COVID 19 - The Coronavirus: First Days at Home

It was a short commute to work for us on Monday!

The horses kept us busy over the weekend and it seems like they're going to keep us busy going forward. Sam's started to stop partway through his door to demand scratches before he'll head off into the field.

Annie gets a special mention today. Our new normal is starting with one less horse. She's going away for training.

Four horses was never the plan. We picked up Annie to help out our friends Sonya and Jeff. Nibs is older and was sent to a trainer, Torrie, to learn how to support a rider. The plan was to have Nibs spend 3 months learning how to work and then she'd come back in May when Kitty moved out. Then it would be Annie's turn to go off and learn how to be ridden.

We got offered a deal. Torrie's moving to SC to get married. She wasn't planning on picking up new prospects, but with the virus and social distancing her events have all been canceled. Suddenly, she has more time than expected and offered us a discount. Carrie likes her work with Nibs, and Torrie was already cheaper than who Carrie was planning on sending Annie to.

We talked it over and decided to go for it. Carrie's hoping that having the same trainer work with both horses will help us have a better comparison between them for how much they could sell for and what homes would be a goof fit for them.

It meant we had to do some extra work Monday morning. Carrie decided to 'ace' Annie to keep her calm for the ride. I got to distract her and hold the lead rope while Carrie found the vein.

I gave Shane my phone and asked him to take some pictures to keep him busy.

There's no need to shower or fix your hair when working from home! I was still in pajamas to boot.

Kitty was shocked.

She kept looking off into the arena and calling out to her friend. You could tell she was lonely. She started to stand closer to Maddy after a while and life went on.

Shane and I stayed home this time. I got to deal with all sorts of things from homeschooling to Happy barf with worms wriggling around in it.

We've wormed her multiple times and she's started to avoid food with the medicine in it. Genevieve is being awesome and sending us prescription strength wormer (she works at a cat clinic).

In between keeping Shane busy, I had a virtual meeting at noon. 

I put on a hat to hide the bed head, but then discovered I could join the meeting with the camera off. I muted myself for good measure (Shane kept trying to yell to me across the house, because Shane).

A bunch of other people didn't get the "mute your mic" memo and kept talking over the principal. I typed in chat that people could pose questions there and an AP said, "Yes!" and took over moderating.

Everyone is trying to figure out how to do virtual school when not all kids can access virtual school. At the moment, the guidance from the state is:

1. Stay closed at least two weeks.
2. Nothing graded allowed those two weeks.
3. No new materials either (unless you're an AP class).

ACPS has said that we need to provide some sort of enrichment material that can't take more than 2 hours to complete in a week. They've extended the school wifi to reach into school parking lots so people without access can use it and there are food distribution sites set up at schools to help the families who rely on schools for food. We will have a virtual meeting Wednesday with more info and it's planned to become a weekly event.

The schools were closed for all business except picking up materials. Shane's school opened to distribute student laptops for 3rd-5th graders, but we opted to stick with what we have.

Carrie came back with more work. She'd dropped by the supply store near Raphine (trailer accessible!). We cleaned out the trailer and did some afternoon work in the barn.

We were all cleaned up and ready for when the vet came that evening. Loki hasn't had a bad vet experience yet and was happy to run and greet the doctor.

Carrie had fecals for all the horses labelled and ready to go. Sam and Maddy earned some special attention.

They're going to the tough love fat camp this week. Sam was estimated over 1400 lbs and needed to slim down to ~1250 lbs. Maddy was estimated around 955 lbs and needed to drop into the 800's (800-850 lbs preferred).

It's good for Sam, but critical for Maddy. After she displayed some aggravation with Shane riding (and he's little) Carrie's kept an eye on her. She seemed a little resistant on the lunge a few times and the vet agreed with Carrie's assessment.

The vet said she thought Maddy was pre-laminitic. Carrie described it to me as "like diabetes in horses, but not diabetes. It affects the hooves." Fresh spring grass is higher in sugars and our fields are sprouting beautifully.

Maddy won't be out on them. She's going be trapped on stall rest with a controlled diet of hay (maybe even soaked hay if she'll eat it).

Sam got pulled in as moral support (No one wants to go to fat camp alone. Especially a herd animal!).

Maddy broke out of fat camp that night.

I'd heard her banging when I went to bed. She'd been complaining about being in the stall ever since the vet left.

We changed out almost all of the stall doors and hinges. Guess who's we hadn't yet?

Nibs was the first one to bust a door. Sam was the one Carrie worried about, because he kept impatiently bumping his chest up against his door. I'd forgotten that Maddy broke one, too.

The cheapo builder screws stripped and several of them broke when Carrie tried to reuse them.

Quite annoying.

It'd not a hard process. It's been on the docket for a while, but it's easier with two people and it was normally dark and cold whenever I made it home through the winter.

It's a good example of why it's good not to put something off for too long, though. There's only one old style latch left in the barn and it's in an unused stall. We took off all the inner ones when we switched to metal stall gates.

That's a big post dealing almost entirely with Carrie, me, and horses. My next post will talk more about how I'm planning to keep this guy busy while at home.