Sunday Selections #68: The miscellaneous edition

Sunday Selections is hosted by Kim from Frogpondsrock and is the place to post those photos that have been hanging around on your computer for far too long. Why not join in?

This is my Selection for this Sunday:

Willem just simply can’t bear the sight of hubs’ behind.

 

This bee definitely needs a napkin.

 

This is the fringe of the leaf of a tulip (did I mention I’m so happy with my macro lens?).

 

Petje is trying to stare fish out of the pond.

All I need to know in life I learned from my horses

 

The Lazy Bunch (Willem, Evie, Naloma)

 

I’ve stolen these words from Grey Horse Matters’ blog.

All I need to know in life I learned from my horses - Vol. 1

1. When in doubt, run far, far away.
2. You can never have too many treats.
3. Passing gas in public is nothing to be ashamed of.
4. New shoes are an absolute necessity every 6 weeks.
5. Ignore cues; they're just another prompt to do more work.
6. Everyone loves a good, wet, slobbery kiss.
7. Never run when you can trot.
8. Never trot when you can walk.
9. And never walk when you can stand still.
10. Heaven is eating at least 10 hours a day...and then sleeping the rest.

 

All I need to know in life I learned from my horses - Vol. 2

1. Eat plenty of roughage.
2. Great legs and a nice rear will get you anywhere in life. Big, brown eyes help too.
3. When you want your way, stomp hard on the nearest foot.
4. In times of crises, take a poop.
5. Act dumb when faced with a task you don't want to do.
6. Follow the herd, that way you can't be singled out to take the blame.
7. A swift kick in the butt will get anyone's attention.
8. Love those who love you back, especially if they have something good to eat.
9. Leather and chains can make anyone look studly.
10. Happiness is a warm, fuzzy blanket and someone to share it with.

Sunday Selections: the love edition

Our Sunday Selections host Kim’s daughter got married yesterday. She has some lovely photos and a memorable wedding story on her blog Frogpondsrock.

So I thought it would be nice to choose my Sunday Selections for this day, based on LOVE.

 

Sarah (the cat, sadly no longer with us) loved Phoebe (now 14 years old).

Lovedoves.

Hubs loves his horse Willem.

They all love each other.

It’s getting a bit crowded with so much love going on.

Cute love.

I loved this little cat, Lapje, but sadly she’s one of the fourleggers who’s no longer with us.

Well, who wouldn’t love Nufnuf’s smiling face.

Or that of his non-related brother Tumtum, who isn’t as smiley, but definitely very loveable.

There is so much love going on in our house, that I have enough photos for several Sunday Selections. More of the same will be in next week’s Sunday Selections.

This, that and the other

First I’d like to thank you all for thinking of Hans and me and sending us good thoughts, prayers, positive energy etc. It really helps to know that so many people care. We’re Teflon coated by positivity now, so everything bad just has to slide off immediately.

THIS
Hubs’ case nurse, Jitty (who seems to be quite relaxed, even though her name suggests otherwise), turns out to be a little gem. She managed to twist some arms so hubs will have his MRI scan this Friday after all. In stead of a week later. So we will hear the good news (provided his Teflon coating works) Tuesday next week. The best news would be that the cancer hasn’t spread and that they’ll only have to remove a small portion of his colon to get rid of the tumour.

We’ll see.

THAT
And now for something totally different: salads. I had a salad on the menu for tonight. With some Nasturtium flowers from my vegetable patch I thought. And then this morning, or it could have been this afternoon, I visited Jabblog who had a post about a beautiful looking, and no doubt very tasty, summer salad. With Nasturtium flowers! And Pansy flowers too. Some people just exaggerate things. Anyway, I told her that we would be having a similar salad tonight and that I’d post some photos of it. So…

Salad leaves, toasted pine nuts and walnuts, Nasturtium flowers and a dressing made of extra virgin olive oil, Balsamic vinegar, mustard and honey. Doesn’t only look good, tastes nice too.

THE OTHER
Or should I say: the others. Some of the others anyway. This is part of our private zoo:

Tumtum, in half winter/half summer coat (summer coat = bald) is looking at us, Nufnuf is just in front of him inspecting the box hedge. Naloma is in the first stable, Evie in the second (from your left).

And next to Evie is Willem.

No you’re not drunk, or maybe you are, but if you were sober you’d also see the wall leaning. It’s not the wall. It’s the camera. Or actually; it’s not the camera either and I wasn’t drunk when I took the photo. I can honestly say I’m never drunk. But this is far too much information. I could have just Photoshopped the photo straight, but it is 30 degrees Celsius and I couldn’t be bothered. In real life the wall is straight. There. That’s what I wanted to say.

