Teeth Day!

Today was vet day out at the stable.  A vet from Red Deer was coming down to look at one of the horses here and he was going to be doing teeth as well.  My mom left work after a few hours to come pick me up and we headed out to the stable.  We wanted to be there to help if we could, mostly with Jimmy. 

We arrived just after the vet did and brought Socks and Jimmy in.  I think that was the first mistake.  Socks took one look at the vet and all his tools and she was not impressed.  Zanza was the first to get worked on and while the sedative was taking effect, the vet came over to check Socks' teeth.  Yeah, apparently my horse took to heart all the stranger danger talks I gave her because she was having nothing to do with this guy.  When he tried to check her teeth, which she has never had an issue with before...she hopped back and tried to get away from him until I told her to quit.  Then he untied her to bring her in a stall and there was no way he was going to get her in it.  She put on the brakes and wouldn't move.  So he handed her to me but the damage was done, Socks had made up her mind.  My darling horse was not going in a stall for the life of her.  She doesn't rear, or back up or anything, she just plants her feet and refuses to move. 

The vet decided to try Jimmy instead so E and I switched, he tried to get Socks in a stall and I led Jimmy in.  Our problem child walked in, no issues.  Socks finally decided to go in and just accepted that this was happening.  Jimmy was iffy about the needle, but the vet slowed down and in no time at all Jimmy was sedated.  Socks wasn't an issue to sedate and she started dozing with her head against my chest.  The vet started with Jimmy but it quickly became apparent that our little, 14.2 hh boy required more tranqulizer.  He ended up getting twice as much as the big Warmbloods and Thoroughbreds before he was finally out of it enough for the vet to do his job.  It doesn't surprise me, he needed extra sedative when he was gelded too.

Jimmy had his teeth done and then Socks had hers.  Both of them desperatly needed them done.  Once he was finished with them, we left them in the stalls for a while to wake up.  Jimmy stood there, his tongue hanging out of his mouth drooling.  It was...interesting.  Socks began waking up quickly, quicker even than Zanza.  Zanza had his sheath cleaned and although we hadn't initially planned for it, Jimmy did too.  We figured that if we have a vet out willing to do it, we might as well go ahead and get him too.  I'm glad we did, Jimmy had several large beans and seemed much happier once he was out.  Plus the vet actually cleaned everything, he didn't just get out the beans like most vets around here do.

My mom left to go back to work but I stayed at the stable to hang with the ponies.  Once all the horses had their teeth done and Spirit was done with her x-rays I went out to visit Artemis.  She came over to me and that was the best we got along all day.  We just had one of those days.  She wasn't being focused and I really wanted her to be focused....and together we were just awful.  She wanted to be with the other horses, I wanted her to focus on what we were doing.  She wanted me to stop telling her what to do and I wanted her to stop neighing because as cute as her neigh can be, it is so high-pitched she was hurting my ears.  She had a little time out in the round pen and I sat on the grass nearby so we, meaning me, could take a breather and start being productive again.  Sometimes my frustration gets the better of me and I try to go sit down for a few minutes to relax.  It calmed me down and I think it even helped her a bit, she was better afterwards, although I'm sure that's because I was much calmer with her. 

We went back inside and everything was fine until the other boarder there put her horse out.  Then Artemis exploded.  I think I need to make a sign to hang up when she starts.  The more people pay attention to her when she does it, the worse she gets.  She was getting better about being alone for a while there but then we went for a long time without her being alone, so she's just gone back to being horrible about it.  The stable owners and a few other boaders are on board with just leaving her alone and ignoring her if she starts up, but I'm having a very difficult time trying to convince everyone of that. 

What did make me smile though, is no matter how annoying she was being today, Artemis was great at backing up.  At one point, before we had our little time outs, she bumped into me and I turned around ready to kill her (okay I might be exagerrating a little bit) and told her to back up...and she did.  No problem at all.  Anytime I gave her the signal to back up she would, right away.  We're learning! 

M thought she had grown so I measured Artemis and sadly, she's not any taller.  Well her withers aren't, I'm pretty sure her backend has grown by another hand.  I sure hope she evens out as she get's older, you could go skiing down her back right now it's so steep.