100 Miles...

I haven't been writing much--I just lost my mojo.  There has been so much bad news, and I just hate writing about bad news.  I am going to try and get things caught up.

Back in April, Ellen and I signed up for the Virtual Tevis Cup, once again.  This is our sixth year of participation.  The goal, unlike the real Tevis Cup where you ride your horse 100 miles in a day, is to ride 100 miles in 100 days.  That is something very easy for us to do, but we enjoy doing it, and the money goes to a good cause.

The weather was crummy right from the get go.  Most of the time, we were just riding up and down the hill to the river.  In the spring, Ellen is very nervous about crossing the river if it is a little high.  There were a lot of times that I could of crossed, but she didn't want to, so I was happy to stay on the hill with her.  I was able to ride with Kevin a few times on the other side of the river.  Ellen would just hike along with us, and Cole just loves that.

Then, Kevin had a terrible accident.  I won't go into any details here; except that he broke 7 ribs--2 in 2 places and punctured his lung.  He ended up in the hospital for 4 days.  Of course, when he got out, he couldn't ride--he couldn't even safely lead Starry.  We were happy to help with Starry all we could.  He didn't miss much good riding.  It still continued to rain, so most of our time was spent going up and down the hill...

I was up to around 84 miles--a bit ahead of Ellen from the days that I crossed the river and she didn't when Cole colicked.  I got the vet out, and she determined that he had an impaction in his colon.  When she went to tube him, a couple gallons of reflux came pouring out of his stomach--this was an emergency.  I either had to take him to the emergency hospital or put him down.  I opted for the hospital.

I won't go into all the gory details, because I simply just don't want to relive them again.  To make the long story short, he was there for 12 days.  The first week, they were draining his stomach every 2 hours.  The rest of the time was spent trying to get him to eat and waiting for something to come out the other side.

I brought home a horse with severe ulcers, nerve damage in his nose, a muted appetite, loads of drugs he needs to take for weeks and a quite a bit thinner body.  For a while, we were just doing hand walking, and I recorded those miles as part of our Virtual Tevis Cup total.  As he improved, we started leading up and down the hill.

Back when he was still in the hospital, I had to take Fairy Floss, my cat, for a follow up appointment for her skin allergies.  The vet and I finally sleuthed out the problem.  Blood work showed that she was extremely allergic to yeast.  Her whole body was itchy--including her ears.  When we treated her ears, she improved, but it wouldn't last.  Then, the vet had an inspiration--she realized Floss had a yeast infection in her ears and it made her whole body have a reaction.  We aggressively attacked the ear infection, and the problem was solved.  The treatment involved flushing her ears out every 3 days because the vet thought she may be so allergic that even dead yeast cells could cause a reaction.

I was taking her to the vet for her last visit.  We were playing shortly before leaving, and she ran between my legs and got tangled in them.  She came out very lame on the other side.  At least I was able to get her into the vet right away.  X-rays showed that 3 ligaments were ruptured--one was completely gone.  We had to schedule an operation, which was a week later.  Until then, she had to live in a dog cage.

Cole was home when she had the operation, and she is healing up beautifully.  She was able to use her leg right away, and on day 5 she snuck up the stairs.  I now have the stairs blocked.  She just went in for her 2 week checkup, and they said she doesn't need to come back.

Back to Cole.  We are still working our way through the medicine.  I am now riding him lightly, and he seems to be enjoying his little excursions--up and down the hill.  While he was away, Ellen was able to almost catch up with us in miles, so I decided to stop recording until we were tied.  That way, we would be able to finish together.

Through all of this, I have been quite a wreck.  Things are finally looking up.  I am still very anxious about Cole.  The vet thinks that the colic was caused by something he ate, but we don't know for certain.  If it happens again, I will make the other decision, because it will be evident that something internal isn't working.  I don't know if I will ever get over this feeling of uncertainty with him.  Kevin is just starting to ride again.  We weren't sure even just a few days ago if he would.  Fairy Floss is doing terrific.  There is a real silver lining on her black cloud.  She is only 7 years old.  I have had her for less than a year.  When Thunder died, I went to the shelter and picked out their most unadoptable cat.  No one wanted a cat with skin allergies.  Anyway, when they x-rayed her, it showed that she has very bad arthritis in her hips.  I now have medicine to help her arthritis.

Finally, the day came to finish the Virtual Tevis Cup.  We probably could have crossed the river, but it was still a little too high for Ellen's comfort.  We thought it would be very appropriate to finish it on the hill.  We determined the finish line would be at the bottom of the hill on the third trip down.  When we got there, we gave each other a big high five!  I didn't know if I would even have a horse to finish it on, so it was very satisfying to do it--even if most of the ride was on the hill.