June 2011

From the Auburn Journal
(taken from artwork at Auburn Large Animal Medical on Friday
while waiting for my Health Certificate appointment):

HORSEBACK PARTY MARKS EMIGRANT TRAIL TO TAHOE
Thursday, October 1st, 1931
"Bob" Watson Guided Party Over Last Part of Trip

(Special to the Journal)

A party including five members of the Auburn Native Sons, namely Dr Conrad Briner, Wendell Robie, Lavelle Shields, Earl Lukens and William Patrick, arrived in Tahoe City Friday after a three-and-half days trip on horse back over the old Emigrant trail from Auburn. With them was R M "Bob" Watson of Tahoe who met the Auburn men at Robertson's Flat on Wednesday.

Watson, who during past years has spent much time in placing markers along this trail, and to whom credit is mainly due for the erection of the new monument, is now nearly his 77th birthday. In spite of his age he made the long trip in splendid condition and stepped from his saddle at the finish with graceful ease.

The party reported a wonderful scenic trip over ninety miles of the steepest and most varied trail in the Sierra Nevadas. Shields, who acted as timekeeper, said the men spent 39 hours in the saddle, and that many times during the trip the trail was completely obliterated by brush and boughs. At these points, some search was acquired to again set the horses feet in the right direction.

On their first night out the party camped at Michigan Bluff where they were surprised by slight showers of rain, and awoke next morning to find the higher peaks white with snow. The second night was spent at Robertson's Flat where they were met by Watson.

Many miles of steep climbing were done during the last day of the trip. At once of the steepest curves on the trail near the drop into French Meadows, one of the pack horses lost its footing, fell and rolled over twice down the mountain side. The animal was saved from rolling further only by the fact that it was tied by a long rope to the riding horse of William Patrick.

The last night on the trail was spent west of Needle Peak, and when the party reached the monument at Fort Sumpter, Dr Briner who had operated a motion picture camera all the way, found that he was short on film. It was then decided that a return trip to the summit would be made on Sunday, and the last few miles filmed. This was done later.

Most of the town's people were on hand to welcome the caravan when it arrived in Tahoe City, and after the strenuous trip most of the riders dismounted with extreme caution, while Earl Lukens declined to dismount at all. He was assisted from his horse with the aid of a hay derrick while the crowd rocked with laughter.

The entire party made an auto trip around the lake on Saturday, and on Sunday they again climbed the last five miles of the old trail and reviewed the raising of the flag on the monument.

Mr Shields states that the Native Sons are considering a plan for turning the old Emigrant trail into a summer tourist trip from Auburn to Tahoe City. The marking of the trail between these places is now complete, though some construction work would improve the trail at the steepest and roughest points.

Lukens describes the old trail as the "trail of thrills," and declares that it will make one of the most fascinating trips in the world. He says that with a little improvement it can be made perfectly safe for guiding large parties back and forth from Auburn to Tahoe. In case this is done stables will be opened at both ends of the trail, and camps stationed at convenient points such as Michigan Bluff, Robertson's Flat and French Meadows.

Lucy Chaplin Trumbull:
He's doing OK. He's ensconced in a 12x20 pen and loving every minute of having the place to himself (with buddies on the other side of the panel, easy to play bitey face with).

Lucy Chaplin Trumbull:
can't really tell, given that he can only walk a few paces in any direction, but I would say not really. I palpated it again tonight before icing and buting and he's still sore.

Uno continues to be iced twice a day, has been getting one gram of bute each morning and evening, a few carrots for carrot stretches, and a roll-on of DMSO when I take the ice boot off. I'm going to drop the bute down to half a gram twice a day starting this evening.

There is still some puffiness around the tendon and when Sally visited late last week, she trotted him out for me and he still doesn't seem quite right - I could notice him limping slightly on the uphill from the barn. But he's miles better than he was Saturday evening after it happened.

He seems perfectly content in his pen, with Provo and Roo to play bitey-face with over the panel. He loves the applesauce bute (chomped a hole in the cheap syringe I was using, in an effort to get it quicker), but is less keen on the icing, and even less keen on the DMSO (doesn't like the smell).

He's booked in for an u/s on 16th with Marty Gardner from Great Basin (comes over to CA to do work, so I only have to drive ~1.5 hours to get to him). I'm taking Roop along as well to get the all clear so I can start riding him properly without feeling anxious.

