Splat!

For some reason, Loki or whatever mischievous deity that I've managed to insult continues to tie my life into knots. 
I mentioned previously that our builder had skedaddled with a sizable chunk of our money, leaving us with no house to move into.  We had then located an adorable little stone cottage that met our needs but literally the day prior to closing Bruce had to be hospitalized.
Hospitalized is an understatement.  He had been battling what seemed to be a severe cold, but early one morning he stumbled into the room stating that he could not breathe.  I immediately drove him to the ER, where they started him on fluids and IV antibiotics while ordering a slew of tests.  As I paced nervously by his side he rapidly slid into shock and was subsequently rushed into the critical care ward.  I stood by helplessly while he lost consciousness and was placed on life support.  It turned out that he had a severe pneumonia that led to septic shock, and now he was literally fighting for his life.  The hospital was doing all it could for supportive care, but what he needed was a top level trauma center, and after much finagling and begging a bed was found for him in a shock trauma center in Virginia; the kicker was that a snow storm was coming and we had less than 2 hours before all of the Medvac flights were to be grounded.  Within 20 minutes he was loaded onto the helicopter...only to have its rotor blades slowly shut down.  We panicked, fearing that Bruce had taken a turn for the worse, but as it turned out the helicopter had broken down.  This flight was Bruce's best chance at life, and with the clouds quickly closing in, a second helicopter was sent; the staff had to clear out a parking lot for it to land in, since the helipad was occupied by the immobile one, but this second attempt was successful, and within 30 minutes Bruce was being settled into a new critical care room just as the snow flakes started to fly. His was the last area flight for the next 24 hours!
After 9 days in a coma Bruce began to come around.  That time is a blur for me, since I stumbled around in another plane, unable to grasp that the man I loved more than anything in the world was fighting odds stacked highly against him.  I barely slept, was unable to eat, and couldn't bring myself to leave his side all that time. Bruce was running a fever of 104, had renal failure, and less than 25% of his lung function.  According to the numbers, he was supposed to be dead.
But he did pull through, and made exponential progress once off the ventilator.  He was transferred to a rehabilitation facility for a further week, and one afternoon I received the happy news that he could return home the following afternoon.
Having been through the wringer and feeling as if I had lost all sense of self and orientation, I headed to the farm for a ride.  It was a beautiful day, and some saddle time would certainly do me some good.  Alas, Beamer had one of his "young and stupid" horse moments and started crow hopping at the canter.  I pulled his head up only to have him rear, lose his balance, and topple over on top of me.  Then he had trouble getting up, so he thrashed back and forth over top of me, his legs flailing in all directions. I was wearing a helmet, but he still managed to clobber me in the face with one hoof before rolling over me one last time and heaving to his feet. I lay in the area for 20 minutes until Mom found me and called an ambulance.  I was rushed to a shock trauma center of my own!  After seemingly endless CT scans, radiographs, ultrasounds, and bloodwork the results were in: four fractured lumbar vertebrae, some cracked ribs, a bruised liver, and a torn medial collateral ligament to one knee. I was in intensive care myself for 4 days prior to discharge.
That was a few days ago, and now Bruce and I are both convalescing at my mother's house since we are unable to care for ourselves.  We are staying on the pull out couch in the living room since stairs are out and we have some health care professionals that come check on us every few days.  We both have been given our own PT regimens along with handicapped parking placards for both cars.  Our lease on the stone house is up this weekend, but how we'll get moved is beyond me.  For the past month we've been in the hospital more than at home...I can't remember the last time I slept in my own bed with my own cats!
For what it's worth, I have no intention of reining in my riding ambitions but I am concerned about how I'm going to sit the extended trot after this, plus it's my RIGHT knee that's injured.  How I'm going to manage riding aside is troubling.  I hope I don't have to make the switch to offside...with all of our medical bills I don't see much in the way of new saddles in my future. 
Someday this will all seem rather humorous.

