Poor Paris

After the walk Emily and Rhoda joined me for breakfast then it was time to start loading the horses that were going to Hoerr Vet clinic. Rhiannon and Killian were loaded into the front of the stock while Hadassah and Paris occupied the back of the trailer. We arrived right at our scheduled appointment 9:30 am but had to wait until Dr. Hoerr finished up de-horning the calves. We brought Rhiannon and Killian in for a coggins test, Paris to find out why she has been losing weight and Hadassah to use as a jump mare to collect Killian. Today was the day we were to test his semen. We were a little pressed for time needing to be home by noon so Emily would have time to change before her class at ICC which started at 1:00 pm. That should have been plenty of time but nothing seems to go as planned.
The first problem was the AV, somehow the liner was stuck to the rubber and as Dr. Hoerr was working on getting it open it developed a leak. He then had to find an old inner tube to use as a patch.

The tube was cleaned and roughed up a bit then adhesive applied, we needed both Emily and Rhoda to hold the AV in position for the fix.

While the girls were helping Dr. Hoerr with the AV, I went with Dr. Pallen to help hold Killian and Rhiannon for the drawing of their blood. They were both perfect standing quietly while getting stuck with a big needle.
The patch on the AV needed to dry so at that point Paris was brought into the clinic. Now Paris is our Arabian mare. She has been on our starting line-up for over 10 years and is around 30 years old. Last summer she had a terrible rectal prolapse then a couple of months ago she started losing weight. At first we thought it may be her teeth and started mixing her grain with shredded moist beet pulp 3 times a day but instead of gaining she lost even more weight. Dr. Hoerr gave her a pretty thorough exam.

 He drew blood and took manure for a fecal then checked her teeth. Her teeth were not the problem so once the blood work was running Paris was put back while Hadassah and Killian brought into the barn area.
Now Killian was ready until he had to use the AV and then would just not finish the job. After 3 or 4 tries there was a small amount of preseminal fluid so Dr. Hoerr decided to check that and thankfully we saw swimmers. Not a lot as Killian did not ejaculate but at least we know he is producing sperm. Dr. Hoerr wanted to try another option trying to use an OB sleeve as a stallion condom to see if that would work but again Killian tried a few times but got very frustrated and quit each time before getting the job done. By this time it was already after noon and we had to quit. Now we had no time to get Emily home to change. We drove her straight to ICC with the truck and horse trailer, dropped her off at the door then found a place to park until she could finish her class. Dr. Hoerr called with the results of Paris' blood work as we were driving home and it wasn't good. Her albumim is extremely low the nutrifil was high so he decided to run more tests. Basically she is having problems with her liver. Either she has an abscess on her liver or something worse. We are going to put her on Sulpha every day for 2 weeks but there really isn't anything else that can be done for her if she doesn't improve.
We weren't able to get home until after 2:30 which gave me just 2 short hours to get the laundry started and a few other jobs finished before picking up mom to head to Russ Rumbold's visitation. We were going to try to be there just before the starting time of 5:00 pm but pulled up right at 5:00 only to find the place packed. Even the parking lot was full. We parked on the street and got in line. We finally made it home by 7:30 pm.
The evening was spent working with Mark feeding and watering Holly, Emily worked on the garden clearing weeds and planting lettuce and I finished up the laundry. I'm tired and heading to bed.