Slacker!!!!

Goodness I have been a slacker!!!! I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year.

I have been VERY busy in the last month. I will start right back where I finished off in my last entry. I have a new job. I am off to Gen-i (another part of Telecom) to be a Training and Development Manager (gulp). It is going to be a BIG challenge I think. Fortunately, with it comes a big pay rise which will come in very useful as my flatmate has moved on so I have no help with the rent any more. :-(

Spyke. Well Spyke and I have been kind of busy too. :-) We had our first 'proper' show hunter competition before Christmas. He was all plaited up and looking fabulous and I lost 3kg on a 2 week detox diet so that I could squeeze into my riding jacket. It was a really, really busy competition with heaps of horses there. We didn't really go so well. Actually, that's not true, I didn't go so well. Spyke jumped well (apart from slamming the anchors on at the second fence of the day and dropping me grrrrrr) but I was all OVER the place. The photos are down right embarrassing as me legs are all over the show, I got tipped forward over every jump and we ended up getting 2nd to last on the only round that counted, with 55%. It was pretty terrible and I felt very discouraged - BUT- I did wonder if my beloved Wintec was making life a bit harder so I borrowed Kristina's  CTD flat seat and we had our next attempt at Show Hunter a few days ago.

WHAT a difference!!!!! We got placed!!!! I felt completely different, I was able to balance and stay with him and found my jumping position again!! It was AMAZING!!!! That horse is born to Show Hunter, he is stunning!!!!? (He did manage to drop me TWICE this time though so that is something I am going to have to work on as I am not very keen on falling off.)  So now I have to buy a new saddle. :-/ I am going to need a proper jumping one. Thank goodness for finance. It gets a bit tricky when I am trying to get Brina's op sorted too but Spyke is 12 now and this is the best time to get him out there. I really believe that if I can get the stop sorted and get jumping a little bit bigger we have a shot at qualifying for Horse of the Year (not this year but maybe next).

Brina. She has been doing really, really well. She has loved me being on holiday (as have I :-) She got to be Santa's Reindeer at work just before Christmas. I took the wagon in and she pulled all the secret santa pressies around. She was a big hit and she was sooooooooooo good. I thought I would have to take her straight home after her 'performance' but she was perfectly happy to curl up under my desk and sleep.

On the down side, she has had two womping great seizures. :-( She had one just before Christmas that was just awful. She had about 3 seizures in a row with no break between, it was really, really scary. And early this morning she had another really big seizure. It was one where she didn't recognise me for about 5 minutes after she came around. She also put a hole in her lip. I really, really hate epilepsy!!!!!! She is Ok again this morning though, thank goodness but I find it really hard watching her go through these. The worst thing is that I would not be able to physically get her to the vet if I needed to. Another pitfall of being alone. :-(

BUT on to more positive things. I have just entered my next show hunter so I am looking forward to that. I go back to work on Monday. I have a week in my old job and then I am off to Telecom Place to start my new role. I have had a GREAT holiday We had Kerri and Walter come to stay, which was just lovely!!! And Anne and her family came to visit too. We spent lots of time up in the forest and the kids had a wee ride on Spyke (who was a STAR).

Oh just realised, I completely forgot to mention that the TV and master bedroom are now sporting a new coat of pain!!! Yay!!!! That was a BIG job but I got the TV room finished before Christmas (just) and got the bedroom done before new year. It is sooooo nice to have them done. The TV room looks completely different, I LOVE it!!!!

Anyway here are a few pics from the last month.

The new TV Room

 Our 2nd Show Hunter

 Brina at the office

Evie, Michael and the dogs

Kerri and Walter

 Our terrible SH

Not Much to Report.

As per the title, I don't have a lot to report this month. Which is great really. :-)

I do have a new computer. Buying a computer is really an INSANE thing to do at this point of brokeness but I got it at an auction. Turners were auctioning off $1 million dollars worth of 'damaged' stock from the Christchurch quake. There were some SERIOUS bargains to be had. I picked up my new 'puter for $600. It was completely undamaged and came fully ready to go with monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. It is FAB!!!!

