summer of fun - denmark 2013!

we've had an actual warm, sunny summer this year, so i thought i'd share some photos of what we've (and by we i mean mostly sabin) have been up to. most of them are on facebook as well, but i wasn't sure how often you checked there. sabin's spent loads of time on the trampoline with friends. they actually set up the tripod and took these jump shots of themselves!

not all of the timing was perfect, but i love how they jumped out of the shot on this one, so i had to share it anyway.

they took a lot of photos of one another. i'm not sure where these sunglasses came from. i suspect they were left here by big sister mathilde.

sabin's got crazy pink and purple tips colored on her hair. it's been super cute, tho' she says she wants to go back to her normal color for the start of school. after all the sunshine, it's faded quite a lot since this shot was taken a few weeks ago.

the girls are crazy for boy band one direction. we've actually bought tickets for a concert in england next may. we had to buy them more than a year ahead of time!

we have thoroughly enjoyed molly's kittens and molly recovered amazingly from her mastitis. we got the most amazing honey medicine from the vet and it was practically miraculous how quickly it healed her sore.

we had time to visit friends and hang out in a colorful hammock.

we moved matilde to a stable that's very close to our house (sabin could bike over there) and she got to spent july out on grass in the pasture. she is transformed into a relaxed, sweet horse. our shoer has been on vacation, but she really, really needs new shoes!

sabin spent a beautiful, sunny afternoon in the garden, tie-dyeing everything she could lay her hands on...shoes, shorts, tops...we're all rainbows now!

she transformed a plain white pair of vans into fabulous rainbows.

here they're almost done.

we had a nice, relaxed ride on matilde on a sunny, summer day. the flies got very, very bad after this, both regular flies and nasty biting horse flies, so we haven't really ridden since (she also threw a shoe and the others were getting loose, so we're waiting for the shoer as well). the horse seems very happy to have time off anyway, so it's all good.

another afternoon, we took easels out and painted in the garden. we were so fortunate to have absolutely gorgeous weather. it made for loads of strawberries as well - our plants produced for at least a month. i made jam and loads of strawberry juice and froze quite a lot for smoothies too.

sabin has, to my great delight, spent lots of time with the camera. she wants to switch lenses for different purposes and knows how to select aperture and ISO and she frequently uses the tripod and sets a timer on the camera. she's a budding photographer, for sure.

she got creative with fabric and made herself some hairbows. this one is my favorite, tho' she made herself a whole wardrobe of them.

i couldn't resist one kitten shot from today - this is ellie and frieda. ellie will go to her new home tomorrow - an old colleague of mine wants her and they're very excited about having a cat. frieda, we're keeping - she's a little molly and my best little buddy. they're exceptional kittens, thanks to having been at least partially bottle fed for a couple of weeks while molly was sick. they love people.

happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear mom (to be sung)

a string of happy memories from last summer, in honor of mom's birthday. we're dreaming of sunshine, as we wait for spring to happen. and looking fondly back on fun had on horseback, in the water and in haunted houses last summer. mom, i hope you have a wonderful day and we wish we were there to celebrate with you!!

matilde's mysterious injury

a week and a half ago, we loaded matilde up to take her to sabin's lesson. everything was fine. we got there, saddled her up and began to warm her up. it was at that point we discovered, much to our dismay, that she was limping in the left front at the trot.

that day, both sabin's trainer and i felt her leg and couldn't find anything wrong. there was a strip of mud (it's VERY muddy these days) on her leg that i had had trouble brushing off and i thought she had scraped off the fur in that spot. there was no swelling and no hot spots. and she wasn't lame at the walk.

i thought she's just bumped herself somehow, bruised something and needed a few days off. but the next day, when they went to turn her out at the stable, they noticed that her leg was all swollen. jytte ran her hand down the leg and it came up quite bloody and she noticed a gaping hole. she called me immediately and then i called the vet. he came out and put three stitches in the gaping hole and bandaged up her leg.

she was heavily dosed with antibiotics (the swelling that day was pretty serious and he couldn't see exactly what was wrong with her) and gave her a 5-day course of antibiotic paste. we were pretty shocked because there had been no hole and no sign of anything (not even the scraped-off hide i had thought was there) the night before. when we got back from her lesson, we soaked her leg in a bucket of warm, soapy water and there was nothing. matilde likes those soaks - it's like a horse spa treatment.

the vet thought she must have had a sliver of some sort in there and it got infected and finally burst out on friday morning, the day after she showed the lameness. it is so strange because there really was no sign of anything - no heat and no swelling on thursday at the lesson, no sign by the lameness, which was actually quite slight (tho' bad enough that we didn't have our lesson).

already the day after she got her stitches, the swelling was completely down and she was on the mend. we've been rewrapping and protecting the wound for 10 days now and keeping her out of the muddy paddock and she will have her stitches out tomorrow. it's so muddy and horrible outside that poor matilde has only been turned out briefly in the indoor arena for 10 days now. the first thing she does is roll, my how she loves that.

the wound is healing nicely, as you can see in these progressive shots. but then last thursday, i noticed some swelling on her leg. and yesterday, a new spot opened up (tho' not so dramatically as the first - and not requiring stitches) and it was bleeding and weeping fluid. this is such a mysterious injury, i don't know what to make of it.

the new spot is lower down and more on the front of her leg, down just above her ankle. it was much better today and no longer weeping or bleeding. the vet will come tomorrow and take out her stitches and look at the new spot. we don't know what she might have gotten into - some kind of slivers or splinters, tho' there was nothing visible in her field or her stall. it's really a mystery and she's not talking.

you can see a little bump of swelling there on the front of her cannon bone. she's still not lame at the walk, but is a bit tender and favoring it at the trot.

she has no trouble rolling with great relish. she loves to roll so much it almost makes me want to roll as well.

the swelling on the front was mostly down today and it was no longer weeping any fluids or blood. but we'll see what the vet says tomorrow.

in the photos, i can see a sort of u-shaped mark there where the blood was coming from. i wasn't really able to see looking at it in person. i wonder if she somehow hit herself on something (something we can't see). she doesn't even have another horse next to her anymore, so i can't see what she could have done to herself in her stall.

she's taking the whole thing quite well, enjoying standing in the barn alone (she actually wishes there were no other horses), munching hay and being pampered. but i do wish she'd tell us what happened.

members only

there was a horse show for members only at our riding club today. sabin entered two dressage classes and got second place in both! in the first, she got 2nd of 11 and in the second one, second of 9. i was so proud of her and it was a great stride forward for her confidence! in denmark, red is first place and blue is second, so this may look like a first place to you, but it's actually second place. we weaved matilde's mane like we did spirit's at the windy hills show. everyone thought it looked awesome! all those massages for the horse and all those lessons are paying off at last!