So the good news is I may have found what has been the problem with my horse Tolsan - the bad news is finding what was wrong resulted in laminitis which could have been disastrous (for those that don't know laminitis is the early days of foundering!) My poor guy is now in a 'dry lot' or more correctly known right now as a 'mud lot' being fed only soaked hay and he has been banned from anything with sugar in it especially grass. This is particularly cruel as he is surrounded by green lush fields at the moment. Rather ironically it was potentially my 'track' system that I put in to avoid the grass that maybe did him in, as he got home from three days at the vets after being fasted for a ulcer scope and put on the track, which had loads of very short lawn like grass on it - and a few days later I come out to find a very uncomfortable horse who found it too painful to walk! So I have now sprayed all the grass on the track and am keeping them off it until there is just dirt pretty much. And yes - he did have a large ulcer, so I am treating him for that too. So - we may take a little longer to finish this place as I have spent all the money on vets and meds for him ha. He is walking fine now and I am thinking will probably be ok to get back to work in another week or so as its unlikely he's done any damage to his feet - I have been exercising him in hand a couple of times a day and he seems ok but under vet instructions he has one more week of 'confinement' to go. So currently my day has been consisting of getting up at 6 to feed him his first little breakfast - put a net of hay in to soak - back inside for a coffee - hour later feed him his proper breakfast along with his meds - pick up the poop from the night before - exercise him - get the next bag of hay in the soaker - maybe do something else for an hour - hang next bag and so on until the last bag goes up at 10pm at night when Ambre goes in with him to keep him company. So not surprisingly I don't get a heck of a lot else done at the moment!
But in other news we recently had our Dutch friends Anoushka and Esme come to visit for a couple of weeks. Esme is a very nice rider so she rode my horses a few times and they both wanted to do some outside stuff so we put them to work ha. Here is Es chipping away at the back of the house.
Some of this stuff is rock hard concrete - we will have to get the big guns out to get that off - ie Paul with a hammer drill! While they were here we took them for lunch at our favourite little Auberge in Nabirat. This place is amazing - just a husband and wife team (like most Auberges around here) they do a five course lunch for 13 euros including coffee and house wine - the price isn't so surprising but the food sure is! They make everything fresh using seasonal local food and I have to say this last meal was one of the best yet. Starts with soup - forgot to get photo but its a light vegie broth pretty much but seasoned really nicely. Next course she called a spinach pizza but was more of a tart and it had a really nice salad with it. I wanted to ask if I could just have seconds of this instead of the main - so good. Then it was a platter of roast pork and potatoes - followed by obligatory local cheese then the most delicious strawberry clafoutis with sorbet - this was the weekend before their village 'fete des fraises' - translates to Strawberry Fair - as there is a lot grown locally. Anyway here is some pics of the food.
As I write this Paul is in Monaco with a bunch of Belgian guys living it up in a mansion with a view over Monaco and the bay. It's a tough life for some! He rode down there on his old BMW with another friend who is into the same bikes - they took it pretty easy - According to Kurt's GpS they only averaged 50 km an hour for the trip which doesn't sound right but probably included coffee breaks ha. Here's a pic of him all packed up and dressed up about to leave.
Most of them went down to watch the Grand Prix but Paul's not that interested and went mainly for the ride down and back - they have also done a couple of rides in that area - up into the mountains and across to the Italian coast too. He's reporting back that its all a bit too touristy for his liking although he loved it up in the Alps.
Paul has not got a lot done on the outdoor area - although a few beams are up - instead of building work he has spent weeks pulling out the gearbox and transfer case of the Landy and replacing it with a higher ratio one or something. All I know is it now goes like a rocket or nearly ha - the difference is truly amazing. But anyway here is the 'gazebo' or whatever you want to call it as it is right now.
I am not sure how he managed to wrangle these things into place on his own without doing himself some major damage but he did. Here is a view with my fledgling vegie patch in the foreground. I currently have pototoes, onions, capsicum, spinach, lettuce and eggplant all in various stages of growth - I think I will be in trouble if they all make it to maturity - not sure there will be room for it all!
And here is a pic for my mum - when she was here a couple of years ago we made a flower bed and put in some very rough stone drywalls to outline it. Well Paul had been
stealing taking some of the nicer stone out of it and it was looking pretty sad - but he has now started to build a proper one which is looking good. Hopefully he can find enough stone to finish it!
Well I need to go and finish polishing my car - hopefully I have sold it - I am meeting someone from the Paris train at lunchtime who has a bank chq with him for it, so fingers crossed it will meet his expectations. I had been using Pauls Landy all the time so I decided I might as well sell my car and put the money to a little project I have in mind.. its horse related of course ha.
I just checked the forecast and it looks like we are in for more storms and rain - I really would like the sun to come back now. And Paul needs a dry day to get back from down South without getting too wet but it's not looking good for him at this stage. Oh well c'est la vie!