So Uno's doing good. I, on the other hand, am struggling somewhat from having the rug pulled out from under me. All the momentum has gone and I'm wavering at sea with no goals or purpose. Life has done a bit of a flat-line for me and although I've been sitting waiting for things to sway back to normal, it hasn't happened yet. I've done a lot of sleeping and a lot of reading and a lot of shut-down, but it hasn't helped much either. I need to get some momentum back into my life and get back on track. Just not sure what to do to make it happen. It makes me shutdown to think on it.

At least I got out of work at a sensible time, so got to come home and ride Jackit - yay!

Vulture - We thumped into a vulture on the way to work this morning. He was feasting with his buddies on some delightful roadkill and got startled up by a car coming the other way, couldn't get enough lift and went straight into the windscreen of the Subaru. Luckily, pft was able to brake sharply enough that we didn't hit him enough to break anything, so I'm guessing he was just dazed. We were glad not to have been in the miata and end up with vulture in our laps (particularly as I've been told they regurgitate carrion when threatened).

Roop's Fat Leg - Uno's leg is much less swollen. In fact, I'm not sure it's swollen at all. This morning he got his last dose of a half gram of bute and I decided to stop icing him. However, when I got home I thought I could still detect something (never mind that he's been standing in a stall all day in 90 degree heat (yay! Summer finally showed up!)). So he got iced again anyway,

In a fit of jealousy, or a fit of worry that I was going to start riding him, Roop managed to scrape his leg on sommat - possibly a big branch that came down off the dead oak in their paddock - and has a nice fat leg so he got iced and DMSOed as well. Stupid idiot. Doesn't he realise he has to stay sound?

More Jackit - And in keeping with my new-found enthusiasm, I rode Jackit again this evening. I'm going to try and do a little ride with him each day. We did some work up on the pad (he's getting used to all the garage debris up there, I'm getting used to getting him unstuck when he can't move forward), we watched deer leap out of the undergrowth (interesting, but not worthy of a spook), and then went nearly to the bottom of the driveway and back up again. I'm still nervous with him on downhills - not exactly sure why, just lacking in trust I supposed. He huffed and puffed back up the driveway - hard work, he says.

He's mostly a very good boy and just goes along, doesn't do anything untoward. However there was one moment when I turned him and he turned a little more sharply than expected and I suddenly got a glimpse of just how fast he'll be able to move - reminded me of the gymkhana ponies that can go from 0-gallop in a nanosecond - while turning around a pole. For this reason, I'm glad he's such a good boy - at least until we're used to each other.

He's ouchy on the gravel, so ideally needs boots. Having trimmed and measured him after our ride, I think he'll go into the smallest size Glove - 00, even though his feet are either round or wider than long. His feet are starting to lose the strange unbalanced wave they developed when I neglected them over the winter.

By the end, he had sweated a little under his pad. I'm a tad dismayed by how out of shape he is... but why would he not be?

Turns out that he has torn the suspensory ligament off the bone up high behind/below his knee. It's a very common sports injury, but also a very hard one to heal because everything's packed in there with little blood flow to mend it.

He's also done some minor injury to a check ligament up high on the inside of his knee (a ligament I'd never even heard of). The vet wasn't vaguely worried about that injury - except he went hunting for it when he wondered about the extra fluid in the leg - explains the extra swelling that I'd been treating. And also means I've been icing and DMSOing the wrong part of the leg - the injury was much higher than I realised.

So I'm going for the "it's only money, right?" approach, and going to try stem cell therapy.

Basically they cut a chunk of fat out of his butt (and let's face it, he's got plenty), send it off to the lab who separate the stem cells, then two days later they reinject it back into his poorly leg.

Then I spend the next six months rehabbing him very slowly and in theory, I get my 100-mile horse back. In theory.

The vet wasn't concerned about the check lig (other than wondering where the fluid was coming from). He wasn't thrilled with the suspensory thing, though. He said that at least the low suspensories have space to swell.

The good thing is he hasn't damaged the bone (i.e. the bone didn't come off with the ligament), and his knee joints are lovely and clean. And he's fine in the back end, so it wasn't some sort of compensatory injury.

