We Hope this is the One

Little Justin. Do you want to know what I looked like at 17 years old? Jonah would have passed the boots test. When I was growing up and going to school, my dad would work us on Saturday. I wonder if subconsciously that's why I like the Sabbath so much. Now I do nothing on the Sabbath except chores. And we work every other day of the week. When are we gonna get rid of this pathetic tree? We're gonna burn it today. Happy day, little one.

Happy day.

Another day visiting Ernie, going for the pre-purchase vet check. You think he's gonna pass? Hopefully. Yeah, you think he's healthy and drug-free?

Yeah.

She's got breakfast ready. Come on, Jonah, we don't— we don't have much time. We're gonna catch these chickens no matter how much time we have. Look at the cat in here. That means there's a door open. Come on, get out of here. It's drizzling. I told the boys yesterday— what are they doing in here? There's plenty of food. Told y'all yesterday we got to get the wood chips in before they get wet. Once they get wet, it's near impossible to get them dry. My friends would come over because I lived in the country. We had a four-wheeler, and so Friday was a lot of fun. Saturday was getting up early and working, and they were accustomed to watching cartoons on Saturday. Remember when cartoons only came on Saturday? There was no Cartoon Network with 24-hour access. There was no YouTube with any cartoon you wanted at the beck and call. How you doing? That little lamb fill you up yesterday? Somebody said, oh, you're gonna start eating lamb. You're supposed to protect them, not, not give the guardian dog the treat. But that's not true. They don't know Winnie. Makes my heart sing. Chips in the dry on the south side too. Open to the south, just gonna get drier. There it is, see, tearing up. I wanted to put these chickens up yesterday. Ran out of time. I'm putting it at the top of the list today even though we're short on time. Hey Jonah, I don't know if this one was ever in the high tunnel. Jonah, that's not the one. Oh, the other one's going in the stall. Bring them this way. Good. There's one over at the pig port, but we'll get it in a minute.

There we go.

I gotta go turn that fence off too. On the other side. You know, Winnie does a pretty good job of patrolling and keeping predators away, so I'm not so worried about that. I'm more worried about the crops and poop on the sidewalk. I can't leave here to help Jonah because I got to keep these people in. So I want to get everybody in to see if my setup that I fortified yesterday will hold everybody. 1, 2— how'd they do that? One of them got past me. Catch the poor chicken. All right, watch. That is a new hen. That hen has never been in here since we moved. Scrappy. I can know that because they would have sorted this out a couple days ago when we moved. Look at the guard goose breaking up the fight. It's all right here, Jonah. It is a little rotten. Which I'm pretty sure you're supposed to burn really good stuff in the gasification wood boiler. Seasoned, meaning not wet, but probably not rotten either. Austin wants to ride the bull. Yeah, you can ride He-Man. Yeah, I don't know if He-Man will buck real good. Oh, I think he will. I'll try to get on it. It's a little drizzly. Happy to have gotten those wood chips in. Is that enough for the winter? Basically 3 months. He's got to drop his load first, get the empty ones out. And then put it in. Poop's in the trough again. Jeez, guys, zero delayed gratification. Imagine having to poop, your plate for eating on is right there, and you just don't want to wait.

Your water glass.

Just poop on your plate. Then you poop on your water glass. Yeah, you poop on the water glass. Catch the— yeah, their brains aren't there. I know, right? But they have such a big brain. Like 6 inches by 8 inches or something. Look, see, a little bit of rock. Yeah, we gotta leave at 9:45 on the dot. We were late to bed, late to rise. I'm not sure if I finished talking about the boots test. You know, we had fun on Friday, we worked on Saturday. Did my friends come back after the work day? And that is why growing up I just had over the whole span a couple of best friends, those that were tough enough to hang. We had fun together and we were miserable together. Yogurt, raw yogurt you cannot buy in the store. A fridge full of milk, that means cream, that means butter. And if it fits your fancy, cheese. We are running out of jars, so we're gonna have to deal with that soon. I want that abundance for you. I'm going to teach you that abundance that is a milk cow. January 5th, that's Sunday, so don't delay. Go ahead and get in Abundance Plus, start enjoying everything else that's in it. January 5th, 2 PM, join us live. Do I even need to say link in description? I mean, you're all— you could be watching on TV, phone. Do I even need to say abundanceplus.com? You Search Abundance Plus on any device, and it's a free trial. So join us for the workshop. Most likely you're gonna like all that Abundance Plus offers, but if you don't, just cancel. You'll never— you won't be charged. So keeping a family cow isn't the most cheapest things in the world. It's an investment. Don't go skimp on the education though, that's for sure, because I can surely show you some ways of where you can skimp and save and do this as frugally as possible. So the education could pay for itself tenfold. Don't skimp on the education. We gotta leave. We gotta leave like for sure about 9:45. 30 minutes till we leave. What should I do? I need to work on this cow class. Oh man, good stuff. Going through how to pick and how to find a cow and how to pick one out. Important stuff. You got to start off right. What's this?

