Grasping At Straws

Three weeks into Fritz's mysterious lameness, I still have a horse that can barely hobble and no clue why.  Lots of clues why not, though.

We eliminated more possibilities today when Dr. DeWitt injected the coffin joint (just above the coronary band of the hoof, a place you wouldn't normally recognize as a joint.)  The idea was to see if the pain originated in the deep flexor tendon by blocking (numbing) the area.

At the same time she also injected a steroid to act as an anti-inflammatory and pain killer.  If this area was the cause of the lameness, we would have seen an improvement in 10-15 minutes. 

We didn't.

We are now at the point technically known as shit-out-of-luck.  Outside of a one-hour trailer ride (with a horse that can barely stand on 4 feet) to the vet college at Michigan State University for a $2,000 MRI, we are out of options.  My bank tells me this is not a real option. 

Tomorrow my farrier will trim Fritz's hoof to help shift weight to the back rather than the toe, relieving as much pressure and pain as we can.  We will also see what he thinks about that bruised-looking area that may or may not indicate a deep abscess.  Vets have a lot of respect for a good farrier, who sees nothing but horses' hooves and knows a lot about their problems.

Meanwhile, Fritz eats less, and has been lying down more often to relieve the constant pain.  For a horse who usually lies down no more than 5 minutes at a time, it's alarming to see him down for one to one-and-a-half hours at a time.  My poor baby.

Through all this, I am re-writing the last chapter of my book, which is due by the end of this week.  That would be the Happily Ever After part, where all the nail-biting issues that kept the hero and heroine apart are neatly resolved, and we know that everything will work out for them from here on out.  Because life is like that - or so we like to think. 

I can be a fatalist if pushed into it, but I prefer to be an optimist.  I am living for the HEA.

The Contenders

I said a couple months ago that two tom cats were contending to be the new barn cat.  I'm not sure I won't get stuck with both, since they seem to come and go at the same time and never fight. 

I call them Black Cat and White Cat - being a writer, I'm creative like that.  Black Cat is very ordinary, with one spot of white:

White Cat is different.  He's mostly white with a couple black spots on his body, a dark raccoon tail, and black that spills across his head and face like the result of a horrible accident with an ink bottle:

I hesitate to call him ugly, but that face is difficult to look at.  He's also a stalker.  He's waiting here on top of the chicken yard for Zoe to come out of the coop for the day.  He used to wait in the weeds, but he's getting bolder.  He's often there at night, too, when I put her in.  She used to trot out happily to see him, but now she lingers inside the coop, apparently waiting for him to leave.  Can't blame her - who wants a needy, clingy boyfriend?

X-rays, Poultices, and Nerve Blocks, or What I Did During My Summer Vacation

I thought strangely rippled horse flesh was going to be my veterinary mystery for the summer.  I wish I'd been right.  (Update - the fungicide from TSC worked.  Thanks, Laurie.)

Nine days ago, Fritz came up lame in his hind leg with no obvious reason.  I gave bute (sort of like asprin for horses) and it got better.  Then came back.  Then went away.  Then came back, but this time it was the front foot and he was dead lame.  Time to call the vet.

We had a mystery - Fritz didn't respond to pressure tests and we couldn't localize the problem.  So she took X-rays for a better look at the foot.  First, front and side views:

The X-ray machine is the yellow box in the foreground.  Results are displayed within seconds on a laptop computer:

Cool, huh?  The third view was from a different angle:

Results: Fritz gets an A+ in feet.  They look better than expected, like a horse much younger than 30 years.  Wonderful!  Now, if he could only walk...

So the vet used a nerve block to numb the foot.  It's like when you get your mouth numbed at the dentist.  First she did part of the foot, and when he still couldn't walk, she numbed the whole foot.  This was the first injection - two, actually, one on each side of the leg above the hoof.  The second was about an inch higher:

Success!  Suddenly Fritz could walk.  Perfect - Dr. DeWitt can go home now.  Hahaha.  No.

