Texas was cold

There is not a lot of NADAC around here and we get tired of the same trials over and over again so months ago my friend Linda and I decided we would try something new and head to Texas for a trial put on by someone we know that we had also heard good things about.  It's a 7-8 hour drive so our initial plan was to travel Friday and Monday so we would not have a late drive home.  But I guess we didn't set this is stone and Linda couldn't get off work Monday so we were just going to leave early enough Sunday to make it a reasonable trip home.  This was all before the arctic blast of winter weather descended upon us.

Anyway we headed out Friday morning and made a pit stop at the Pink Pistol in Oklahoma-the girls are big Miranda Lambert fans, as are we.  This necessitated a purchase of boots and a T-shirt as well as this photo-op.

Then, it was back on the road and we settled into the hotel around 8PM and ordered pizzas for dinner.  Good start.

The trial site is a horse farm, which was very pretty, but cold.  Like unseasonably cold for November in Texas.  Made for fast running dogs though!  We have done literally zero agility since our last trial in August but Legend managed to pick up 6/12 Qs including two of the most amazingly perfect Chances runs of her life (7 more to NATCH 2).  Who needs training?  Lyric went 5/6 and wowed everyone with her cuteness picking up several new fans I'm sure.  She also finished her O-TN-E. We got to see some different dogs run and meet many new people. Overall a very nice group and fun little trial.  Saturday we enjoyed dinner out with the group and tucked ourselves into bed early.

Sunday, a winter weather advisory was issued for home and much of the route we needed to drive was covered in snow during our proposed drive time.  So we decided to go ahead and stay for all runs and just spend another night in Texas.  Linda was able to get her shift covered at work since the snow had also wrecked her co-workers plans.  I had only recently volunteered to work at one of my regular jobs on Monday to give the boss an extra day off, but had to back out thanks this early winter weather.  But all ended up ok. We ate leftover pizza for dinner, Texas shaped waffles for breakfast and headed on home.  We hope to return in the spring when the weather should be warmer.

I took a few photos of this cool horse whose pen was adjacent to the arena.  I like this one, but you can tell where I was taking out part of the fence and another horse.  I should have worked on it more before I finished.

 These three are all the same but I didn't know which one I liked better.

 This guy just looked cute.

Cool, but not cool

In the midst today's chaos I saw a cat with a grossly swollen front leg complete with bloody drainage and lesser injuries to all his other limbs. 

After administering sedation and pain meds we cleaned and evaluated the legs. In addition to the very swollen front limb the other limbs all had puncture wounds with small amounts of swelling, edema and cellulitis. What seemed odd about this is that a cat usually only sustains injury to one or two areas of the body in a fight-typically once they get bit good on one leg, they don't hang around to get bit on all the others. Since there was so much swelling in the bad leg it was impossible to evaluate the bones so I decided to take an x-ray to see if there was any bone damage or infection. 

This is what we got. 

Yep, gunshot wounds. The bullet spray must have also hit the other legs, just to a lesser extent. There are multiple fractures here in case you are wondering. However, with the amount of swelling and drainage we can't splint it. Also, there is a chance that there will be collateral damage from the swelling if blood supply or nerves have been damaged. Sloughing of skin or permanent nerve damage is not out of the question. There is also the possibility these fractures will never heal adequately-but this is a cat so we are hopeful. There are worse fates than amputation. 

While there is no shortage of buckshot in rural missouri animals, most of the time it's just an incidental finding on an x-ray, not the actual issue at hand. So I have to admit I felt a little like I was on a cop show today when I got to diagnose the infamous GSW. 

This x-ray was pretty spectacular from a pathology standpoint, not so much for the cat. Such is the case with most things in medicine-the more abnormal it is, the "cooler" it is. Normal just ain't fun, sadly, my inner pathologist says. Unless it's my pet, then normal is just fine. 

This week

Not a lot going on here.  Just working, doing some tracking and hanging out.  We have had family in and out of town the last few weekends so have been doing all the requisite tourist stuff and eating out a lot.

We had several applications for Shea, all of which have lost interest apparently so I updated her bio in hopes of attracting new attention to it.

All the dogs got their senior bloodwork done and everyone looks great.  Hopefully they all stay that way.

Twix said she wanted a turn on the blog.  So here she is-5 months of totally spoiled cuteness.

Horses and Ponies Fall 2014

The whole herd

 Socks is a woolly beast right now.  It's hard to get a picture because he keeps following me around wanting petting and cookies.

Then he got wild and was running all over the place.  If I had a better camera these would be really good, but this is as good as it gets for now.

And finally, pretty boy Squirt, with his "I got in the cockleburrs" haircut.