Trudy (standard poodle) 

Schmitty

Shifty

Shitty 

..... (golden retriever)

Good and infuriating

The Keeneland breeding stock sale got off to a snappy start on the 5th, and is available for viewing online!  There is a live video feed, along with a digital copy of the sales book for that session (I would assume that this will be available until the end of the sale on November 16th.)  It is exciting, so check it out.  

Live video coverage + catalog

TheHorse.com posted news from Florida that stolen horses had been recovered.....

In carcass form, after being butchered.  

October

Birdie and her lone eye.

Dyl

This was the first time that Gibbs went to an actual groomer, and it seems to have gone well. 

Sinyatta 

Validated!

Foffmom spotted this and was kind enough to share it with me:

Ugh.  I am not proud of my checkered past of responses.

In some cases I am horrified by them.

They wouldn't look so offended if they knew that I had chosen the least unsavory option.

Foffmom: Shink at the Nest

Shrink follow up:  Shrink is now with me. She is the second Fe Leuk positive cat to be assigned my quilt room. The first one, Opie, lasted two years before developing lymphoma. It has been several years since, and I had put the rats in my quilt room, in two lovely cages over aquariums. Then Foffdaughter managed to catch Shrink, the small kittenish cat that had appeared and vanished when pursued for months. At one point, FoffDaughter asked "Do you think I am imagining seeing a cat?" But her persistence and cat feeding skills paid off, and capture was achieved.

The joy of this was blunted by the obvious illness of the cat. Joy was further blunted when the Fe Leuk test was positive. WonderVet did what he did with Opie: advised confinement away from other cats (vaccine is not 100% protective), optimal nutrition, medical care as needed and retest.  Foffdaughter did these things. But having a Fe Leuk positive cat was a huge strain on her and her household. Shrink had to be confined to a bathroom for most of the time. Her health improved, her coat became more shiny and black, and her energy level improved. Her energy level improved so much, that she became impatient with her confinement. Her repeat test was positive. The spay procedure went well. The week her stitches came out, she managed to open a faucet on the sink. Of course the drain was shut.

Shrink continues to upgrade the quality of her life. 

(Relocated on 09-22-2012  - -  picture taken on 10-01-2012)

So Shrink lives with us now. She is amazingly loving, and she is fascinated by the rats, and sleeps on the ledge beside one of the aquariums.  She cannot actually have much contact with them. At first they were rather freaked out, but now have resumed their normal ratty activities.  

Jam: a rat

As I am in and out multiple times each day, she has more human company than she probably wants. She still shows the displaced cat behavior that made her so hard to catch when she is faced with any new thing. She dashes beneath the bookcase and will not come out unless I actually touch her. Then she is fine. So far, the sound of the radio, CD music, and the sewing machine have sent her flying into hiding. I marvel that Foffdaughter ever found her, outside, in a huge yard. I had trouble finding her in a confined space the first time she "disappeared". Best of all there are no faucets in the quilt room. If she figures out the sewing machine, I'll put her to work!

Faces

All of these pictures are from the past month.

 Mork

 Dyl (who technically belongs to Foffmom.)

 Praying Mantis

 Milady the Ball Python (actual gender unknown) has been part of the Foffamily for at least 4 years now.  

The new neighbors just got 11 sheep, and a Morgan-looking mare.  The owners, in their enduring wisdom, have the mare turned out with hobbles on her front feet.  

The sheep are not long for this world with those two-leggers calling the shots.

Olaf Update

12/14/2011 -- Olaf weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces.

08/15/2012 -- Olaf weighs 8 pounds 12 ounces.

Blank

 Navarre makes a point to observe any two-legger activity that goes on in the barn.  

Taken at River Downs

Foffdaughter: New Cat

This introduction is somewhat tardy, but as of July 2nd, there is a new addition to the ranks of Foffarm.  It is a young female cat (estimated at the vet clinic to be at least 6 months old), and her name is Shrink. 

 Shrink before being assimilated.

Shrink is a very small cat.  Very..well... shrunken.  Standard procedure means that Shrink was quarantined immediately after being caught, and in this case, it was needed.  The 'initiation visit' is always done by WonderVet.  Always.  Shrink did not get the 'WonderVet welcomes you to Foffarm' experience though.  Instead, I brought her to the veterinary clinic that WonderVet uses as a home-base for the surgical portion of the job.

