Trim
January 22nd, 2023Happy Mio Monday everyone. Hope it’s a good one.
16/1 2023
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Good goat times today. I was a little worried in the morning, because Jeanette was nowhere to be seen. Yes, yes. I actully look forward to seeing a human too, not just the goats! She turned up about and hour and a half later, so that was okay. and the good news is we got a vet appointment on Thursday so hooves crossed that will go well.
We actually got sunshine today too. How nice. Along with a little rain. There hasn’t been many days without rain lately. It rained A LOT yesterday, so the it was muddy as ever today. Along with some very slippery streets to walk on for me because the temperatures dropped after the rain. I sure do look forward to spring.
But we had some good fun today. We actually got out into the pen for a bit and Milo and Sky did some excellent running and jumping around. Good twirls! Mia saved the running for when it was time to get through hte muddy patches and get back home. I sure hope the vet can help her with the limping. And thankfully the vet will come while Jeanette is there. I think that’s important. Hope it goes well.
16/1 2023
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I’m not sure what that ball of fire in the sky is but I’d sure like to see it more often.
16/1 2023
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Guess which hunk of a goat stud retained the hoofshake knowledge? That’s right. Milo remembered the trick. So we now have three goats who will shake hoof. Although I wouldn’t put it past him to one day just forget out of the blue just because he’s such a stinker sometimes.
16/1 2023
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Mia sees her own shadow. That means.. sigh, 2 months more of rain.
Well, it also means the sun is shining which is nice at least.
16/1 2023
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HappY Yogi daY everyone. I hope it’s a good one.
17/1 2023
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Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on here.
17/1 2023
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Happy Hump Day everyone. I hope it’s a good one.
18/1 2023
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goatlog
18/1 2023
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Good exercise times today. i got on the bike for the first time in about 2 months. Yikes. Feel the burn, from climbing onto the bike alone. I have gotten some motivation because i’ve been feeling not great lately. Remember about a year ago when I had breathing problems and got tired super quickly? The last week or so I’ve been starting to feel about the same. Being totally pooped after a trip out with the goats and shopping. Having to sit down and catch my breath. We never did find out for sure what was wrong last time, other than those x-rays showing a slight change in a little lung tissue. Who knows if it’s the same now? or something else. Or my imagination? One thing that has changed that last couple of weeks is I have cut the candy. I was eating candy. Like a lot. Various stuff. Just having bags lying next to my chair and just …eating on and off all day. Which is super super dumb considering my condition. And it was affecting my blood sugar in a negative way for sure. So I have cut that out. Not completely eating totally healthy yet, but snacking on apples and carrots mostly. And I wonder if cutting out those unhealthy easy sugars is the reason I have less energy? Maybe my body just needs to adjust to not getting all that sugar. Or maybe my lung got poked by a bent rib. I did one night kind of feel like.. a bone was poking in my insides. I can’t really explain it, but it’s something I’ve felt before. I don’t even know if it’s physically possible for ribs or other bones to poke holes in your lungs or whatever. Haha. Well. I’m not a hypondriac but.. wait, maybe I AM a hypocondriac. Because I do have all the diseases so surely I have that too.
Anyway. We’ll see how it goes now that I hopefully will keep up exercising. Maybe that will get me in better shape and that will be that.
My weight was good. Surprisingly good. I was expecting to have put on weight. But I’m lower than I’ve been since last July. So that’s good. Maybe just a couple of weeks without all the sugar has helped me drop a bit. Maybe I just need more sunshine, please.
Now let me got prepare some evasive answers to everyone who will be telling me to go to the doctor…
Love you all, I know you care!
18/1 2023
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Ugh I almost can’t stand how cute Milo and Sky were when they were babies. Such darlings. Jeanette texted me the other day asking for birtdates for the goats in preparation for the vet visit. Had to go look up Milo and Sky. I don’t know their exact birthdays but they came to us in December 2017. Tiny little things.
18/1 2023
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I hope today is a good one. Here’s Bob from 2012.
19/1 2023
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Good goat times today. A tough day, though. Starting with a freezing walk in snow and sleet. Not a lot, but just wet and cold. And today was the date for the vet visit. She was scheduled to arrive between noon and 1pm, so I got to freeze my butt off for hours waiting. Brr.
