Vet Visit

I had a vet appointment scheduled for this past Friday. I wanted to take Junior in to make sure that his teeth weren't the reason why he was as thin as he was. I know his previous owner did everything for him and I vaguely remember her saying that she'd taken him to the vet for a float at some point. But I wanted our vet to do an overall evaluation on Junior. I figure a second opinion is always a good thing. But our vet came up with the same conclusion. Junior is a hard keeper.

Of course, Friday  morning rolled around and I hadn't hooked the truck up. Luckily I'd given myself plenty of time. When I went out to hook the trailer up, it was iced over. I had to take a hammer to some parts of the trailer to get latches and doors open. By the time I was finally hooked up and on the road, I figured I'd better take the short route. Hwy 19 is finally open although rough. If I took the Valley Road it would add an additional 15 minutes to the drive. So I opted for Hwy 19.

I. Was. Wrong.

I should NOT have taken Hwy 19. It might be open and might be called a road by some, but I sure wouldn't call it a road. It took just as long to get to the vet's taking Hwy 19 as it would had I taken the Valley Road and driven the normal speed limit. 40mph on hwy 19. That'll teach me.

I decided that I would also take Rain to the vet to have his teeth floated. We've been working on his wavy teeth for the past few years and I wanted to make sure that he wasn't too bad. So I brought both Rain and Junior in to the working area and put Rain into the chute to be worked on.

Surprisingly, Rain did really well. The vet checked his mouth and said "If he were my horse, I wouldn't float him. But since you're here, we might as well take care of those few sharp points." I was thrilled. I was worried that his teeth would be all wavy again. I will admit that I was a bad horse owner and had them check to see when he was last floated. September 2010. We were able to get the waves under control and now are just maintaining his teeth instead of doing serious work. The best part, Rain let the vet hand float him without any sedatives. One less expense. Although I'm a little worried that Rain may not allow a hand float to happen again without a tranquilizer. But we'll see. Overall, Rain got a good grade on his teeth.

Then it was Junior's turn. Junior would NOT allow the vet to look at his teeth. So we had to tranquilize him. Once the vet got into his mouth, he decided that Junior only needed a hand float as well to get a few sharp points. He IS missing a tooth, which happened recently. So overall, Junior's teeth looked pretty darn good. The tranquilizer did it's job and Junior was sleepy for the hand float. I also had the vet take a quick look at him to get his impression on Junior, as far as weight goes. There's no heart murmur, which is good.

I think with Junior's high withers, he really looks thinner than he actually is. I pulled his blanket off, and he looked about the same as when we first got him. I was actually afraid that he'd dropped some weight since coming to the Sanctuary. So, we'll keep him on his grain ration and see how it goes. I'm hoping that maybe he'll eat faster but I think he's simply a slow eater (just like some people are slow eaters).

Once I had Rain and Junior loaded back in the trailer, I went back in to the vets for our little min pin to be examined. That gave Junior some more time to come out of the sedative. But when I got back out, his head was still drooping so I stopped at Mom and Dad's and gave Junior an extra half an hour to come out of the sedative before I hauled him home.

I made the smart move of taking the Valley Road, although that's curvy and winding so the horses had to pay attention while I was hauling them so they wouldn't get tossed around. Oh for a decent road!

So, an uneventful vet visit and I learned just a little bit more about Junior. Now to pay the bill. At least the vet was able to keep the price down.