Marla's Musings

Please pray for Kelly Crawford of Generation Cedar.  Her family lost their home in yesterday’s tornado outbreak.  She has been an encouragement to so many and is still being faithful to declare the goodness of God even in her loss.

God is Mighty to Save–All is Not Lost |

The Dover Teacher’s Sampler — Welcome to Dover Publications

Dover has an especially good selection of free coloring pages this week!

In March we kept a long overdue promise to our eldest daughter and bought her a 5 year old quarterhorse gelding.  His name is Joey Joey.   We had begun building a barn and fencing in a small paddock in February for her birthday, which wasn’t nearly finished, but she had started a job working at a local boarding stable, and Joey seemed like such a great horse, so we went ahead with the purchase, moving him out there to board.

We noticed shortly after moving him, that his eyes had a funny blue haze, and he kept bumping into things on his right side, but it had been less than a week since our vet had checked him out and he seemed fine otherwise, so we just thought he didn’t have very good vision.  He has a very sweet temper, and is so eager to please and laid back.  A wonderful horse for a first time owner.

A  little over a month ago, my daughter mentioned that she was starting to have problems in the round pen.  Joey was really balking at going a certain direction.  He was fine the other way, but was beginning to fight her hard when she tried to send him around the other way.  He was also hurting himself on the fence almost every day.  Within the week he actually reared up and fell over backwards when she was working him on the “bad side”.  He continued to be sweet and cooperative in every other situation.

I went to the barn myself to check on him and knew something was wrong.  The trainer came over and said that she also was having trouble with him tripping on the barn threshold.  I immediately called the vet, who met me out there the next day.  By that time Joey had gone completely blind from a disease called uveitis.  An auto immune disease, which causes the horse’s own immune system to destroy his eyes.

We were heartbroken.  To make matters worse, Joey was very difficult to treat.  He had lived his whole life free in the pasture where he was born and had never had vet care, so he did not take kindly to needles and eye drops.  We actually suspect that the vaccinations we had to give him to board at the barn, coupled with all the exposure to new germs, may have triggered this disease, but that is another post.

After a week of help from more experienced horse people, everyone was giving up on treating him.  He was becoming dangerous and I was unwilling to ask anyone else to medicate him.  We were talking seriously about finding a rescue farm to take him to so that he could get some more qualified help.  Unfortunately, that option wasn’t going to happen overnight and I didn’t want him to be in pain, so I decided to try the meds myself.  It turned out that was what he wanted all along!   The trainer did use a few more aggressive techniques on him the day I took over, but he was such a fast learner, and within 24 hours he was standing quietly for all of his meds and nuzzling up against me through the whole process.  Success!

Last week,  we decided we couldn’t leave him out there any longer.  Multiple trips to the barn everyday keep me from getting my work done here at the house, and Joey was definitely starting to act depressed.  We finished the fencing, hung the gate, patched any openings left in the barn framing, and brought him home!

We are all so excited to have him here.  But I don’t think anyone’s happier than Joey Joey!

After our whirlwind trip to Atlanta and back, and the 4 hour roundtrip to pick up my daughter from her week as an LIT (leader in training) at camp,  Sunday morning found us all too sleep deprived and road weary to attempt the 70 mile journey to church and all day festivities we had planned to attend.

So we had a nice quiet day at home.

We  grilled out.

Put the two littles to bed early.

Played with a few party poppers.

And sparklers.

Watched a little bit of the nation’s celebration on PBS.

And retired early ourselves.

It’s a good thing, too.  Monday turned out to be a very exciting day….(to be continued…)

At 2:30 on Thursday afternoon my cell phone rang while I was out doing my Walmart run.  It was my oldest son, letting me know he was in New York, flying to Atlanta, and would have an overnight layover before flying to Ft.  Benning the next morning to start basic training.  Could we come?

What a silly question!

We were out of the house and on the road in record time.

I have been longing to see him before training started and really struggling with not getting to be at his graduation.

As is often the case, the LORD has shown himself to be generous beyond my expectations.