Thirty-Two Square Foot RV

Presently, my life companion is a miniature horse named Camellia, who is the sweetest equine of any size I've known in 40 years of horse ownership. When I have to be away from home overnight, I have to arrange a "horse sitter" to feed her and check in to see that everything is alright. This task has usually fallen to helpful neighbors, but there have been instances when they have not been available, and I've had to cancel travel as a result.

Even when she is being fed and watched by someone I trust, the practical fact is that they come and toss her some food, give her a pet, and leave. The rest of the day and night, she is alone in her pasture. Horses don't require a lot of entertainment, but there are predators in these parts, and even otherwise docile family dogs have been known to roam and attack livestock. What I needed was a way to transport her to the stables north of town for boarding among her own kind and watchful, engaged staff who can recognize problems before they get out of control.

In January, I found a suitable conveyance to get Camellia out on the road. It is one of those cheap single-axle trailers, this one with a rather nicely designed enclosure built on top that is perfectly miniature horse sized:

This was formerly the home of a couple of tweakers who bedeviled the law enforcement agencies in town for a while before their arrest. I acquired it after it went through impound and salvage disposal. It was filled about two feet deep in garbage, syringes, porn, wet clothes and rotted food. The former occupant's possessions went into a car that was destined to be shredded into splinters, and after pulling up the wet carpet and drying it out, it wasn't too bad inside.

I had to replace the windows, which were broken out by vandals when it was abandoned on the street, and I also fitted some custom made screens. The folding ramp was a recycle yard score, and has a sandpaper-rough anti-skid top surface.

The plan was to gradually fix the trailer up, then acclimate Camellia to getting in and out of it, then take her for some short trips to see how she reacted before setting off for a stay away from home.

Great plan, but planning doesn't always follow realities path.

A little over two weeks ago, I got up like usual and went out to the barn to let Camellia out to eat. I took one look at her and knew she didn't feel good. Too much green spring grass, I thought, so I kept her in the barn for a few days, eating hay instead. Her condition didn't improve, and after four days, she stopped eating hay. Another day and she stopped drinking water. This rang a lot of alarm bells inside my head. Friday night brought diarrhea, and I knew we were in trouble. Calls to veterinary clinics over the weekend got me voice mails and answering machines.

Monday morning, I called every Vet I could find, and all of them told me the same thing, "We don't make house calls to your area". The last thing I wanted to do was load her into a trailer and haul her over the road in her condition, but it became obvious that I was going to have to do that if she was going to get attention.

So, I now had a couple of hours to complete a project that I thought I would do over a month or so. Nothing to do but throw myself at it and hope for the best. I put four blue plastic milk crates in the front of the trailer and secured them with ratchet straps so that there was some kind of an offset that would give her something to press her chest against when the trailer was going downhill or stopping.

Not much after doing that, I called Scott, my friend at the recycle yard and told him that if he got a call from me that day, it was because my pickup had finally blown the motor, and I was stranded with a sick horse somewhere along the road between here and the city. Scott offered to let me use his Lexus SUV as the tow vehicle, and put it on the flatbed tow truck to bring it out to me. I continued preparing the trailer, putting down a thick rubber mat and screwing plywood over the front half of the windows to protect them from impact from the inside. Because the body was barely attached to the trailer frame, I threw thick trucker's ratchet straps over the roof and bound it down tight.

Scott arrived with the tow truck, and after unloading it, told me that he had decided on the way up to come with me if I'd allow. We then spent about two hours working on the trailer together. I had removed the foam mattress from my old Housetruck and cut it into sections to act as padding inside the trailer. By 2pm, it was ready and we went in the house to eat a bit before leaving.

Now for the great unknown. I wasn't at all sure how Camellia would react to being stuffed into the trailer, if she'd go up the ramps, in the door, and whether I could get her turned around facing forward once we were both inside. This turned out to the be least challenging part of the whole experience, she went right up the ramps behind me, and Scott said she was lifting her feet up like she was climbing stairs the whole way. She had been trailered before, and apparently knew what she needed to do to get inside. It was close quarters with both of us inside, but after turning her around and securing her halter to a chain on the front wall, it all looked like it might be a successful launch.

The first five miles towards the Valley include four miles of steep, winding logging road. Scott drove like one of his kids was in the trailer behind, nice and easy. The county had graded the road not more than a couple of days prior, so it was smooth and even, no potholes or washboard, and there was a minimum of dust, as perfect conditions as we could ask for.

Highway 36 is a secondary road between the Coast and the Willamette Valley. It's mostly narrow, older, winding, and has little traffic. I sometime drive it instead of 126 when I'm not in a hurry, as you can usually poke along at 40 - 45 MPH and not slow anybody down much. The first 15 or 20 miles are pretty uneven, and we would be taking this section even slower.

The problem is that Highway 126 is under construction near Walton, and apparently many drivers are using 36 as a detour to avoid the delays related to lane closures, etc. More than once, we had drivers some up from behind and become enraged at our 35 MPH speed. They would follow too closely, blast their horn at us if we didn't slam on the brakes and dive into a short turn-out that they thought we should use, pass on the double yellow line under full throttle acceleration, etc. It was very nerve-wracking, and dangerous at the core. We did as much as we could to say out of their way, but speeding up was not an option. The later parts of 36 allowed for more reasonable speeds without the trailer tossing and pitching, as the road has been improved and widened recently.

