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Sigh
Yesterday, we moved Jo's crate (Now With Added Cable Ties!) upstairs and put it outside out bedroom door (Not A Sustainable Solution, TM, if only as the crate is about four inches narrower than the hallway). She did stay in it overnight, but she woke Mike up several times whimpering.
She's being a bit funny about going on her sofa at all, possibly because it's turned into a prelude to Being Left All Alone With The Terror Of Being All Alone For Ever And Ever, so I've been spending a bit of time sitting on it and (when I eventually coax her up there) having cuddles. As soon as I get up, though, she jumps back down and comes and lies next to wherever I've gone.
It'd be nice if she went "hmm... so I can go in the crate upstairs All Alone or I can stretch out on my nice comfy sofa and be only very slightly more All Alone", but I fear it's beyond her little doggy brain.
We're a bit at a loss, really. She can't keep staying upstairs, so we don't want to keep doing that for too long, but we don't want to reinforce the whole 'bash your way out of the room / crate and you can come upstairs' thing, so we need to wait until it's faded slightly from her memory. I can't decide if it'll be better to gradually move the crate further from our bedroom or not, or if I should try the sofa and then take her up to the crate if / when she starts demolishing things.
We've seen a horse that we quite like the look of, although it's a little on the large side. The woman selling it doesn't seem to have thought things through, though: I contacted her the day after the advert went up (and I *think* I'm first in the queue and that she's Doing The Right Thing and having a queue), but then it turned out that the woman who loans the horse went on holiday the day after (and it's on one of those very secure yards where the owner can't actually get in without the loaner). Loaner is back on Monday, but works shifts, and owner works full time, and *owner* is going on holiday on Saturday.... The only evening this week when it would all work out is one where we have dinner plans.
We're going to try and set something up for next weekend, without the owner, but I'm getting quite close to saying 'never mind' and letting her try to schedule someone else instead.
He's called Gitano, and it does seem a little unfair that we're already referring to him as Git Face....
I saw another one today that looked ok on paper, and had a very nice (in the well-thought-out, showed you everything, sense) video, but it was a standardbred and the canter was a mix of canter and the special standardbred gait (which -- judging by the number of 'how to retrain your standardbred to canter' videos on YouTube -- is both common and hard to fix). Plus, I didn't like the movement in the back end. Not sure if it was a standardbred thing or not, but the ones I looked at videos of didn't look so off. So, not bothering there.
That's two -- count 'em -- horses I've liked enough to go and look at in six months, and I'm not sure we're ever going to manage to see the second one.
My wrists are still bad. I'm Under Doctor's Orders to not do any gardening, but I'm sure that spending half an hour pottering around and pulling out weeds doesn't count, right? I mean, it's not actually gardening if I don't use any tools...? Poor Mike keeps having to follow me around while I do my best impression of Elderly Aristocratic Lady With Gardener: "Make sure you get all of the root on that dandelion!" and "No, dig the hole a little to the left!"
I've just, on the off chance, checked with my sister to see if we've got the kind of CTS that responds well to steroid injections, but she says "really painful and did nothing", so it doesn't seem worth making an appointment with the hospital about it.
(I seem to have very genetic CTS. My mother, sister and I all developed it at the same age to within about a year, and my mother and sister have both had the same (not very successful) response to the surgery, which I am therefore putting off.)
Oh, and grandad gotthrown out of an expedited discharge from the hospital because he was causing trouble, and it looks like he's about to be thrown out of the latest home as well.
Still.
The ducks are laying well and the horses are busy getting fat.
The tomatoes and tomatillos are flowering, and I'm expecting the veg patch to suddenly explode into life any day now.
Mrs Farmer gave me a couple of evergreen honeysuckle last week, which I've planted next to the front fence in the hope that they'll grow over it and look / smell lovely, and the dahlias that I thought had been lost by the courier have arrived and been planted out.
I've just realised that the Pilates book that I bought months ago and never actually looked at not only goes through the exercises but has some ready-made routines in it, which helps with my vague plan to give up on classes in favour of doing it myself at home with an occasional (monthly?) private lesson to check I'm not getting bad habits.
