Goodbye Twiggy

We let the old corgi go to cross the Rainbow Bridge yesterday. It was time and her condition was deteriorating. I was having to help her up every time she was down - which was often. She was falling a lot and was unable to get up. She was losing her appetite. It was time. 

I think that I have a very good relationship with death, if that doesn't sound too terribly odd. It is just a part of life and we all must go through it, and partake in losses of our loved ones at some point. It is just a part of being a carbon-based life form on this planet. I have seen a lot of deaths, been around a lot of animals at the end, and I know what it is to have a good death and to have a bad one too. I don't ever want my animals to suffer through a bad death, if it can be helped. Quincy was my first horse, my first true love, and my first view of a gruesome death - his colic was far and away the most violent and horrible thing I've ever witnessed, and I hope to never see anything like it again. Even other horrible deaths I've been a part of - like the mare who broke her neck and then rubbed her eyeball out of her head while thrashing - somehow don't compare to that first one. It is so permanently, so horribly burned into my mind that I don't think I will ever escape it. I remember all the fine details. I remember the dust settling onto his eyeballs. I remember spending far, far too long around his bloated and stiff body, and those memories override a lot of the joyful ones I had of him while he was still alive. He suffered - really, really suffered - at the end, and even though I was just a dumb kid with a lot of naive hope, I regret all of my decisions that day. I regret trying to save a horse that was almost dead on his feet. I regret not being able to even have the vet euthanize him - he died right in front of my eyes before the vet could even get back to the farm. I never want any of my animals to ever have to go through that, ever again.

Death is a natural part of life, and we all will have to go through it. We all deserve to die with dignity and peace. Not everyone will get to have that, but as such, it is my solomn promise to all of my animals that I will do my best to give that gift to them, and I will be there for them until the very end. And I hope they can all walk with with relative comfort and dignity to their graves.

Twiggy was very, very old. She was the first pet that I had to put down because of really, really old age. Her body was just failing her in every direction, and there was nothing else to be done. That is just how life is, and it is something we all will have to go through if we ever reach that kind of age. She aged slowly, the process marked by small changes in her ability to do things. She used to be able to ride with me in the truck all day long as I worked, but her arthritis started to slow her down about two years ago, and she could only do half days before she would get tired and lame. Then she wasn't able to do even half days anymore, so we relegated her to walking a few miles a couple times a week. That slowly declined to only a half a mile twice a week, to a quarter of a mile ever couple weeks, to nothing at all. At the end, she was still able to get around the yard slowly, but that was about it, and she seemed satisfied to sit and bark at the running dogs without feeling the need to join in. But it was time. 

We chose yesterday so that we could both be there with her. She had mac'n cheese and eggs for breakfast, then napped and got petted for the rest of the morning. In the early afternoon, we took her to McDonalds and got an ice cream cone and an entire box of chicken nuggets for her, then went and sat at our favorite old park. She was a little nervous in the vet's office, but a small dose of sedation calmed her down (I can't recommend this enough, seriously - it helps so much with the human ability to process). She dozed off under her dose of sedation, then slipped away immediately once the actual deed was performed. It was quiet, and peaceful, and good. Unlike with when my greyhound died, the vets did not pressure us, ask us questions, try to get us to do something more, and guilt trip us. (All those things happened with poor Ti - she was dying of kidney failure and the emergency vet tried to convince us to jump through enormous expensive hoops to save her, even though she was clearly suffering and dying and had been going through this process for some time. Then she made us feel like we were too cheap to save our dog and that we didn't love her enough. It was horrible and I've never been back to that vet since.) They just patted our backs, told us how sorry they were, and let us grieve quietly. It was very hard, but it was peaceful, and it was good.

I firmly believe that euthanasia is a gift. It is the last kind act we can do for a suffering or dying animal, instead of letting them waste away in unimaginable pain until their bodies finally give out on them. I remember last year finding the neighbor's ancient old heeler dead out in the pasture - he dragged his pathetic carcass out there and expired, and I found him with buzzards picking his innards apart. I never, ever will let that happen to any of my animals. I don't believe it is right or fair to keep a crippled, sick, feeble, ancient, or otherwise incurable animal alive just because we can. Managing a chronic condition is something we of course can do, and should do if we can, until we can't anymore - and then we have to make that choice. When the animal has rounded the bend, or is not getting better, or is suffering - make that choice for them. Give them that last gift. Let them be at peace and out of pain. And give them a good last day if you can. 

