June 2012

June 30, 2012: Took a Hike

I spent the last five days amidst the magnificent hills and forests of Limpopo Province, hiking 40km alongside the minister of our church, Dominee Sarel, and a bunch of other teens. It looks just like Narnia up there, all pine forests and ferns and streams as clear as liquid mirrors. Pine needles, moving like hair in the wind. Birds, singing jewels in the leaves. The sound of running water. It was truly splendid; four days spent walking and singing and staring in the glory of God's creation and reading His Word and getting stiff in places I didn't even know you could get stiff in. Dominee Sarel is a really good minister, and Jesus walked with us every step of the way.

View from De Hoek Hut

On the trail in the pine forests

Dokolewa Pools (VERY cold)

One of the less horrible bridges; I was tempted to negotiate the more horrible ones on my hands and knees

Old lovely mossy trees

View from the trail near Woodbush Hut

Picturesque forest

Waterfall

Much refreshed, I'm back to find that Mom and Rain did a wonderful job of looking after my herd and dog pack; Thunder caught a bit of inexplicable diarrhea, which I will have to look into in more detail, but he's not sick in himself, and he had the same problem as a very small foal so I guess he's a bit delicate. Otherwise, everybody is fine although Skye apparently got sick of being fed by the wrong human and aimed a kick at Rain when I was not around. Can't imagine why; she hasn't tried anything of the sort while I'm around or I would have spanked her silly bum. Thankfully, according to Rain, she was aiming to miss and it was more a gesture of irritation than anything else, but I won't stand that kind of thing even with my spoiled Skye.

Horsy news is that Skye's lameness remains mysterious and all but invisible; the mutterer is quite sure that it's not a pulled tendon. I showed her to him last Wednesday and he really couldn't see anything in the way of a problem, leaving me to wonder if she has a sore back, since I feel the lameness when I ride but can't see it from the ground. I was instructed to warm her up very slowly at a walk before trotting and see how it felt; after a sufficiently endless period of walking (twenty minutes or more) she's pretty much sound. She had the week off since I wasn't home, so perhaps that's cleared up the last of it.

To my deep dismay, on Tuesday morning I discovered a little lump on the inside of Arwen's front left leg, just below the knee. It was hard and bony so I immediately thought "SPLINT!! SPLINT!!! Oh my goodness my horse has a SPLINT!! I rode her to DEATH!!!!" but she's not lame at all and when I presented her to the mutterer he confirmed that she had a splint, but that it was seriously not the end of the world. I guess she must have hit her leg when we were crashing into triples two weeks ago.

Scary splint

I got her a set of exercise bandages, which will help, as soon as I figure out how to put them on. The horse mutterer did show me, but I appear to have a blind spot when it comes to exercise bandages. "You are really talented," he remarked, dryly. "I have never seen anyone get a bandage that tangled up."

June 20, 2012: A Long Four Weeks

Four weeks can be forever.

Four weeks can be a moment when you're watching a colt grow. But when your mare possibly needs to rest for four weeks due to a niggling injury, when you're fifteen years old and can't remember not having her, when she's a horse as graceful as a star, AHS Survivor, God's horse, four weeks can be forever.

Skye's lameness came and went and came again, and though I can't see any swelling or heat or anything, the vet - over the phone - suspects a pulled tendon. The mutterer will come and see her later and confirm what's going on, but meanwhile, being the worrywart I am, I am fretting. From what I've read, tendon injuries are notoriously slow to heal, and four weeks is pretty much nothing compared to the 12-18 month rest period required for a bowed tendon (according to what I've read. I read a lot), but...

... eh.

I can't complain. This is nothing like the AHS scare Skye had last year - she's still perfectly happy in every way. When I got on her on Monday to see what was happening with her leg, she decided that "trot on" suddenly meant "put head down and shoot off", so it doesn't seem to be too painful. She's enjoying loads of TLC (well, more than usual, anyway), bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and a little mischievous out of having too much energy. When I taught lessons yesterday on Arwen and Siobhan she was forever tagging after the students, nudging them with her nose to demand why they were ignoring her, and then stood, asleep, beside their mom just in case she decided to leap on for a spot of bareback galloping.

Skye: I smell a carrot! Arwen: Where?