Spyke is going well. We had another dressage comp in the weekend. He didn't go as well I had hoped but that was pilot error. He was still very, very good. It was a lovely hot day and I was grateful to have my tests in the morning. We then retired under the trees and drank champagne and ate yummy food.
Spyke got about mid field in both tests which is pretty good really!!! It was BIG classes.

In a couple of weeks we have our first jumping comp of the season.

The dogs are both great. I have been selling baking at work to try and raise money for Brina's op and that went really well at first but I think the novelty has worn off now. :-)

That's about everything really. I do have other news but am unable to make it public yet so I will have to post again in a few days.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Life is into full 'summer' swing again. I can't believe it's nearly a month since I posted.....sorry. :-) It has been a very busy month so I'll break it down a bit.

Dogs.
The dogs are both well. Brina has had a few 'episodes' this month. Mainly because she is a greedy little so and so. She has eaten my martingale..... again..... that would be the one that I bought to replace the last one she ate. I thought that I had hidden it REALLY well but apparently not. Sheesh!! That leather item of course was 'returned' when she tried to eat her dinner.  She also managed to work a bit of a hole in her Brinabal Lector mask and made the most of it. She brought up a bit of a revolting mixture of things, the least objectional being the cow poop. :-/ Sammie is well and is ticking along, she is just no trouble that girl. :-) (Long may she stay that way!!!)

Brina also managed to somehow break her tail. I came home one day to find it all bent and hanging, heaven knows how she did it. I made a splint of a used toilet roll and a bandage that Spyke had won at a dressage comp so she had a lovely bright pink tail. I took the splint off today after two weeks and the tail seems to be completely mended. :-)

Weekend Away
Excitingly I actually managed to have a weekend away in Peel Forest, down south of Christchurch. I went there with a few of the girls from the Chch office. It was a GREAT weekend. We drove down on the Saturday and when we got there at about 2pm we broke out the peanuts and the drinks and spent the next eight hours drinking, laughing, chatting and eating. It was FABULOUS. On the Sunday we went for a walk in the forest and then stopped for a picnic in Ashburton on the way home. Lovely, LOVELY weekend.

Spyke
Spyke has had a busy time. We competed in the WRC dressage at level 2. We did two tests. The first test didn't go so well. Spyke did some of his throwing head resistance so I tried to really concentrate on not getting tense and he came back to me really well, which is a first. In the past, once he started resisting we were pretty much toast so I was really pleased with him. We did manage to come second to last though. :-/

Resisting

Looking fabulous (him, not me :-)



In the second test he was GREAT!!! He was soft, kind and tried really hard. I was chuffed with him and we managed to get fourth. :-) I was really, really pleased with that result as there were some VERY nice horses that we were up against.

I have been jumping him too and he has been brilliant. He is really keen to jump and seems to be really enjoying it. Today we had a show hunter clinic with Sue Whiddet, a national judge. She remembered Spyke from the showmanship challenge last year (where I had a bit of a jumping melt down), I figured her remembering us was not a a good thing but in actual fact she remembered his lovely dressage so I was pretty blinkin' chuffed. Spyke usually saves his most 'special' behaviour for clinics so I was a bit worried about today. It wasn't helped by me having the wrong start time in my head. I thought it started at 10:30 but it was actually 10. Fortunately Kristina noticed that I had the wrong time and set me right.

Once we got there I had about 2 minutes to tack up and get on so my 'long warm up' that I had planned didn't happen. Spyke however was PERFECT. He did not put a foot wrong at all. Sue's advice to me was to trust Spyke as he is a 'lovely boy'. :-)

Rainy Day

It is a lovely rainy Sunday morning, which is just bliss. There's no rush to do anything and I can see a slow but productive day coming. At the moment I am sitting on my bed, still in my pyjamas with Brina sleeping next to me and Sammie sleeping on the floor.

The reason that we are 'computering' in the bedroom is because the rest of the house is chaos. The builders have been in to fix the ceilings after Mr Rat caused a mess by chewing through two water pipes. All the furniture from the home theatre is spread throughout the rest of the house and one corner of the lounge is empty. It will probably be chaos for a while too as I am grabbing the opportunity to get the plasterer to skim the master bedroom and the home theatre and I will finally get them repainted.