Poor Little Beam Beam

Beamer just hasn't responded well to the abscess therapy. One day he's a little better, the next not so much so today Liz returned to radiograph his hoof.  The best that can be said is that Beamer found the entire process very entertaining, especially so since he was the center of the ministrations of three females.  But he did his very best to examine all of the equipment thoroughly,  not because he was nervous but because it made for some fascinating sampling.
Still, the rads were not encouraging,  showing several different gas pockets, each the result of a separate abscess pocket. The deepest pocket lies immediately next to the coffin bone, which itself is not infected but does show periosteal reaction to the bacteria. This requires immediate intervention in the form of increased hoof soaks, stronger poulticing, and oral antibiotics.  OK, this all falls within reason but I'm headed to Florida on Saturday for ten days. Sis is farm sitting and if this were a normal equine it would not be a problem. ..but it's BEAMER we are talking about.  Very few horses have the agility to pull their own tails and fewer still can pull the elasticon from your hands while you wrap a hind hoof but he is one of them. Again, Beamer is not bad boy but is a classic case of ADHD and I'm concerned Sis won't be able to treat AND babysit at the same time, so I have 24 hours to either find a layup facility or arrange for additional help.
Beamer, like Owen, evidently cannot stand the idea of my being bored!

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go Shopping

If I was to pick the theme song of my life it would be, "Taken in , taken in again," by Mike and the Mechanics. Still horribly  reeling from the blow to our bank account inflicted by our previous builder, we were again stunned by the latest bid which came in easily $50K over budget..
Are you kidding me?  Given that the first guy skedaddled with our deposit how could we possibly iNCREASE our budget for the house?  And if that weren't bad enough we just got served with a mechanic's lien from the original architect since the contractor never paid him and he has to make his payroll somehow; so he's come after us for $25 K, due the moment we break ground even though we aren't even using his plans but had the added expense of purchasing a set from another architect.  So what does any other wronged and innocent party duped out of $75, 000 do but immediately go out and buy a house?

Don't get me wrong,  I love living at Cold Saturday but we can't keep forking out $1, 500 per month rent with no equity in sight.  So we found an adorable little stone house about 10 minutes from the farm.  It's not in the country and not an ideal location but it does shave 15-30 minutes off my morning commute, plus it has room for me to organize all of my sidesaddles, habits,  and appointments.  Quite simply, it's just a lovely house.

There's no room for horses but the cats should enjoy it.

And speaking of horses, Owen is laid up with a prolapsing disc that' s affecting his lumbar spine and Beamer is still horribly lame from his never ending abscess.  Tomorrow Liz is coming to take radiographs.  I'm spending a fortune on lame equines!

And Never the Swain Shall Meet

One thing that's really hampering my posts these days is lack of internet access,  forcing me to write these from my phone. I suppose that qualifies as some sort of new literary genre similar to the new Twitter short story which should add a bit of charm.  But I'm also still bogged down with whatever illness I'm incubating and no doubt I was not improved by yesterday's foray out into the wind and cold.  Not good for bronchitis to have 40 mph winds raring down your throat but like most devoted horse people I had to put my own welfare on the back burner. ..doctors will never understand.   I popped out to the barn from my sick bed only to find Beamer shivering out in the cold...on 3 legs.  I will admit to 5 minutes of internal turmoil whilst in my flu befuddled state I frantically tried to text another vet. Yes, my previous experience in equine medicine told me this was a simple abscess yet the female middle aged horse owner in me won out.  I couldn't get a signal in the barn and was forced to stumble out from the shelter of the barn into the raw wind to find a signal.  We didn't name this farm Woodwind for nothing.

In the end the reasonable part of my brain was validated and when Liz arrived armed with hoof testers and a knife it was indeed proved to be an abscess.  Beamer totally charmed the Dr and her tech with big eyes and adorable little ears; they felt sorry for him but I think he's just fishing for attention.