Once in Eugene, we unloaded Camellia, who didn't seem to be any worse for the experience, and eventually she was examined briefly by a Vet at a clinic I used to use when I lived there. Dr. Camp's assessment was Colitis, and advised me that if I wanted Camellia to live, I was going to have to take her straight to Oregon State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, as she needed 24-hour care immediately. Scott's attitude was "let's go", so while the doctor called in a referral, we loaded her back into the trailer.

The trip to Corvallis took another 45 minutes, the speed only moderate, and still getting dirty looks from passing drivers who didn't want to be slowed down on their commute.

At OSU, we located the Large Animal clinic, where Camellia was placed in an isolation stall that could prevent any infection she might have from spreading to other horses at the facility. I spent a good bit of time filling out paperwork, and the medical staff took blood samples to the lab. Within two hours of arriving, the lab work reported nothing too disturbing, results consistent with dehydration and rapid weigh loss due to not eating or drinking enough. There were possible complications in recovery from these conditions, but overall, Camellia's health wasn't horrible. The cause of the Colitis would be determined from a fecal sample, but the results wouldn't be back until the next afternoon.

After leaving them a low four-figure deposit, Scott and I found a deli that was about to close and got some food before the trip home. As upsetting as having Camellia being sick was, I felt that she was at the best possible facility for the care she needed.

Back at home, I reflected on the bad behavior exhibited by the other drivers we encountered. This was going to be a continuing problem, as I would not be ripping round with Camellia in the trailer even when she wasn't sick. I needed a way to let people behind me know that there was a reason I was traveling slowly, not just that I wasn't paying attention, or I was texting, or actually trying to slow them down and piss them off. I called a business associate who makes signs and then sent him a page with a concept I had in mind.

The OSU staff was great, I got daily update on Camellia's condition and recent lab results, sometimes twice a day. The diagnosis was Potomac Horse Fever, a bacterium carried by water snails and spread by mayflies. Treatment was fairly easy, a round of antibiotics would knock back the infection while blood tests would monitor possible complications such as blood poisoning from excessive dying bacteria or the regeneration of her colon lining.

There was nothing I could do but wait, but I felt that I should be doing something to make her return home closer. Because the trailer was ugly with badly rendered and painted "seascape" graphics, I decided that a coat of paint was indicated. Coming up behind a slow, gray trailer painted with seagulls and fake waves probably didn't endear me any more deeply to other motorists. I had some fairly expensive paint left over from a project ten years earlier, so I began brushing it on, covering up the whole mess and transforming the trailer into an off-white color. Some red and amber reflectors from the Housetruck and my junk collection were applied, and I plopped an amber strobe light in the middle of the roof, making the whole thing look more official, and giving us a way to warn approaching divers that there was an obstruction poking along up ahead.

When the sign came back from the shop, the make-over was complete:

Last Friday, I got a call from an OSU Veterinary student telling me that Camellia would be released Saturday. I called Scott to borrow the Lexus, and he asked to come along again. I suggested that his preteen daughter who is horse-crazy might enjoy seeing the horse hospital, so she came along.

At the University, a nurse met with us, and before going to pick up Camellia, I asked if they did "5 minute tours" of the facility. She said that they did, and we actually spent about 15 minute touring the imaging department (CT, MRI, X-ray), operating rooms, recovery stalls, ICU, and exam rooms. Everything was clean and neat, even though it was basically a big warehouse building.

I was given Camellia's check-out papers, home care instructions, some medication for the IV catheter site over her jugular vein where fluids and medications were administered, and some supplement for her feed.

I was concerned that I'd be unable to contain my emotions when I first saw her, but when they opened the isolation stall door, I was so happy to see her holding her head up and looking good, that I could feel only joy. We loaded her into the now very stylish horse ambulance and headed back towards home.

On the road, the sign on the back of the trailer did its job. Cars would come up from the rear, get close enough to read the sign, and then drop back to a respectful distance. They passed only in a really very safe manner. This happened repeatedly. One car followed us through some of the bad parts of the road for 8 - 10 miles at 35 MPH, and only passed when there was a long straight stretch of open road ahead. They waved as they went by.

If you've read this far, it must have crossed your mind "What does ~any~ of this have to do with a tiny RV?" Well, it occurred to me pretty much from the time I acquired the trailer that it might make a decent little camp trailer for one person if using it as a horse trailer didn't completely trash it. I spent a little time sitting inside in a lawn chair, and it could be a passable habitation for short periods with the addition of a small counter, some enhanced insulation, a roof vent and better lighting. I already have all that stuff around, as well as some halfway nice cedar paneling to replace the wavy hardboard that covers the ceiling and end walls. If hauling a horse with the trots 100 miles didn't trash it, nothing will.

Camellia is back at home and pretty much recovered. The other shoe hasn't dropped yet, I haven't received the final bill for the hospitalization, but it will be a whopper. My free horse just cost me about half my earned income for the entire year, I'm thinking. I have to consider that I bought myself out of a whole lot of grief and sorrow. The last time I had to put a horse down it nearly killed me.

For more about how Camellia came into my life: Camellia.