The animals are all well. Brina is due for her next dilation. She has been brilliant for the last few weeks with very few issue. The vet rang us on Friday to see how she is doing and that night she regurgitated her dinner and the next day she found a bone while walking in the forest. Fortunately she brought that back up pretty quickly. She is a worry. LOL

Sammie is getting a bit stiff in her old age. I had her on some Hubrihound which was really making a difference to her but blinkin' Brina stole the tub off the bench and ate the lot (and then brought it all back up) so I have to save up for some more. Grrrrrr.

Spyke is back in work. Yay!!! We have entered our first dressage (gulp) and have signed up for a show hunter clinic in November. I have popped a couple of jumps with him and he is sane and sensible (although the first jump was somewhat hairy LOL). Yay!!! Yesterday Kristina and I took Spyke and Benhorse up to an arena to play and Spyke was very good, I even cantered him around the arena with my hands on my head, he is a good boy!!! :-) We are probably going to do a terrible test at the dressage in a couple of weeks though as he is still quite stiff and doesn't really lengthen at all yet. I have nowhere to practice lengthening either so I think we will mess that up, oh well, it is only two movements......

Spring

We are well into spring now although we only just now getting some nice weather. We have had 5 nice days in a row which has been LOVELY!!!!

Brina has been great. She has a couple of minor issues but with being on complete lock down we have avoided any real problems. She is still getting soaked, mashed food and is slowly putting on weight.

Spyke is now back in work, 2 months later than usual and has been pretty good so far. He has felt a bit bucky at the canter which made me realise that I haven’t actually lunged him at all this season. He likes to have a good buck on the lunge and was obviously ‘feeling the need’. So I gave a bit of a lunge on Tuesday and sure enough, there was a great deal of bucking. Hopefully that is now out of his system.

We had our first forest ride on Saturday. Kristina and I took Spyke and Oscar for a bit of a womble. The boys were very, very good although BOTH managed to lose a shoe, I suspect they lost them when Oscar stood on Spyke’s back foot.

I have sent in the entries for our first dressage comp of the season. We are doing two novice (gulp) tests at the Riding Club. I am not sure that we will be ready in three weeks but we shall give it a shot!!!!

Brina Decides the Stricture Needs Fixed NOW!!!!

Yet another interesting couple of weeks has passed. I experimented a bit with a muzzle for Brina so that she would be able to roam up at the paddock while I was doing the horses. The theory behind the muzzle was that she wouldn't be able to pick up anything that could get stuck in the stricture. In the beginning she still managed to get a bit of horse poop and horse food. I got hold of a old horse nose-net and cable tied that into the bottom of the muzzle so that she wouldn't be able to pick things up but would still be able to drink. It appeared to work really, really well. The day that I tried it I would have spent about an hour up at the paddock while she got hold of no horse poop or food. I was THRILLED!!! However, I left her alone for less than 5 minutes as I put Spykle back in the paddock and came back to find her with her muzzle still on but she was chewing on a blinking cow horn!!!! I have no idea how she managed it!!! I ripped the muzzle off and stuck my hand in her mouth to get all the bits out. I didn't know if I had got them but I can say that madam was VERY pleased with herself.

She seemed completely fine so we headed home and I had my fingers firmly crossed. I gave her, her dinner but within a few minutes she had regurged it but only food came out so, if a cow horn had been blocking, she had not managed to get it out. :-(

The next morning I gave her a tiny bit of breakfast but that too came up. Back to VSG we went. The vet and I came to same conclusion that Brina clearly had a stricture and that it really had to be dealt with so back into hospital she went. They had to do some x-rays to make sure that there was no sign of pneumonia before they could do the procedure. All was clear so they 'did' her that afternoon.

It all went really well. The vet was pleased to find that her stricture was 0.9cm so they stretched it to 1.2cm. What they found lurking in her oesophagus was bark!!!! From the garden!!!! The best bit was they showed me a video of the procedure, it was really, really cool!!!! And it is very reassuring to actually SEE how well she has healed. She has two more dilations in the future, one will take her out to 2cm and then she will get another to take her out to almost normal.

