"What's that?" Tessa asked.
"Phenylbutazone. It's a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that controls pain and inflammation." He closed the stall door behind himself and headed for the feed room with Tessa trailing along behind him. Out of the corner of his eyes, he noted a faint hitch in her git-along Probably from that crooked boot heel of hers.
He showed Tessa the shelf by the window with its row of small plastic bins, labeled with the names of various animals. He reached into Biscuit's bin and pulled out a large tube syringe. "This is Biscuit's Bute. It's dosed based on the horse's weight. He weighs right at two-thousand pounds, so?—"
"He weighs a literal ton?" Tessa exclaimed.
"Have you looked at the size of him? He's a big boy. Although, I have seen Belgians considerably bigger than—" he broke off. "As I was saying. He gets two grams of paste twice a day with food. This stuff tastes bitter, so he'll make faces and try to spit it out. That's why it's paste. It'll stick to the surfaces in his mouth and he'll be forced to swallow it as he eats."
More furious typing by Tessa on her phone.
He continued his lecture. "June has a heart murmur and needs daily heart meds." He pulled out the little bin with her name on it and lifted out three oversized pill bottles. "Technically, you could just give her a double dose of each of these medications once a day, but it's better for her if you two smaller doses twice a day."
"Twice a day, it is, then," Tessa answered immediately.
Good for her. She was completely floundering out here, but she hadn't hesitated to prioritize June's health over her convenience.
"You can just mix the pills in with her feed. Be sure to check her grain bucket after she's done eating, though, and make sure she ate her pills. Now and then she gets tricksy and eats everything but the pills. In that case, just mix the pills into a handful of grain with a big glob of molasses. She'll chow them right down."
He waited patiently while Tessa typed all that down.
"Next up is the llama."
"Dolly."
He glanced up. There was something in the set of Tessa's jaw that reminded him of first-year vet students when they realized exactly how much they didn't know. She was totally overwhelmed but refusing to show it.
He led Tessa to the llama's stall. She stayed outside the half-door while he examined Dolly's coat. Rats. The llama was losing hair and had patches of red, inflamed skin and the beginnings of a few scaly, yellow scabs around her ears and behind her elbows—the junction where her front legs met her ribcage.
"As I feared," he murmured, stepping out of the stall and stripping off his surgical gloves. "Dolly has a skin condition called mange. I won't go into the scientific details, but hers is the kind that comes back if she's stressed or her immune system is weakened. Unfortunately, Fern's passing has clearly stressed her out, and the mange is starting to flare up again. The good news is we've caught it early, and Dolly's case responds well to treatment. The bad news is she needs to be isolated in this stall away from any of the other animals, and you'll need to completely disinfect the stall every week."
"How do I do that?" Tessa blurted.
"I did it for Arlo last week, so you're good for a few more days. I'll come back next week—say, Tuesday or Wednesday—and show you how to do it."
"Thank you," she said with genuine relief.
She wouldn't be feeling so grateful when she found out she had to scrape the stall down to the dirt and wash down the whole thing, floor, walls, and ceiling with bleach.
"Meanwhile, you'll need to swab down the affected areas every day with a medicated wash. Twice a day would be even better. I'll show you how right now."
He put on a new pair of gloves, opened the bottle of topical medication, and sponged it onto Dolly's affected areas. She commenced making a humming sound much like a person saying, "Mmm."
"What's she doing?" Tessa asked.
"Humming. That means she's happy. This medicine eases her itchiness and she's telling me she likes it."
"Oh." A pause. "Can I do the medicine more often that twice a day?"
"It won't hurt her. Why?"
"Well, if she's uncomfortable, shouldn't I help her?"
Huh. Tessa Lawrence was a big ole' softy under all that prickly armor of hers? He hadn't seen that one coming.
Loretta the donkey chose that moment to let out an ear-splitting bray. Tessa flinched. Dillon didn't.
"I don't know what she wants," Tessa confessed with a hint of desperation. She looked around the barn with the expression a first-time parent completely overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for a newborn baby. Except she'd just inherited a dozen high maintenance babies she knew nothing about caring for.