Despite both of us being on the biddy list I do have some sidesaddle topics to report, mainly that Beamer is going to be a bear to fit.  He is narrow, slab sided, and has no withers.   Conventional saddle fit wisdom neatly compartmentalizes horses into narrow, medium, wide, etc. but the reality is more complicated than that.  Consider that the foretree has to fit several distinct parts: withers, rib cage, along with two moving shoulders.  We like to think of horses being consistent in their assemblage of parts, i. e. cobby and round, narrow and throughbreddy (that's an old scientific term!) but horses are illiterate and have not read the manual.

I am planning a more detailed and anatomical post but in the mean time suffice to say that keeping a sidesaddle well positioned on him is going to require professional assistance.   My little Martin & Mayhew has the best chance of fitting,  while Jeannie's Swain, for which I had hopes, is totally off the mark.  When I tried Beamer I only noted his mutton withers without assessing the rest of him.  I naively assumed he would be round bodied like an arab.

This long point of the M & M has a fairly good fit:

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The saddle fits fairly level but needs some flocking in the front to make it stable.

But you can clearly see this Swain would be disastrous to ride in...there's a huge gap between the point and his rib cage.

 Who knows...? Perhaps little Beamer will need a compass point saddle.

Pneu Year, Pneu Horse...Pneumonitis!

To put everyone's miId at ease, I am the one ill,  not Beamer.  And there's not much in the world as frustrating as having a new horse and being confined to bed.   My only interaction with him has been via Bruce's cellphone.   Still,  he's been far from idle,  and upon their first meeting he and Owen managed to escape in search of the proverbial greener grass.  They did find some slightly more palatable but it being  mid-winter there just isn't much out there.  Still, coming from Oklahoma,  Beamer seems to find our freeze dried dead orchard grass to be just the thing.  Wait until he sees Spring!

I helped Shelley and Jeannie out at the ISSO booth at the Horse World Expo last weekend...no doubt that's where I picked up my current malaise.   But I came home with more than just a virus  and drove home sitting amongst a sea of pommels and leaping heads. I haven't even had a chance to sit any of the sidesaddles on Beamer yet though I have been planning some new habits.  I see him in a nice dark Brewster green.  Obviously,  he supplies his own bling.  I can't wait to get him into combination ride and drive classes...aside, of course.

But in the meantime I won't be going any where that doesn't have an oxygen canister handy.

And My New Horse Is Where...?

"At some sale barn in Missouri" said the hauler when we finally got him to answer his cell.  Beamer shipped out from Oklahoma on Saturday and was supposed to arrive here today but when we failed to hear from the shipper Bruce and I started to panic.   It seems the original hauler got sick, arranged for a substitute driver who then passed the buck to a buddy of his...all without updating me!

When I tried to contact the original shipper with whom I have a contract his website had been taken down as of this AM..
So where the #=#×/^%& is my horse?  The most recent driver said he was told to leave the horse in Missouri and that was all he could tell us.  Where Beamer is and who is taking care of him heaven only knows (I sure don't), though word is we should expect him some time this week.

I'm headed straight away to my bank to get a refund on my shipping deposit and if Beamer is in any way harmed there WILL be hell to pay.

Stay tuned.

Bounding and Re-Bounding

I'm not sure if Owen has gotten wind of the forth coming changes to the stable line up...or if his new drug regimen is agreeing with him but his old cheeky self is back!  He'd been turning into a reliable hack but since his diet change and Prascend dosing his bounce is back.

Too much so.  When I rode him aside yesterday he bounded forward as soon as I was in the saddle.  He pranced around so much that I couldn't even find my stirrup,  so since it was getting dark I just bailed on it and did without.  He quickly worked up to the tempis, surprising me with a line of 3s, at which I called it quits.  Wish I could say the same about today.  He was expressive enough, but as soon as Savanna drove past to do the barn he lost all focus, food eclipsing flying changes.  He passaged artfully back to the barn and I must say he's looking fitter.

But he won't be happy when he's no longer the only barn cutie.  Beamer ships out on the 19th and arrives about 2 days later.  Beamer, however,  lacks Owen's fabulous sidesaddle grabbing withers.

M I a QT or whut?  Beamer as a baby.