But the vet came. And I recognised her voice immediately. It’s the same vet they used at the two previous playgrounds we were at. it’s not like we’ve met a ton of times, but she recognised me as well. We had to trim the goats’ hoves and that was not fun. They had to be laid down on their sides one by one. You can imagine this did not go over well with the goats. Poor things must have been so scared. But ti was a pretty big job because it hadn’t been done for so long. Jeanette said she was glad I was there because she didn’t think just her and the vet would have been able to do it on their own. Milo especially is really strong. But the vet said that if it had just been the two of them she had a technique of sitting on them that would have worked, she has a lot of experience iwth it. And apparently she does it with goats who are much wilder. Our are really tame. But they still buck and struggle. Jeanette had to grab them by the horns and I grabeed the legs that weren’t being trimmed and we had to hold them down. It was not a nice experience. But I’m glad it got done. Because it really needed doing. The vet said it had been left for way too long. And when we got to Mia, she shocked at the state of her hooves. They were literally deformed. No wonder she’s been having trouble walking. Poor girl. It was so bad that they probably won’t be back to normal until the next time it’s done. But the vet did the best she could with them today, and said she thought fixing the hooves would probably fix them limping.
After we let them up, and they ran for safet, we walked and talked a bit out in the pen. And Mia was still limping. So the vet got her some tablets. I guess painkiller or anti-inflammatory things. Mia needs to take them for a week and then hopefully she’ll be getting back to normal. If not then we’ll have to take further measures.
Well I’m really glad it got done. Those hooves hadn’t been trimmed since the move in.. was it September? And who knows how long before that it was done last. And I have always been worried about the quality of the hoof trimmings at the old plac. Even when it was done I felt it wasn’t always good enough. I am really glad going forward we’ll have the vet doing it. I feel a lot better about that. She’s very nice, the vet. Competent and friendly and caring. And Jeanette seemed to really appreciate getting the help and input and support. Going forward the playground will be part of a program the vet clinic has where the staff can call them and there will be visits a couple of times a year, and Jeanette will have that to lean on when the higher-ups don’t want to spend money on stuff. Saying the vet recommends it will help.
We talked about the deworming and parasite stuff, and looked around at the pen and the vet gave some advice for some possible changes and how to handle things. They went around to talk about the other animals and I went back to comfort the goats, who by then had retreated to the goat house and were watching with dread as if the vet was there to murder them. Oh dear.
Oh and the vet noticed that Mia doesn’t have ear tags. “This is an illegal goat!” she said. Slightly kidding, but not really. Mia is illegal like this and she will now need ear tags. Sigh. It’s not that bad, but it’s a little sad. I can just imagine the reaction on Mia’s page, some people really hate those ear tags. And I get it. They don’t look nice. But I’d rather have goats with tags than no goats.
So yeah. That was a big day. Hard at times, but ultimately good. I just hope Mia will be okay now and we won’t need to go through anything worse with her legs.
Man I tell you, it’s really really heartbreaking hearing a goat wail and try to wrestle free from your grip. If only you could explain to them what was going on. At least they didn’t hold a grudge against me. They fled from the vet and were wary of Jeanette afterwards too. We had to get a hold of Mia after the trimming to check the leg furter and then get her the pill. I don’t know if the vet or Jeanette could have gotten a hold of her right then, she was running from them. Thankfully I could still get close to her and grab on so we could get it all done. AndI got some nice thanks and compliments for my bond with the goats, that’s always nice to hear.
OKay, enough rambling. I really need food.
19/1 2023
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Sorry about the bad picture quality. I didn’t have time to take a flash photo before they got up, so this is just a very brightened video still. This is how I found the three this morning. I think this is the first time at the new place when they haven’t come out to greet me in the morning. The weather was so so bad that it was definitely a “stay in bed” kind of morning. Normally even if the weather is bad they’ll at least be standing in the entryway waiting for me. But today they’d sat back down. So sweet together. I have never seen how they sleep at night (kind of wish I could put in a nightcam..) but this is pretty much how they must look at night. Especially when it’s so cold. Huddled up together. Big Mia in the middle.
19/1 2023
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I hope today is a good one. Here’s Mads from 2004.
20/1 2023
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Well, I just got back from an emergency goat visit. Don’t worry, it wasn’t a terrible emergency, but a surprising one nonetheless.
I was sitting at my pc working on a problem on Mia’s page (don’t even get me started) when I noticed there was a message to the page. And it was from one of the caretakers at the playground. She was asking if I could come help them with Milo
He was limping, and the vet had said it was most likely from the trimming yesterday and to wash his hooves. But they could not get a hold of him and do it. So they asked if I could come help.