Even with the good things, though, I'm feeling rather brittle and balanced on edge, which isn't a good way to be if you then have a wobble.
She's being a bit funny about going on her sofa at all, possibly because it's turned into a prelude to Being Left All Alone With The Terror Of Being All Alone For Ever And Ever, so I've been spending a bit of time sitting on it and (when I eventually coax her up there) having cuddles. As soon as I get up, though, she jumps back down and comes and lies next to wherever I've gone.
It'd be nice if she went "hmm... so I can go in the crate upstairs All Alone or I can stretch out on my nice comfy sofa and be only very slightly more All Alone", but I fear it's beyond her little doggy brain.
We're a bit at a loss, really. She can't keep staying upstairs, so we don't want to keep doing that for too long, but we don't want to reinforce the whole 'bash your way out of the room / crate and you can come upstairs' thing, so we need to wait until it's faded slightly from her memory. I can't decide if it'll be better to gradually move the crate further from our bedroom or not, or if I should try the sofa and then take her up to the crate if / when she starts demolishing things.
We've seen a horse that we quite like the look of, although it's a little on the large side. The woman selling it doesn't seem to have thought things through, though: I contacted her the day after the advert went up (and I *think* I'm first in the queue and that she's Doing The Right Thing and having a queue), but then it turned out that the woman who loans the horse went on holiday the day after (and it's on one of those very secure yards where the owner can't actually get in without the loaner). Loaner is back on Monday, but works shifts, and owner works full time, and *owner* is going on holiday on Saturday.... The only evening this week when it would all work out is one where we have dinner plans.
We're going to try and set something up for next weekend, without the owner, but I'm getting quite close to saying 'never mind' and letting her try to schedule someone else instead.
He's called Gitano, and it does seem a little unfair that we're already referring to him as Git Face....
I saw another one today that looked ok on paper, and had a very nice (in the well-thought-out, showed you everything, sense) video, but it was a standardbred and the canter was a mix of canter and the special standardbred gait (which -- judging by the number of 'how to retrain your standardbred to canter' videos on YouTube -- is both common and hard to fix). Plus, I didn't like the movement in the back end. Not sure if it was a standardbred thing or not, but the ones I looked at videos of didn't look so off. So, not bothering there.
That's two -- count 'em -- horses I've liked enough to go and look at in six months, and I'm not sure we're ever going to manage to see the second one.
My wrists are still bad. I'm Under Doctor's Orders to not do any gardening, but I'm sure that spending half an hour pottering around and pulling out weeds doesn't count, right? I mean, it's not actually gardening if I don't use any tools...? Poor Mike keeps having to follow me around while I do my best impression of Elderly Aristocratic Lady With Gardener: "Make sure you get all of the root on that dandelion!" and "No, dig the hole a little to the left!"
I've just, on the off chance, checked with my sister to see if we've got the kind of CTS that responds well to steroid injections, but she says "really painful and did nothing", so it doesn't seem worth making an appointment with the hospital about it.
(I seem to have very genetic CTS. My mother, sister and I all developed it at the same age to within about a year, and my mother and sister have both had the same (not very successful) response to the surgery, which I am therefore putting off.)
Oh, and grandad got
Still.
The ducks are laying well and the horses are busy getting fat.
The tomatoes and tomatillos are flowering, and I'm expecting the veg patch to suddenly explode into life any day now.
Mrs Farmer gave me a couple of evergreen honeysuckle last week, which I've planted next to the front fence in the hope that they'll grow over it and look / smell lovely, and the dahlias that I thought had been lost by the courier have arrived and been planted out.
I've just realised that the Pilates book that I bought months ago and never actually looked at not only goes through the exercises but has some ready-made routines in it, which helps with my vague plan to give up on classes in favour of doing it myself at home with an occasional (monthly?) private lesson to check I'm not getting bad habits.
Even with the good things, though, I'm feeling rather brittle and balanced on edge, which isn't a good way to be if you then have a wobble.