I don’t know why it is but hot and humid days just make me want to hole up some where until they are over. I can take a little heat if its not too humid but the combination really gets to me. And it has been miserable here the last 5 or 6 days. The plants love it though. The lilies are gorgeous right now.
I had to get up early today so I could run the little Jack Russell pup Tina to the vet. Late Friday night she and the rest of the dogs were playing wildly after it cooled off a bit and she started yelping and hid. I thought she got bit and checked her over but couldn’t find anything. She screamed every time one of her legs was touched. I didn’t see much swelling and couldn’t feel a break so I let it go, assuming she would feel better the next morning. But she laid around all Saturday and Sunday with the one hind leg in a funny position and crying whenever someone touched it.
So I got up early to get her to the vet, our country vet waits in his office for appointments or walk-ins for a short while after 8:30 am then he goes off to farm calls, does surgery or goes home. We caught him and he thought an x-ray was in order. In order to keep her still during the x-ray, he knocked her out. I held her while she dozed off and he ran out to let a plumber into a rental house he owned.
When he came back we did the first x-ray. His machine is really old. While waiting for the x-ray to develop, I decided to cuddle her to make her more comfortable than laying on a cold table. Bad move, she peed all over me, still out cold. The x-ray was too dark and we had to do another one. And wait, me with a wet shirt now. I saw a flea on her and killed it. Our dogs do not have fleas, she must have picked it up off the table. I hope I got the only one. Lucky for Tina the x-ray showed no break or dislocation. So a hundred dollars later I learn she has a bad bruise and now maybe fleas.
Not only did I spend $100. on a dog today I got bit on my left arm by one of my lovely dogs this morning trying to break up a fight. These girls are cranky in the hot weather too. The fight started right beside me in bed, over who would be between me and Steve, the coveted position.
And I had to shoo turkeys home again this morning too. Last week I opened up the pen for the little mallard ducks I raised and told them to go find the pond. They had all their feathers and they sure make a mess of a pen. By evening two had disappeared, although I can’t see them on the pond. Our old white duck came up to eat where the last mallard was, and I thought it would follow him but it just hung around the back door of the barn where its pen is. It started coming in the barn through the hole for the cats and then it found the pen where I had moved the heritage turkeys. They had spent their first few weeks together in the brooder.
Duck encouraged turkeys to fly up over their pen walls and the first day I came out they were all just inside the barn door. I recaptured the turkeys, I thought maybe something had just spooked them. Second night duck led them out through the cat door. I had to chase them around outside that morning. I closed a connecting door between two parts of the barn so they couldn’t get out the back or the duck in by them. Duck circled around outside until he came to the pen where the bigger turkeys and the hens were. Turkeys somehow knew he was there. This am the two lighter colored turkeys were sitting on the 52 inch high rail of their pen and the one who looks like a wild turkey had flown over the inside divider between the hens and other turkeys, went through their door to the outside pen and was sitting next to his friend the duck. I shooed the other two back into their pen.
I don’t want the duck in the hen pen because it’s a wild mallard and should be free and because I don’t want the mess he will make with the water. I can’t catch him now or I would take it down to the pond, which is only about 50 feet away but down an incline and hidden to a duck anyway, by tall grass. The dark turkey will probably be all right with the hens and big turkey. Unless he flies out of there to be with the duck. So much fun down on the farm.
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