I thought you’d like to know that our beloved old mule, Roy, is doing much better after losing his buddy, blind Scout. We have continued to let him wander the ranch at will, which suits him just fine. People who have come to the ranch in the past week are often startled to see this big-eared guy walking around freely. They turn to us and ask, "Say, do you know you have a mule loose?"
Why, yes we do.
Roy has started attaching himself to us, and whenever we’re around Beauty’s Barn, he quietly ambles over and walks up to us until his massive head is just an inch or so from our chest. That’s the signal for, "Go ahead. Scratch me." There’s nothing he likes more than to have those ears scratched, which is what I’m doing in the photo at the top that Alayne took this morning.
So his routine now is to hang out inside the south end of Beauty’s Barn, in the barn aisle right outside his and Scout’s stalls, and use that as his base to explore. Roy visits blind Hannah and Luna in their corral, and he stands next to old Crazy Horse and little Brynn when we put them up in their stalls for the night. He’s even taken to coming down to the welcome center in the evenings. Roy has visited the sighted horse herd again, though I suspect it’s as much to rub their horsey noses in the fact that he, a mule, is free to wander and they are not. Hee-haw.
He’s the original smorgasbord-eater, preferring to sample a little of this and a little of that. This preference for nibbling has always made it difficult to keep weight on the old guy, although our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, says that for an ancient mule he’s in good body condition — despite some bony ribs. But his new set-up is perfect for his eating style.
Roy’s got a stack of alfalfa hay flakes at the north end of the barn, bales of grass hay at the south end, and green grass wherever he goes. Though true to his smorgasbord nature, he’ll still eat the hay in addition to grazing the grass — unlike other equines, who wouldn’t touch the hay if they could have green grass. Our biggest nutritional challenge has always been to get him to eat his equine senior grain, which he just picks at in small bites before losing interest. Other equines would wolf it down, but not Roy: "I’ll just have a sample, thank you." That’s his style. But he’ll gladly come over to get a mouthful or two when I dish it up for Crazy Horse. Just don’t serve him a couple of scoops of the stuff.
His major health problem continues to be his joints. After he arrived last summer, Erin X-rayed his legs and called him a "walking arthritic nightmare." Following joint injections, lots of farrier work, and daily anti-inflammatories, he is better than he was … but there is only so much we can do for him. You can see in that photo above of Roy walking how he is dragging that left rear foot. He does that with both rear feet. Like blind Laddie, we continually assess Roy’s quality of life and his physical comfort.
For now, though, Roy seems quite content with his new lifestyle. I took this photo of him lying down in the grass for a nap this morning:
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