Well, what can I say? God knows what He's doing, especially when we don't.

Winter has arrived with a vengeance; the midges are (hopefully) dead, the flies are (mostly) dead, and the horses are all fluffy teddies. They are gloriously shiny in summer and so cute and furry in winter. You just want to hug them. Copper wins the prize for furriest winter coat; he looks like a real pony, basically a fluffball with a tiny little nose and two pointy ears at the top. He now understands what a halter is for and walks quietly beside you unless he sees/smells/hears/imagines something scary, doesn't feel like it, is having a bad day, is in a mood or is being Copper. He's a royal pest. I really hope he gets over this phase; he has a temper tantrum every few minutes and can be extraordinarily stubborn. Thankfully he's only five months old and tiny, so not terribly intimidating, but he can be rather a bore. Like his mom, he enjoys rearing, but with the aid of a three-metre lead rein we are fixing that. The long lead rein is so important. They easily suck you underneath them when they rear if you have a short lead. I used to work Siobhan with a lungeing rein, but luckily Copper isn't quite that bad.

Rain and Copper

Speaking of Siobhan, Rain has been looking for a way to improve Siobhan's fitness without having to do a lot of work herself, so, somewhat tentaviely, I had a go at lungeing The Mustang. She was, in fact, extremely well behaved. The worst she did was kick out once, but that was more out of confusion than anything else (Rain had to learn to lunge first and my lungeing is one of my very weak points, so I wasn't the greatest teacher), and when lunged to the right she twists her head in and holds her body out. She does it under saddle, too, and it's very annoying. Maybe if I put two lunge reins on her I can fix it. Hmm. It's something to try, anyway, if everybody concerned can wear protective gear (last time I tried lungeing her with two reins she blew up).

I lunged Dancer again after last week's light bulb moment and she was super. She only did the spin-and-bolt thing once and didn't get very far; once she realises I am staying calm she calms down quite quickly, too, and I even got her to canter calmly for two laps to the right (she was perfect cantering to the left). I've said it before and I'll say it again; she's very smart, but very challenging.

On the other hand, I'm massively enjoying her full brother, Secret. He cottons on quickly, but he doesn't have issues - he very rarely has tantrums and is not as panicky about leaving other horses as Thunder is. I wish I didn't have to sell him. He's handsome, too, with that dark coat and little white star, and after his colic he's picking up very nicely again and eating well. If I could keep one other horse besides Skye, Arwen and Thunder (oh, and Siobhan, but she's Rain's), it would undoubtedly be Secret. With this blasted nervousness, I fret about backing Dancer and Copper (especially Dancer, somehow she just seems scarier, my paranoia is not sensible), but not Secret or Thunder.

Arwen was lunged too and was extremely well behaved; she had several days off and when I rode her out yesterday she had buckets of energy, displaying it by doing some dramatic acts when she was attacked by a fearsome francolin. A kilometre's brisk trotting steadied her somewhat, and on the way home she was just brilliant - responsive but sensible.

And now I must flee. I desperately hope Skye doesn't have a serious injury. Well, God knows what He's doing.

June 12, 2012: Light Bulb Moments

Isn't God amazing? He has all the work of listening to prayers, telling hearts to beat and watching over us, and yet He paints every sunrise, everywhere, every morning, with the masterful Hand that no mortal painter ever will acquire. This sunrise will not last as long as The Last Supper or The Creation of Adam, but in its blazing brilliance it was real. And without the Artist that made this sunrise, there would be no Adam, no Last Supper to be painted nor a hand to paint it with; and yet He still paints the sunrises. God is real. Why would a universe that happened by chance happen so beautifully? God made it beautiful; He saw it and said it was good. And this is why we should recycle and switch off the lights, because God made the world and gave it to us and gave us dominion over it and we have been terrible, terrible tyrants. Imagine making an absolutely gorgeous painting, a masterpiece, a perfect work of art, and handing it over to a friend and watching him take out a knife and cut it to shreds. We'll never save the world, but we may be able to save the planet, so that in the day that Jesus comes on the clouds He can tell us we did a good job.

