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THE MONTHLY MUSTER
April/ May Newsletter

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Hello, and welcome back to the blog for the April/ May Monthly Muster. I’m a bit late to write these given it is now June, but there has been a lot going on and so I didn’t get much of a chance to write. Does anyone else feel their life is constantly changing direction? Just me?

Personal Updates

From the last time I wrote, I have moved house, Harry has been on lease and I have been offered a new job to start in the new term. In addition to that, there has been another death in my family. My Pops (grandfather) passed away on Monday 10th June . It is heartbreaking to not be at home to be around family during this time. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been long since I went back for my Grans’ funeral and so at present, it is not feasible for me to be heading home. It’s not been an easy time to say the least.

Where to start…

Well, perhaps I will start on my birthday which was the 22nd April- this was the day we got accepted for our lovely new home. We decided not to renew our lease at our last apartment and instead find a house in a different area where we can feel more settled until we are ready to buy. We are now in a quiet, leafy green neighbourhood and I am absolutely in love with this house. It really is the dream house and it is such a pleasure to live here. I am looking forward to all the memories we can make in this home.

The trouble at the moment is that this house is on the north side of Brisbane and my job is on the south side (quite far down). As a result, my commute is pretty monumental. It’s not sustainable, and we always said if we moved to the north, I would move jobs. And move jobs I will do. I was offered a position in a small primary school just ten minutes from our house. I start in the new term in July.

As you can imagine, the last 6 weeks or so have been full on; moving house, interviewing for a new job, setting up a home, driving copious amounts and battling the question ‘to give up horses or to not give up horses’.

There are many reasons why I was battling this question that I won’t go into depth with on my blog, but I was seriously thinking about it. Luckily, throughout this turbulent time, Harry was out on lease to a wonderful family at the agistment where I keep him. They have been amazing in looking after him and I am so grateful to have had the breathing space to deal with all of the other things going on.

Something that has resonated with me recently is a piece of advice from the author Elizabeth Gilbert. She explained that if you step away from something that takes up a large portion of your life and you find it nearly impossible to stay away because you miss it so much, you are absolutely doing the right thing. This seems to be my relationship with horses. There has been a couple of times now where I have tried to step away and I make it to the 6 week mark before I naturally start to seek it again. Sometimes I wish I didn’t. Sometimes I wish I was a ‘normal person’ with a ‘normal, inexpensive, less time consuming hobby’, but that’s not me apparently. Then I think, how lucky am I to have something that I am truly passionate about. Horses are a gift. I need to cherish them more.

And so, I am going to be moving Harry up to a new agistment near my home in the coming weeks. I do still have the plan to find a new home for Harry, though not to give up horses entirely this time. Harry is the MOST chilled out, easy going horse I have ever owned and I love him dearly, but my goodness is he hard work. He is a thoroughbred after all, and I am thinking something lower maintenance might fit the busyness of my lifestyle more.

That is not to say things might work out differently for Harry in a different location. We will see. My plan is to bring him up to the new place, settle him in, get him fit and go from there. Who knows what will happen.

Training updates

As you would expect, I have not been working with Harry and so I don’t have any training updates as such. However, I did get the opportunity to see him working a couple of weekends ago which was good for me to see. He seems to be happy in his work and really just needs some more fitness.

Also, for the first time since buying him, I can say that he is looking good. He is slowly gaining a bit of muscle and is finally at a weight I am happy with.

A brief interlude:
Harry gets stuck in a creek

I was driving to work and was 56 minutes into my commute when I got a call from the family who lease Harry telling me he was stuck in the creek. After a quick call to my boss saying rather frantically “my horse is stuck in a creek, I need to go” I turned around and headed back up another 45 minutes to reach Harry’s agistment.
When I arrived, the fire fighters were already there working on getting Harry out. Harry was lying down towards the edge of the creek, shaking like a leaf, and my first thought was that he looked so tiny. He’s a big horse- around 16.2/ 16.3hh and he looked so little. He let his neck fall to the ground and he had no energy. He was giving up. The vet soon arrived and gave him a concentrated steroid injection to help give him a bit of energy but he still had to be dragged out. The amazing fire fighters and other agistees helping did an amazing job and I am so grateful to them. They had straps strategically placed around Harry’s body and attached to a 4×4. With that, he was dragged out. He still did not get up. It took a lot of rocking back and forth and encouragement before Harry shakily made it to his feet.
It was then time to get him warmed up and cleaned off. His temperature had dropped to 35 degrees celsius and so it was important to get him warmed as quickly as we could. Once he was stabilised and checked over by the vet, we then spent some time getting him cleaned up and noted any cuts or scrapes. He had a number of them on his legs which all required cleaning. After about 2 hours, Harry was back to his normal self. It was like it never happened. He’s really one of a kind, totally not phased by his near death experience and more concerned with if he was going to get more hay or not!

This was an event that happened, amongst the other chaos. Luckily, Harry is completely fine and though he still has some healing cuts, he is back to work and back to normal.

I am looking forward to having my horse back and getting to work with him again. He was doing so well before all the moving/ creek diving. We did lots of hacking around the fields and transition work which he picked up like a dream.

At the new agistment, there is a 20×60 dressage arena which is UNBELIEVABLE! I am so so so looking forward to riding in this space. There are also many trails off into the woods to explore and there are jumps, cross country fences and a very interesting water jump (currently looks like a pond but I am assured it is not too deep!). It’s an exciting prospect and I am looking forward to giving Harry a bit of challenge. He’s such a sweetheart of a horse but he isn’t overly experienced in, well, anything! So, it will be great to expose him to some different things. I’d love to try him over a jump as well. I just have to work out how to rev him up enough so we don’t knock every single fence down! Maybe he’ll have a hidden talent or passion for jumping? (Perhaps wishful thinking but I’m rolling with it). Who knows!

Goals for June / July

Given that Harry won’t be joining me at the new agistment until pretty much the end of June, we don’t really have any goals for the month of June.

I thought I may as well add in my goals for July as there won’t be too much to write in the June Monthly Muster (I hope!).

When he does arrive, I will give him a couple of days to just settle in the field, get our stuff all organised and get to know some of the people at the yard. Then, I will start bringing him into work again.

By the end of July, I would love to:

So, though things are definitely hard at the moment, I am also excited to start riding my horse again and hopefully, finally, begin to feel settled in life down under.

Recommendations

Happy Horsing!