During the initiation visit (for a cat), WonderVet will draw a blood sample for Feluk/FIV testing, and usually it is another 48-72 hours before the clinic actually runs the sample. Shrink's symptoms made me uneasy, so I brought her in for a checkup.  

Basically healthy animals;  I have had a lucky go thus far with healthy animals falling out of the unknown.  Now, like Foffmom before me, I am responsible for a cat with FIV. 

After

There are only a few poor quality pictures because Shrink is an unwavering, an (on occasion) uncivil, unencumbered, contact-focused boomerang that doesn't hold still.

 Day after clinic appointment and the start of her medications

This is Shrink as of a few hours ago.  The pictures are harder to take these days, but I guess the mania means she is feeling much better

FIV positive cats can live a normal, lovely life... for 3 years at the most, and only if there are no complications along the way.  

Shrink still gets her medicines twice per day.  It was easier before they worked.

Day one, pee one, and she mastered the litter box.

WonderVet proclaimed that Shrink had reached a healthy weight.

Except for the enlarged lymph nodes, all symptoms are gone.

Brilliant!  Wet cat food is a painless, terror-free way to get the medicine inside of the cat!

Shrink gets her rabies vaccination from WonderVet.

WonderVet hints that 'portly' Shrink could use a diet.

Foffmom: Birdie

A follow up on Birdie the one-eyed beagle. 

She finally was healthy enough for her spay procedure last week. Wonder Vet has decreed she should be sheltered from roughhousing with the big dogs for two weeks, so she is back in the kennel, leash, and roam the house with supervision routine. She enjoys napping on the couches, but misses the canine companionship. On two occasions she has run out the front door, and on one, skipped down the basement steps to greet her dog friends. She continues to be a haunted dog and is terrified of new men, which frustrates our dog-loving son, who is living here for a while. 

Birdie is drawn to the cats, particularly Elwood, and avidly pursues their company when out for a walk. Her happy circle runs always remind me of Snoopy's happy dance, and bring a smile to my face and lift my spirits. A big change since she arrived here on February 21. And yes, she is microchipped. I think that means she lives here now.

Foffdaughter: Any Answer

Within the horse world, there are established communities for different breeds, disciplines, color, cause, etc.  The pictures below are an example representing one of the aforementioned sects.  Click on a picture to make it bigger.

When I am disgusted by one aspect of horse related two-legger barbarism and/or stupidity, it is weird to know that a specific, sanctioned subdivision exists to further and encourage the offending cause.  Most of their websites even sell denim jackets with their particular logo embroidered across the back.  Those people, the in-the-club-people, are enthusiastic about the same thing that makes me ill with revulsion.  Those people...

What do those people see that I don't?  What am I not seeing that somehow makes everything okay?  What do outsiders, non-horse people, see without a prior basis of knowledge? Is this how things should be?

Foffdaughter: Remark

"Killing animals, if it must be done, is the butcher's business. But to spend a great deal of money on it in addition... I understand, of course, that there must be professional hunters to shoot sick animals. If only there were some danger connected with hunting, as in the days when men used spears for killing game. But today, when anybody with a fat belly can shoot the animal down at a distance... hunting and horse racing are the last remnants of a dead, feudal world."    -Adolf Hitler (remarks made at Obersalzberg, quoted in Alber Speer's Inside the Third Reich, chapter 7)

Foffmom: Hopeful

I was driving home after work, in a line of about ten cars on a busy two lane road. Suddenly, I spot a large turtle in full retract mode, in the middle of my lane. I hold my breath as the cars ahead of me straddle it (it is not moving, a smart idea), and I follow suit. Here goes the thought pattern: "Somebody needs to move that poor thing. (mumbling inner voice about being tired, wanting to get home, etc) Oh crap, I better turn around." 

I pull in a drive, and head back, hoping no one has swerved to flatten the poor thing. To my surprise, the turtle was gone! Despite Foffdaughter's teasing implications that my driving is so slow the turtle crawled away, the only possible explanation was another human picked it up. As long as it wasn't for consumption, this makes me feel better about my species... a rare event.

