While many would shy away from grabbing a horse’s leg to extend and rotate it, Dr. Kinal Patel, a chiropractor of humans, horses, dogs and cats, was in her element as she did so to the 21-year-old steed, Mariah, at Northfield Stables in Heber City. 

For many boarders and their horses, Northfield Stables is their happy place away from the hustle and bustle of downtown. The 20 acres are surrounded on all sides with the serene emptiness of the North Fields, a freshwater wetland area, with towering Mt. Timpanogos on the horizon.

Patel has spent as much time as possible in that environment since moving to Heber City last year, not just for the views, but to help her animal friends, too.

As Patel adjusted Mariah, the horse lifted one of her right legs, not to kick her doctor, but as her way of saying, “Help me out, here!” She has an uneven trot thanks to soreness on the right side of her body.

Patel gives Mariah adjustments once a week. The horse has arthritis in her hock and stifle joints in her hind legs, in no small part because her previous owner neglected her. Mariah’s current owner, Amy Hartquist, bought her nine years ago from a boarding barn in Washington. 

“She had at least two incidents where she reared up and flipped over with a saddle on, before I found her,” Hartquist said. “And she grew a whole baby without any nutritional support. They just threw her out in the field, and they were like, ‘Have a baby!’”

Patel said that, in her experience, saddles are the number one reason horses become lame. If a saddle is too tight, pinching the scapula while a human sits directly on the horse’s spine, it can create long-term health problems that can be worsened by running and jumping in high-octane events.

“It’s like an extra small bra, when you can’t fit into it. … You need space for their vertebrae to move around,” Patel explained. “But they try their hardest to please the owner and move.”

The goal of Mariah’s treatment is to make her healthy enough to be ridden. 

Patel’s treatment began with rubbing essential oils onto Mariah’s body to soothe her. Then, she performed a series of adjustments across Mariah’s body, extending her legs, pushing down on the spine and massaging the temporomandibular joint in the jaw.

As Patel performed the latter adjustment, Mariah involuntarily stuck her tongue out and flatulated. While stinky, that indicates the horse is relaxed and signals the treatment is working, Patel explained. Yawning and nuzzling up are also positive indicators.

By the time Patel wrapped up the treatment by enveloping Mariah in a pulsed electromagnetic field blanket, which massages the horse with vibrations and uses magnetic fields to stimulate cellular repair, the horse was falling asleep on her hooves. Hartquist’s anxious girl was completely relaxed.

Usually, it’s the horses that are in the most pain that have negative reactions, nipping, kicking or bucking if Patel tries to touch them. 

“You just have to keep calm and give the horse some space, and go back to see why it bucked back or reared up. It’s obviously pain or discomfort,” Patel said. “You don’t come in like you own them. It’s a kind of respect.”

Dogs can also be dangerous, but they’re typically easier to handle. 

For example, 13-year-old border collie poodle mix Beau didn’t resist when Patel picked him up and adjusted his legs. 

Beau suffered a neck injury last year. His owner, Ashley Peatross, didn’t see it happen, but he assumes Beau tripped on the stairs.

“I was upstairs, and he came up, and he was pretty much crawling,” Peatross said. 

After a month of trying to manage the injury, administering anti-inflammatory medications and carrying Beau outside for every bathroom trip, Peatross scheduled an appointment with Patel.

“She came over and did one adjustment, and after that, he went from barely being able to move to being able to move around and take care of himself,” Peatross said. “After two or three treatments, his quality of life was way better.” 

Patel entered chiropractic medicine because of the positive effects it had on her own life.

Patel was born prematurely, which resulted in lifelong health issues, particularly asthma and constipation. She didn’t discover chiropractic care until she was a pharmacy student at Western Illinois University. A friend recommended it to Patel, who had injured her knee while playing soccer. Patel was surprised to find that adjustments lessened the severity of her other health conditions. 

“I was literally hospitalized all the time for those two things. So, I was like, ‘If medicine didn’t help, and this is helping?’ So, I switched careers,” Patel said.

She earned her doctorate at the Logan University College of Chiropractic in Missouri in 2012, later opening a practice in Illinois with her former husband, where, among their many patients, the pair treated professional athletes from the National Football League and Major League Baseball.

Patel became interested in animal chiropractic after an experience she’d had with her dog. Then, Patel acquired a certification in animal chiropractic at the Options For Animals College of Animal Chiropractic in Kansas in 2018. 

