Yesterday Knickers and I took Q for his first stud visit, where he will stay for approximately 10 days to be trained to the dummy, collected and assessed for post-freezing viability. There are very few occasions where I would be persuaded to take him somewhere **and leave him there without me** but this is one of them. The prospect of Q babies fills my heart with joy.
We had a lesson with Mandy on Saturday; setting aside the fact that I had to resist the urge to pick him up and carry him around the arena myself in an attempt to find a bit more energy, the other notable point was that he was a complete filthmeister. Poo stains galore, wild man hair, the lot. Cro-Magnon Luso. If you've seen Lord of The Rings, the Wild Men of Dunland will give you a good idea of what we were up against. As a result it was decided that he really ought to have a bath to make himself presentable, so afterwards me and Knickers set to with a bottle of shampoo and a lot of elbow grease. The transformation was several colour shades and I don't even want to think about what came out of his mane and tail. Suffice it to say he had a rug on straight away and on it stayed until moments before we loaded him, a glory of shiny white round Luso loveliness with an all new clean and fluffy mane and tail; Shadowfax restored.
The journey was fine; he loaded and travelled well. In our house we seem to have a need to come up with many different names for the same thing and, during one such conversation about his impending activities, Knickers came up with the genius title of "Sexy Camp".
We settled him in, went through the paperwork, unpacked his kit and returned home, trying not to dwell on the last view of him as we pulled away, his head right up and watching the trailer disappearing with that air of "but....!" about him. Argh.
Arrived home to find T caprioling in his stable and making some new hind foot-shaped holes in the wall. Argh. Argh. He was better out hand grazing though and again tonight and understands I think that I want him to stay reasonably still and does respond to requests for same, although finding it difficult to contain himself. I spoke to the vet tonight and the feeling is that ACP at a sufficient dose to have the desired effect presents too much of a risk of penile prolapse, so he is looking into a product called Zilcan, a new one on the market which has been receiving good reviews. Meanwhile Pheel, our hero, came round to measure up and discuss options for enclosing a stable-sized bit outside his box, so I got on the blower to McVeighs this morning and ordered a 15' gate, which he will hopefully come and fix tomorrow evening. I asked what the likely prognosis was if we simply turned him away for a couple of months, if this next idea fails. The most likely outcome is a longer recovery period, so that might be an option, but we will see.
Today has been a shitty one at work but was made considerably brighter by an update from Madeleine to say that Q has been cutting quite the dash at stud, charming everyone with his winsome ways and delighting everyone further by taking to the dummy and AV like a duck to water, jumping straight up and providing a semen sample with no bother at all. Bless his glorious heart! The next few days will be about flushing him out and assessing the semen quality before starting to freeze next week. We have to decide how many straws to freeze down and for that I need to determine (a) how much that is, and (b) how long the straws will last. A quick check on the stallion list should provide this information and then we can make an informed decision.
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