Favourite pictures

I took a friend out to the barn. He had a new Pentax K10D DSLR and wanted to try taking pictures of the horses. He ended up with the picture below of Kasane. It's probably one of my favourites of her. She's making that face because I'm scratching That Spot on her belly.



Isis is also now wearing her grazing muzzle and her fly mask. (Isis wears the grazing muzzle to reduce the amuont of grass she can eat. She is not supposed to have a lot of grass, so wearing the muzzle on her halter lets still be out on grass instead of in a dry lot.) She is Not Amused. She walked over to the paddock fence and pestered me to remove something. Normally she asks for her grazing muzzle to be off. This time, as soon as I removed her fly mask she was happy and went back to grazing. 

Real picture of Isis

So the Mare in the Post-Apocalyptic Equine Wear(™ tosaigh_allaidh ) is actually quite pretty out of her fly mask and grazing muzzle. I've had Isis since she was a baby. Her grandmother was my Mom's first Arabian mare. There is a lot of history in her bloodlines, history I was part of.



I have almost lost her several times. The worst time was when she had colic surgery due to a strangulating lipoma, a benign fatty tumor suspended by a stalk in her abdomen and had wrapped around 60% of her small intestines. No one had been optimistic after her colic surgery. Five or six days in intensive care, a secondary colic, no motility in her small intestines until five days after surgery, and a history of laminitis. The odds had not been in her favor.

That is one of the reasons she earned the nickname of the Miracle Mare.

A few weeks ago that was really brought home when another mare I know died from tortion colic caused by a lipoma. Within a few weeks, I had two vets tell me that Isis had been very lucky -- most horses don't survive a lipoma because of the sudden onset and little time to get to an equine hospital.



Ever hear an Arabian snort? When they are excited, Arabians flag their tail (carry it almost straight up) and make snorting noises. In this video, you can see Isis prancing around and snorting.

(The full size video is also available (64 MB AVI file).)

She now has arthritis. We're working on treatment for that. Hopefully we'll have it managed by July...