About me!

[bftlovesRDA]

Thanks for the story about Jade - what a special horse! Glad you had 10 years with that beautiful Champion Horse!

[cmbj67]

Thanks Stoneridge, they are all interesting stories, keep writing

[Stoneridge]

Addy & Cyan

(Sorry, I have looked everywhere for a photo of these two and I don't have one at all so you will have to use your imagination)

There was one particular mare that we had who was quite a handful at the best of times. She didn’t believe that anyone had the right to catch her, approach her or even so much as look at her, in hindsight she could be somewhat on the wild side, she had a nasty temper to go along with it as well, so much so that nobody would handle her at all and it was all left up to me.

My mother and I purchased this mare with a two day old foal at foot. She was named Adeline, Addy for short and we named her colt foal Stoneridge’s Cyan. He was quite a stunning little guy with absolutely no markings of any kind on him at all, completely jet black like his mum. We only had them for one day and during that day I noticed that he didn’t play with the other foals which we had at the time, in fact what he was doing all day long was just standing there and occasionally attempting to follow his mother around. This is not normal at all, he should have been bouncing around like an idiot as the other foals were doing and demanding milk from his mum. Instead his head was down and he seemed to want to eat grass. This was very odd and somewhat disturbing because he normally wouldn’t even know what grass is at two days old.

I decided to phone an equine specialist vet that I knew of and I explained what Cyan was doing. He said that it was worrying and that he would come straight out and see if he could figure out what was going on. His prognosis was not good at all, Cyan had septicemia, (basically blood poisoning). This can happen if a mare has a foal in unsterile conditions and the umbilical is not treated correctly upon birth. We never foaled Addy so we had no idea what the conditions were like when she gave birth or what took place immediately afterwards. My vet gave Cyan a five percent chance of survival, and then he did something which even shocked me. He picked up some horse droppings that were in the paddock and threw them into our horse’s nice crisp clean drinking water. It was all I could muster to not swear at him and ask him what the hell he was doing. As it turns out when it was explained to me, the foal needs bacteria, in order to do this in a screaming hurry is to do exactly what Phil did as the droppings were from healthy horses. I was still shocked! From there I had to get hold of as much full strength acidophilus yoghurt that I could get my hands on and a huge syringe. The yoghurt contains living bacteria as well as a food source, nowhere near as good as what he could get from his mother but I had to give it a shot. Every hour on the hour I was syringing this yoghurt into this small foal and he didn’t like it one little bit, I actually don’t blame him as it was horrible stuff. The main idea was to give him a lining in his stomach so that he could drink milk, he had zero suck reflex because he was so ill, basically starving to death even at a couple of days old. I persevered and we took it in turns to come home from work as soon as we got breaks to make sure he got as much yoghurt as we could give him.

Phil (my vet) was also popping in at our farm from time to time whenever he had any free time and was in the area. Day by day Cyan’s chances of survival increased, he eventually regained his reflexes and after several weeks his chances had increased to fifty percent.

Months later down the track I can remember Phil one day shaking his head at me and telling me that he never thought Cyan would make it even from a veterinarian perspective. He called me something along the lines of a persistent little bugger and I in turn told him to never tell me there is no chance or that I can’t. Pretty much those are two of the worst things that you could actually say to me. I have no recollection of how many people have said that to me and every time I have proved them wrong…. And I’m proud to have done it every time!

(I hope some of you are gaining insight with my little life stories and hopefully or maybe even learning a thing or too ~ Learning can be a long hard road to travel but it's so exciting and interesting along the way.)

Personally I yearn for knowledge and experiences, I just cannot get enough when I get curious and even better than that is being able to pass on what I know or learn.

T

[Stoneridge]

Surprisingly, I get all the great things to sort out and fix. God knows why it’s always me, whenever there is an issue of any sort people have this shocking habit of looking straight at me.

This is generally followed by my “Oh No!” “What are you all looking at me for……well don’t” I’ve even heard many a friend or family member state to someone else “not to worry, Tracy will sort it for you” This covers, animals, computers, building, broken things, talking to people to sort out a problem and the list goes on even my employer does this to me.

