week 39: resuming normal operations

this week on the little dream farm

Came back home to a fall-colored wonderland!

I arrived back home on Thursday afternoon to a fall-colored wonderland. It’s incredible to see how much the leaves and the colors on the trees have changed while I was away.

On Friday we crossed the threshold of more hours of darkness than daylight. This will be our fifth fall season here on the Little Dream Farm and it’s wild to think of how much time has passed since we made the decision to leave our city life behind and chase our dream of having a farm of our own.

I’m glad to report that everyone here on the farm fared just fine while I was away.

Unfortunately, however, Molly-Max turned up lame again just yesterday morning. Our farrier was here at the start of the week to work on his hooves and told Chris he feels we should have another x-ray done of his front right hoof. He’s worried that maybe there’s a foreign body somewhere in the hoof or perhaps even a keratoma—usually a benign mass but one that can cause a lot of issues in equines all the same.

This is the third time he’s abscessed in this front right hoof in the last several months—which is an unusual pattern we’ve not dealt with before. Our vet was due to come by on Friday but her x-ray machine went down and it’ll be a few days before she has a replacement on hand.

Once she does we’ll get him looked at, and while our farrier was right about his hunch that Molly-Max likely had Cushing’s Disease (which he does), we’re hoping he’s not right about this one—and that it’s just another abscess that needs more time and care to heal.

Sadly, there isn’t going to be anything more we’ll be able to do for Molly-Max to prevent this from happening. Everything we can be doing—soft bedding, having him wear his Soft Ride orthotic boots, keeping his hooves cleaned, regularly trimming them, keeping him off grass to avoid spiking his blood sugar—we’re already doing.

Chris and I are becoming more concerned about his quality of life and we’ll be talking at length with both our vet and farrier once we have the results of his upcoming x-rays.

In the meantime, we always do our best to keep him comfortable—keeping his foot treated and wrapped and daily soaks in warm/hot water with epsom salt to ease the pain and allow the abscess to burst and then heal.

It feels quite helpless that there isn’t more we can do for poor Maxy—of course he’s in good spirits just as he always is, but it’s terribly hard watching him limp around, knowing that he’s in so much pain and just having to deal with it.

I’ll keep you updated as we learn more.

As for me—my military orders went great and the trip was far better than I expected. I had the opportunity to lead a really great event with a chamber of commerce group from the Atlanta area, worked on a few projects, and had the chance to spend time with my team who I generally only get to interact with online.

My sister and I had a perfect weekend when she visited, and I spent my days walking the city, working, having great meals, and doing a fair share of relaxing, too.

It was a wonderful trip, but I’m beyond glad to be home and can tell so obviously how much the kitties missed me—a few of them have been glued to me since I got back and Micro is currently asleep at my side with his face pressed on the computer screen as I write this.

This time of year Chris takes a bunch of days off of work so that we can drive around and enjoy the fall colors—we’ve got that on our agenda this week and we’re very much looking forward to our fall adventures! This is our favorite time of year here and our favorite way to spend it together.

That’ll do it from me this week…we’ve resumed normal operations here on the farm!

Its been ages since I’ve been on Instagram so it’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to check in with you—how are things in your neck of the woods? How’s life? How are you? What’s new?

Catch me up in the comments today if you’d like! I’d love to hear how you’re getting on.

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