And look, we have a little chick. Its (we don’t know yet if it is a he or a she) mom is one of our brown chickens and she’s in there with him, just not in the photo. We’ve put the both of them into a run and their (con)temporary home is a travel box for the cats. They like it in there. Chick is too small to go up and down the ladder in the big coop yet. But when he'/she is a little bigger, we’ll put the both of them back with the rest of the family and keep them all locked up for a while in their coop and run. Hopefully it is a ‘she’, so she can stay with us. Otherwise I’m afraid he’ll end up in someone’s soup ;-(

Sunday Selections

 

Bottoms

My Sunday Selections (hosted by Kim from Frogpondsrock and a really good excuse to post those photos that are sort of aimlessly hanging around in your computer somewhere) is all about bottoms this week. Perhaps it’s only fair that I’ll dedicate the next Sunday Selections to the other ends of these animals; their lovely faces. Although I don’t have a photo of the last one’s face. For some reason it kept running away from me.

 

 

 

  

THE END

Sunday Selections

Some time ago I decided that I wouldn’t join memes anymore, because: a) it takes so much time to visit everyone else on the list and b) it started to feel like too much pressure to come up with something original every week, but then I visited Jay at the Depp Effect and she joined this great new meme: Sunday Selections. A meme, started by Kim over at Frogpondsrock, that ‘allows’ you to post those photos that have been sitting in folders on your computer, doing nothing. Waiting for an opportunity to be shared with others.

Now, I think this is a wonderful excuse to bore you with more of my photos, so I’ve decided to join this meme.

You see: my best photos, or the photos that I consider to be my best up till now (because I haven’t taken my best photo yet; I haven’t even taken a really good one yet, but as long as there is life there is hope) I put up on my photo blog (link can be found at the bottom of this blog). Photos that can illustrate a story or just seem to be suitable for my ‘normal’ (using the term ‘normal’ very loosely here) blog I put up here. And yet there are more photos I don’t want to throw away, but that are not suited for posting either. Unless there is a really good reason. And this meme is a good reason. So… here they are: photos that did not have a purpose until now. If that isn’t a happy ending… Or a happy beginning?

Evie & Willem

Naloma

Don’t worry, they won’t all be horsey photos. Just wanted to get these ones of our horses ‘of my chest’ so to speak.

So, if you have folders full of photos on your computer and haven’t found a good excuse to post them yet, here’s your chance: visit Frogpondsrock and join Sunday Selections.

A happy horse

These photos of Willem enjoying his daily roll are especially for

Mr. Rhymeswithplague and his lovely wife

(who were slightly worried when they saw a horse rolling in a field and wondered if it is a normal thing to do for a horse)

you can click on the photo for a bigger version

See the stupid and slightly scary grin on Willem's face? Pure enjoyment!

Just an ordinary day at the Brinkbeest household...

Yesterday a friend was here with his little dog Ruby. Ruby loves chasing a ball and can play that game for hours on end. So friend threw the ball into the paddock where the horses were. Willem and Evie were very interested in the ball too. Willem is sniffing the ball while Ruby is on her way to fetch it... ...oops... ...Willem is not going to give up the ball without a good chase first. Run Ruby! Run! Meanwhile Nufnuf has made a new friend. It's a crow that I've noticed in our garden before. He (or she, but I'm sticking with 'he') is easily recognizable because he has one manky foot and can't walk properly.

Perhaps you can see that his left foot isn't quite as it's supposed to be. He observed Nufnuf attentively...

...while our chickens kept a close eye on Tumtum's behind. Our chickens are very interested in recycling and they know that what goes into a pig at the front... ...comes out at the other end and is a culinary feast for a chicken, not to be missed. But Tumtum's intestines were still busy processing, so they eventually lost interest and gave up the pursuit. Tumtum and Willem had a very intersting conversation about... ...oh I don't know what about. It was a private conversation.