Since the procedure Brina has been on lockdown, I am not taking ANY risks with her. She is on mashed food instead of liquidised and is looking really well. She has lost a lot of weight but is slowly putting it back on.

On the horsey front I have finally ridden Spyke!! YAY!!!! It is so wet though that I HAD to road ride. I am a very nervous road rider so to go for my first ride of the season along the road was a challenge for me. Of course, Spyke didn't put a foot wrong, bless him. I have only managed to one ride though as the weather is still very wet. But DaylightSavings starts in less than two weeks so hopefully, we will get going properly then.

In the weekend we celebrated my Dad's 70th birthday. It was really, really nice!!!! Maree and Andrew came up from HB and Iain and Stu were there. We went out on the Waipa Delta. Poor Dad though, we made sure we had helium balloons and banners and things and I think Dad was hoping for anonymous. He he. The meal on Delta was a hot rock meal which was really good fun and the lamb that I had was delicious and very tender. Happy 70th Dad. Love you. :-)

I have some pikkies but my camera won't talk to this computer so I will have to work on getting them on here.

Brina is Celtic for 'Defender' but I think it means 'Fighter'

The month since my last post has been a complete roller coaster of highs and lows. I hardly know where to begin. Brina made it through the surgery. The first three days post surgery are crucial and I was told that if she made it through those then we could start to hope for a good outcome. That girl is a fighter and she improved every day that she was in hospital. I was able to visit her twice a day and I am sure that made a difference. She made it very, very clear that she was happy that I was there.

After 5 days she was allowed to go home for a few days. She wasn’t allowed anything by mouth and had to be fed and medicated through a stomach tube. I was able to take some leave to look after her but was also able to keep working from home (which was great as it gave me something else to think about). Brina seemed amazing well at this time and was very pleased to be home. On the Friday after her operation she had to go back into the hospital for 24 hours while they tested her oesophagus to see if it would hold. This was a very, very difficult 24 hours for me and I was a bit of a wreck.

On that Friday night I had to go into town with Kristina to meet a ‘friend of her neighbour’s’ who wanted to buy Spyke. I thought it was kinda odd but I NEEDED to sell Spyke so in we went. It turned out that the ‘friend’ was a group of friends who ‘bought’ Spyke for me to ride. I was somewhat completely overwhelmed and cried and cried and cried in a very busy pub on a Friday night. Their generosity was AMAZING and I am soo grateful.



The other amazing thing was a group of people, most of whom I have never met, that frequent a horse forum that I have been a member of for approximately 10 years, got together and donated money towards Brina’s vet bill. AMAZING!!!!!! I have been completely stunned and overwhelmed by people’s generosity and support.



Anyway, back to Brina. Her oesophagus held!!!!! She was able to eat and drink!!! So she was able to come home. The next few weeks were both fabulous and difficult. I had some trouble with getting the consistency of the food right which resulted in her regurging a few times. A couple of these occasions were just awful to watch as she struggled to get something out of her throat. There were two occasions where it took her nearly half an hour to get the offending article out and she was extremely distressed. Both of those meant a trip in to the vet for painkillers. She also had terrible diarrhoea for a few days that made life very difficult.

She is now very much on the mend and getting her bounce back. I will have to change our lifestyle as there is no way she can be allowed off leash where there is any possibility of her picking up something that won’t go all the way down. I am pretty sure that she has a stricture L and this will need to be addressed but I will need to save some money before I can afford to fix it but the vet feels there is no big hurry on this if she is managing to eat (everything she gets is liquidised at the moment).



Spyke and Tai have moved house. They have moved up to Kristina’s place as she has offered me some cheaper grazing and I think there is a lot of stuff we will be able to do from there. We will be able to road ride more etc. Once again life will be different.



I’m feeling quite lost at the moment, life has changed suddenly and I’m not sure where it is heading. I feel like I am going in the wrong direction and I am getting trapped into a life that is not what I want or need. I dream of living on a piece of land where I can have my dogs and my horses all together, with fruit trees that blossom in the spring and a vegetable garden but I feel now that can never be. :-(



Overall, I am so grateful to still have my dog, she is an important part of me.