It was a hard day. A sad day. A day I won't ever forget. But it was a beautiful day, a fun day, a day full of good food and love and happiness. It was a good day to die. 

Tentative 2015 Show Schedule

We've had a weird winter so far in Texas. The first two weeks of January were nothing but grey, cold, wet, and miserable, day in and day out. This was followed up with a week of amazing, gorgeous, sunny 70 degree days. For whatever reason, Mother Nature has decided to retract her taste of spring, and it is currently hovering around freezing, pouring with a howling wind. What happened??

Luckily, I was able to get three good workdays in a row before the weather tanked. After our great drive on Tuesday, we added another lunge day yesterday - I knew the bad weather was coming in for today, but I didn't want to drive her two days in a row, as she is historically never great about doing the same thing two days in a row. She was lovely, buoyant, pleasant and quiet yesterday, working in a longer outline and stretching out well.

 

And by longer outline, I mean she has lots of loose rein, but still likes to canter along in show-off-able self carriage. Because she's a boss like that.
(She has a very nice canter when she is quiet and balanced. Out of balanced, and it becomes very flat, lateral and counterbent, not to mention super zoomy. She was definitely in lovely canter mode yesterday.)

Tomorrow I will be super busy all day - not to mention it will be wicked muddy - but Saturday and Sunday she is back to work! I have to make due with the days I have, especially when the weather tanks.




The bad weather has given me a bit of time to sit down and gather up the tentative show schedule. Included in the schedule are seminars on the ground (no active drive time), clinics (active drive time), and of course shows, which include fun games days as well as actual ADS sanctioned shows. This is a whole new thing I am tackling here, so this entire schedule is subject to change - it all just depends on how it is going. This is the full list of stuff available to be that I'd like to be able to attend - it is a LOT of stuff and O has not ever had a really full schedule like this, so we'll be largely going on her level of brain-fried-ness. If she starts to get a little fried, we back off. Making a success out of a first season (for both of us!) largely has to do with laying the groundwork for getting good experiences out of everything. The pressure comes later, the good experience is the first thing you always need to go for.

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2015 Schedule:
 
March 7th: Beginner to Winner seminar*
March 21st: Day of Dressage (?? Maybe)
April 12th: Sunrise Ridge HDT
May 3rd: TCA Carriage Classic
May 16th: NTW Playday
May 24th: Pine Hill HDT**
June 12-14th: Cowboy Country HDT
June 27th: HACA Driving Trial
July 23-25th: Clinic
October 25th: NTW Playday
November 7-8th: Black Star Farm CDE

 *Non-riding seminar
**There is conflicting evidence that says Pine Hill may or may not be an HDT this year - it may just be a pleasure show

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It's a bit confusing, trying to sort through the schedule. There is very little information on each thing at the moment, so it is hard to choose what to go for. The seminar on the 7th makes sense, it is just a bunch of lectures all day long, but the Day of Dressage is confusing - it isn't clear if this is something to trailer your horse to, or if you just go watch, or? I don't know. I am also disappointed to learn that I won't be able to participate in two of the NTW playdays - I was asked if I could help out with organizing them this year (kind of a large task for a noob, but since they asked, I said I would help out). Turns out that means I can't show in two of them at all. Pretty disappointing and I wish I had been told that right off the bat before I had agreed to help out, but hindsight is 20-20. I'm pretty sure that they knew I'd say no if I knew ahead of time what the thing entailed... but ah well. I agreed to it, so I'll do it. Serves me right for not asking ahead of time what it all meant.


