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Leaving Blogworld unannounced for a couple of weeks is really very good for your self-esteem. I can highly recommend it. All your beloved Blogfriends tell you how much they miss you. It’s good to know that you mean something to them. Whatever it is.
(Just between you and me, that’s why I disappear now and again. I need a confidence-boost from time to time. But don’t tell anyone. They might just stop caring.)

(Actually, that’s a lie. What I told you yesterday is the truth. Honest!)

So, what’s been happening while I was neither here nor there. I mean, I was here but not hére. And from my point of view I’m never there. Not even always here. Are you still following? Good for you! I’ve lost the plot totally. Where was I? Oh yes, I wasn’t here, nor there, but here. And what happened here? Not much.

Main event: Evie had a colic. God knows why. She’s alright now, but I can’t for the life of me think of a reason why she suddenly was constipated. We are always careful about what we feed the horses (their intestines are very sensitive to variations in their diet). As soon as I noticed something was wrong I gave her a dose of Colosan (sadly not known in other parts of the world as a medicine for horses with a tummy ache), which usually does the trick within 10 minutes or so but this time it didn’t work. So the vet came and gave her an injection to ease the pain and get her system working again. Vet even tried to do an internal examination, but poor Evie was highly surprised someone tried to push an arm into her… erm… arse. She didn’t agree with such impertinent behaviour and made that very clear to vet and me. She didn’t kick, but jumped around a lot and tried to stand on her hind legs, which you can imagine isn’t funny if you have your arm somewhere up there. (Well, it is funny to watch if you are an innocent bystander perhaps.) So vet abandoned the idea and said: “I’ll just give her the injection then…”, and that worked. Non-horsey-people probably don’t understand why you’re doing a happy dance when you see a pile of your horse’s poo.

We also did some obstacle training when I wasn’t in Blogworld. Horses sometimes consider the most normal things to be horribly scary, so it’s important to show them that not everything is as frightening as it may seem. An umbrella for instance makes Naloma snort like a pig. She does that when she doesn’t trust something. I know. It’s weird. She’s weird. I’ve done ‘umbrella-training’ before and it took Willem about 2 minutes to destroy the umbrella I dropped in the paddock. He isn’t scared of anything. He picked it up, shook it, dropped it and stood on it. Dead umbrella. Naloma however… totally different story. Her first reaction is WHAAAAAAAA SNORT. Her second reaction is SNORT and keeping a safe distance from the weird object. I did some work with her and eventually she dared to touch the umbrella, but she still wasn’t convinced the thing didn’t want to attack her.

So I thought I’d introduce an umbrella to Evie. She had much the same reaction as Willem, but the umbrella survived this time.

Then we introduced a sheet of plastic and tried to make them walk over it.
Willem didn’t care. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow. So no problem there.

Evie thought it was an exciting thing, but she’s very curious so she couldn’t keep her distance for long. She walked over it in no time and when we let her do her own thing….

…she tried to eat it. Not a good idea. We saved the plastic (and Evie) and…

…then we introduced the plastic to Naloma. She snorted a lot…

…but about half a bucket of treats later…

…she accidentally put one foot on it, which she regretted soon afterwards…

Don’t you just love her?

Eventually she walked over the plastic a couple of times, after I took over from hubs, but there is no photographic proof, because I’m silly and rather not have my photo taken. 

So my lovelies… that’s about it for today. I’m off to rake up the leaves. I love Autumn for its light and beautiful colours, but all those dropping leaves… Can do without that!

An eventful morning

First of all I'd like to mention that this is NOT A HORSE-OR-ANY-OTHER-ANIMAL-BLOG. The only animal this blog is about is ME! However, rules are there to be broken, and since we have a lot of animals that feature heavily in our lives, it is almost inevitable they will pop up now and again in this blog. Lately they have been here a lot! Sorry about that if you are only interested in little old moi. I assure you that interesting things about me will get a mention if they manifest. This post is again *sigh* about the horses. Or to be specific, about Naloma. You see, this morning I brought them all outside to the paddock and started to muck out their stables. Just when I had almost finished the mucking out, I heard galloping noises and looked outside. Naloma and Evie were running around, while Willem was just happily standing in the sunshine, thinking about life in general. Eventually Evie calmed down, but Naloma kept running around. So I thought that perhaps a nasty flying insect was pursuing her and decided to return them to their stables again to mislead the nasty insect. But when I brought Naloma to her stable she just didn't seem alright to me. Nothing definite showing, but she wasn't her usual self. And she started to walk around in her stable too. NOT a good sign. Colic, I thought. For the non-horsey-people: colic is a tummy ache and can be fatal for horses. They have highly sensitive tummies. So I called the vet. I had planned to call him anyway, because he has a mare that was due to have her baby and he also borrowed a car from us a couple of weeks ago to bring another mare to a studfarm to be inseminated with frozen sperm from a stallion in Spain. And I was wondering how both mares were doing. (Vet's heavily pregnant mare brought a lovely palomino coloured girl into this world just last night.) I told vet that I was worried about Naloma. I was using my mobile and watched her while talking to the vet. At that point she looked at her belly. "Okay, now I'm sure she has a colic", I said. "I'll be there as soon as possible", he said." "Until then I will put them outside again. Please be quick." (Not that I was panicking in any way -cough-.) So I took the horses to the paddock again and Naloma started walking around. Then she stopped and dropped her head. She wasn't feeling too good. I mean, if someone who doesn't know her had been there, they would not have noticed anything wrong. She could also be having a little nap. She wasn't breathing heavily or sweating, but she just wasn't herself. Then I noticed that the right side of her belly was showing signs of an alien trying to get out. It moved and twitched and looked like it was leading a life of its own. I couldn't see any of this happening on the left side of her belly. I called vet again. "Hi, sorry, it's me again." I described the alien thing to him. "And I have a bottle of Colosan somewhere. Shall I give her some?" "Great", he said. "Give her that and I'll be there in half an hour." So (and this is the point where I feel really sorry that I don't allow ads at my blogspace, because the Colosan manufacturers will be delighted with what I'm going to tell you now) I gave her 10ml of Colosan. Í don't know if it is a known product outside the Netherlands, but if you own a horse, you should also own a bottle of Colosan! Within 5 minutes the alien gave up his attempts to get out of Naloma's belly. Things calmed down and she started looking like her normal self again; bright eyed and bushy tailed. The vet came and gave her an injection to calm down her belly even more. "Keep a good eye on her", he said. "She'll be alright for the next couple of hours, but when she shows signs of colic again, we'll have to take a more drastic approach." Without boring you with the details of that, I hope it will not come to more extreme measures, I'll be leaving you now to check up on her again. Send positive thoughts her way if you like. Or keep your fingers crossed. Back with more, hopefully good, news soon ;-) Update 14.38 hrs. local time: Naloma seems to be doing fine. You have never seen someone so delighted with seeing a fresh pile of horse droppings. At least her intestines are working. I'll be watching her closely the rest of this day. Will be back... Update 18.03 hrs. local time: Still no sign of colic. We will assume this crisis is over and will resume normal activities.