What's what?

Everything. This? What's your Give me a tour of everything.

So this is the cookies for him. These are horse cookies off Amazon. And then we have some snacks. And then we have Mama's water, your electrolytes, and my water. And then my drawing stuff because I'm gonna make a schedule.

You're tempting me, Dar.

With what?

Well, I'm trying to OMAD.

Because I'm so good looking?

I'm trying to OMAD. Oh, okay. And I love a tea, especially on a cold, drizzly day. Our chauffeur, Becky. Nice having a chauffeur. What's this, Lily?

That is my list if we buy any toys. Napoleon, what we'll do, see, this is lesson with the friends every 2 weeks, so once a week I'll have my own, once a week I'll have my, so I'll have my lesson, but I'll have a private lesson, and then the next week I'll have a lesson with friends on Sunday, and then the next week I'll have my dream.

All right, Josiah, let's just let you do it. That's the best way to learn growing up. I don't know what to do. Learn how to buy fuel.

Just put it in?

Yes. I don't know what to do. Put it in. Now follow the Instructions. Get it?

Yeah. So what do I press?

Always get the 87 unless you accidentally put diesel in the gas. Okay, you got this.

I'm going back in where it's warm.

I've put in my 30 years. It's your turn. Wait a minute. What? He's no dummy. You don't want to stand out there and hold vigil? No. Becky, how's it— how's it to have a chauffeur? It can be scary sometimes. I get to scroll the gram. It's good. I get to work back here. I've gotten so much. Go ahead.

Sorry.

It's good. It's good. It's good.

It's— I'm seeing glimpses of who he's going to be when I'm not in the car.

Tell them we're there.

There he is.

Hey, how's it going?

Good.

How are you? Good.

Awesome.

All right, let's go.

We're gonna give him a full physical exam. We're gonna watch him go. We're gonna flex him up. We're gonna put him on some different surfaces, lunging. We usually do a little neurologic assessment as well. We're looking at his eyes, and we'll pull blood for the drug test. Right. It's all good. And then— oh, and he also needs a Coggins. Yes, we were going to do a Coggins test. That's a good thing.

Yep.

And that's all part of like a normal pre-purchase. And then beyond that, then it's, you know, are there any images that we should get? Do we need to x-ray this, that, or the other thing? Have we seen recent images of him so we don't need new ones or any of those things?

What are you looking for here?

Just checking his teeth and making sure he's got a good bite and the right number of teeth and his teeth match the age and whatnot.

How do you know how to take a heartbeat?

Well, he's got a good sounding heart.

That's good.

I'm a little ouchy when I felt his lower back there. Keep that in mind.

Is that a little sore spot? Yeah, is that a normal reaction or is that a sensitivity?

A little sensitive to his lower back palpation. Look at that, on the right than the left.

Wow. Wait, now how do you know he's not going to kick you?

I'm just playing my bets. I don't.

Are you feeling for a numb— anonymous is there?

Yeah, feeling for sore spots and swellings and scars and whatnot. He's had a wound, or if he had some procedure to his head. Okay, I can almost make out, make out that there's a rectangle here. Yeah, and that's a great location for somebody to have done a sinus surgery on him. Um, so I'm kind of wondering if it's, it's not obvious. I don't know, Brittany sees enough of these. What do you think, Brittany? So you got this guy that makes a corner right here, and then, you know, the landmarks for where I make my incision when I do those is the medial canthus and the supraorbital foramen. And then if I smooth the hair down, like, there's just a little ridge that connects the two. Is that bad? Rectangle?

Something like that?

It kind of depends on what was in there. And I mean, it looks like it obviously isn't fresh. It's been a while.

Why would you do that surgery?