For the past two years now, I have been banging away at my novel, Sparrowhawk. Well, its working title is Sparrowhawk, anyway. I suck at titles. I think I may call it The Mustang's Voice but I'm not sure if it really works. In any case, I've been fiddling with it for months; I hammered out the first draft, which, to be honest, was garbage, and now am busy trying to revamp it. Hah. Good luck on that one. I've been trying for a year and I was still wrestling with a great, bloated, overgrown monster of a story that was on the brink of collapsing under its own weight. It had problems with everything - plot, character, setting, and especially length; for the Y. A. genre, I should be writing 80 000 words to a novel. Sparrowhawk was 160K. Yep. No kidding.

So now as I grappled with a thousand issues - protagonist was a victim and not an instigator of the plot, other protagonist was shallow and had no development, too many characters, too many subplots, inconsistent setting, clumsy action sequences - that bloated 160 000 word length kept on niggling and niggling at me and the problem I really felt I had to deal with was the plot. It was messy, it was all over the place, stuffed full of characters that did nothing and went nowhere and just stood around looking pretty because I quite liked them. To be honest, I wrote the whole thing by the seat of my pants and it sure looks it. Subplots trailed off into nothingness. The main plot galloped on for the first third and then fell asleep for the second third, which happened only by virtue of a subplot that could have been a novel in its own right, woke up in the final third and crash-landed on its nose at the end.

I trimmed the first third and spent a full year just fighting through the first few chapters. That wasn't actually so bad; they were a bit long, but driven and stuff happened, all the time. Then my pint-sized protagonist, Falcon, and his trusted equine sidekick, Sparrowhawk, arrived in the castle of dreams, Caerwyn Ea, where Falcon trains to be a knight so that he can protect his family from the antagonist. And then it all falls to bits. Then we met Flavian, Falcon's pal, and he hijacks the story for a novel-sized chunk of narrative. Too sentimental to cut Flavian completely, I scaled him down and then sat with an impending climax rushing up much too fast with no real support and without my characters anywhere near ready for it and I was about to freak out.

The plot had a massive hole in it. In fact, it was more hole than plot. The Auryon (antagonist) attacks Falcon and Sparrowhawk in the second chapter of the book, is driven off by the Knights of Fire, and then whisks off to a cave where he spends the rest of the narrative lurking before charging out again at the climax. Why does he disappear for most of the book? Well, in the context, he was mysteriously cowardly for half the story and (without explanation) gets his courage back at the end. If looked at in the right light through a telescope held the wrong way round, it worked. Really, he disappears because I needed the protagonists to get their bums to knight school and gain the skills they needed to fight the Auryon and win. He spent the story sending increasingly more evil henchmen to attack them and in the climax called up a whole army of monsters banished to the sea and the Deep Faeriewood during a war thirty years before the story starts, but the question I should have asked myself when I opened a blank document and wrote the word "SPARROWHAWK" in capitals at the top was why on Ea - I mean, in the world, did he only call up the army right at the end? This beast had spent 500 years seeking vengeance for his dead wife. When he did call up the army, he did it effortlessly. So why didn't he call it up ages ago to annihilate the whole family centuries before Falcon was even born?

I wrestled with this question for a long, long time. Obviously, I needed an obstacle. Something difficult and dangerous that the Auryon needed to overcome before being able to call up the army - something that would set the monsters free from the realm to which they were banished decades ago.

And yesterday night, out of the blue, the light bulb went on. As a rule, I try not to give out details on an idea before writing it, because then it mysteriously dies (sorry), but I will say that it fits nicely into the narrative and for the first time in eighteen months I am actually excited about this project. Since starting Sparrowhawk in June 2010, I have only managed to write (most of) one other story, which I will have to shelve for several years before being able to rework it because it deals with a lot of themes I can't handle right now (nothing icky; it just seems to be a story about the questions I'm still asking at my age and will better be able to answer later on). Sparrowhawk has been my main focus. And now, finally, I have rediscovered what it's like to dream about the characters of a story, to feel adrenalin pump in my body when anything - a dapple-grey horse spotted on the roadside, a brown-haired boy, a Lipizzaner, a lake - reminds me of the wonderful, imaginary world I can retreat to, a world full of people that I wish sometimes achingly were real, and yet are echoes of the people I love achingly because they are so real; a world that has elements resembling so many of the worlds I have read of in the best of books and movies - Narnia and Black Beauty and How to Train Your Dragon and Tangled - and yet is its own shadowland, as unique as the imagination that dreamed it up.

