Where did this Yak come from?

Poor Miss Lily has entered a rather unattractive stage in her development. Bless her heart, her little (well not so little) parts just don't match up at the moment. Baby girl has a lot of growing left to do and sometimes the in between stages are really scarey!

Megan never had an ugly stage. Megan is Donna Dooley. You know that girl you grew up with that was cute in kindergarten and every grade up til graduation. Lily is Laura Ingalls. I feel for Lily, I was Laura Ingalls, too -- with big old buck teeth and unfortunate hair dos that live on in yearbooks hidden under my sofa. This, too, shall pass and her front end will catch up with her back end and she will look like a horse again someday, but at the moment... pure yak.

Lucky for Lily, we don't have a date for school pictures and her growing pains and bad hair do aren't being memorialized for all time. Ain't so bad being a horse...

We'll just take pictures from a distance for awhile.

Family Portrait

If only we could have gotten the three dogs in this, too, we would have had our Christmas card!

As you can tell from the body language getting cooperation from both girls simultaneously was touch and go. Thanks to our friend Gordon for catching the moment brief as it was!

The girls are doing great. Lily learned about blankets this weekend with a minimum of fuss. She may have had one on before; I'll have to check with her birth mother on that. Either way, she wasn't totally thrilled with a big old blanket being thrown up on her, but a few carrots and pats smoothed her over and it was no big deal.

Yahoo! Good News!

Today was Megan's recheck at the UGA vet hospital. After 6 weeks of Marquis, she has shown improvement. Steve and I watched (and videotaped) all of the field tests and I'm very optimistic that she will recover fully. The vet started with the leg placement tests and Megan stood like a Gumby doll. I don't put a lot of faith in that being a positive sign of neurological deficits. Megan is an agreeable girl -- you tie her legs up like a pretzel and she isn't going to protest.

The next tests were in a straight line -- no visible problem. Onto the circling, she showed some signs in her right hind only. The tail pull test was mildly postive to right side and completely normal to the left. The tests going up and down a rather steep incline raised the vet's concerns over the front feet on the downhill only and then only mildly (I think it's just how she moves). Still showing a little ataxia on the right hind. We then moved over to another area where she was led up and down a pine island with concrete curbing in a serpentine along the curb. The test was did she know where her feet were stepping up and down off the curb repeatedly. (I certainly would have fallen at least once.) She never did anything other than take an awkward step occasionally when she was distracted -- overall read: normal.

The diagnosis in August was grade 1/2 of 5 deficits in the front legs and grade 2/3 of 5 in the rear legs. Today's diagnosis was grade 0/1 of 5 deficits in the front and grade 2.5 in the right rear and grade 2 in the left rear. Overall the vet thought she was much improved. The course of action is to do another month on the Marquis and recheck. The vet isn't totally ruling out Wobblers, but she is less focused on that as the issue.

We still aren't to ride her, but did get the go ahead for ground work to resume! After several nights of no sleep and imagining the worst, I couldn't be more relieved and hopeful!

Lily the Fearless

Cost to move flight up by 2 hours -- $50; getting to see the girls before leaving town again -- priceless. Yeah, I love cheesy takeoffs on those Visa ads, so sue me. Bumping up our return from birthweek celebrations in the Keys left enough sunshine to get out and see the girls. Lily's legs are healing nicely with no new scrapes so I guess the lesson is learned.

She was pretty adamant about not letting me touch them when the wounds were fresh and sore, but last night she stood nicely and let me inspect. It's all basically big scratches and healing nicely. After a good grooming, when we went on a trail walk little Lily and I.

Lily is such a pleasure to just hang out with -- she walks nicely next to you and is interested in the scenery. She occasionally reaches over for a snuffle, but mostly just takes in the sights. Last night, the sights included deer bounding across the power line cut and that got her attention. She stood and stared -- probably thinking she'd like to be out bounding around, too. A couple of steps of prancing that abated with a gentle tug on her halter and we finished our walk.

Megan served as our spokesmodel for how to behave when your sister takes a little walk. She whinnied once and trotted the fence line a little, but didn't tear anything down or injure herself. Hope little sister took note.