Thursday, February 2, 2012

After a WOW! Trip, VT Friends Arrived on Tues Pm

Andrew & Bambi were making a nest in anticipation of their arrival. However, I do have to share that ANDREW was a BAD RAT, in that he gave me quite the scare!! After taking the picture below, I put the rats in my truck door and then proceeded to take all of the VT Crew's personal goodies back to their cabin, etc. So, an hour later when I got back to my room, I realized that only Bambi was in my door....Andrew was MISSING!!! So, I had to call Dan, who had just had a 2 day drive to FL that took twice as long as normal and actually ask him to get a flashlight and find Andrew. He first said I was insane and then he called me back to say there was no Andrew to be found. I was so distraught that I put on a head mounted flashlight and drove over to their cabin....searching for Andrew and then I back traced my steps over the previous hour to try to locate him. Chuck called while I was in rescue mode and I just told him...Andrew is missing and I cannot talk....I hung up on him!! After all, how in the world could I replace Andrew?? BUT, when I went to the barn the next am, Coleen informed me that she found Andrew in the middle of the lawn, yes, miles away from our previous night's pathway. I was tickled to be reunited with Andrew and I felt awful that he had a tough night. The outside "dingo-dog", Cappy, had found and tortured him all night.....poor Andrew is still healing from immense slime and many multiple puncture wounds. I won't even mention all the black sand and small grasses that from here forward may nest in his fur.....oh, TG, Andrew was found!!!!! And, thank you to Chuck for asking about Andrew first thing in the am......I think we have all come to LOVE OUR RATS, ANDREW & BAMBI!!!!

Coleen (with G-Man), Jess (with Skidders & Andrew on her head), Dan (trying to eat Bambi) and Keagan had a very long haul from VT. They left Mon am and arrived at Thornridge at 5 pm only to settle the horses and be back on the road at 4 am on Tues am. In South Carolina, they started to have truck engine overheating problems which required them to stop often. I was on call in FL realizing that I may need to drop life and go pick them up. But, even though it was a slow crawl, they did make it here 17 hrs later (it only took Chuck and I 13hrs!). There was one horse that clearly struggled with the trip so we gave him meds and tucked him in for the evening......unfortunately, he was running a high temp on wed and looked to have shipping fever, aka pneumonia. So, after dropping their truck off to the shop for repair, it was off to Gainesville that my truck went for the equine hospital. The truck can be saved, but the horse was in such bad shape that he could not be saved. A very difficult decision was made to donate him to the hospital. Wow, what a trip. In the meantime, I have reverted back to my norm as I have not left the farm in days......they are using my truck to get all organized and I just stay at my new home with the 4 kids and trying to catch up on office work. After all, I can, literally, go 10 days without driving off the farm in MD...so, why should my life be any different now in FL....LOL??!!

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