Fantasy so easily becomes an abominable genre, something evil and hateful to God. Not long ago, my fantasies were exactly that - before Skye's illness, before I met Jesus, before everything. Now, when I grapple with the complexities of imagining people and countries that are mere shades, one-dimensional watercolours of the real thing at best, my marvel for the One who made the real people and places grows by the day. Have you ever tried to imagine a person? A real, consistent person straight out of your head, complete with appearances and fears and pet peeves and quirks and idiosyncrasies and likes and dislikes and desperate yearnings and all the million million little things that make a person? And yet there is Someone out there who actually makes us, every day, another and another, all unique, all complete.

I won't have the audacity to say that God wrote this story. If He had, it would be perfect. His Story is already written down. But I will say that it's only because of Him that I keep writing.

Words aren't the only medium I can (kind of) use. This is supposed to look like Skye

Horse wise, life has been galloping happily along. After our superb ride on Thursday, Skye was suddenly a bit off again on Saturday, to my dismay; I gave her Sunday off and rode her lightly on Monday and she felt a gazillion times better, thanks to God of course, so much so that even my paranoia can barely detect the mildness unevenness. There's no doubt she's better and I think she's sound, but my imagination has a cruel way of playing tricks on me, so I will ask the mutterer to check her out tomorrow. She was so bursting out of her skin that I still decided to put one of the lesson kids on her. Tanya and Skye are both spunky and special and get along like a house on fire.

I gambled a bit and let the mom and two daughters ride together on Skye, Arwen and Siobhan. Danielle, the elder sister, rode on Siobhan, they seem to get along and Danielle really likes the pony, though Siobhan was indescribably lazy. This is not altogether Siobhanny's fault; she is very skinny at the moment and as such has next to no energy, something I've tried to fix by doubling her feed in the past week to a full kilogram each day. We shall see how it goes. Well, she doesn't buck/bite/bolt/do any of the crazy stuff that, not long ago, was her trademark; she is safe, just kind of frustrating when she refuses to go any faster than a mulish plod. To be fair Danielle got a trot out of her, so I guess I can't complain. Skye's ears are pointing to the side when she trots with Tanya so the bouncing must have diminished and tannie Lizelle, who rode Arwen, is doing really well; she's sitting better and is a quite strict, assertive rider, which is the type Arwen works with, so it went well. I enjoy teaching. It has its frustrations and if I have one beginner going around and around for half an hour just trying to adjust to the feeling of a horse I get bored out of my skull, but they're over that stage, so I can shake it up a bit and get interested.

Thunder's lungeing improved a lot today. His greatest faults are laziness and absentmindedness; I have to focus and keep him on his toes, ready for a command, or he goes to sleep and jogs along in happy little Planet Thunder without listening to a word I say. It's improving as he grows up (the boy hormones are helping, too) and today he gave me a good canter on both sides, which I'm very pleased with as he is a lot stiffer on his left side than his right, and he cantered a whole lap around the 10m lungeing ring (for want of a better word) to the left, which is great. I wasn't watching his legs so don't know if he was leading with the correct leg, but it's a start.

I think he has bucked a total of two times on the lunge. No heading for the hills, no kicking out, no bucking, rearing, plunging hissy fits. The worst he does is to give his head a violent shake occasionally when told to go around to the left, but that's it.

I love him to bits. He's growing up to be absolutely magnificent and retaining the golden colour he inherited from his mom. I just wish he hadn't ripped out all his lovely mane. Mom measured him on Friday and he stands 148cm - 14.2hh! I am going to have an official horse!

Dancer is a different story; she hates going around to the right, and as such has developed a trick of whirling suddenly to the left and taking off like a rocket. As she is living with the mares, I lunge her in the arena, so when she takes off there is nothing to stop her for the next 40m and when she really decides to take off I don't even have a bit to control her with; she puts her head down and drags me along like a sledge. It was massively frustrating; I didn't know how to stop her; once she wheeled around it was much too late to do anything very much and she did it time and time again whenever she was asked to go any faster than a walk. And then she started doing it to the left too and occasionally coupling the wheeling around with a smartly aimed kick. Whack her with a lunge whip, and she just went faster. Pull and she pulled back. Walk quietly after maintaining the pressure on the lunge line and she took you for a walk like a dog.

