Two weeks on the ranch (April 21 - May 5, 2013)

Well, it is never a great week when it starts with your dog at the emergency vet.  Riley, who is usually very smart about snakes, got a little too close to one.  I think his hearing is not as good as it used to be, and he didn't hear the rattlesnake "buzz" at him.  Regardless of how it happened, it happened, and Riley got bit in the lip.

The vet at the emergency clinic (because these types of things always happen on Sunday night) says that the rattlesnakes in this area have two elements to their venom:  first, is the paralytic element, the one that makes it difficult for their prey to move, and the second is the anti-coagulant element, the one that makes their prey bleed out.  Riley is fighting both.  You can't see it from these pictures, but his lip and throat were very swollen, even less than an hour after being bitten.  

Here is what he looked like about twenty-four hours later.  :(  I took this picture on Monday afternoon, when I came to visit him at his regular vet, Pleasant Valley Pet Clinic.  Riley's face was so swollen, he couldn't open his eyes, and I wasn't really sure that he even knew I was there.  He was a very miserable dog that day. 

On Wednesday, I was worried about Riley not having eaten since Saturday, so with the vet's permission, I started feeding him soft food with a syringe, and everyone was pretty surprised and happy when he ate it!  The vet techs started also feeding him soft food through a syringe that day and through Friday, mixing it with fresh broth that I brought in daily. 


As you can see, he looks much cleaner.  That is because I gave him a sponge bath every time I visited him.   :)

On Thursday, the vet finally decided that Riley might live. 

By Friday evening, he was back at home with me. 

Now, two weeks later, we are dealing with all the dead tissue that is sloughing off.  Happily, Riley is back to his old self, eating like he is starving and sticking his nose into holes where it doesn't belong.  His blood chemistry is almost back to normal, and except for sleeping a little more than usual, he is acting like he is feeling pretty good.

And just to prove that life marches on, even when it feels like it shouldn't, because all your energy and focus is frozen on one situation, my hen decided to show off her new clutch of six baby chicks to me.  (By the time I took the picture, one of the yellow chicks had already ducked under mom.)  Good way to end the week, and definitely something that made me smile.

Riley on the way to the vet.  I think he looks cute in this picture.  :)

A week on the ranch (April 14 - April 20, 2013)

Wow, this week flew by!!  Normally, I try to draft out this blog during the week, then just hit "publish" on Sunday, but here I am, Sunday morning, writing from scratch!

First, Angus, my doxie dog, is doing much better (from his diagnosis last week of having canine patellar luxation).  I have been carrying him up and down the stairs multiple times per day, and he has finally figured out that I am going to do so, because he now waits for me to pick him up every time we go up or down a floor.  :)  I think he will actually resent having to find his own way up next week, when he will be done with his two-week "rest" period.  The good news is that I haven't seen him hiking up his leg since Thursday, so the rest seems to be helping.

Girl, my donkey, met with her vet again, and the diagnosis is that she has a bruised toe.  Apparently, donkeys can stub their toes.  :)  (Well, it isn't quite that simple, but basically, she has a bruise because she has been putting weight on the toe of her hoof as the heel of her hoof has been sloughing off.)  She is back in a poultice for two weeks, after which her vet will probably trim the hoof up again to even it out a bit.  We are looking at about a year before she is completely better, in a "best case" scenario.

All the donkeys had hoof trims this week, as well as Girl, and she did very well with her farrier.