“He got a nerve nicked by a veterinary procedure,” she explained. “When he came back, his right hind (leg) wasn’t working, and he was peeing himself. Gabapentin would make him absolutely neurotic and crazy, like, teeth out at patients, because he’d come to work with me. My girlfriend, who does show dogs and show horses in Florida and Pennsylvania … came and adjusted him, and it was magic.” 

She moved to Heber City last year after her divorce and soon found a family of sorts at Northfield Stables, where she spends her Sundays providing adjustments to animals. 

While treating human patients is fulfilling, treating horses, cats and dogs provides Patel with her sense of purpose.

“My goal is to give back to the ones that can’t speak,” she said.

Patel’s practice, Heber Valley Chiropractic, is located at 2 S. Main St. She also expanded to Park City last month and is located within Park City Fit at 4108 N. Forestdale Dr. 

Appointments can be booked at hebervalleychiropractic.com.

The post Meet chiropractor Kinal Patel, the Wasatch Back’s doctor in the (barn)house appeared first on Park Record.

Many of the dozens of chickens, goats, horses, pigs, mini donkeys, cats and dogs on Mary Wynne’s nearly four-acre property in Daniel were happy accidents.

There was the 300-pound pig next door that kept digging holes under her fence, escaping the butcher like the star of a “Chicken Run” knockoff. The exasperated neighbor let Lynne keep the fortunate fugitive.

“There were seven of them, and six of them went to the barbecue truck,” Wynne explained. 

A pregnant orange cat also took refuge on Wynne’s property inside a stack of Wrangler tires and gave birth to five kittens — a “genius” move on the mother’s part, she said. Wynne had the cats spayed and neutered, keeping the mama and one of her kits while finding homes for the rest.

The nomadic, “nice rooster” arrived six months ago — a marked improvement from another “mean” rooster she’d rescued off the side of the road. 

“There’s a sign above her house for all the animals that says, ‘You can have free food and friends,’” said Wynne’s daughter-in-law, Paige Pribble. 

The latest to take up the invitation was none other than a blue peacock. Strangely enough, he wasn’t the first of his kind to wander onto Wynne’s property. 

Close to 10 years ago, a peacock, which had belonged to a neighbor who raised the birds, tried to move in. So when this new peacock began hanging around, Wynne rang up her neighbor, who said the bird was not his.

When this blue peacock started wandering around Wynne’s yard last week, he quickly became buddies with her chickens.

“The peacock decided the chicken coop wasn’t up to his standards,” she said. “It just sleeps on the doormat, and then at night, it flies up in the trees.”

Wynne began calling the peacock Harry Styles after a heated debate with Pribble about whether JLo or Lenny Kravitz might be a more suitable name for the bird.

The peacock subsisted on a diet of Goldfish crackers, chicken food and cucumbers for a few days. Preparing to become the bird’s mother, Wynne then visited Tractor Supply to buy game bird food for it.

Yet she was sure the peacock was somebody’s lost pet.

“In the morning, it goes up in the trees, and at 6:45 in the morning, it starts screaming. And then it flies down. And if I don’t get out fast enough, it comes around and starts pecking my front door,” she said. “It’s somebody’s pet for sure. … It’s a needy peacock.”

After posting about Harry Styles — the bird, not the man — on Facebook, Wynne’s suspicion was confirmed: the peacock was her neighbor Elisa Skilton’s.

The bird is named Blue. He lives with his female counterpart, Red. The pair are foster pets from Wasatch Wanderers, a Utah-based animal rescue focused on farm and exotic animals. Wasatch Wanderers has no physical location and is instead made up of foster families across the state who care for the animals until they are adopted.

Skilton is part of the foster-to-adopt program. She’s admired peafowl since childhood and currently owns one lonely peahen in want of friends. So, Wasatch Wanderers reached out to her when the organization came into possession of Blue and Red two months ago. 

Skilton is currently keeping the pair in her barn, following the protocol of Wasatch Wanderers, which recommends keeping peafowl in a large, enclosed space for at least six to eight weeks before letting them roam freely. If peafowl don’t have that period to get familiar with their new home, they tend to wander off. 

Blue wasn’t happy with being cooped up, so he tore a hole in a mesh window of the barn and made his escape. 

“(Peafowl are) probably the most wandering animal that we’ve helped,” laughed Wasatch Wanderers President Adri Ballif.

That tendency to wander is exactly why Blue and Red were put up for adoption in the first place. Their previous owner, who has a farm in Murray, kept getting complaints that the peafowl were visiting neighbors’ front porches and making a mess. 