Lots of reasons. Whether it's some sort of sinus disorder usually, and, uh, so whether there's, you know, whether he had a tooth problem or whether he had a cyst or an infection or a hematoma, all sorts of reasons. All right, temperature 94.7, which is a little bit low, but he's kind of, uh, he's got good tail tone, but he's, uh His anus was a little relaxed there. Squeeze his feet, see if he cares. You guys might not want to stand right there just in case he does decide to stop bluffing. When his right hind foot hits the ground, his right hip stays a little higher. He's just a little bit lighter on that right hind today than his left. And we'll see what he does with the flexions and going on the circles and all that kind of stuff. Maybe a thing to, you know, dig deeper into.

We're going outside. It's a damp cold. I thought South Carolina was warm. We came off the mountain. It's still— it's cold. Your assistant there is going to get it. She don't need to go to the gym today. All day, every day.

We have these conversations.

You checking flexibility there?

Yeah, see what his range of motion is there.

See if he's going to be able to give you a hug one day. Guesses on how much he weighs? Any guesses? Um, I'm going to say, oh, 1056. I'm gonna say— I have no idea. I'm gonna say 900 pounds.

900 pounds for what?

How much he weighs.

I would say more than 1,000.

Okay, so making sure that his pupil works and his cornea looks okay and his anterior chamber looks okay and look in the back of the eye at the optic disc and make sure that looks okay. Horses have a third eyelid just like That's another species to protect their eyes from when they're grazing and whatnot, that they don't get seed pods in their eyes and stuff. That's an— we think. I don't know, I wasn't there, but we think it's an evolutionary thing. There's his vein.

You can see it. Yeah, it's that big.

It's that big.

Gonna weigh him.

Whoa, told you.

You were right on. I'm a bad judge of animals. 11:32. We ordered more tests. Testing just to be sure. There are some things, so we want to go into this based on the last one, our first horse purchase, eyes wide open or not at all. If they don't find anything, then it's likely that we can manage, you know, the soreness and the— right, the, the— if it's that or something else, then yeah, we can address all that thing. Unless it's something major, so we're getting tested for that.

Right.

X-raying right now. X-ray's done. We can come see the rest of the exam.

So I didn't shoot them all. We shot the back first. And so this is his withers, so he's going to be looking that way and his rump is over to the right.

Okay.

And so this is withers, and this is what I was saying, you can't see like the whole spine, but you can see these things that are called the dorsal spinous processes, and they're like little shark fins. Each one of these comes off a vertebra. And so this is moving from his withers. We're gonna move back down the back. And normally this is a normal shape, and this is all kind of normal shape. And normally the spaces do get a little bit smaller as you go back, but what I run into is he's got a lot of— this is by definition kissing spines where he's got—

that's what Leslie just said.

Whoa, Leslie! She's all over it.

She is.

Uh, yeah, he's got some overriding of the processes as well as this is some irregularity of the bone, right? So there's bony resorption and remodeling, okay, where the bone is actually responding to the abnormal stresses. Okay, so, um, you know, kissing spine is not a definitive deal breaker in a lot of cases. And there are a lot of horses out there that have some degree of bony pathology in their backs, and they can be managed and they can get by. And that's physical therapy, sometimes injections, sometimes shockwave. If you're looking for a horse that's not going to need management, this increases the risk that he's going to need some help in order to try to get him to fulfill what you want out of him.

Right, right.

To me, this would be a guy that If you're happy with this horse as he is right now, maybe he's gonna be okay. If you're gonna ask him to start doing stuff over fences and cross country and all that kind of stuff—

I mean, she just told me she wants to jump 4 feet within 2 years.

That's not happening here, yes? It's, I mean, it's gonna be hard.

Aww, Millie. Aww. Ernie has kissing spine. I don't know what kissing spine is. I'm learning as we go, but it's a deal breaker. It's, it's probably why he was sore on his leg, on his back, I guess hip, lower back. Uh, it's probably why he's a little more lethargic. And so it's not laziness, it's just I imagine he's in pain. That's a deal breaker. But I'm so happy we went this step further because we, we did have to order those x-rays. That wasn't the original plan. It was going to cost more money. But the good news is they did the x-ray first, and so now they don't have to charge us for the blood test. Very good vets down there at the Tryon, Tryon Equestrian Hospital. Not every story ends with a happy ending, except it is kind of happy because we dodged a bullet. Hey guys, we're back! Did you miss me? I got a lot of work done while we were on the ride, but I'm gonna knock it out right now. I just sent off a masterclass outline. This is going to take the two full hours of class. You don't want to miss it. Abundance Plus this Sunday, live at 2 PM. And if you missed that, check out the replay. Happy day!