Mustang Saga

I know I said I wasn't going to be here to entertain you today, but here I am anyway! Underpromise and overdeliver! Borrowing a motto from my husband.

Bella had her first vaccination outside the BLM chutes today. She was a good girl. When the needle went in she jumped away and thought for a second, then we petted her for a few minutes and John attached the syringe and did his business. With intramuscular vaccines, like this one, you have to pull back on the syringe before you inject the vaccine. If you get blood you need to reposition the needle so you're not injecting into a vein. So it's not as quick as a stick and plunge. But John's good at it.

This was the pneumabort vaccine, given in case of pregnancy, since Tonka could bring home the bug that causes horses to abort in late pregnancy. It has to be given every 2 months starting either 3 or 5 months into the pregnancy (depending on who you ask) because it gives a very short term immunity. I did consider not giving it to her, because there's a chance she doesn't need it, and if she did lose the baby it'd be one less horse in a world that has way too many horses as it is. But that's too detatched a way of looking at it. I'd be really upset if I found a dead baby. So she got a "poke," as my son used to call them.

It's a beautiful day for torturing horses with shots. A warm thirty degrees, bright and sunny.