Now we've localized the pain, and it must be an abscess we can't see and can't make him feel with pressure.  So if you've hung around these pages for long, you know what comes next - the poultice.

This stays on for three days to soften the hoof, so she can cut away more hoof wall and hopefully find the sore spot so she can let the infection drain.  That was Friday; I'm supposed to call in with the progress report Monday morning.  Meantime, I can increase the bute to see if it makes him more comfortable.

It didn't.  But it did give him an allergic reaction - irregular flat, raised areas all over his neck and sides.  Hives!  Great; cut back on the bute.

And by Monday - today - no change.  He's still hobbling, hesitant enough to make you cringe in sympathy.  So the poultice came off and she did more cutting away at the softened area.  (Not too soft, really - in this dry wether, hooves get especially hard.)  A bit more success - she made him flinch and jerk away.  Now we know where the abscess is, but it still needs to make its way through the hoof, and drain.  So we have another poultice, another green and black clubbed foot, and another three days to wait.  I sure hope this one works.

Kittens Aren't The Only Reason

I've been MIA with several animal issues, plus trying to finish my book.  Still in the process with both, but here's an update.

I neuter and spay all my dogs and cats.  I don't say that to get a patronizing round of applause, but to explain why it took me more than three years to spay Abby.  I adopted her and her brother, Simon, when they were about 4 months old, rescues who were found living under a deck, trying to survive on birdseed.  Both were frightened of people and terrified if touched.  I worked with them on that.  Simon got over it; Abby didn't.  After three years, we could touch her, but attempting to pick her up resulted in a terrified dive for cover. 

So spaying was delayed.  No big deal, right?  Everyone else was neutered.  Uh, wrong.  This is why you want to spay your cat:  (If you can't see the picture, press play anyway.  It works.)

Abby is complaining to Penny that none of the 4 male cats in the house is man enough to see what a hot babe she is.  Penny just wants her to go away so she can play with her leaf.  She will, but she won't shut up.  She'll cry like this constantly for a week.  Let me repeat that.  Constantly.  Then she might be back to normal for 6 months.  Or maybe for a week.  You never know.

 It gets old after 3 minutes.  After 3 days you want to crawl out of your skin.  After three years you say the hell with her terror level, bait a cage with catnip, and let her whirl, cry, and climb the walls until you can hand her over to the vet. 

This is Abby now.  She's not happy.  The rest of us are.

Horse Ripples?

I'm hoping some horse person can tell me what this is.  Or even if they have no idea what it is but have seen it before.

Remi has been developing rippled areas on his skin.  They aren't hard or callused feeling, and don't seem to bother him.  After a couple weeks skin will begin to pull away like a scab.  He has four areas like this.

The lower area here has already lost a section of skin in the center of the rippled patch.  To the right (sorry about the glare) is a patch that looks wet or rough - that's how they start.

This is low on his side - an older patch and a new one beginning below it where some skin is already off, even though it doesn't show rippels yet.

If it matters, Remi is a 15-year-old gelding.


I have Googled this and couldn't find anything about rippled areas of skin.  I can not accept that Google has failed me - I must be doing something wrong.  If anyone has better luck, or has seen this before, please let me know!  If the comments won't work for you here, send an email to starrambrose@gmail.com.  Thanks!

Mowing The Lawn - Large Scale

It's 90 degrees.  Not a cloud in the sky.  Humid enough that walking from the house to the barn will make you break a sweat.  A swimming pool sounds great.  So what so farmers do?  Cut and bale loads of dry, itchy hay, then stack them in airless barns where the chaff fills the air, your nose, and your bronchial passages.  Then let the hay grow for a few weeks and do it again.  All for low pay, no health plan, no pension, and no such thing as an 8-hour day.

Jets In Fur

OMG, she didn't really put a picture of a steaming pile of poop on her blog, did she?  Of course not!  That's day old poop.  How crude do you think I am?

