Sunday on the Farm

Can I tell you about my Sunday?

Yesterday started like any other day. Up at 4:30--because of the time change, of course. Made coffee, fed little Anabel her bottle. Got my first cup of steaming hot coffee and began my trek through the foggy pre-dawn to the office to read the news on the internet. Peaceful.

I went in the house and got a second cup of coffee. Made a "Buster Sandwich", consisting of a slice of white bread, some maple syrup, and a huge, crushed phenylbutazone tablet, and went out to feed the crew. The nursery was a piece-o'-cake. Little horses, little goat. Little deer and turkeys galore! Fed the donkey and fed the ducks. Man, oh man, I have great luck!...wait...I'm waxing poetic...

Got a scoop of dog food for Skooter and a whole bucket of grain for the preggie mini girls and Buster, who you know by my previous post is sequestered in the arena barn to hopefully heal his leg/foot. All is right with the world. Started off across the yard with the golf cart and decided to feed Skooter and the mini girls before heading out to the pasture to feed Buster. I put the Buster sandwich in the dash cubby of the golf cart just long enough to dump Skooter's grain. I turned back around just in time to hear Bob swallow hard and belch. Nothing new...he always gets into the livestock grain for a nice change of menu.

Then I realized...

...the Buster sandwich was gone!! I knew, for sure, that Bob would die. He'd just consumed enough Bute to medicate a 1000 pound bull in less time than it took to turn around in a circle. After sticking my finger all the way down Bob's throat at least a dozen times trying to make him puke, I rushed in to the internet to google an antidote, but much to my chagrin, there is none. "They", the great and mysterious powers that be, suggested giving the animal milk or egg whites and rushing them to the vet. "Do not induce vomiting," the advice read. "Great!" I thought, "he didn't puke, anyway!" So, taking the wonderful mystery medical advice, I rushed into the house, cracked an egg into a bowl, added a healthy dose of milk, and mixed. My reasoning was that, with the addition of the egg yolk, he'd be more likely to eat it.

Out of the house I went, bowl in hand, to present Bob with what would hopefully overfill his little tummy and cause him to surrender the potential poison he'd just swallowed a few minutes before. Interestingly, Bob polished off the egg mixture in less than a minute, licking the remnants off his little moustache. Hoping against hope, and not having $300 to $500 to sink into a stray dog for an emergency-weekend-vet-call, we hoped and prayed. Now, the Good Book says, to paraphrase, having done all, stand.

So, we stood. And, we waited...and waited...

One hour passed. Another hour passed. Soon, the morning was gone, and Bob was still his spry little self. Albeit a bit calmer, he was none the worse for wear. The day continued to pass, and Bob didn't even show signs of halucinating. Nothing! No salivating, no quivering, no poos, no coma. Absolutely nothing.

We pronounced him safe around mid-afternoon.

Then, as we worked on the Cottage's gardens, readying them for a fall dressing of mulch, we heard a commotion in the corner of our yard, inside the fence near the nursery. It was Anabel--playing in the leaves that had fallen from the great oak in front of the gate. She buried her nose into the leaves, jumped into the air, twirled, rolled, and started all over again...at least until those awful turkeys came walking through and ruined all her fun.

It was a nice ending to a stressful day. Thankfully, the ending was a good one.