I couldn't cope. So I prayed. "Lord, I can't do this anymore, she's too strong for me. Please help me." And three seconds later she did it again and the light bulb went on. First, long before actually taking off, she puts her head down. It was a moment of perfect illumination. She had been laughing up her sleeve because seconds before she even tried to run away she would tell me "Look, I'm gonna go," and I would ignore her completely. So every time she put her head down I snapped the lunge line, hard. Every time she put her head back up and quietly trotted on. I kept this up for ten minutes or so and she was a dream.

Jesus rode an untamed donkey colt up to Jerusalem. On the colt on which "never a man sat", Jesus rode through crowds of happy people waving palm fronds and garments, throwing them in the path of the little donkey, who, unafraid, continued straight on to Jerusalem. He knew his Master's touch. That is one of my very favourite Bible stories and I think of it each time I work with the horses, of the Man who rode an untrained donkey (for your information, they're worse than horses). I thought of it especially as I brushed Dancer. I'd never had noticed her head-tossing trick on my own. He really cares. He invented the silent language of horses and He illuminated just a little piece of it for me.

It's like the sunrises. He has time for everything.

Rain was very sick with a horrible sinus infection the past two weeks, and she was missing Siobhanny desperately, so I decided to cheer her up a bit. With the help of a very inquisitive boy named F. C., I prettied the pony up with plaits and pink ribbons and I think I'll let the pictures speak.

Say what you will, I think Rain liked it.

On a final note, Arwen is being absolutely miles better. The quality of her walk, trot and canter has improved massively; I no longer have to kick until I'm blue in the face to get anything resembling a decent speed out of her. An extended trot is still something to dream of, but her working trot is good again, she walks well, and she has finally started to shake the cantering-in-front-and-trotting-behind thing. She's fun again. It's awesome. We've started to work on other fiddly things, too, like standing squarely, walking on with the correct leg in front and turns on the forehand, and she's turned out to be amazingly responsive to the legs when asked to turn, to the point where when going around the arena I barely have to use my hands at all for turning.

Her energy levels have only one negative effect; the dopey, dependable trail horse has had a slight relapse to loony skittish Arwen again. She's way better than she was the first time I rode her out after Secret was weaned - there was a lot of snorting and shying and some bucking involved there - but I know she'll soon be fine again. I think she's passed the biggest test for my own personal horse. I'm not afraid of her anymore. I'm afraid of most horses - not always afraid just being around them but afraid in certain situations, like riding on Achilles, or riding Siobhan away from other horses, or cantering Romeo around the corner where we fell. Skye and Arwen are the only ones I'm not afraid of. Arwen and I rode out yesterday and she had a silly spook at a flock of guinea fowls; she was trotting happily along and then suddenly shot backwards and sideways out from under me. I sailed off, hit the end of the reins and landed on my knees; the terrified Arwen, whose rider had turned into some kind of demented flying squirrel, tried to take off and succeeded only in dragging me onto my feet because I was clinging onto the reins with a white-knuckled grip. I scolded her roundly, got back on and we went on without any further problems. Not a single spook. No fear. Awesome.

Jumping has been going well, too; I put up a triple today and she had two quite foolish stops that went "Oh, I'm gonna stop, no, okay, these are trotting poles, I'll go, hey, these are getting higher!" and she ended up in the middle of the jump in a mess of poles and tyres. She finally realised that it was a jump and actually took off, and after a few tries she jumped it pretty well.

I love the way she inspects the jump so incredulously when I've cooled her off and take her over to it to admire what she's done. "You've got to be kidding me. I actually jumped that?"

I'm not entirely sure if putting the third tyre in the front (small) row was a great idea, but she kept forgetting about the first pole and treading on it instead of jumping over it, and once the tyre was there she seemed to realise it existed and it went better, so I guess it worked out well.