I knew raccoons had been in my barn overnight because I saw all the dirt and grass they left in the cats' water dish.  Raccoons have a reputation for being clean; that's only because they dirty up every body of water they pass with their filthy, curious little paws.  I don't sound prejudiced toward raccoons, do I?  Just because they slaughter my chickens, poop all over my hay and rafters, and break into the horse and chicken feed.

One raccoon I can handle.  (Although my last Aricauna chicken couldn't.)  But there had to have been more, many more.  Here's your story problem for today - how many raccoons does it take to leave three random piles of poop in a 150 foot span between my house and barn?  I doubt they all got the urge to go at the same time.  So I'm thinking it takes a gang.  A knife-toting, swaggering gang.  Singing and dancing. 

"When you're a 'coon, you're a 'coon all the way, From your first Aricauna to your last dying day . . ."

Nope, not fond of raccoons.

Silver Sparks Studies Abroad

. . . and enjoys the beach and view of Vulcan Mederas in Nicaragua while the students work on cultural and language studies.  Life is good.

The (Cover) Art of Selling

I've been absent because I've been busy writing.  That's a good excuse, isn't it?  I like it.  Sadly, it's not true.  Mostly I've been freaking out about how much I'm not writing, because the creative portion of my brain is frozen and I'm not doing much of anything.

In case my editor's reading this: don't panic.  This paralysis is normal for me when my book is due in six weeks.  I always find something wrong with the way I said the story would end, and I have to re-think the whole thing.  I'll annoy everyone around me with my anxious hair pulling and distracted muttering, but I'll figure it out.  My creative process isn't pretty, but it works.

Meanwhile, my publisher has revealed the covers for my next novel and my e-novella, both in the Barringer's Pass series.  We had some disagreement over the cover for the novel, Gold Fire.  They want to change the style from the first novel in the series, Silver Sparks, and I don't like that they no longer seem to go together.  But it's not about what I like, it's about what sells.  (By the way, this is the answer for ANY disagreement in publishing; get used to it.)  Since odds are they know what they're doing, I'm good with it.

So these are the covers:

This is the e-novella, about a horse trainer who has no intention of giving her heart to a man who won't stay in her small mountain town, and a man who has no intention of staying in the small town he left years ago for a successful career in Boston.   

  

This is book two in the Barringer's Pass series, Zoe's story.  She's the ambitious, image-conscious assistant manager of the prestigious Alpine Sky resort.  He's Jase, a washed-up athlete and the current owner of the Rusty Wire Saloon, who's most far-reaching ambition is planning his next fishing trip.  He has what the Alpine Sky wants - the land under the Rusty Wire - and it's her job to convince him to sell.  Her repeated failures don't seem to deter the handsome owner of the Alpine Sky from espressing a personal interest in Zoe.  He's the opposite of Jase - polished, ambitious, and attentive.  And his kisses are more than nice.  But one impulsive clinch with stubborn, irritating Jase has her head spinning.  She might need to get the wrong man out of her system before she can concentrate on the right man.

The big question is, how much does a book's cover influence your decision to buy it?  Or to even pick it up?  Marketing research seems to indicate that it matters a lot, and I'd have to agree.  The question is whether these covers will work well for these stories.  In the end, it's all a gamble.  (My publisher would probably call it an educated guess.) 

What makes you reach for a book?  If you'd never heard of it before, would you take a second look at these books based solely on the cover?

Brave New e-World

I have recently agreed to a new contract with my publisher, Pocket Books, for the third book in my Barringer's Pass series.  It will release early next year as a digital-only book, with the possibility of going to print later.

When I first began writing for Pocket Books, Pocket Star was a line of mass market paperbacks.  Then the name disappeared.  Now it's back, with an impressive list of authors like Cindy Gerard, Laura Griffin, and V.C. Andrews, and featuring new titles you will only find in e-book form.  Including mine!  I'm honored to be included in this group.

And a bit embarrassed - I think I need to buy an e-reader!