I heard about a cool program while listening to one of my podcasts this week.  It is called Tiny Habits and it is run by a behavioural analyst named BJ Fogg.  I tried it out last week, just to see if I could do it (and I succeeded!) and am trying another three tiny habits this week.  You basically find an anchor, something you do every day, and you add a 30-second or less event to this anchor.  One of mine, for example, was that I would open a book in iBooks on my iPad when I got into bed at night.  The habits you add are truly tiny (i.e, his example is that you will floss one tooth, read one sentence in a book, etc.), but once you add them to your anchor, and start doing them daily, they become habit, and you can build from there.  It is also a good way to keep your brain active, because you are learning three new habits each week.  Finally, it is a positive affirmation, because, if Dr. Fogg can be believed, if you give yourself a moment of mental "atta boy" after you: a) remember to do your tiny habit and b) after you accomplish it, apparently, your brain treats that success the same way it would treat what you would typically consider a bigger success, and you get the same positive mental self-esteem feedback.  I don't know about that:  I just know I like to try new things, and this one tickled my fancy.  :)  Check out the link, and give it a try.  It is fun, in an odd way, and it helps Dr. Fogg with his study of human behaviour. 

Sapphire, one of the four original goats I brought to the ranch in 2001.

A week on the ranch (April 7 - April 13, 2013)

Well, the week started out well enough, until Thursday morning, when I noticed that Girl, my donkey, appeared to be favouring her hoof again.  By Saturday, she was back to laying down and limping.  Another call to the vet, and I'm waiting for further instructions.

Then, when I took the pups out for a walk on Friday morning, Angus started limping!  Apparently, he decided to take after his step-mom (me) and have an issue with his knee:  Angus has been diagnosed with canine patellar luxation.  (It is even the same left knee as mine!!)  THIS is an excellent article about canine patellar luxation, if you are interested.  Angus is currently Grade 1.    He is on anti-inflammatories for a week, and on bed rest until the end of the month, and then we re-assess. 

The one fun thing that happened this week was that I received the "Tater Baker" that I won in an auction to help animal rescue.  This particular auction was to pay for free spay/neuter for pets of low-income families.

I've used it twice already, to bake sweet potatoes, and it works like a charm!  You wash the potato, then put the wet potato in the bag, and the moisture from the potato steams it inside the bag.  In about five minutes, I've got a perfectly cooked potato! 

I was also able to finish a knitted dog sweater this week.  This one would fit a small breed, such as a chihuahua.  I wanted to try the pattern before playing with it to make a sweater that would fit any of my dogs.  I am now working on one for Angus, which will look pretty much identical to this one, except it will be longer in the torso.

Baby picture of Angus, taken a few hours after birth.

A week on the ranch (March 31 - April 6, 2013)

The week started out rainy and cold, and that gave me time to try some Double Crunch Honey Garlic Chicken.  Apparently, this is a pork chop recipe that was tweaked for chicken breasts.

I'm not usually a big fan of fried food, but that title just intrigued me too much to NOT try it!  :)

A few notes about the instructions.  I noticed that some people remarked in the original post that the coating was not as crunchy as they would have hoped.  I don't know what they consider crunchy, but I found it very nice - not the fried batter coating of a KFC - just a nice crunchy little coat.  Once you add the glaze, the crunch factor goes down considerably, though.  (See my note regarding the glaze.) 

The instructions say that you will have enough of the flour/spice dredge to make two batches of the chicken, and that you can store any leftover mix in a Ziplock for the next time you make this recipe.  I agree that there was quite a bit of flour left over, but I didn't like the idea of reserving something that had been in contact with both raw chicken AND raw egg, so I didn't save it.  It isn't that hard to make up a new batch, and there wasn't so much that I thought I was being wasteful throwing the last of it out.  I made eight pieces (split four breasts lengthwise) and I thought it was a good amount to coat without having to work really hard for it.

There was something I didn't like about the chicken as I was making it, and I couldn't figure it out until I was getting ready to toss the remaining flour coating.  It was the nutmeg.  I really didn't like the smell of nutmeg as I was prepping the chicken.  I normally LOVE the smell of nutmeg, but I associate it with pies and cookies.  I don't associate it with meat.  I don't think it necessarily was a bad ingredient in the cooked product, but the smell kept putting me off as I was coating the meat.  There is quite a bit of it in the coating, so I am not sure if leaving it out would significantly change the taste.  Also, the coating does have some "bite" to it, so if you aren't into "bite," you might want to leave out the cayenne.