In general I retaliate with I’m not friggin wonder woman you know! Mind you that never works in my favour and I am normally in the thick of everything asking myself “Why me!”

I should really start acting dumb, that way I’m reasonably sure that I would have such a peaceful existence, I think!

Don't you just want to say some days ~ "Someone please hide me"

T

[cmbj67]

So you're a sort of MacGyver? You've come to the right place

I don't think that acting dumb is a good idea, it would be peaceful but you wouldn't have the satisfaction to have been helpful.
But I can understand that you want to hide sometimes.

[Stoneridge]

Just another day in paradise.

So another day begins, it was a fairly nice looking Sunday morning outside and I had just finished a lovely coffee and decided to open my dining room curtains to let the sunshine in. Big Mistake!

I grabbed hold of the pull cord on the right hand side and before I knew what was happening three quarters of the track and curtains fell on top of me. The other side was just hanging on.

The bracket screws had been put into the gib board on their own, no anchoring system of any kind and my curtains exceed 5 metres in width. Whoever put those tiny screws into the gib board and figured that they would hold must have been one sandwich short of a picnic. And to be honest I should have checked the stability of the track a long time ago, so my fault as well really.

So I thought, ok great start to my day I will just jump up onto one of my dining room chairs and secure it as best I could and then go and get a drill, some serious ramset wall anchors and secure it so that never happens again.

In my divine wisdom I jumped up onto one of my dining chairs while holding the track and curtains up to stop them from bending. I grabbed hold of the side frame on my window, a mere 20mm of timber if I was lucky.

The next thing I can remember is my grip on the side of the window slipped and I went backwards still holding the track and curtain with my leg going straight through one of the rungs on my colonial dining chair, I went straight backwards moving my couch and side table along the way. I heard both my cat and dog take off with fright as I came crashing down.

I got to my feet and felt excruciating pain coming from my left leg, my whole left shin from my knee down to my ankle had been stripped of skin, and the pain was more than intense, I lifted my foot off of the floor as the pain was unbearable. I looked around to see if my fur babies were ok and they were now both sitting there staring at me as if I had gone completely mad. I cannot describe the pain I was feeling at this point in time but it was all I could muster not to scream. So with me being me I just held myself up by way of my kitchen bench and put the jug on for another coffee, I figured that was bound to help while I was contemplating how on earth am I going to get out of this one if I am unable to drive.

I finally managed to hobble to a chair wondering if I had broken my leg or was it just that I had really bruised my shin bone and lost skin while I was at it. I grabbed a tea towel and soaked it in cold water but that was also a bit too much to bear at that point in time, I kept putting it on my leg and wincing every time I did so. After about 20 minutes I was able to keep it there for a little while.

I glanced at my curtain track just hanging there precariously about to rip out from the other side of the wall and I figured that come hell or high water I need to fix this right now. I managed to get hold of some tools that I keep in the house and I drilled the pilot holes for the anchors then set them with the track bracket in place, doing all of this on one leg as I still couldn’t put my left leg down. Success, it held and was perfect, no way was that going to come down again, you could pretty much swing on that bracket now and it won’t budge.

I hobbled back to my chair and surveyed the damage that I had created upon myself, it was not looking good. My leg was beginning to change colour and swell, I must have really taken a beating. But not to be deterred I just figured I would take it a bit easy for the rest of the day and only do housework instead of something else where I might try and kill myself in the process.

So Monday is here and I’m pleased to say that I don’t think I have broken anything, however my right leg and my back are killing me today. The good part is that the pain I am still feeling with my left leg really is out doing the rest of the pain that I am feeling, so that’s a good thing I reckon. And my curtain’s are still in place.

People, do yourselves a favour and don’t try this one, it’s not a great end result.

T

[cmbj67]

Ok, I won't.
I'm sorry to hear about your leg (and back and other leg) . I'm glad you didn't break a bone
I hope you will recover soon.

