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was for once right! it is awful.
wagon blown over on the M6, driver dead, this morning.
horsebox blown over on the A1 north of newcastle, 4 horses loose on the motorway in teh rush hour....
trees down all over.
pouring rain, or snow, and howling gales....with some sunny intervals, but still with howling gales.
horrid.
I did do some work with molly - wind was starting to get up but the arena is quite sheltered and i thought given that the forecast is pants i'd take the opportunity. just a bit of rope circling, but i kkept it going longer than i'd originally intended as she was challenging me - not wanting to do as I asked - i.e, going right rein! so i worked on that. she did do it several times but was not happy and not really "thinking". so more of that next good weather opportunity!
weather, that is - back to damp (i.e. wet horse) and windy - with more of the same forecast. to be fair, not totally teeming down, but enough to put a block on any work being done tonight.
that is, in relation to the dizziness...
thought i was this morning, but this afternoon i had a hospital appointment (about all my aching joints, but in particular the right hip...)
i told him, i've got something going on in my left ear and would rather not bend forwards... so he had me do just that! and then on the examination couch, i was dizzy going backwards and the world swam when i was on my front so he could see my spine...
then would have it that a lot of my joint pains are down to stress.... duh. no, that's the muscles in my neck. he reckoned ditto with the hips. shoulders. de dah. i don't THINK so ....the shoulders are three falls on each side! the hip, probably the same....the knee - a fall, resulting in a torn medial meniscus and long term chondrolamacia patella...
he's referring me for phsyio, and says osteopath and arnica by mouth....
he was a Pole, it was his first day in that particular hospital.
and Molly? did 15 minutes rope circling.....i don't move my head, i move my entire body round MY inside leg...especially at the moment. I've found that the best way of ensuring i do stand still in the centre of molly's circle is to do that...
wasn't totally sure i should have done that for me, but molly needed the work and I need to watch the dvd again....
in the meantime, anyone watching City of Vice - very interesting, about the brothers Fielding who started off the Bow Street Runners, forbears of that well known institution, the Met....(Metropolitan Police, for those of you outside the UK) - dramatisation. Very good.
me, that is. I wasn't feeling at sea when lying in bed, so that must be progress. Mind, cleaning Molly's legs/feet was never going to be as easy as usual, did the legs by bending mine and didn't do the feet at all!
then did some ground work - some basic rope circling then some longlining - been watching max's DVD as I felt i needed to remind myself of what I should be doing, as I felt sure i'd picked up the odd fault! which i had.
both were a bit better than recently tonight, but i found once she felt she'd done enough right rein she started arguing about it.
If the weather stays as it was today - lovely and still and relatively warm by later afternoon - that'll do me for the week!
and I even got some washing on the line today, first time since about september...
still. probably not as badly as yesterday, but having to be really careful about bending and stuff still.
finally downloaded a dvd decoder for the PC - good to be able to watch my dvd's upstairs on the pc, easier than the tv/dvd player in many ways and it means i can watch those (horse related ones, of course!) whilst partner watches whatever she wants on telly...
not that she's watching anything tonight, spent the day in bed having been out until 0130 this morning and being very much the worse for wear...
twice yesterday through the day, and in bed a couple of times when turning over, and a couple of times more this morning (once when looking up to put headcollar on horse!!!!) - so, clearly not a good plan to decide to drive to thornaby, 25 miles, for work; instead, came home again and got doctor's appointment.
two choices - either infection/ears/like that, likely in view of sinus pain this week, or something in my neck. doctor thought the first choice more likely, there's some fluid behind my left ear apparently (which makes sense!) and see how it settles, or not, over the weekend. i reckon it will settle if the sinuses settle. very scary when you think you're going to fall over and the world swims!
two lots, in fact.
the really really good news for me is that Pet Plan, the insurance company, have paid out for Queenie's choke! fantastic. I've still got the excess to pay, of course, £115, but in the scale of things that's small. I've won that gamble, then! as they're paying out more than i've paid them over the last 2/3 years....
and the other good news is that mother found her necklace - she'd put it in the bag she swore she'd been through!
on the other hand, the weather's still pants - we're either warm but blown away and/or wet, or we're frozen, probably with added wind...
and i don't begin to know where it came from. came out of the office and it was calm, by the time i'd gone 5 miles to get out of stockton you could feel the car being buffeted. so clearly no work with molly again tonight! but i did get the mud off her.
we have a pond (literally!) at the access to the mare's field; the geldings field is as muddy but stickier, felt it pulling my boot this morning.
the result of the pond is that Molly doesn't REALLY want to go through the gate - who can blame her, but at least she will learn that whilst it's horrid, she can do it without being eaten alive by the horse eating shallow water!
well, i think it was just wind chill. thermometer says it was 6 degrees C - but felt a huge amount colder tonight. surprisingly, Molly was warm, in a thin rug - well, i was surprised, anyway, but the field doesn't get the full on wind and teh stable builds up quite a bit of heat, considering it only has one horse in it!
still recovering from yesterday's drive....