Here's hoping it dries out soon... and that my Monster Dog heals up quickly from her surgery. She went in Tuesday to have her eyelid repaired, and she is now living temporarily in the Cone of Shame 24/7. It took her a little bit to figure out how to do Life while in the Cone of Shame, but now she has fully accepted it as part of her body. She has also weaponized it, smashing shamelessly into everything in her path, scattering cats, dogs, and people alike. My thighs might be bruised and sore after all the full-on smash time, but at least the eye looks great?

Goodbye Ti

Our return from our quickie getaway vacation was marked by the death of my old greyhound. There are fewer things that are sadder than returning home from a very nice getaway only to find that your old friend is dying. Ti was my first canine companion ever, adopted fresh off the Florida track as a three year-old, and has been a mainstay in my life ever since college. She has lived with me in four states and a dozen different homes, moved across the country more than once, gone on endless adventures with me, and has always, always been there. Kidney disease and cancer were her downfall in the end. We got home from vacation to find a note from the pet sitter saying that she hadn't eaten at all in two days, and she wasn't drinking either. She had a 105 degree fever and couldn't get up. We already knew about the kidney failure, and I had already made the decision to not put her through a lengthy treatment of any sort when we already knew that her kidneys were at least 85% shot already. Despite all we did, the infection returned a month and a half out from her diagnosis and last intensive treatment. When the vet looked her over, she also had a heart murmur, which likely meant the infection was going to seed in her heart as well. I don't believe in making feeble elderly dogs suffer through lengthy and pointless treatments when they already have a terminal illness. She died peacefully in our arms, like a lady - the great lady that she was.

It is hard to lose a friend that has been in your life for so many years. Ti has always been there... always. To have her suddenly just gone has been very difficult. Her beds, her bowl, her collar, her blankets... everything is still here, as it always has been, but she is gone. It just feels so empty without her constant presence. Just.... empty, and hollow, and sad. 

I take great solace in the fact that I have hundreds and hundreds of pictures of her, and memories as well. She has always been here ever since college, and so every photo album I go through has pictures of her in it, always there. They also returned her to us in a beautiful rosewood box, so she is still here with us. I've never lost one of my own pets (outside of childhood family pets), and never have been there for the death of one aside from the horses. It was peaceful and easy, and terribly sad. The finality of death is something I will never get used to. 

The hardest part of it all has been the fact that there is no way to explain to a cat that their beloved lifelong companion is now gone and isn't coming back. When I first got Ti, she had major separation issues in the house - tearing things up, messes, crying, stressing. My solution to this was to bring home a tiny fleabag throwaway kitten as her companion... the rest is history. I named her Snidget, and they were best friends from day one.

 

Ti and Snidget have been inseparable for years. I accumulated all of my other pets only after I moved to Texas, but these two were with me for my time in Ohio, Michigan, Connecticut, and Texas. After we came home from the vet without Ti, Snidge wandering around the house for hours, occasionally crying and looking for her dog. "Your hound is gone," I told her. "She's not coming back." But there is no way to make her understand. She sits by Ti's bed, stares at it, and cries.

She did at least get a chance to sniff the box of ashes. She went completely nuts at first, smelling and smelling... then she rubbed it all over with her cheek, and passed out sleeping. I hope she understands.

Rest in peace my old Dizzle.... we love you and miss you so much already.

Harness!

You'll have to forgive my radio silence for the past several days. My elderly greyhound (who you've seen on and off through my blogging experience over the years) had a really terrible week last week. Unfortunately she was crashed by a vet who decided to take a certain route of care without consulting with me first, and now she is in outright kidney failure. We're not really sure what is going to happen, but this is terminal and at some point it will kill her. Whether that happens in a few days or in a year, it's impossible to say.

(Gogo and Ti in 2010)

She had a really good day yesterday after a few really bad days, but today she's not looking so great again. Lots of meds, sub-q fluids, and an emergency diet change after she stopped eating altogether seem to have helped until now, but we don't really even know if she is going to make it long enough to retest her bloodwork in a few weeks.

Ti is my first dog, and I've had her since she was 3 and freshly retired off the track. She has been in my life through college and all of my subsequent moves, jobs, relationships, and so much more. It is very hard to watch your companion age and start to wear out. I trust her to tell me when she's ready, and I'm ready to make that choice for her when the time comes... but I hope I get a little more time with her.

