Month: July 2017

A few days ago early in the morning I was on my way to the barn before work.  Not far from home on a curvy road an owl was sitting in my lane of the road.  I stopped, put on my flashers, and got out to see if it would try to fly from me.  No, too stunned.  I thought about picking it up in my bare hands and arms but decided work gloves might be better.  Since I'm a horse girl, naturally I have work gloves in my car along with many other useful items that leave very little room for passengers, should they decide to brave a ride in a horse girl's car.

I approached the owl from the rear, thinking I would pick it up by holding its wings to the body — the way one would pick up a chicken.  Even in its stunned state, the owl watch my movements and turned its head all the way around, with widened eyes.  But it didn't move.  Couldn't, obviously.  I picked it up and set it on the grassy shoulder where it flopped over unable to right itself.  I righted it then moved my car out of the middle of the road and parked at a popular dump site not far way.  Then I walked back, took a picture then posted to Facebook, asking for help.  In the meantime I drove to the barn intending to work with BeeGee.

By the time I got to the barn, one of my FB friends responded that I should check with Sarvey Wildlife Rescue, which fortunately is located in Arlington and not far from the barn.  Their website stated that they weren't open yet but that I should put the animal in a box and bring it during open hours.  One thing this horse girl doesn't have in the car is a suitable box.  However, BeeGee has an empty grain bin with lots of holes and I had a dry swim towel in the car.

About 30 or so minutes later I was back where I had left the owl and found that it was still there, sitting on the side of the road with half closed eyes.  I was thankful that it hadn't wandered out into the road, hadn't been eaten by a coyote, and frankly was still there and responsive when I picked it up in the towel.  It didn't make any noise in the grain bin as I drove it back to Arlington and beyond.  It didn't move much either but I had it captured in a rather large towel inside a grain bin.

The rescue was open when I got there and a nice young lady came to get the owl, had me fill out paper work about where I found it and its circumstances. Then I got a piece of paper that said how I could check on its status in a few days but warned that not all rescued animals survive.  She gave me back my towel and grain bin.  If you're a horse girl, you're always relieved to see normal poop and I was glad to see normal bird poop in the grain bin and on my swim towel.

I was late to work that day but an hour of vacation is worth making the difference to a bird.  Surely it would've died out there on the side of the road.  Naturally I couldn't wait the full 48 hours to contact the rescue.  By 24 hours it had survived the night and ate a mouse on its own.  By 48 hours it had been evaluated by the vet who stated that its eyes were fine but it had some head trauma in the form of bruising behind the ear.

It's still too soon to be optimistic that it will be well enough to be released into the wild after recovery, if it fully recovers.  I've been attached to the owl ever since I made the decision to grab the grain bin and returned to the scene of its accident.  I hope to get another update tomorrow.

Two weeks ago tomorrow was when BeeGee bucked me off.  I had to sit for a moment because the fall kind of knocked the wind out of me and I wanted to take inventory of potential injuries.  Booboo on my elbow was the most obvious.  So I got back on and rode to finish the exercise I was doing.  Later is when the rest of the injuries became apparent: non-functional right arm, ugly bruise on my right knee and whiplash.  I was able to take ibuprofen for almost a week before it started affecting my stomach.  Then I had an upset stomach and a very sore neck.  My right arm is mostly functional but it's crabby first thing in the morning.  The scab on my elbow is healing and the bruise on my right knee is also going away.

Great but what about whiplash?  How long does it take to heal and what should or should I not be doing?  I've already resigned myself to riding BeeGee at the walk until my neck is better.  But how long will that be?  Like any curious person, I Googled "whiplash" and found this nifty brochure:  http://www.bcmj.org/sites/default/files/BCMJ_44_Vol6-pp318-321-patient-handout.pdf

In part, it's nifty because it's from the Canadian medical journal and I'm a Canadian-wannabe.  Also, the recommended exercises are funny cartoons of recognizable characters.  If that's not motivating I don't know what is.

The psychological difficulty of whiplash is that it can take a LONG LONG time to feel back to normal.  And probably two weeks isn't enough time.  Here is yet one more thing that is teaching me patience.  How many lessons do I need to learn patience?  Probably more than I've had so far.

I'm reading a 6-month old issue of Chronicle of the Horse in which Denny Emerson (1974 Equestrian Champion) describes horse shopping in Ireland. First he describes his kamikaze driver who has one foot pressing the gas peddle to the floor while craning her neck to engage in conversation with passengers in the backseat.  In the meantime oncoming traffic is a large hay wagon.  What does he do?  He buys the next horse in order to avoid another road trip.

This, in general, describes my shopping experience no matter what I'm buying.  The journey is always fraught with some kind of trauma, imagined or real.  Somehow the journey seems to decide the outcome of the purchase more so than the quality or suitability of the goods being considered for purchase.

Or, I'm a shopping wimp.  I'm fully prepared to admit that shopping itself traumatizes me so I'm likely to buy the first thing that might seem suitable and hope it works out.

Usually it does.  I rarely have buyer's remorse.  Sometimes the outcome isn't anywhere near what I imagined but I'm not particularly attached to my expectations so I adjust.  You might say that I most adopt the attitude that if the Universe plopped it in front of me at this particular time then it's the right thing and I'm ready to learn whatever lesson I'm supposed to gain.  This is the easy way to be flexible.

There was a time when I may have considered force, as in forcing whatever is in front of me to work out for my purposes.  But that was an exercise in frustration and ultimately ended up going badly with a lot of hard feelings.  I'm not sure when I changed my mind — probably longer than necessary.

In any event I'm happy with my direction forward and am prepared to be curious about what comes next, accepting the challenges before me, and flexible in how I navigate the path forward.

In the beginning I wanted a horse but I didn't think I could afford one until January of 2017.  Now that it's July of 2017, I've had BeeGee for a year and 8 months.  Things happen for a reason and often a good reason.  I've had horses before but I can't really say that I knew them.  They did their jobs and had their personalities but that was about it.

When I got BeeGee, I really did not know him.  He was very different from the other horses I'd known: Dandy the Arab, Sing the Paint, Prince the Appaloosa, Clipper the Appendix Paint.  Sing was the greenest horse I'd had but she was very sweet and very slow.  Prince was probably the best trained horse I ever had, followed by Clipper.  Prince and Clipper had different jobs.  Prince was a cow cutting champion, a great team roping horse, and a child's lesson horse.  Clipper was my hunter/jumper.

BeeGee is an Off the Track Thoroughbred and very sensitive.  Our initial meeting went well but then things rapidly went downhill when I tried to treat him like I knew how, based on my previous horses.  He doesn't like to be pushed and doesn't have much confidence.  He demonstrates his amazing athletic ability when exploding from frustration.  I had to start over with him and then he suffered a suspensory ligament (or tendon?) injury and had to be on stall rest.  That was the true beginning — coaxing him through stall rest that nearly made him crazy.  Then handgrazing and walking, lots and lots of walking.  This is how I really got to know him.  It would've been easy to give up but I couldn't because he showed me the sweet, willing horse he can be.  This is where we go forward.