Sad News

I must regretfully inform you that we had Lily humanely euthanized. Her left front leg ballooned up one day, and she was very sore on it. After one month of wrapping and special care, she was the same, if not worse. She was miserable and suffering greatly - she would barely get up by the end. We believe a tendon or ligament gave out after how much damage was done to her legs from such long term founder - we will be dissecting the leg to find what went wrong. Letting Lily go was the best decision for her, but it was a hard one as we wanted nothing more than to see her trot around the field, pain free. We can at least rest assured that we gave her an extra chunk of time that she would not have had otherwise where her belly was full, and she felt happy and secure. It's hard to not have her greet me with her whinny every morning when I walk out to feed, but we tried our best and at least we gave her that last positive experience with humans. We love you Lily, thank you.

Lily In The Herd

Lily has wanted so badly to go out with the rest of my mares, but I've always made her go alone in another paddock. But with the footing being so soft and nice, and with her fighting and trying to drag me the other way towards the mares field, I finally gave in today and put her out there. I was scared to death they would kill her - she can't really stick up for herself, nor can she run away. But things worked out well, there was only one minor squeeling incident and now she's out there munching away with them, happy as a clam in her little pink blanket. I took a crummy picture with my phone in the blowing snow.

Leftover Cards For Sale

Well, the Valentine Card sale was a success! We sold all but four cards, and between sales and donations from some very kind people we raised $62! Thanks to everyone who bought cards and donated, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help supporting Lily!

The remaining cards are available for $2 each, please e-mail flyingheartsfarm@yahoo.com if you're interested.

Valentine's Day Cards!

So we made a bunch of Valentine's Day cards featuring Lily to send to a local craft sale that my mom is selling her things at. I wish I'd thought of doing it sooner and offered them for sale here, but it's too late now. Each card is unique and has this ridiculously cute photo of Lily girl on the front:



We have a TON of snow right now, which is nice because it keep Lily's little feetsies nice and clean and it also makes the ground nice and cushy compared to just plain frozen ground.

Lily's regular monthly expenses are sitting now at about $100 per month, plus vet bills, dewormer, etc... luckily we own this farm so I don't have to pay board or I just wouldn't be able to do this!

Remember, you can always PayPal ANY amount to flyingheartsfarm@yahoo.com and mark it Lily Donation if you want to help support this little girl. Every donation is GREATLY appreciated and helps out a lot. Lily also still wears an ugly green nylon halter, so if anyone happens to have a pony sized leather halter (or wants to donate about $25 for a new one) we'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much to Sandy for donating the heavyweight blanket, it's been nice to have lately (last night it went down to 5 degrees - ugh!)

And finally, remember that visitors are always welcome to come out and meet Lily in person! Whether you want to come out and clean her pen, give her a good grooming, or simply feed her some carrots and brighten her day, you are more than welcome! Just e-mail me at flyingheartsfarm@yahoo.com.

New Hoof Photos

So Lily can hold her front feet up for me to trim them pretty well now, but her hinds are another story. So I usually try to catch her while she's laying down to take care of her hind feet. Well, sometime around December I went in to trim her hinds - usually she'd let me do a few swipes and then get up. But this particular day she was very relaxed and happy, and not only did she let me trim all four feet, she actually fell asleep while I was on the ground rasping away. She'd periodically wake up and have a little moment of "oh crap what's happening?!" and then instantly realize it was just me taking care of her little hooves. Then she'd sigh, and her eyes would get droopy, and before I knew it she would be flat out, sound asleep again. What an adorable pony.

Speaking of hooves, unfortunately my computer had a bad day and lost all of my photos I'd taken of Lily since the last ones I posted. But here are some photos taken of her yesterday showing the huge improvement in her posture and weight gain.


Still trying to get her heels to lower. I've been learning massage and working on her to try to get those muscles to loosen and let her heels continue to stretch down. While this still looks terrible, this is as fast as I can get her to progress and it's such a huge improvement from when she came here. I keep her trimmed so that her heels are just floating above the ground pretty much all the time.


I know it looks like the toe is trimmed very crooked in the above photo, but what you can't see in this pic is how the wall doesn't get anywhere near the ground around her entire toe.


Random angle shot, minus her head haha - at least it shows how much she's filled out.


Now compare the photo above with the photo below (taken when she arrived). Just wow.

Slacking!

Ok, so I've been seriously slacking on updating this blog, but I'm ready to devote some time to it again and keep it updated more often! I'll try to start where I left off. Here is a photo of her from October, showing how thin she still was.


Over the months, I've changed her feed. She's now getting 1 1/2 lbs. of the Triple Crown Senior soaked twice a day. She gets 1 gram bute in the AM (it seems to help her out - I think it helps the rest of her achy body more than her feet - also, I think she wasn't actually looking at her belly before, she was looking at her achy hind legs - they're under so much stress, and she isn't exactly young). She's also on Source and MSM. She gets free choice timothy and a flake of alfalfa every day. She's not laminitic, she doesn't look Cushings or IR, so I don't see a problem with feeding her this right now. However, ever since she came here her thyroid gland is swollen and it hasn't changed in the 6 months I've had her.

Anyway, I bought Lily this awesome SmartPink blankie from SmartPak.

How adorable is that??

The What To Feed Debate

So I ended up switching Lily off of her two cups sweet feed and onto two cups of mushy Triple Crown Senior to get the lower NSC's. I've also taken her off of all but a few bites of grass that I let her snatch on our twice daily handwalks. There is a thead on COTH I started about what to feed Lily - many people were shocked that she was getting some grass and sweet feed and assumed I was ignorant, but trust me, I've read safergrass.org as much as the next person and I do consider myself educated on the topic. I actually consciously chose to give her sweet feed and three hours of grass per day. And I'm fairly certain she hasn't had any laminitic episodes since she's been here. I did the whole "natural" feeding program with all of my horses for a year and half and never had much success (however, that's a whole other topic I won't get into). But, I am trying the TC Senior and no grass thing because she's still been looking at her belly a bit - she's eating/pooping just fine though. So, we'll see what happens. On the plus side, I think her belly has filled out a little bit finally! It's getting into the low 40's now at night, so I rigged a too big blanket on her last night and will be ordering her one today.

Here's the link to the COTH thread:
http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=225401