From what they were telling me, it sounds like Marty and his crew have done about 300 stem cell "fixes" over the last 5-6 years and have about a 94% success rate (where I was thinking it was more like a 6% success rate, so that was very encouraging). I'm not sure it speeds recovery, but I think it makes it more likely that what will regenerate will be new ligament, not new scar tissue (ready to snap again at the slightest provocation).

Incidentally, I know of at least one "stem-celled" horse that had a similar injury to Uno who is planning on Tevis this year. The injured susp. has never given the horse any further trouble, but crunchy fetlocks are catching up with it. But again, an encouraging anecdotal story.

The nice thing about doing "something" is just that - that I'm doing something as opposed to just relying on rehab and crossed fingers. How well I rehab him will probably dictate how successfully he heals. He's a very good candidate as far as being perfectly content on stall rest, and doesn't want to rush about as soon as you get on his back, so hopefully we won't end up with "kite on a string" type rehabbbing.

Fat pack, ...uh, ...I mean stem cell harvest is on Tuesday in Gardnerville, so we get to drive over the mtn again. Reinjection is Thursday in Ione.

Jackit graduated to "big horse" status this weekend. Saturday evening I took him out onto Andy Wolf, along the lane and along Brumarba to the stallion barn and back - with only Chili dog for a chaperone. On the way back in, we took the scenic route - bulldozer-style: who cares if there are bushes or small trees in the way. Just point him at it and off he goes.

He performed so excellently well, that Sunday evening I took him back to Cool (we rode there with pft and Fergus on Friday evening after work) and we did his first ever completely solo trail ride. He's so much fun to ride - ever alert for stuff to look at, but not flighty or over-reacty.

The most alarmed he got was when confronted with barky dogs at a property bordering Cool. While watching the barking dogs on our left, a turkey leapt out of the undergrowth on our right. He barely flicked an ear at it. Good pony! After some thought and processing, we were able to walk past the dogs (albeit quite fast) without further ado and continue down the trail.

I was so comfortable on him that I was happy to take photos (and email them) while riding him. Not bad for a horse's first ride, eh?

Tuesday 21st
Uno's Fat Pack Removal for Stem Cell Harvest

Back from our round the world tour to NV and back for Uno's surgical procedure. The vet part went flawlessly, the driving part, not so good. Who knew I'd forget my phone? Who knew there are no gas stations between Strawberry and Gardnerville?

Uno seems none the worse for wear, though - he's had two slurpies in one day, so life can't be bad, even if he did have to ride in the trailer for six hours.

No, but I was darn close. I had about 5 miles left in the tank. Marty gave me a gallon of diesel so I was able to get into Gardnerville to the gas station, but I don't think I would have without it. <squeak>

Uno's v. happy - he has to eat two and half scoops of an anti-biotic, so he just got his third slurpie of the day.

Small Thing and I went bushwhacking this evening, out back. Quite hilarious. You know you're in trouble when you're trying to lay along his neck to get under the branches and he's ducking. Chili Dog came too and she fits under the brush, Small Thing tries to keep up with her, and I ended up with a bra full of twigs and nearly being strangled by a vine.

Renee Robinson:
He sounds like the perfect pone for bushwhacking. As long as pft and Fergus don't try to use the trail behind you (it'll only be bushwhacked up to their ankles)

There's no way Fergus and pft would have made it through what we were trampling through this evening.

I think it was too "viney" to be PO. But I went straight in the shower when I got done and scrubbed with Technu Extreme. Trouble with riding Small Thing is you are *in* the bushes as opposed to above them. :)

Uno's poorly leg has been injected with his stem cells back from the lab. Saturday the bandage comes off and I start the first 30 days of his six month rehab. First week is hand-walking 15 mins twice a day, but after that I can start riding him at a walk - 30 minutes every day. He was a good boy today, but is starting to get fed up with being poked with needles.

Starting out on rocks so I figured I might as well hand-walk Jackit for a bit. Fergus had to babysit again. He has a hard time going *that* slowly, so we let him go in front for most of the ride and jogged a lot to keep up.

Jackit's so smooth, he's actually hard to post to. I think this is probably because he's not trotting with much impulsion yet - just trundling along. He did good this evening, though, and trotted more than he ever has before, even if it was in 20' chunks.

And, as usual, we had to deal with a creek of death. He actually managed this six or so times and only jumped it once, but not before having a small hissy-fit when I asked him to stand quietly next to it.