The honey-garlic glaze is nice, but mine was too thin because I didn't have a full cup of honey.  If you like your chicken super crunchy, you might want to reserve the glaze as a dipping sauce and do nuggets instead of full breasts.  (Or dip each bite of your chicken breast in the sauce as you cut it.)

I also started out this week with a bee sting on the bottom of my foot.  :(  I woke up late at night and decided, since I was awake, to let the dogs out for a potty break.  I walked down the stairs in my bare feet, to the bottom landing, and promptly stepped on what was probably the only bee within a ten mile radius that happened to not be in her hive at 10:00 pm.  She deservedly let me know she was not pleased at being stepped on by stinging me.  I wasn't sure what had hit me, but knew it was a sting or a bite.  I was almost relieved to see the bee, when I limped back up the stairs to get a flashlight, then limped back down the stairs again.  I was a little worried it was a baby rattlesnake, considering the time (night) and location (cool cement landing near water)!  I felt badly for the bee, but I figured she was probably out of her hive because she was dying anyway, so at least she struck one for the team before going.

As for me, I have a lump the diameter of a quarter on the bottom of my foot, and for most of the week, every time I stepped on it:  a) it felt like I had a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of my foot; and b) it itched like mad!  Who would think that tiny little stinger could cause so much discomfort!  Happily, THIS weekend finds my foot whole and happy again.

It was a cold and wet week, so not much going on at the ranch.  We were all just hunkering down and waiting for dry weather.   I did find this recipe for crock pot apple pie, using a biscuit baking mix and fresh apples.  I would give it a B- in taste, but a D in aesthetics!!  It looked a hot mess!!

For the amount of effort it took, I am not sure if I'd make it again in the crockpot.  You could just as easily make it in a conventional oven in a glass baking pan and save yourself hours of wondering how it is going to taste!

In the tiny window in which we had some sun on Saturday, I spent a few hours renovating the floor of the chicken run.  Over time, with chickens scratching and ground squirrels burrowing, it has become very pitted and uneven.  I even had a little bit of concern, when the chicks were tiny, that they might fall into an abandoned (or is it?) squirrel hole!  On Saturday, I dumped five bags of sawdust into the run, leveled it out, then "tiled" over the sawdust with some extremely compacted flakes of alfalfa hay.  It is a work in progress still, but my intent is to tile the whole run, with the exception of an area that will be designated by cinderblock and will be available for dustbaths and just generally being lazy while soaking up the sun.  Granted, the chickens don't spend much time in their run, since they are usually out on the property, but sometimes I have to keep them in the coop (when I have visitors who I don't want my rooster to attack, in the early morning when the hawks are out, etc), so I wanted them to have a nice hang-out.  I also squeezed the alfalfa flakes very close together, so I suspect any squirrel trying to dig in under the wall is going to have an unpleasant surprise.

After their initial reluctance to step out onto the foreign "turf" I had set up for them, the chickens seemed to get the hang of it and actually started looking like they enjoyed the new digs.

I still need another bale of hay to finish the floor area, then some cinderblocks and maybe some potting soil to give the girls a nice deep area for dirt baths.  (Yes, I know they'll just kick it all out, but it will look cool for a day or two.)  Once it is done, I'll post some more detailed pictures.

Hummers at dawn, coming in for the first nectar of the day

A week on the ranch (March 24 - March 30, 2013)

Well, the week started a little rockier than most.  I got a call from my sister on Sunday morning, informing me that my mother was in an ambulance, on her way to the hospital!!

Here's a "Where's Waldo" photo for you.  I got to the hospital while my mother was having an MRI, so I waited by her bed (in the hall) for her return.  Can you spot me?  :)

She was admitted into the hospital and spent three days there, but is back at home now and seems to be doing well. 
 