But Skilton thinks the birds will be right at home in Daniel, where they’ll have much more room to roam and neighbors like Wynne, who are more accustomed to animal visitors.

Besides, as Wynne put it, “Daniel’s a good place to be different.”

Peafowl are not native to Utah. Even the colonies of feral peafowl found in the Salt Lake area were once domesticated birds, Ballif explained. 

That makes peafowl particularly vulnerable to Utah’s native predators and traffic.

Ballif recommends calling animal control upon the discovery of stray peafowl. If the owner does not come forward to claim it, animal shelters will often reach out to Wasatch Wanderers for help finding it a home. 

But that only happens a few times a year.

Wasatch Wanderers currently does not have other peafowl available to foster or adopt, but does have guinea pigs, rats, tortoises, lizards, snakes, frogs, chickens, goats, pigs and cows looking for homes.

Going into the spring, Ballif said the biggest need for Wasatch Wanderers will be foster and adoptive homes for domestic ducks, which are often purchased at big box stores in infancy and abandoned at ponds by owners regretting their impulse purchase.

Abandoning any domestic animal is a crime per Utah code. 

Prospective feather-, scale- and fur-parents can visit wasatchwanderers.org to fill out an application to foster or adopt an animal.

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Heber City residents Bonny and Andy Armstrong were looking for the perfect campsite for a nature retreat with their pet ducks when they found the avian equivalent of a blood-splattered crime scene: a splay of feathers on the dirt. Obviously, some predator had killed a bird.

The Armstrongs had traveled up Mirror Lake Highway to Upper Setting Road. Other than the concerning feathers, the site was the idyllic getaway for their beloved Serrano and Lucy Boy, complete with a bubbling creek for the ducks to wade in. So the next day, the Armstrongs hopped in their van and drove back to the site, this time with their ducks in the backseat.

As soon as they exited the van, they heard a rooster crow nearby.

“We were like, ‘That’s weird because we’re at least eight and a half miles from Kamas,’” Bonny recalled.

They found the entrance of a dirt tunnel hidden underneath a bush while investigating the area. Nestled inside the tunnel was a sunset orange rooster.

The Armstrongs immediately realized two things: The feathers they’d found the previous day were from a chicken, and the birds had probably been abandoned in the wilderness. The couple set up camp, and the rooster — whom they affectionately named Sparky — took an immediate interest in them.

“The rooster was real interested in our ducks, and our ducks were kind of afraid of him,” Bonny said.

So Andy picked up Sparky and walked him to a campsite down the road to give his ducks some temporary peace of mind.

Thinking that was the end of it, the Armstrong clan enjoyed their first night under the stars. But in the morning, Sparky made his triumphant return.

“We’re like, ‘OK, we’re just going to be camping with the rooster, too,’” Bonny laughed. “He never got farther than maybe 20 feet away from our van the whole time.”

Even when the Armstrongs walked away from the campsite, Sparky was always close behind. 

“He’s kind of like our ducks in that he wanted to be close to us but didn’t want us to really touch him,” Bonny said.

Sparky wasn’t aggressive, only curious, but the ducks never became used to him.

As the sun began to set, the Armstrongs noticed Sparky was gazing up into their van. Then he flew inside, searching for a place to roost.

“The temperatures up there were in the 20s at night,” Bonny said. “And we’re thinking, ‘Oh, God, the poor thing. He just really wants a safe, warm place for the night.’”

The couple knew that keeping their two nervous ducks mere feet away from a rooster would be a nightmare for everyone. So they nestled Sparky under a wheel well on top of one of their van’s tires that faced the campfire.

“Once we put him in there, he was like, ‘OK, I guess this will do,’” Bonny recalled.

The final night of their camping trip was hard on Bonny. She “cried all night,” pondering what to do with Sparky. If the Armstrongs took Sparky and dropped him off near a farm, he’d become someone else’s problem. 

Bonny knew that with the coming winter, the most merciful outcome for a rooster surviving on its own would be a swift dispatch by a predator. But she thought Sparky was too “smart and savvy” for that. If he managed to avoid predators, he would starve or freeze to death with frostbite creeping up his feet and beak.

The dilemma was even more heart-wrenching for Bonny because Sparky reminded her of the couple’s ducks.

In March 2013, the Armstrongs were buying seed for their bird feeder at the Silver Eagle Country Store in Heber City. A woman entered with a box she’d found in a Smith’s parking lot. Inside were six chicks and two ducklings, shivering and no more than a few days old.