June 9, 2012: Love Should be Easy

It's really, really cold. Frost, frozen water troughs, numb fingers, cancelled riding lessons, the works. A wind came blasting up right out of Antarctica yesterday so instead of helping out at lessons at Bushwillow Stables, I stayed home and sorted out my tack room. I hate cleaning tack, I really do, but I was so tired yesterday and my saddle was so filthy that I guess God was giving me a little hint with the frigid weather.

So I scrubbed my saddle and scrubbed it and scrubbed it and scrubbed it and eventually got all the gunk off the saddle flaps (it seriously needed cleaning), and then I put dubbin on everything and hung the stirrup leathers in the sunshine (which promptly disappeared, but anyway, they are softer now). And then I went through the baskets and buckets of miscellaneous stuff. I don't know why, but I seem to have an endless array of broken cheekpieces, mismatching reins and currycombs missing half their spikes. The broken and mildewered were finally thrown away and the unnecessary but serviceable dumped into a box marked "DONATE". And my tack room (well, corner really) looks a whole lot better and I actually know where half my stuff is. Hooray.

The other project for a lesson-less Friday was Thunder. I suspected that he wasn't picking up weight like he should be; whereas Dancer's coat is flat and sleek, and her ribs barely visible, Thunder remains furry and ribby. He didn't gave a great month, what with being lame twice and having a sore mouth, so I guess I wasn't surprised when he turned out to have lost 6kg. His legs are fine and his teeth were floated, so that's fixed, but the hay's quality has dropped from a stellar 10-13% to only 5%. Plus winter has arrived with a vengeance and it is cold, cold, cold. He's already eating a kilogram of feed each day and has hay ad lib, but I think he needs just a bit more help, so I waltzed off to find a blanket. It has been used to nurse sick cows once or twice and as such is not in the best repair, but it's something.

At suppertime I caught him, tied him up and presented him with his new pyjamas. He was a bit worried about the noises it made when I unfolded it, but the straps around his bum and under his belly didn't bother him at all, which is a definite plus, and five minutes later he was gallivanting around blanket and all without a care in the world. He's so steady and such a pleasure to work with, especially after Siobhan; I remember trying to blanket her for the first time - it was quite the rodeo, it took about twenty minutes before she would allow the blanket, folded up into a little rectangle, on her back, and even then she didn't really stand still. With Thunder, it's chalk and cheese. He just doesn't have issues, he doesn't make a big deal of everything and he doesn't go all melodramatic. He's not very spirited or very smart, but the meekness in him, the acceptance and willingness is wonderful; his gentle spirit makes my day each time. Yesterday, when I went to get the brick out from under their trough's ball valve so they could drink, he was lying in the hay with his long legs folded under him, looking irresistible under his thick black forelock. I went and lay flat on his back, arms locked around his warm, fluffy neck, face buried in that most perfect of smells, the warm earthines of a horse. He made no protest; in fact, he closed his eyes and went back to sleep, absolutely trusting, as always. In this way I suppose this young bay colt is an example to me. I have a Master too, and I don't always understand what He's doing or know how to react, but I would love to have the trust and obedience and patience and willingness to do whatever is commanded with the quiet and unassuming and humble spirit that Thunder has.

Horses aren't people and they aren't God; they're animals, beasts of the earth, not to be worshipped in themselves, but to be marvelled at as creations of the Most High. But God made them, and He can teach us through them. Thunder is an example of meekness and patience, but not of himself, for God put that meekness and patience in him when He made him. Skye is an example of fearless faith, of courage, and of a passionate, bold willingness to do it and do it with every cell of one's body, but God put that fearlessness and faith inside her so that us humans could learn.

The best example, of course, lies between the covers of a beautiful Book we call the Bible; it walks in our hearts and touches the world. It is Jesus. He is the One we should  follow and obey, and His greatest commandments are of love: Love God, and love others. And in this wonderful world full of smiles and horses and storms and seas, He has made loving easy. At least, it should be easy, if only we'd let it be.

June 7, 2012: Equus Ex Nihilo

It's Latin, it means "Horse out of Nothing" and it's the title of the brand-new brilliant e-zine to which I've been priviledged to contribute an article about the S. A. Lipizzaners. Equus Ex Nihilo is a free electronic magazine written by Christians and publishes articles about our Triune God and the horses He made with His own Hands. Go to http://www.equest4truth.com/ to subscribe or enter the writing, art and photography competitions. It's a goldmine for people who love God and His horses.

