February 24th, 2010

February 24th, 11:58pm: No I haven’t forgotten folks…just been a busy, busy day. Wow, where to even begin. After Windchill’s 30+ hour stand, he wanted up this morning but could only stand for 20 minutes and then laid back down. A day’s worth of well-wishers gave him the ‘oomph’ he needed for his lift this evening and around 6pm or so he was back on his feet again. His newest guardian angel during the day is a new mare on this farm named Bonnie. She was adorable, watching him closely, lowering her head over the stall and nickering to him. And after one full day on this farm she’s been sold to proud new ‘parents’ Aaron & Kris, both of whom spent a good deal of time helping care for Windchill as well. Congratulations guys. Today was a day of goodwill and generosity. We have new friends from Bruno, MN (thanks again Maricle family!) And lots of new friends from Duluth and the surrounding area. I didn’t know my driveway could hold this many cars without collapsing or something. Todd brought us all a huge dinner which was wonderful! And I think we have enough strawberry yogurt for the moment, if Windchill gets to it all he’ll probably have a weight problem. Somehow I don’t think any of us would complain.

You know the one thing that will be hard for you to see if I ever do get that webcam going out there – a good one hopefully – is Windchill’s eyes. Windchill’s eyes are what capture people’s hearts. They shine with that quiet determination. They hold wonder, sadness, intelligence and love. I’m not making that up because I’m one of those insane ‘horse people’ – non-horse people have been out to visit in droves and they see him, they kneel by him and he touches them with his innocence and fierce desire to see all this through. It’s not an in your face sort of thing – it’s more powerful than that. It’s this quiet determination he has to keep breathing. Today  it was 40 degrees here. Two weeks ago it was 60 degrees colder. He was just as determined in the cold as he is now healing in this mild temperature reprieve. Amazing. We’re keeping warmer leg wraps on him now after our vet said his legs were colder than last time. Hopefully between that and being on his legs more the circulation is increasing in his legs. One more week til we’re in the clear on potential frostbite damage, so far no symptoms. He still doesn’t like his medicine, that’s downright cute. Internal organs are functioning normally. All this is good.

Windchill did very well today, soaking up the love and affection. Another animal healer and communicator stopped to visit. One told us about Windchill’s joints (sore but improving and nowhere near the pain he was in not too far back). Both said he was in better spirits. And one echoed what another had said – Windchill is sad. He’s not sad about where he is now – quite the opposite in fact. He’s profoundly saddened about his past life – that now that he knows there’s this other life he doesn’t understand why he went through what he did. You know what Windchill – neither do we.

February 24th, 10:41am: Some quick updates – we have to go move bales out to a couple of pastures: Thanks so much to Lyle Shannon of Duluth for showing me how to set up videos. And Angela Vinson of IA let me know that my dates are off on my updates. Had she not been from IA I would have blamed it on time zone differences and explained that there was a lot of math involved so it couldn’t possibly be my error…but instead it’s a mixture of days blurring together, trying to keep this updated and I’m a guy and prone to letting details like that escape my consciousness. I think the dates went awry when I fell asleep typing an update two nights ago, because the dates were all wrong after that.

Okay, more importantly, we figure now that Windchill must’ve stayed up most of the night as well blowing out of the water his previous standing record. He was up for about 20 minutes this morning and then decided to lay back down and is sleeping comfortably. He shows every sign of being a kid who stayed up too late. I’m going to try to get the cam going today as it’s 20 degrees out and it seems to work when it’s warmer so you can keep trying the link above.

February 24th, 9:11am: Trying to get the videos to work on here – does anyone know how to set them so they all don’t play at once so people can view them one at a time? I see the lifting crew is here – I’ll update more shortly. Windchill finally went down for rest late last night setting a new Windchill record of standing for around 30 hours! This morning he heard the chains of the winch getting ready and he’s making little ‘puppy’ noises, kind of little whines or grunts that he wants up NOW. We’re going to hoist him now, they’re waiting for me so gotta go.