mother's lost her necklace, think she left it there! oops. whitby jet she had from her mother, hope it's retrieved.
but the driving conditions! interesting how little time you really lose sticking to 50/60 mph for a lot of the way - too much spray, at one point the heavens opened seriously when i was on the outside lane of a 3 lane stretch, and all of a sudden i couldn't see my hand in front of my face, let alone where i was going. that was scary! but, still did it in 7 hours including stops, so we had a good run, avoided all the rush hour traffic round london (which was amazing, really, expected a bad time getting through the dartford tunnel but we sailed through!). and on 1/2 a tank of diesel, very impressive!
it was a "good" funeral - in that there was a huge turnout, and it was a real celebration of his life. even a singing group Jean, you would have loved them - a capella, old english folk songs I think.
is where i am at the moment... uncle's funeral tomorrow. couldn't resist my internet fix and hotel has broadband wi fi....
good drive down, very little traffic in the scale of things, so even with lunch etc stops and mother calling to see a friend of hers in a home in north london, arrived within 8 hours of setting off. that is good going, and i didn't break the speed limit.
interestingly, my sat nav not only tells me where the speed cameras are, it also tells me when i'm doing 5 mph over the national limit, which is very irritating when you want to do 80 and get peeped at at 75!
it irritated mother no end, as of course we were going the right way to her friend;s, but NOT the way mother thought we shoudl go ... she wasn't happy about that at all!
cats and house are of course being minded, as is Molly ...
on right rein!
now, we used to be ok on this, no arguments, especially no arguments with the bit.
now - this time and last, but i didn't say anything last time as it might have been a one off! - she's arguing on right rein, really arguing against going right and takes herself back left as soon as she can if i let her. to prevent that, i would end up really with too much pressure on the inside .
left rein is fine, she's moving nicely - not perfectly, but getting there! - and accepting the bit.
now, we hadn't done this for a while, i suppose, but nothing had happened to turn her against and she's been lunging right rein much better lately!
the only thing that happened between the previous sequence of longlining was the lesson with emma in december and i did more riding and rope circling after that, so maybe i'm doing something wrong now that she doesn't like re the longlining? although really i'm at a loss to think what!
ah well, she'll get another couple of days off now as it's forecast to tip down again for another few days!
that's the weather, so nothing else to say....
this morning it was wet and warm. this evening it was very very cold but dry. therefore, Molly got her first shock of the year - given I had the energy, i took her in the arena for 10 minutes ground work. don't think she was overjoyed (it was about 0) but she did what i asked, which is about all i can ask for! then got tucked up for the night in a warmer rug than the one she went out in this morning!!!
Torchwood tonight.
I was here - but i could hardly keep my eyes open and had absolutely nothing to say save for whinging about how tired i was. If it hadn't been for the fact that I had to drive home, one could say i probably shouldn't have driven....don't know why I was so tired, imagine it was not sleeping as well as I thought I had.
Tonight, i felt a lot better; I said to people at work before I left, where it was dry, i bet it's raining at home; guess what, it was raining at home & at the yard.
phooey!
but one thing I did do last night was find a rather cool video on you tube - doma vaquera in action, wow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk_n1yQlmT0
today I decided to reinforce some basics with some rope circling, which went well. Molly did try to challenge me a couple of times, but her heart wasn't really in it.
i need to work out how to get her to back up straight - she ALWAYS does it on a backwards curve to my right, her left - now why would that be?
after that, i did some clicker training - with a target. that seemed to go well, she was getting the idea
caroline the work for the garden was necessary - we've got a man in remodelling it and we needed some well rotted stuff for the allotment area! he wants to finish that off this week, so it needed doing and he can only go down there when i'm there in case he gets challenged!
did some work with Molly - not till it was getting dark, of course, as had had a busy day getting trailer loads of well rotted compost off the muck heap.
Chap who's doing the garden had intended to turn up at 11. he rang - he'd lent his van to his mate; van is diesel, mate put unleaded in it = oopsy. happily it didn't get driven and has been drained off and sorted.
so i went down to yard to muck out etc, then of course was rung to come home again...
anyway, ended up doing the manure at 3, then going for feed etc, and Molly & I went into the arena at about 4.30 or thereabouts.
i decided to lunge - because it didn't require any further effort from me, by thtat time my back was not happy! - and Molly was pretty good. She rushes more right rein when lunged than she does when long lined, but did go right, and second time right she wasn't rushing nearly as much. So i was pleased about that. I lunged her in side reins, quite loose so she'll look for the contact, and she does that, which is also good.
Have loads of time tomorrow if the weather's good, as partner is off for a long walk up near Powburn, which is well up in north northumberland
won a holiday! one of those where you have to pretend to be interested in a holiday club membershup and be very strict about not spending money - but we've had one of these before with a different organisation - so anyway that's to cheer us up. we would have to pay GBP 64. clealry need to do some research on the organisation, spot of googling tomorrow, but hey.
still did nothing. i'm now turning into a bad girl not doing any work. my excuse is that it's thursday and i'm knackered.
the good news is that my clipper blades are sharpened now.
