Worming

I bet you all thought this would be about having earthworms in the garden.  Nope, 7 years and we still don't seem to have earthworms.  We had some red compost worms last year that made it through the winter under some straw in the vegie garden but no sign of them this year.  It was too dry, I think.  Not a tiny bit of rain all winter and spring.  Oh, what an exciting day it was in Fernley when we found our first earthworm after only living there a couple of years.  Here in our sandy realm, so far not a one.

Nope, today we wormed the cat, the two dogs, the three goats and the miniature horse.  We generally do this in early June every year.  I don't recall why we do it in early June but we must have had our reasons when we first started this tradition.

We are worming the cat and the dogs specifically for tapeworms.  Penney had tapeworms a couple of years ago.  I thought is was shocking.  In all my years of dog ownership, I had never actually had a dog with known tapeworms.  There are no fleas here so we thought we were safe.  Turns out that if the cat or dog eats rabbits [and ours do] the rabbits all have tapeworms which the directly pass on to the dog or cat.  Isn't nature fascinating!  Yuck.

Any way, it is real and we are working to prevent problems.

I finally found a farrier that will come out our way.  I got a recommendation from the vet tech at the animal clinic we have been taking the dogs to occasionally.  Honestly, we worm and give the basic shots ourselves so unless your getting neutered or need rabies or are really sick, when you are a pet around here you don't see the inside of the vet's office.  Saves us a ton of money.