Day Two Hundred and Eight - Horse Foot Spa

Dear all,

It was another incredible fall day at the inn but despite the golden light radiating throughout valley, we are having a terrible run of luck with the animals and the vet has been promoted to the highly revered spot of being 'on speed dial'.

Today we discovered our resident eating machine and veritable giant, Shorna, was in excruciating pain up to the point where she couldn't stand on her back legs and was even lying down: very disturbing in horse world.

Turns out, Shorna had a foot abscess *wince* in the central groove of her 'frog' [see diagram above]. After the vet had administered anti-biotics and various other analgesics, we were told advised to 'bathe Shorna's hoof in epsom salts, three times a day for five minutes'.

Shorna is from the Percheron breed and around 18 hands in height (akin to a Shire or Clydesdale). We managed to get her into the centre of the field where I stood with [a bucket] of treats and managed to keep her still for the best part of 5 minutes while Paul wrangled her hoof into the foot spa.

It was traumatic at the best of times considering the remainder of the herd felt dreadfully left out and were desperately trying to get a shot at having a foot spa ( and treats) instead of Shorna.

Despite the set backs, we managed to get the job done and Shorna is already looking much better!

And in other news:

1. Everything was still closed due to the Thanksgiving national holiday today, but Darren was hell bent on getting fish and chips. After work, I went on an extensive run around Collingwood and on my return, picked up oven chips, onion rings and two variations on the the 'fish finger' theme.

I chose the healthier 'garlic and herb' breaded fish and the slightly less healthy ' English Style beer batter [???]'.

It was a great dinner and enjoyed in front of Star Trek (around the 50th time I have now seen this film)

2. Whilst I was in Metro purchasing the fish, a large bat flew above my head and into the bread department. Most odd.