Notes from Maine - 2026/07/12

We’re flying through summer here. The weather has been perfect, although we could always use a little more rain. Yesterday Lilly (15-month-old filly) was able to step out into the sunshine for the first time this month. She has been confined to a stall with her mother since her hernia surgery last month. The first couple of weeks were difficult. Every time I went near the door to switch them to a clean stall, she wanted to burst through. She had to take 392 pills and scoops and scoops of Phenylbutazone. Then, finally, she was deemed well enough to have access to a small turnout. I have a pen right next to the barn that’s about 30’ x 15’ (10m x 5m). Right now, Lilly and her mom (Maybelle, Spotted Draft) are in the stall with a wide-open door that leads to that pen. The first day she stepped out, sniffed the air, squinted up at the sun, and then went back inside to eat hay again. Before bedtime, she also tripped and stumbled and I nearly had a heart attack. She’s fine. Maybelle grunted and bucked when Lilly went down. I don’t know if she was concerned or just surprised. 

As one injury heals, another springs up.

Last Sunday, Albert (dog) started favoring his left hind leg, not wanting to put weight on it. I booked an appointment and he went in to the veterinarian on Tuesday morning. He was just in there a few weeks ago for his regular checkup, so he laid his ears flat when I got him out of the truck. 

“Just a sprain,” the veterinarian decided. “Keep him off of it for a couple of weeks, keep him on a leash outside, and I’ll prescribe him some Rimadyl for pain.”

That sounded good to me. He’s only five, so I didn’t expect a knee or hip injury yet, but it was a relief to hear that it was just a sprain. There was a looming implication—maybe it was slightly more serious and I would find out if he didn’t heal in two weeks—but that type of injury has a good prognosis. The next day, I knew that the diagnosis was off. First, he was licking the bottom of his foot incessantly whenever I wasn’t paying close enough attention. That seemed odd for a sprain, so I investigated. The big pad on his foot was swollen and very tender to the touch. There was an inflamed pink spot on the side when I spread his toes. I put a bandage on it and booked another appointment.

This time, we met with the owner of the hospital, who quickly discovered the Pododermatitis, which is a foot infection. Let me backtrack a tiny bit. The veterinary technician, who has been working there about twenty years, nodded when we came back. After asking about Albert’s symptoms, the tech nodded again and asked Albert if he had Pododermatitis. It makes me wonder if maybe this tech had an inkling of the diagnosis the first time we were there, but didn’t want to contradict the veterinarian. Maybe I’m just reading into that. At any rate, Albert had an infection in that pad. It could have been from a splinter or cut that went undetected. The treatment includes antibiotics, soaking, and wrapping. It was a very different treatment plan. By Friday, I knew that the second diagnosis was correct. The infection blew out through the side of his pad, deflating the skin and taking away most of the pain with it. Albert looks like he feels a million times better and is on the road to recovery. I don’t know how long it will take the skin of his pad to heal. He will require more rest than he’s comfortable with, but that’s how it goes around here. People get locked up in the middle of summer for injuries that weren’t their fault.

I was talking with my sister yesterday, and she asked something like, “When will I have free time to do all these things I have to do?”

My answer came very quickly, perhaps because that same thought has been stuck in my head for weeks. 

“Right now,” I said. 

I wasn’t being cheeky, but I was probably trying to convince myself more than my sister. I went on to explain my thesis. We stay busy, trying to keep track of tons of things. Some of those are IMPORTANT tasks, like how it’s very important for me to try to keep my animal-friends healthy. Other items on the list, like putting up a ladder so I can sweep down the cobwebs in the corners of the vaulted ceiling in the living room, are less important. That task is on my list, but I’m not going to drop everything to get it done this morning. This is just the normal push/pull of keeping a list, right? We have high-priority and low-priority objectives. Some tasks will get done today, and some might not get done this year. 

The consternation comes (I believe) when we don’t trust ourselves that we’ve correctly prioritized the list. I might be afraid that I can’t do a good job at a task and then I put it off—that’s a form of deprioritization. I might be embarrassed that I haven’t taken action yet, so I deprioritize. The stress I feel is not that I don’t have enough time, it’s that I’m not spending my time on the things that I really should move to the top of my list. If I put my tasks in the proper order, stick to that order, and then trust myself enough to know why I chose that order in the first place, the stress goes away.

Theoretically! I should add that caveat! This is all theoretical. I told this hypothesis to my sister as if it was established, proven fact. But of course I always feel like I don’t have enough time, or I’ve wasted my precious time on the wrong things. I never said any of that, but maybe she’ll read this one day and discover my hypocrisy. 

That said, I have a million things to do today. Albert’s foot needs to air out for a while. I’ll unwrap it while I have time to keep an eye on him. Summer guests will be arriving any day, so I need to make sure the house is in order. And it’s another beautiful day. It’s a good time to get some outside chores done!

Lilly outside!