Smokey

 

Smokey's owners abandoned him.  Moved to Arizona, and didn't come back, and didn't want to come get him.  The home where he was left fed him for a while, but couldn't keep up.  They asked for help, telling me he was 30 and possibly Cushings.

 

Smokey is very thin (200 pounds underweight) and still has some excess hair; his eyes sunken; gimpy in the left fore.  I had Dr. Z out right away to see what we have here.  The doctor thinks Smokey is more like 24. He says Smokey's heart and lungs sound ok. He found, and fixed, some minor abnormalities in Smokey's upper teeth, but the lower teeth are ground almost to the gumline (one upper tooth was actually impinging on his lower gumline). Dr. Z thinks the gimpiness is in the arthritic knee rather than his foot, and the farrier indicated it had evidence of bad past abscessing.  Dr. Z wants to wait a month, to see if good rations will make a difference - if he gains weight, loses that hair coat, perks up, he is probably not Cushings.  We can hope. 

 

So far he clearly loves mares, and the geldings are taking exception to that. He has tried hard to get Surely, his stallmate, to accept him, but she's moved toward Buck instead. Next, he liked Montego (because they are the same age? both grays?) but I have no way to put him next to Monte, and he has not yet figured out the whole available territory. And so finally, once they return from the southstream area, he hangs with Peanut and Dion.  Dion, strangely, is quite accepting of his lurking around.  When he feels better, I hope he'll be able to feel comfortable with someone.  He has figured out the routine here, and clearly loves coming back to his stall even though it separates him from P&D.  More energy may change that too...

 

 

 

He had trouble eating the hay pellets until I soaked them; loves his senior feed, and eats grass hay well - I'm hoping he'll do better now that his teeth have been fixed.

He seems very fragile to me.  Was completely exhausted on arrival, and the current heat wave has taken a lot out of him.  Although he's the same age as Montego, and very similar in overall appearance, he's in much worse condition so I'm less sanguine about improving his quality of life.  Let's keep our fingers crossed this sweetheart can pull through...

Happy to report that after his first friend Dion passed away, Smokey stepped up to guard Peanut; and sortly thereafter, Ashley joined us and fell in love with him! So he has two ladies to guard, and our Cinnamon to guard over them all!  He keeps Cinny at a distance, but I think is grateful to have the backup....