Friday Weather Watch

I can't believe it's Friday already!  I've had a crazy week, first there was the gargantuan dressage show that ran from 8.30am to 5.45pm on Sunday, which then ate into a lot of Monday as well, as I sorted out results and wrote up a report for the Irish Field.  My room-mate from college came to stay on Sunday night as well, which was great, but it added to to the general business of the day!

Anne and I have both been kept busy for the rest of the week, with therapeutic walking or working of the three barefoot horses, starting to weed and tidy up our vegetable gardens and I've even begun some house tidying in aniticipation of Christmas visitors.

Strawberry bed weeded and runners
set for next year

Anyway, here's this Friday's Weather Watch :

What's missing from these Yahoo! forecasts is the wind - it's still quite windy today (Friday) after yesterday's gale force conditions.  The Met Eireann forecast is a bit different, too, they are saying that the weather will improve a little from tomorrow.  We shall see....


Meanwhile Equine Preparations Continue....

Yesterday (Thursday) the weather was spectacularly foul.  All four horses were huddled on the dryish hard standing area, because that's best shelter from this wind and rain.

Anne: Gigi has been stumbling behind from time to time and at first I thought it was just laziness, but when the dentist was up to do her teeth, he had a quick feel of her back and discovered a tight spot behind the saddle. So an appointment was made with the chiropractor, Aine Dillon,  on what turned out to be one of the worst days weatherwise we have had for a while. Having battled with a 12 foot solid wooden gate, in gale force winds, doing a drive and dash with the trailer before it blew shut again, we reached the safety of the yard.

Gigi quietly succumbed to an examination while munching on a huge pile of haylage.  I'll say this for my mare, as long as there is food and company, she is quite happy.  She had quite a few problems, neck, back and pelvis all needed manipulating, and she has some heat in her hocks, which I am just hoping is due to the hoof trim, and a different alignment of her back legs.

So a check of the saddle is called for, and hopefully I can get it fixed before the departure.

Martine: The day was so awful that comfort food was called for, so I made a great big pot of potato and jalapeno soup - yum!  It warmed us all up no end.

Later in the afternoon, Dave-the-Vet came up to do routine flu vaccs for GiGi and Flurry.  He was also meant to bring the dental gag so he could check Aero and Flurry's teeth, but unfortunately he forgot it, so he'll be back tomorrow.

Flurry has awful teeth - if I'd known how bad they were I may not have bought him.  He is prone to diastemas, which is when there is a gap at the bottom of two teeth.  Food matter gets wedged in the gap, rots and causes infection - imagine a piece of steak stuck between your teeth for weeks and you get the idea.  The treatment is a General Anaesthetic job - knock out the horse and carefully open up the diastema from top to bottom by means of judicious drilling, rounding off the edges, so that food can just pass through and will no longer cause infection.

So far, Flurry has had to go through this twice since I bought him - for four diastemas the first time and I think five the second time.  Thankfully we have a brilliant Veterinary practice locally, Tower Equine Hospital, whose head Vet, John Hyde, has a special interest in equine dentistry - he's done a great job each time.

I'm just hoping that there aren't any more diastemas threatening to cause trouble, but it's way more sensible to get him checked out now before we go than to risk having trouble with his teeth while we're in France.