Foffdaughter: Rue the day

A question has a broad range of possibilities:
"What special stuff does he do?"  
"Why do you need to have that dog?"   
"Ohmigawd I would love to bring my dog everywhere I go!  Is that doggie vest for sale?"

"My daughter has been waiting so patiently to pet the puppy, and if you give the okay!..."
I'm sorry, but he is working.
"Oh she won't take but a few minutes of your time!"
 My minutes have a previous engagement to attend to.
"Well you have the dog.  Hang on one second- I want a picture of that face!"
No.  Thanks for this entire nothing, but no thank you,  To everything. 

THE question is: "What services or tasks does your dog perform to help you?" 
That is a rare question that is acceptable to ask, and one is expected to answer.  I have never answered a single question anyone has ever asked about Gibbs, or about me having him.  Aside from familiar two-leggers (like family and stuff).  From time to time I reuse the timeless treasure, and explain that my service animal is an alien and zombie detection dog, but that is a rare treat for me. 

Foffdaughter: Count

                       1 year celebration of Mork-mas                           Going on 4 years of Catten Jack

 Just celebrated 1 year of Sinyatta

Thoroughbreds are no longer accepted in 2 of the 4 equine slaughterhouses in Canada.  I was trying to pay attention, when this article was brought to my attention.

Foffdaughter: Festive

The Thoroughbred stallion Dynaformer died several days ago, and I was touched to see that he got listed in the local obituaries.  Then I read the guestbook comments.  I only got through about 31 of the 58 comments, because every single one of them....  Well, George Carlin said it best (in reference to airline announcements): "The next sentence is full of things that piss me off."  All of the comments were some version of:

"Thank you for blessing us with Barbaro."

Okay.

Let's start with "immediate seating area".

Barbaro developed a fan base because the people responsible for him did not humanely put him down in a timely fashion.  People somehow thought that this horse was a valiant, noble, brave creature who was facing down death because there were still things he had to do on this Earth.  I'm going to go with the answer 'yeah, not so much.'  It was a human decision to use every available resource to keep Barbaro alive, and it was not powered by a deep bond of love and loyalty.  Sure he was a bit broken down, but he was still a colt, and the possibility of collecting off of his stud fee was just too tantalizing to ignore.  It was not an epic poem of a hero desperate to continue life.  It was his right hind breaking in 20 places, it was laminitis and it was a 3 year old colt dying over 9 months.

Blessing you fuckers with Barbaro indeed.   Oh- just a note here- when Barbaro brought sunshine into the lives of asshats everywhere- there wasn't actually any blessings or angelic involvement.  It is okay; it was just a little mix-up.  See, what happened was La Ville Rouge (Barbaro's mommy) was forcibly restrained while Dynaformer (Barbaro's daddy) mounted, penetrated, and violated her against her will, at which point he ejaculated inside of her and that is where Barbaro came from!  Blessing.... Spermatozoa and seminal fluids.... Same thing.

(click on the picture below for proof) Dynaformer was the sire of 1185 foals registered with the Jockey Club.  I am sure that he was just trying to bring little Blessing into the world for you.

Foffdaughter: Nothing

 Attending the Rolex Kentucky 3 Day Event is an annual highlight for me, as I am sure it is for numerous other two-leggers.  Aside from the overwhelming excitement of seeing horses (ohmigawash!), what possible reason could justify attending each year?  There are situations that I willingly expose myself to by attending Rolex, despite the fact that every non-Rolex day of the year, I ensure those same situations will never make it to my radar screen.

 Do I enjoy the inevitable sunburn which represents the value of foresight?  No.

Could it be the jolting shuffle of the morbidly obese woman plucking denim shorts out of her depths while chewing an entire hot dog, and struggling to get the straw into her gaping maw so that she can guzzle Coca-Cola?  (It's a jumbo-mega-massive diet Coke though!)  Hilarious and disgusting, but nope.  

Is it Nigel, the imported British announcer, reminding the spectators that they are responsible for making sure that: "your children are on leashes and your dogs are well behaved"?  Well, a little bit, yeah. 

 Rolex is a great place to take pictures.  Lots of pictures.  So many pictures that they are still not done being edited by the next Rolex!  ALL the pictures!

I have 121 pictures from Rolex 2012.  

I took 837 pictures.  Technology ate 716 of them.