An employee agreed to take the birds, placing them in a cozy cage with a heat lamp and trough. 

“When we got married, we had pledged to try to be a no-pets, no-plants, no-kids type of family. And we were doing really good, but something about these two baby ducks — they were just so adorable,” Bonny laughed. “I don’t know what possessed us, but we brought them home with us.”

The Armstrongs named the ducks Sarah and Lucy after the characters from “Trailer Park Boys.” The ducks grew as quickly as Clifford the Big Red Dog, and as they did, the Armstrongs realized by raspy quacks and curling tail feathers that Sarah and Lucy were male. 

They renamed Sarah “Serrano” because his black feathers look iridescent green in the sunlight, just like a pepper.

As for Lucy, Bonny explained, “We tried all kinds of different names for him, but Lucy still fit him, even though he was a boy. So we just always introduce him as Lucy Boy.”

The Armstrongs expected Serrano and Lucy Boy to live for about 10 years. The ducks are now 11 and a half years old.

“I’ve since learned that ducks that are really well taken care of and kept safe from predators can live to be 16 or 18 years,” Bonny said. “My husband and I, a couple of years ago, bought a house in Costa Rica. That’s where we plan to retire. And we can probably move within a year or two, but we can’t take the ducks because Costa Rica doesn’t allow you to import birds. And so we’re like, ‘Well, I guess we’re staying here until our ducks die.’ We’re not going to abandon them. That’s how they started off life. They’re like our children now.”

Bonny is sure that Serrano and Lucy Boy were abandoned because they were male. Ducks and roosters tend to become hormonal and fight other males, so farmers raising the birds like to maintain an unbalanced male-female ratio. If a farmer is unwilling to kill a male or find it a home, they may leave it in the wilderness.

Bonny suspects that Sparky was abandoned for the same reason. 

“Whoever dumped (Serrano and Lucy Boy) — it just kills me that they never got to know what cool animals these two ducks are and how much personality they have,” she said. “I feel the same way about that rooster. He was a really nice bird, and you could see all this personality. I feel like if someone took him home and treated him well and was kind to him, I think he would be somebody’s really special pet.”

As Bonny pondered the dilemma, Andy recommended calling an animal shelter. They were surprised to find that Summit County Animal Control in Wanship, a no-kill animal shelter, accepts roosters, not just cats and dogs. Staff reported he’s doing just fine.

People interested in adopting Sparky can call 435-336-3990 or visit the shelter at 1745 S. Hoytsville Road. 

Summit County Animal Control also accepts donations. Monetary donations go to the county’s general fund, but the shelter also accepts goods like food, toys, blankets, towels, litter and even newspapers.

Alyssa Poulsen, animal care manager at Park City’s Sage Mountain animal sanctuary, and Adri Ballif, president of Wasatch Wanderers Animal Rescue, agreed that the No. 1 cause of rooster abandonment is farm supply stores that sell baby chicks.

Because the birds are too young to be accurately identified as male or female, it’s entirely possible to find a rooster among a batch of what were advertised as hens.

The desired male-to-female ratio Bonny Armstrong mentioned can certainly be a factor that leads to the abandonment of a rooster. But more often, cities have zoning laws that prohibit roosters in residential areas due to potential noise complaints.

For example, Park City, Heber City and Coalville prohibit roosters within city limits.

“(Farm supply stores) make it really easy for people to impulse purchase animals,” Baliff added, even if the buyer has little to no education on appropriate animal care.

Dumping a rooster in a canyon or a domestic duck at a local pond is often a death sentence because they don’t have the same instincts as a wild bird, she said.

Abandoning any domestic animal is a crime per Utah Code 76-13-202.

Ballif said Wasatch Wanderers receives calls about abandoned roosters two or three times a week from throughout the state.

She usually recommends contacting a local animal shelter to see if it accepts roosters. If it does not, she suggests trying to find a home for the animal by reaching out to friends and family members or posting on social media.

You can reach out to Wasatch Wanderers for additional advice or to see if they might be able to take the animal. They’re currently at full capacity.

“Everyone is stretched so thin,” Ballif explained. “There aren’t enough foster homes or adoptive homes.”

Poulsen added that you may have success with a rooster as a pet — if you live in an area that allows for it, of course.

“I have a friend that has a house rooster,” Poulsen said. “You can get them diapers, and they’ll basically just live in your house like a dog or cat and become your best friend.”