I know it’s silly, but I don’t really like going outside later in the day. The more people are out, the worse I feel. And I was so tired after yesterday, I have just been sleeping and relaxing, napping in my comfy chair. And that was all I had planned to do today. But of course I could not say no to a goat in distress. Good thing I happened to see the message in time.
So I got out and got up to the playground. Where I was met by two young ladies. Today isn’t one of Jeanette’s working days. I had met Maja before, the other one was Sanne and I don’t think I’ve met her. But they were really thankful that I had come to help. They said I’d saved their, and Milo’s day. It was no trouble for me to grab Milo and hold him. They washed his hoof. They said it looked fine though, no blood or anything. Hopefully there’s no bigger problem. My thinking is after walking on bad hooves for so long maybe he has to get a bit used to actually walking on proper ones, and maybe there was some pain from having the bad hooves trimmed for the first time in so long. Hopefully it will clear up. We also had to give ho, a pill. Which proved trickier than expected. We put it in an apple slice and he started to eat it, but then he did a thing he sometimes does when he starts to shake his head and then the food just pops out of his mouth. And then immediately a chicken grabbed the apple slice and ran! Haha. Oh bour. The girls were mortified. What have we done, are we going to have killed one of the chickens?! Thankfully they managed to catch the bird and get the apple slice and the pill was still there. This time I gave it to Milo and he ate it down. So hopefully both him and Mia will be walking better soon.
The girls were amazed when i walked back to the goat house and the goats just followed me in. I think everyone but Jeanette has to work a lot harder to get them inside. It’s not really optimal that the workers aren’t all good at handling the goats. I understand it though, they were hired to take care of human kids and now suddenly goats are added to the job. Goats can be intimidating with their horns. Milo is strong and willful. Especially Maja was not so happy with it. i think she’s had a bad run-in with the bandit. She is a little scared of him. She was holding the apple slices and Milo was coming towards her and you could tell she was not happy. She wasn’t screaming in terror and running away, but she was backing away and expressing how she was feeling anxious and didn’t like the situation.
I wish they had more people like Jeanette working there. I think Jeanette is planning to sit down with Maja and the goats and try to get her more comfortable with them. But I’m getting the feeling that Maja has got the fear in her now and it will be hard to change. When I was young I was terrified of dogs, and I still have a bit of that in me. And then there’s my fear of humans of course. Once the brain gets a phobia it is hard to change.
I was telling the girls how I’d been with the goats all their lives. “We’re still in the processing of getting to know them” Sanne said. Yes. I hope for the best. It’s not optimal, but there’s nothing I can really do. If it was up to me the goats would be the number one priority and they would come first in everything, but i know that’s not how it works. They have to fit into a system and there are lots of issues and things to deal with. I hope the goats still have better lives than meat and industry goats. They get care and attention and have a silly human who likes to just hang out with them. And now they have a vet associated with them which will hopefully help too.
But yes, glad I could help. The girls were super appeciative and said they’d buy me a box of chocolate or something, i told them they didn’t have to. The goats mean everything to me, if I can help I will.
Hoping the best for the hooves.
20/1 2023
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Here’s a picture from yesterday after the hoof trimming. Mia, Milo and Sky retreated to their safe, watching the evil vet and making sure she doesn’t come near them again.
20/1 2023
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Happy Caturday everyone. I hope it’s a good one. Here’s Nala.
21/1 2023
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Snoot!
21/1 2023
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Happy Funday everyone. I hope it’s a good one.
22/1 2023
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One from today’s exercise mix. As I sat on my bike i couldn’t help thinking of my dad. He has started on a rehabilitation program, or whatever it’s called. Mental and physical exercise. He told me the other day that he was going to partake in the Tour de France because he was biking 30 km, I forget if it was every week or every session. He goes 3 times a week. Anyway, I found that funny because I just can’t picture my dad on an exercise bike. But hey, now we’re both doing it. And he says he’s enjoying it, i think he’s getting stronger physically and he like spending time with other people with similar diagnoses. I don’t know if it’s just alzeheimer patients or similar things, but it’s always good to spend time with people who can relate and whomst you can relate to. so that’s good.
22/1 2023
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Milo on his rock.
22/1 2023
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For the premium subscribers, here is a highlight reel from an upcoming video. Some fun running earlier in the week. There was one Sky jump that got me bursting out in laughter, see if you catch it.
22/1 2023
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That’s all for now.
