Hell or High Water...

The last couple of days have been quite a roller coaster. Thursday was pretty much the day from hell, as the drillers went down to 400' and came up with bupkis. When I heard this, I went into some form of shock, as our worst nightmare was materializing before our very eyes.

Here lies a very expensive and useless hole in the ground.

The hard choice at that point was to either stay on the same hole and just keep going until we either hit water or ran out of money, OR, move to another spot and start all over again with no guarantee that we would be any better off in the new location.

I felt so scared and sick that I basically zoned out at that point and told Michael that he would have to figure out what he wanted to do, and I wouldn't fault him either way if it ended badly. He spent hours looking over well logs from the neighborhood, studying the lay of the land up on our property, and finally decided to move the location of the well. The 400' of clay on the witcher's site just didn't give him any good feeling at all, so he ditched it. Now there will be expense to officially "abandon" that well, as they have to fill it, get 20' of concrete into the top part of the hole, and cap it -- and then we will have a lovely, permanent reminder of the HUGE mistake we made in putting our faith in a dowser!

So, yesterday morning, Michael told the drillers we wanted to move the location. This took major cojones, as the drillers were recommending staying on the same hole, plus they weren't jumping up and down about the new site Michael had picked. Even with all that pressure, Michael stuck to his guns and told them to move the rig and start all over again. I don't think I could have done that in a million years.  Like I said, cojones grandes!

Problem was, we needed a new waste material pit dug before they could proceed. Enter our neighbor across the road, a retired contractor who has a backhoe. Thankfully, he was available and could come right over. However, the Evil Construction Gods were not through toying with us just yet. Five feet away from the new location, the neighbor's backhoe broke down -- completely stopped running. And, his machine was now partially blocking the road. This spurred a frantic flurry of phone calls to various backhoe operators around the region, as we scrambled desperately to find someone who could come dig the stupid pit. It was also going to cost a whack of money to make that happen, which we needed like yet another hole in the head! Fortunately, the neighbor managed to get his rig going again and dig the pit.

We went up to check things out a bit later, and when we left, I waved to Carlos, the foreman of the job, then made a praying gesture with my hands. He threw up his arms in a "Who knows?" gesture back.

Getting started on the new location,with the pit that almost didn't happen today.

I was about as scared as I've ever been in my life, as another dry hole could sink the whole project and take every penny we had with it. I kept trying not to go there in my mind, but wasn't doing too well.

So, try to imagine how I felt later that day when Michael went back to the site, then came home and said they hit water somewhere between 140'-175'! Carlos estimated it was about 8-10 gallons a minute -- not a ton of water, but enough to get a building permit and certainly do-able. All I could say was "Halle-freakin'-lujah!" Michael was running on pure adrenaline at that point, as he had not been able to sleep much at all the night before -- which tells you just how stressful the situation really was, as Michael is one of those people who can sleep just about anywhere, anytime, no matter what is going on.

I found myself walking around for the next hour or so saying, "Wow" at odd intervals. The relief was huge, but I was so exhausted that I felt like I had been knocked screwy with a sledgehammer.

What happens next? On Monday, they will keep drilling and see if they can get a bit deeper. The hope is to find a bit more water, as it would certainly be preferable to have more g.p.m. However, they sometimes have trouble drilling much past where they hit water, as the water itself can erode the column they are digging, creating voids and causing problems. Keeping the well shallow has financial benefits for us right now and would help offset the cost of the abandoned well, but a shallow well has more chances of running dry in the future. We are currently going into a fifth year of drought in this area, so we would like to think that normal weather will soon return and that we might be safe, but who knows...we could have years more of drought to come.

Once they finish the well, we have to get it tested for both g.p.m. and water quality before we can get our building permit, so we will be getting on all that ASAP. Every day of delay is not good.

As for Lido, he seems to be doing well, although Thursday morning he was not. I went over to give him his medication and saw that he had not eaten his breakfast, did not appear to have had any water (despite my having given him a salted mash the night before to encourage him to drink), and he was listless. He seemed depressed, though whether that was from pain, medication side effects or just being cooped up in a stall, I didn't know. My guess was that it wasn't pain, as he was bearing weight on the injured leg quite well. Since Gryphon and Rogie were not keeping him company at that time, I was thinking maybe he was just upset at being locked up.

Lido, much perkier after being sprung from the joint!

I called Dr. Ruby at Comstock Equine and asked her if it would be better to keep him in the stall or to turn him out and see if that perked him up. She thought it would be better to turn him out, but hoped he wouldn't run or move around too much. She thought his depression was most likely from being locked in, and she thought it was important to get him eating and drinking. We let him out and he immediately went to the outdoor water trough and had a huge drink. Then he went over to the outside feed trough (we had put some hay out there) and started to eat. He made it very clear what the problem had been!

Today, we had to take the vet's bandages off, cold-hose the leg, then re-wrap it. The wounds look okay, considering, and though there was some swelling around the tendons, there was definitely less swelling than there had been the first day. He is bearing weight and walking pretty normally, so I think he may have avoided serious damage other than to his skin.

This new wrap -- accomplished only through the help of dear Dona -- is supposed to remain on until Tuesday. I don't know if it will, as I am no pro at wrapping horse wounds, especially with so many complicated layers! I am thankful to Lido for his patience and gentle temperament, as he let us mess with him for a total of about two hours before we got everything done -- oral meds, old bandages off, hosing, drying, etc.

Lido, sporting his new hunter green bandage and getting some love from Dona.

He seems comfortable in the new bandage, so here's hoping all goes well for the next few days!