Breaking news, the full story

Breaking news, the full story with more details than anyone could ever wish for: One of these past weeks, on Monday morning, our usual vet, the one who lives in quite a nice place (understatement!) which I'm almost convinced partly belongs to us since we are the ones who payed for at least half of it, was here to give our horses their yearly shots. We discussed the great feeding system we had taken into use about three weeks earlier and that is especially designed for horses; in each stable a box hangs on the wall. In that box you drop a bale of compressed dehydrated grass, put a metal grate on top of the grass to prevent the horses from gobbling it up all in one go and the proverbial Bob is your uncle. The horses can 'graze' from the box when they are in their stable, you only have to fill the boxes once every two days and they don't get bored because they have something to do. So...great system. We thought so and our vet did too. 'Great system', he said. And I agreed. Well... Thát was Monday morning. Monday evening Willem (one of the horses, if you did not know that already and if it doesn't become clear if you read on) got his upper jaw stuck in the metal grate (hów exactly, nobody knows) and in trying to free himself he broke it. Not the grate sadly. No, he broke his jaw. I know! Shocking. Three of his upper teeth pointed in a totally different direction than the rest of his teeth. And just next to those three teeth he had a nasty crack in his jaw. Poor horse. It was an ugly sight. So we called our usual vet, who couldn't come because he was operating on another poor animal. We decided to sponsor our backup vet, who specializes in horses anyway and we called him. He came, gave Willem some strong painkillers and decided he could operate on him on our premises the next day. That meant that we didn't have to take Willem 'on tour', which was quite a relief. We don't own a horse trailer, we have enough friends we can borrow one from if needed and we didn't have to arrange 'animal-sitters' for the rest of the Brinkbeest-crew. We called our usual vet again, who is one of those friends with a horse-trailer, and who had kept his mobile phone on to hear from us how Willem was doing and if we needed the trailer, to tell him the plan and that we didn't need the trailer. 'Great plan', he said. Again I agreed. Tuesday afternoon horse vet came, drugged Willem into a standing anaesthetic, hubs (who had cancelled all his appointments) rested Willem's head on his shoulder (which is now very bruised and painfull) and vet drilled and scraped and did something ingenious with metal wire and now Willem has a brace. For the coming four weeks Metalmouth will be his nickname. He could feature in a James Bond movie as a Russian villan. Fortunately he can eat (we have removed the boxes, informed the manufacturer who were as shocked as we were and who were generous enough to take the boxes back with a full refund and who wanted to know how Willem managed to break his jaw in order to prevent it from happening to other horses, and are back to feeding the grass many times a day in big flexible plastic buckets. We don't feed hay because we found it very difficult to get a consistent good quality supply.). 'Call me next week', vet said, 'I'll have to tighten the wire then.'

Willem's brace is hidden under the grass. We need a big toothbrush ;-) The rest of that week we had a lot of visitors who came to see how the poor patient was doing (and to see how I was doing too, since they were here anyway.) On Saturday one of those visitors told us that horse vet had had a heart attack on Wednesday. What? He had heard that from people who had heard it from other people who in their turn had heard it from other people, so by that time you never know what is true anymore. But still, we were shocked. We like horse vet. If he had been an arrogant bastard we couldn't care less if he was in good health or not of course (sorry, just a bad joke, only slightly true) but horse vet is a really nice guy. So now we were worried about horse vet too. The next Monday our farrier came to do the hoofs of our horses. Our horses don't have horseshoes, but still they need a pedicure every 8 weeks or so and our very cool and calm, plane flying farrier, Johan, does that. Not that he arrives in a plane, he flies them in his spare time. Oh, and Evie behaved very well. Since she was about a week old, she is now seven months, we have lifted her legs, tapped on her hoofs and cleaned them, all to make her a well-behaved horse. This was the third time she had her hoofs done by Johan. The first time he only lifted her legs so she got used to him handling her and she tried to jump over us. The second time she sat down on her big butt, so I was a little worried what she had planned for this time, but she made us proud and behaved very ladylike. Lifted her legs without any protest (which in human terms isn't very ladylike at all actually) and I asked Johan if he had heard anything about horse vet and told him what the story was. 'I've seen him last Friday', he said. 'Ah, but was he standing up or lying down?', I asked, because perhaps Johan had visited him in hospital? 'He was working', Johan said. 'He looked okay to me'. Wednesday hubs called horse vet to make the appointment for tightening Willems brace. Horse vet arrived late that afternoon, it was already getting dark, which is significant to the story if you read on, and we asked how he was doing, because we had heard something about him having a heart attack. He laughed: "well it's almost true. My left arm was a bit painful and I went to the doctor. Next thing I knew I was lying in intensive care with all sorts of monitors attached to me. They virtually held me hostage. But my heart is fine. High bloodpressure, that's all. Very inconvenient. Had to cancel lots of appointments."

Something tells me he isn't a typical man-flu sufferer.