The horse mutterer pronounced Skye sound yesterday, so it was with immense glee that for the first time in ten whole days I saddled her up and rode out. She stepped out briskly and felt fine, so I gave her a little squeeze to ask for a slow trot. Skye bucked spectacularly and took off like a shot, only to ski to a complete halt the next minute, snorting with mock terror at a feed bag, and then rocket off again with her tail in the air. Obviously not feeling too horrible, then. I scolded her roundly and attempted to set off at a somewhat saner pace; she reluctantly agreed to slow to a trot and floated off with her head and ears and spirits high. She takes care of me, even on her lunatic days, and I love it when she's so happy and exploding with life.

It was a wonderful ride. Skye settled down a bit and quit bucking and shying after the first eruption, but she was definitely feeling fabulous. She tossed out her legs and flung up her tail and danced and danced. I tried to take it easy, nursing the newly healed leg and keeping in mind that she might have lost a little fitness, but all easy-taking notions disappeared when at our favourite galloping place I decided to let her run a bit and shoved my hands in her mane.  Not a touch from the legs, not even a word, and she suddenly went flat to the ground and broke into a flying gallop. I discovered my loose girth about halfway up the stretch and couldn't care less; as long as I stayed in the middle so did the saddle (we had a nasty moment when she shied but I stayed on) and she was just flying. The wind was blowing and Skye challenged it, snorting, tossing up her legs, nose in the air even as she strode out and flung herself forward in perfect exuberance, shaking with the very joy of being alive and being equus ex nihilo, God's horse. We pulled up eventually (a bit more eventually than I expected) with Skye's tail flagging up like an Arab's, snorting.

She is Job 39:19-25:

“Do you give the horse its strength
    or clothe its neck with a flowing mane?
²⁰ Do you make it leap like a locust,
    striking terror with its proud snorting?
²¹ It paws fiercely, rejoicing in its strength,
    and charges into the fray.
²² It laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;
    it does not shy away from the sword.
²³ The quiver rattles against its side,
    along with the flashing spear and lance.
²⁴ In frenzied excitement it eats up the ground;
    it cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.
²⁵ At the blast of the trumpet it snorts, ‘Aha!’
    It catches the scent of battle from afar,
    the shout of commanders and the battle cry."

And since God described her and her kind perfectly, I shall say no more, but that God sure knew what He was doing when He led a seven-year-old kid and her parents to the small orange horse standing in the corner of a small dirt pen eight years ago.

Blizzard has grown up so much! The little furball I met in November has morphed into a big, solid, beautiful nine-month-old dog. Her movement, thank goodness, shows none of the toe-dragging that characterises Cyke's hip displasia, and she is developing a very pretty head, though not quite as mysteriously lovely as Cyclone's dark face. She is a very happy-go-lucky dog and easy to work with and be around; a real, playful, bouncy puppy.

She and Cyclone are absolutely inseparable. The Disasters, as they were dubbed soon after meeting each other, bounce joyfully through life wrecking everything in their path.

Cyke at the age of one year, and a weight of 28kg, seems to have stopped growing. She's a very fussy eater and pretty underweight, as you can see, but at least she is glossy-coated, bright-eyed, pain-free and having fun. I suppose it's better for her poor hips that she doesn't have to carry a lot of weight. Blizz in contrast is already 30kg and her enormous paws promise even more room to grow.