Those are chicken diapers you’d be using, not human ones.

If you are interested in adopting a farm or exotic animal, consider reaching out to Wasatch Wanderers. Both Wasatch Wanderers and Sage Mountain accept monetary donations and would love more volunteers.

The post Lost rooster sparks a rescue mission in the Uinta range appeared first on Park Record.

Adopting a pet as a gift to a loved one for the holidays is a romantic gesture that looks good on TV and in the movies.

While bringing home a new puppy or kitten donned with a bow or dressed in mini Santa suits is exciting and magical, these living creatures aren’t anything like a toy that can be discarded when the novelty wears off, said Arin Meade, director of animal placement at Nuzzles & Co., a pet rescue nonprofit.

“What some people don’t understand is that a pet is at least a 15- to 20-year commitment, and not just for the holidays,” Meade said. “We want to set up the animals for success, and we want people to know this animal will be living with them for years to come.”

One of the first things potential pet owners need to look at is their living quarters.

“It may not be a good match to live in an apartment and adopt a high-energy pet,” she said. “Also, some cats don’t like to live with other animals, so there may be a conflict with pets you already have.”

Another item on the checklist is considering expenses for medical emergencies, wellness checkups and training classes.

“Kittens and puppies have to be taken to the vet every two to three weeks for vaccinations and booster shots when they are 5 months old,” Meade said. “The animals can get sick if they aren’t up on their vaccines, and rabies vaccinations are required every three years.”

Vaccinations cost between $15 to $40 every three weeks, and yearly wellness exams run from $100 to $200, she said.

Added veterinarian expenses can pile up during emergencies, as well, according to Meade.

“One of my dogs has a history of snapping her nails off to the wick when she runs on ice,” she said. “You can’t really tell your dog not to run, so I plan on spending at least $150 every time I take her in for treatment, and just know that I will probably take her to the vet each winter.”

Proper training is also important if owners don’t want their furry friends making messes in the house, destroying furniture or not staying on a leash when required, Meade said.

“Getting them enrolled in socializing or basic obedience classes so they don’t turn into naughty adults is something that owners should look into,” she said. “Training classes can run from $150 to $300, depending on how many classes you want to take.”

On top of that, pets need licenses, and pet owners can register their pups and kitties with Summit County for $14, Meade said.

“This is a nominal cost, because if your dog has taken off and you’re caught without a registration, you can be charged much more for animal impound,”she said.

Food is also another obvious necessity, she said.

“Food can cost an average of $60 a month, unless the pet requires special food in the case of food allergies,” Meade said. “Special diets can cost more, and food allergies are sometimes hard to diagnose until the pet is older.”

Another concern is how much animals can grow in the first few years.

“At first, a lot of people can see a cute little puppy or kitten, but sometimes small animals, like children, won’t stay small,” Meade said. “Sometimes a 10-pound bundle of fur can become a 50-pound bundle of energy.”

After all of these requirements are checked off, there are still other concerns, according to Meade.

“Parents who get the pet for their kids and teens also need to be prepared for the responsibility,” she said. “They need to ask themselves what will happen with the pets when their children go off to college or move out and can’t take the pet with them.”

Also parents are usually the ones who have to drive the pets to the vet until their children pass their driving tests, Meade said.

“As you can see, there are a lot of things that go along with owning a pet, but that doesn’t mean getting a pet for a gift during the holidays is a bad thing,” she said. “If people have set money aside and are prepared to adopt, then the holidays are a good time to do that, because they get a present and add to the giving spirit of the season by buying their pets presents.”

This year, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Nuzzles & Co. has seen an increase of successful pet adoptions, Meade said.

“With COVID, many people are at home more and have the time and energy to invest in a cute buddy who becomes a lifelong companion,” she said.

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The Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter opened up their nature walks for the summer Saturday morning, April 15, 2017. The walks are weekly on Saturday mornings beginning at 8:30 a.m. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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In this week’s For The Record, we asked some furry and feathered friends this question — If a moose is elected mayor of Park City, what should be at the top of his agenda? (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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Second graders at Jeremy Ranch Elementary visited with Fenris the gopher snake, Larry the desert turtle, Kronos the American Kestrel and other critters from the Hogle Zoo on Tuesday, March 7, 2017. The meet-and-greet aimed to get kids excited for celebrity wildlife biologist Jeff Corwin’s show at the Eccles Center on Saturday, March 11th.  (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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