If you could send along some good thoughts for her, it would be much appreciated. I am very, very attached to my old doodle and I'm really not emotionally ready for her to go.


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In much brighter news, O had several days in a row off while I was attending to Ti's medical needs, but she also drove down the road in the long lines for the first time, AND she wore a harness for the first time!!!

I've ridden on this road 892910873392021938 times, so I wasn't worried about going off property and down the road, and true to form she was fantastic. For a horse that is so new to long lining - and SO hot under saddle - she is incredibly quick to pick up on an idea and is incredibly mellow in its execution. We walked and trotted down the road back and forth, and she walked out away from the property without hardly any of her usual barn sourness (which manifests as walking super slow, looking back over her shoulders, walking in really crooked lines). We trotted along quietly up and down the road with me jogging along behind her, and she is so very chill about this that I have absolutely no trouble keeping up at a wheezing jog (note to self: maybe try running a little more).

She was so good that I dared take a short video while we were trotting along on the way home. Don't try this at home kids... also please ignore my wheezing. I'm not very in shape!

Yes, that is my crazy redhead being decidedly un-crazy. I have a theory on this: she has a lot of bad associations with riding, and carries all of that baggage around with her all the time. She has no bad associations with driving of any sort, so she just jumps right in without any problems or evasions. I want to continue to cultivate this in her, and make sure everything progresses smoothly, because I've seen just how bad she can be when she has a bad association with something.

 We also progressed to our next step: an actual harness! I managed to get my hands on this one and I'm pretty happy with it. It's actually quite nice for what it is and will serve us just fine for now. The one thing about it is that it is sized for regular horses, and O is a very small horse (don't tell her I said that). I had to punch a lot of holes in everything, and will need to punch even more. Even everything on the bridle is too big - the blinders are huge on her and I had to punch all sorts of holes to keep her bit from falling out of her mouth. She's a big bodied horse for her size, but she is only 15.1 after all.... about cob size. I'll have to keep that in mind for sizing in the future. 

 Driving people, what do you think? Does it look ok or do you see something glaringly funky? Something I should change/fix?

The traces on this harness are removable, so I ran the breeching straps up through the breastcollar and back again to keep them out of the way. Since the harness is a little big all over, that worked just fine, although the straps might have to be cut shorter in the future. They are loooooooooong.

True to form, she went, "Ok more stuff on my body... whatever." She goosed herself once with the crupper, and then forgot about it, but I left the crupper really loose (way too loose really) just in case. I'll punch more holes and tighten her backstrap up with care. She had never worn a crupper before today and I think that will be the one thing so far that she'll object some to. I lunged her for a little bit in harness at the walk and trot, but not the canter yet - which is probably when she'll be goosey about the crupper, if she is going to be goosey.

She was not very amused by the blinders. I can't blame her for this - she is a VERY visual horse, and she has to look at things and be able to see in order to process. I led her around for awhile, and she got the hang of them, but they were confusing to her. She figured it out, true to form, and was lunging within short order, but I'm definitely going to continue to do most of my work in an open bridle. She needs to be able to do both, but since she learns new things better if she can see them and process them, I expect I'll do everything in an open bridle first. There seem to be conflicting opinions on this, and there are reasons to have your horse in blinders later on when they're broke, but since O is a very visual horse I'm pretty sure that I'll do everything in an open bridle first until she learns it, so she can see and process things. I never really thought about the pros or cons of blinders (or even why you'd use them, really.... I never thought about them at all until now!), so I'm doing my research and asking my resources for guidance. What do you guys think?



I also spent a long time this evening chatting on the phone with the driving trainer I was able to locate! She is sending me some more information about continuation with stuff that I can do on the ground with her until we can proceed with some lessons!

Splish Splash!

It's summertime in Texas, and it is starting to get HOT! Not sweltering yet by any means - it hasn't gotten above 95 yet, with most days still lingering in the low 90's - but anything over 90 is an excuse to go to the lake for a swim! Enjoy this video of our big dogs having some fun!

Of course, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled program in no time ;)