On Tuesday morning Secret gave me quite the fright. He gave his meal a listless shove with his nose and then wandered off to lie down, one hindleg flicking up impulsively at his stomach. By the time he was midway through his roll I had swooped upon him screeching like a banshee, dragged him to his feet and began to march him up and down as he continued to kick at his stomach, attempt to lie down and show classic signs of colic. Surprisingly he had no fever, but he was sore and very unhappy. I prayed fervently, walked him for twenty minutes, gave him a shot of phenylbutazone (the last, probably; from now on "bute" is a Schedule 6 drug so only vets may use it) and a dose of castor oil. By the end of it he was looking much perkier, so I locked him in a pen without any food and only a bucket of warm water, walked him for five minutes out of every twenty, and as he improved slowly gave him bits of hay until by evening he was perfectly fine and happy to go back in his paddock with Thunder, who had had a terrible day without his little brother and ran around neighing for most of the time. Thank heaven for the horse mutterer who talked me through it on the phone (including reminding me to keep breathing) or I would have been totally at sea. Secret is healthy again now; the mutterer suspects that he gorged himself on ice water (the troughs have begun freezing over so hopefully the midges are dead, hooray) so now from five PM to nine AM the colts' trough is closed off so that it doesn't self-refill. I am fretting about the mares, too, need to talk to the mutterer about that.

We also gave Rain a birthday meal; she just turned thirteen and our house is now full of teenagers (I am not a typical one but my mom attempts to make up for me). Pork neck and roast potatoes washed down with generous chunks of rich dark chocolate cake with Oreo and cream filling. Yum.

She baked the cake, by the way, but at least the parents cooked the meal. I am ashamed to say that I had nothing to do with it (except eating it, which I did a lot of. Thankfully I do a lot of physical work every day or I would roll around like a barrel).

Winter and the first frosts have officially arrived, which means magnificent sunsets and bare branches to cast their delicate silhouettes against them. I'm addicted to sunsets-and-bare-branches pictures and take far too many.

Arwen is being as mulish as ever when it comes to working in the arena; her walking has improved by a smidgen and her trotting is definitely a lot better. Her canter was abysmal for a long time, but last time I schooled her she was doing quite a bit better. Her favourite trick is cantering with her forelegs and trotting with her hindlegs (she appears to have invented a whole new gait) but now especially after Secret was weaned she's getting a little more energetic, meaning that you don't need to pummel her to get her to do anything anymore, which is a nice change.

Her jumping has been going swimmingly, though; she may approach it at the world's slowest canter but as long as she knows you want to jump it, she will, come what may. At our last lesson the mutterer suddenly turned our nice, exciting-but-safe 85cm double into a whopping great 1m double and cheerfully told us to go for it. I should have known she'd refuse before I even asked her to walk on because I looked at it and thought "Good golly, it's enormous," and even though I was yelping (unconvincingly) "It's little, it's little, it's little, it's tiny," as we came around the corner, Arwen didn't buy it and hit the brakes. I managed to stay on top and the next time around I tried not to think of anything at all except making sure she was going at a good speed and paying attention and amazingly it worked. She managed to creep into a strong(ish) canter and galumphed over to a good distance from the jump. I decided to do or die and thankfully she didn't stop or I would have taken the leap solo. The showjumping mule took off. It was HUGE! How does 10cm make such a big difference? She made a valiant effort, I grabbed two fistfuls of mane and gave a great cry of exhilaration (OK, so actually I made a strangled quacking noise like a duck being trodden on), her head went down, her shoulders came straight up, and she cleared it. Upon hitting the ground she, as usual, plodded off in an extremely sluggish trot, and the saddle, as usual, shot forward onto her withers. I was rubbing her neck with both hands and squeaking incoherently. The mutterer decided to look the other way (he hates it when I let go of the reins like that, and I don't blame him) and my squeaks turned into "We did it! You're a good girl! You're a smart little girl, Arwen!"

We gave it another go and she did it again, not even touching the pole. If you will forgive a teenager moment, this is a BIG jump, people. Two years ago this little horse was refusing 40cm from a trot and this little rider had never so much as seen anything taller than 70cm. It's a brilliant feeling to be the same little rider on the same little horse taking on a one-metre double and winning. She may be the world's laziest horse, but Arwen is a brave and generous jumper and she really likes jumping, too.

Arwen inspecting the jump with a kind of awestruck horror the next morning

Considering that she is less than half a metre taller than the actual jump, and only five years old to boot, and had 50kg of tightly-clinging-on rider on top, I think she did great. Way to go Arwen.

Thank You Sir for the horses You made out of nothing. For Arwen the patient and Thunder the gentle and Skye the fearless, I'll never be able to thank You enough. And for the parents who make it all possible, who love, who still know how to dream, thank You. And for the sister who shares them with me with her cheeky courage, thank You.