Leslie and Lynda and I had a blast today, spectating WS100. Spent the early part of the afternoon watching the front runners come up the hill just before the pavement at Bath Rd, then a while at Foresthill, then down to Michigan Bluff, back to Foresthill, supper in Auburn, to the High School, the lastly to No Hands Bridge.

We got to the High School finish just in time to see the first place women's finisher, Ellie Greenwood, blitz in. She made up 11 mins between 96.8 mi and 98.9 mi - partly due to a bear in a tree which delayed her opponents, and finally finished 22 minutes ahead of them.

Then there was a sprint race for 2nd and 3rd place women, Kami Semick and Nikki Kimball. Nikki couldn't stop laughing once over the finish line. 4th place went to last year's winner, Tracy Garneau who showed up within five minutes. *Great* race for those guys.

Oh, and they said that Tracy Garneau improved her time from last year by 35 minutes... but dropped three places. Competitive field!

And predictably, I not only forgot to charge my phone ahead of time, I also forgot the charger, so was down to 10% battery by mid-afternoon from continual Twitter and Webcast inspection.

Uno and I completed his 1st day of rehab: 2 x 15 minute hand-walks. 1st, a jaunt down to the lane - not great, our driveway is a steep 300' downhill and he looked gimpy coming back up (supposed to rehab on "firm, level ground" - hah, we live on a hill). Second I experimented tacking back and forth in the barn/house/pad area. Shorter climbs = better, except that he was in leap-mode - not great either. We'll do better tomorrow.

I think he'll settle down OK. He was actually very good the first session, going down onto the lane. The second session was experimenting out back, tacking back and forth across the property, with more closed-in vegetation, so he was back to his normal "I'm scared something's going to leap out of the bushes at me" - Chili was rustling around back there and then pft dropped something down in the garage and he leapt forwards in scuttle mode.

This morning he was already better. I think once we get into the routine, he'll be even better and less jumpy since he's by nature pretty laid-back (just a scaredy) and does better when got out often - he's been stuck in that stall for three weeks now with virtually no outings (except being taken to the vet).

He's still very suspicious every time I go in to get him, thinking I'm going to stick him in the trailer for hours, or stick pins in him.

ooh, after making payments for eight and half years, my Trails West 3-H gooseneck trailer is finally paid off and *mine*! :)

UNO disgraced himself this morning by casually dropping his head to graze and then spooking himself 50' at warpspeed with me flying along behind him on the end of the lead. To make matters worse, he clouted me on my bad ankle with a hoof as he went by. Since this is a repeat performance of an idiotic stunt he kept pulling over Christmas he will no longer be taking the odd bite as we walk and he will be spanked.

Two more rehab walks completed with only minimum threatening (and one of them in the dark). Hand-walking a horse that jumps every 30 seconds is less fun than hand-walking a plod. My ankle is still sore.

Zut alors, as they say in French when the driver's side windscreen wiper comes off its spindle in the pouring rain on the way home from work.

I was *thinking* WTF but having had it happen before, it wasn't quite the shock as last time (when the wiper flops over and hangs off the side of the car on the freeway, reducing your visibility to 0 in about seven seconds). Plus this time pft was with me so I made him stand in the rain and fix it while I played on FB.

It was the Baja - but considering this is the only problem we've had with it in 100,000 miles, I'll let it go this time.

pft:
"The splines on the wiper arm had stripped. Nut did not seem THAT loose (was able to undo it with garden shears from back seat ) but it is the second time this side. Needs more careful watching. Made a shim out of roadside bottle cap and then got a cheap wrench set to tighten at local autoparts store."

After the wiper incident we didn't get home until 9:45 last night and it was still pouring with rain. Needless to say, UNO did *not* get walked. This morning we walked amongst the dripping trees under DEFCON 3 conditions: any time he looked behind him or huffed slightly louder than usual, he was reprimanded sharply. Poor UNO, no fun at all, but we got it done without a single indiscretion.

Successful hand-walk this evening - I took Jackit along as a chaperone and we went down the lane instead of back and forth across the property. Jackit has to scuttle to keep up with Uno's big walk (not clear why the big walk was necessary, but I think he was happy to be going *somewhere*).

Jackit even practised walking through a puddle - good pony. Apparently it was deemed safe after Chili lay in it.