Well, horse vet gave Willem another 'standing' anaesthetic and tightened his brace. "Looking good", he said, checking Willem's jaw. "Another four weeks and everything will be okay again. See you then! Got to go, still got a couple of visits to do tonight." And off he went. At least... that was his plan. You see, we have a double garden gate. A right part and a left part. It is painted black. It was a very windy night. One part of the gate had been blown in the wrong direction. So it wasn't opened into our garden, which is the right way, but into the path that leads up to our garden. And it can only open so far that way round. Which isn't far enough to let a car through. But it was dark, the gate is black and difficult to see in the dark, the vet was in a hurry, and when he backed out through the gates he heard a screeching sound. So he drove forward a bit, heard nothing, tried to back out again, heard the sound again, went forward again... And then I turned up. The rear bumper of his car got caught on the gate. Both bumper and gate lost the battle, which left the bumper only partly attached to the car and the gate only attached to it's post by the bottom hinge. I had noticed a week earlier that the front bumper of his car was stuck to said car with the help of lots of duct tape. 'I hope you didn't get that repaired yet, because you have knocked the rear bumper off your car too now', I laughed, a bit worried how his bloodpressure and heart would react to the bad news. Poor vet. 'Oh your gate, your gate! I'm so sorry!' 'Don't worry about the gate', I said. 'I feel sorry for your poor car.' Anyway, I opened the gate the right way round and he backed up to visit the rest of his patients that night. 'See you in about four weeks!', he said. The next day Willem found a little branch to chew on and part of it got stuck in his braces. By the time I got there to remove the branch from it's tangled web, he had fidgeted with it so much that half of his braces had come loose. So... I called horse vet again. 'I'll come around today', he said. And that afternoon he arrived, rear bumper in place again. 'It just needed a good kick.'

'Or were you out of duct tape?' He sedated Willem, thinking he could easily repair the damage, but then discovered that it would be better to just remove the old braces and fit him new ones. So Willem was brought into another standing anaesthetic and the operation 'new braces' began. This time I had the difficult task to keep Willem's head up, because hubs was back to work again. A very heavy head, but if left hanging, his nose almost touches the ground which makes it very difficult to fit braces as you can imagine, so I switched it from shoulder to shoulder and about half way through the operation I felt very faint and had to sit down. After a couple of minutes I felt much better and was up to the task again. But I had horse vet very worried for just a moment, hehe. This time horse vet left the premises without any further damage. And then, a couple of days later, a weathergod broke wind and a tree just snapped and fell from the neighbour's garden into ours, júst missing our stables.

Perhaps I shóuld change my headertext.

Breaking news and post-Lyme

We've had a hectic couple of weeks. First: I now no longer have Lyme disease. Four weeks of antibiotics have killed the little Borrelia bacteria buggers that cause Lyme. Or, as the doctor said, the chance the bacteria is still in my blood is nil. I now suffer from post-Lyme symptoms. Which means I'm still very tired, my fingers show sort of reumatic signs in that they don't bend sometimes, and some other minor pains and aches. It may take some time for these symptoms to disappear completely. So...that was that. And, two weeks ago, Willem (one of our horses, if you didn't know that) broke his upper jaw. Long story. He did something stupid and that resulted in three of his upper teeth pointing in a totally different direction than the rest of his teeth. And behind these three teeth his jaw had a nasty break. So the specialist horse vet came and operated on him and fitted him metal braces to keep everything in place. And after a week those braces had to be tightened, which horse vet did and the day after that Willem found a small branch that had fallen of a tree and nibbled on that and a piece of it got stuck in his braces and pulled half of it out of his mouth, so the vet had to operate on him again to fit him new braces. Fortunately he will recover totally and in about four weeks from now he will be operated on again and the braces will be removed. This is the incredibly short version of everything that happened. The full story includes among other things a broken fence and a damaged car. And that was just the horse vet trying to leave our grounds again, hehe. And during a hefty storm a very large tree fell and júst missed our stables. Exciting times.

Camera Critters & Pet Pride: Unlikely friends

Our pets all like each other. A lot.

Check for other Camera Critters this blog and for other Proud Pet owners this blog.

Camera Critters 60, Evie is growing up

April 10, two days old. First time out and staying very close to mommy.

May 12, growing up fast.

And when you are part of the Brinkbeest-household, you get to meet all sorts of critters.

Meeting Holle, one of our labradors, for the first time.

No, this is not one of the other labradors. This is Nufnuf, one of our pigs.

Our other horse Willem, having a little talk with Tumtum, our other pig. Willem used to be REALLY scared of the pigs. He wouldn't even come near us if we had just touched a pig. The smell made him tremble. But Tumtum is a patient and very friendly pig who likes horses. So now Willem is pigproof.

Camera Critters is a fun meme, hosted by Misty Dawn. Check out the other entries here!