Still enjoying my homemade granola.  Here it is topping a bowl of plain Greek yogurt, with just a dollop of homemade apple butter!  Since I made the granola and the apple butter, I guess the next step is learning how to make yogurt!

Girl, my donkey, is doing very well since her hoof "surgery."  She isn't limping at all, although she still has a shortened gait on the affected hoof.  I have been picking and scrubbing and dousing the hoof with iodine almost daily, and she has been very patient with it all.  (This is the donkey that had to be almost hog-tied the first time she needed a hoof trim.  I am just happy the problem was on the FRONT leg, because she still won't let me touch her back legs.)

I posted this picture, even though it is a bit fuzzy, to show you something that the vet showed me.  See how she is standing with her back legs kind of stretched out behind her?  According to the vet, Girl stands that way because she has a little arthritis in those back legs, and they are stiff.   I had never noticed that she stood a little differently than the other donkeys (who are about ten years OLDER than her, so it is interesting that SHE is the one with the arthritis).

My latest cooking adventure has been in dog cookies.  I found a great recipe for pumpkin biscotti for dogs, and it is, so far, a hit with all concerned.  :)  (I added the yogurt "frosting" on a whim.)

A week on the ranch (March 17 - March 23, 2013)

BUSY week on the ranch!!  Wow, it is feast or famine out here sometimes!!  I apologize in advance for the super-long entry, but it was that or split the week into two separate entries, and the OCD part of my brain didn't want to look at two post titles that didn't conform to the rest.

I happened upon an old issue of The Tightwad Gazette (Amy Dacyczyn) last weekend, and I was inspired to try her recipe for granola.   I looked the recipe over and was pretty sure I had everything, so I started to make the granola.  Of course, right at the beginning, I realized I didn't have vegetable oil, so I substituted coconut oil.  And I didn't have a FULL 1/3 cup of honey, but I had almost the right amount.  Then, as the brown sugar was melting in the skillet, I checked my pantry and realized that actually I didn't have most of the ingredients that she used!!  By that time, however, I was committed, so I improvised a bit (a lot) and successfully created an edible granola! 

I don't really like granola as a cereal, but I do love it as a topping.  Here it my creation, topping a bowl of Wallaby greek yogurt with strawberries.  :)

Mad Hen's granola:

Combine into a large skillet:

3/4 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. coconut oil (the original recipe calls for the same amount, but vegetable oil)
1/3 c. honey

Heat over medium heat until the sugar is melted.

In a large cake pan, combine 5 cups of oatmeal (I only had minute and steel-cut, so that is what I used), 1/2 c. dry milk, 1/2 c. dried cranberries, 1/2 c. walnuts, and 3/4 t. cinnamon.  (The original recipe calls for raisins, not cranberries, and for you to add them AFTER you bake.  I didn't see that part until I had already mixed in the cranberries, and I didn't feel like sitting there for twenty minutes, picking them out.  They turned out FINE.)

Pour sugar mix over dry mix and stir well.  Bake in 375F oven for approx 10 minutes.  Let cool.

It turned out pretty good!  And as an extra added bonus, it helped me clear out my pantry of stuff I haven't been using for a while (primarily, several partial containers of weird types of oatmeal)!!  I think I will try it again, using regular "old-fashioned" oatmeal (Why is normal oatmeal called "old-fashioned"?), pecans instead of walnuts, and possibly shredded coconut (because I have some I need to use up).  And I have a bag of goji berries sitting in the pantry....

Round two of bagel wars, and I think I'm winning!!  If you recall, from last week's post, I attempted to make cinnamon-apple bagels, and the result was not very pretty.  They tasted fine, though, so I had hope that they might someday look as good as they tasted.

