech told me that the last time she spent all night in the barn, she woke up the next day feeling as though she just ran a marathon. Her whole body ached. Every muscle. Muscles you didn't even know existed! Well, that is EXACTLY how my body felt on saturday! Kneeling and standing and then kneeling again. Bent over the foal keeping it down, or trying to keep it up. Getting beat up.... It's all very exausting!

On Saturday after I made myself look presentable again, I was about to start my blog entry, when the tech came running in ( to grab her rubber boots) and saw me sitting here at the computer. She said " are you doing anything? do you want to help process cattle? " And, like all of my other responses, I said " HECK YES!"

When we got out there, it was more than just processing cattle! They had a little over 100 head to go through and so we did a cattle drive!!!!!! It was very cool! They had two horses were out chasing down cows, and I was in the truck coaxing with hay. They were separating bulls and calves, from the cows, ivomec-ing, tagging, and BRANDING!!!! All of which I've done before, except the branding. Noone really does that in the East, but out here it's law.

I think apart from the rancher, I was the only one COMFORTABLE around the cows. So I got the job of herding them and getting them through the stocks. HO-LY COW this pen was soupy as Ill get out!!I swear I was up to my calves in manure and mud. And of course the cows would kick at me each time I poked them with the electric cattle prod!! hahah So I was COVERED from seriously, head to toe in...maunre and mud. It was all over my face and through my hair. omg.... OMG....hahah COVERED!

So then, that went from about 1130am to just before dark( 650ish). We drank beer while doing it too. Very funny. At the end of it we were all famished, so the rancher said " lets go to Longview". So in the truck we go, still covered in...manure and mud, up to some cowboy bar in the middle of nowhere that was packed with people, just so that we could eat food....the rancher paid for all 8 of us! By the time I got back to the clinic it was about 10. So a really fun day all in all.

12 hours later....when I decided to pull myself out of bed again, I made my second attempt at producing a blog entry, and thins is how it turned out!! :)

Hope you enjoyed hearing about my past 4 days!