I tried it again this week, and I think these are about 80% better-looking than last week's batch!  Other than some slightly oval ones, these look like bagels, and they didn't stick to the baking pan.  The trick?  As suspected, more flour was the number one fix.  Then, instead of putting the bagels directly on the baking pan, I put foil on the pan, sprayed the foil with cooking spray, then baked the bagels that way.    They slid right off.  :)

And again, they are delicious.

The only problem that I have with most homemade breads is that they go stale very quickly.  By mid-week, I hadn't made a dent in this pile, and the remaining bagels were starting to get a bit dry.  I didn't want to throw them away, but I wasn't really enjoying stale bagels.  On a whim, I chopped them up and threw them in the dehydrator.  The next morning:  bagel chips!!   They have the texture of crispbread crackers, but with a lovely and delicate apple-cinnamon flavour and aroma.   (And, as an extra added bonus, the aroma, when you dehydrate them, fills your house!!)  I know what I'll be snacking on all next week!  (The dogs also think bagel chips are pretty darned tasty.)

Woo hoo!!  I finally got rid of a HUGE water tank that has been sitting out in front of my house for years!!  I put it on Craigslist, and less than a week later, this lovely gentleman handed me a lovely pile of money and took the tank to its new home in the lovely town of Sutter Creek.

My side door got a facelift this week.  A few weeks ago, I  happened to meet a fellow who does custom door and window shutter work, and he happened to have some security doors that were custom made for another house, but didn't work because the homeowner had not measured the door frame correctly.  Among the doors he had was an aluminum powder-coated security door that was perfect for where I live!!   I happened to have a couple of hundred dollars that I had just received for an old water tank, so....

I still need to paint the exterior trim, because he had to do a little remodeling to make the door fit, but I think it looks fantastic.  :)

The only thing I have to get used to is that little coyote silhouette.  From inside, it looks like one of my dogs is standing by the door!!  (And I'm not the only one who feels that way.  Polly barked at it the first time she saw it at night.  :))

 

Much of the time, as I type these blog entries, I am sipping on a nice hot mug of tea.  The only problem is that the mugs don't hold enough tea (or coffee) to get me through an entire session of blogging.  Problem solved!   I won this mug on an on-line auction for PIPS (Partners in Pet Stewardship) and it holds a whopping TWENTY ounces of liquid!!

They have another auction going on right now, and I am hoping to win a very cool bag that you can use to microwave potatoes in.  :)  The auction ends at 7pm on Saturday, March 23rd!  (4pm if you are out where I live.)  Check it out!  They still have a brand new Michael Kors purse up and the bidding isn't even at half the retail price.  A lot of great jewelry, a lot of great handmade quilts, some very cool dog-related things, AND every penny goes toward spaying/neutering dogs and cats in the South Carolina area.  Every dog and cat they spay/neuter is one less animal contributing to the thousands that are euthanized every year.  So go and check it out.  There are some very inexpensive items and there are some VERY expensive items that are currently very low in bids, and every penny you spend is a brownie point for your efforts to help animal rescue.  Tell them Mad Hen sent you over.  ;)

Girl had her hoof wall resection this week, and it went very well.  She is already walking a little more like a normal donkey, and the vet (Dr. Menninger from Foothill Mobile Veterinary Services) is optimistic about what she saw.  Lots of black, dead, gunk under that hoof wall, tissue that has been destroyed by months and months of anaerobic bacteria, and we removed a bunch of it.   As soon as the air hit it, I could smell the infection. 

That black triangle on the bottom center is dead tissue where her hoof wall has pulled away.  She also has a spot on the outside wall that we had to scrape out.  Now, she will just need tincture of iodine poured over the open spots daily, until we see new hoof wall coming in and we determine whether we have to go back in to scrape out more infected tissue.  I am hopeful that we don't, although Girl tolerated it very well.  If we don't have to do it again, it will take Girl's hoof about a year to fully grow back in, at which point she may finally, after years of lameness, be able to be a normal and healthy donkey again!!

Donkeys and goats at dusk (yes, that goat is standing on a donkey)