[bftlovesRDA]

Wow - it hurt just to read your account of this event! Hope things are continuing to heal and the pain is easing. And take care and you're right - people shouldn't try that feat of skill and daring. I am amazed that you went back to that window to fix everything even after your injury. That took gumption. But am glad you didn't break anything.

Rest if you can and heal some more.

[Stoneridge]

Thanks All. I'm absolutely fine, the pain is subsiding and I can laugh about it now. I must be made of rubber haha. Yep was more important to me to fix the darned thing than worry about myself at the time.

T

[Stoneridge]

The Tornado.

Ok folks this was a really scary one and one which I would never want to go through again, nor would I ever want anyone to experience this first hand.

We had quite a stormy week on the farm and I’m quite sure the animals were as over it all as much as myself and my parents were. It’s hard work when the weather is bad and you cannot just stay inside the house and say never mind the animals will be ok, not so, they still have to be checked, fed, water supply checked, paddocks checked for anything foreign in there, more so when the weather is bad. If anything there is more work to do in these instances.

My mother and myself had not long got home from work, it was a Wednesday afternoon and my father was getting ready for his graveyard nightshift as a security guard, he would soon be gone and not back home until about 6am the next morning so there would just be myself and my mum at home.

The weather was really picking up momentum outside and I told my mother that I was going to move our stallion from the paddock behind the stables and put him into the paddock outside our kitchen which would give us a good view of him and he would be safer there for the night. All of our other horses were fine as they were in our West paddock which was relatively sheltered.

We checked all of the other animals, fed them, made sure their covers were secure and that the paddocks were all looking safe, all was well and they all seemed to be quite content given the horrid weather.

Around 10pm we decided that we should get some sleep as we had work the next day. My mother put our Border Collie (Gypsy) in her run up the back beside the stable block and I put our two cats (Jaspee & Sharma) in the cattery for the night on the other side.

We only had one Border Collie (dog - Gypsy) at that stage but had purchased another one (Tammy) which we were driving up north on the pending weekend to collect. My dad had already made her a kennel to match Gypsy’s one and they had a huge dog run which was 4 metres by 4 metres in size, it was constructed of 100mm solid posts with hurricane mesh sides and bolted together, the roof was solid corrugated iron and it was really sheltered and snug in there. If it ever needed moving then we would require about 8 men to move it, it was as solid as a rock.

Midnight came around and we were woken up with a start, something really bad was happening outside, we could hear crashing and trees breaking. We both grabbed our gumboots and torches and rushed outside to see what on earth was going on. When we stepped outside the back door we were standing in about 2 feet of water, the cattery which had our two cats in it was over on its side and submerged in water, Jaspee was missing and Sharma was trying desperately to keep his head above water, I tried in vain to open the cattery door but it was jammed tight, I shouted over the rain and wind to my mother to go and grab a sledge hammer out of the garage, she didn’t know what that was so I just yelled back, get the biggest and heaviest hammer that you can carry. She came back with the sledge hammer that I was after and I began smashing the door in. We got Sharma out and pretty much threw him inside the house soaking wet and shivering with the cold.

I said to my mother that we need to check if Gypsy was ok, so we went around the corner of the house and to our horror the dog pen and kennels were gone, there was absolutely nothing left, Gypsy was gone, we called out to her but there was nothing at all. We were soaked at this stage and battling the wind to even stand up straight, we decided to head back inside and dry off a bit. When we got inside the house I glanced at the lounge ranch slider and who happened to be there staring back at me but Gypsy and Jaspee, our missing cat and dog. They were really shaken up and freezing cold, we got them inside the house and I lit the fire while my mother went and got some towels so that we could dry them all off a bit. We spent the rest of the night waiting for daylight to be able to assess the damage.

What had happened was that a tornado had hit and split at the garage end of the house and tunneled down both sides of the house, taking out the cattery, dog pen, damaging the roof of the stables and the post and rail fencing behind it. It then threw debris right into the paddock where I had earlier moved our stallion from; he would have been killed if the dog pen had of hit him.

The morning shed light on the damage, the cattery was pretty much firewood as I had done a lot of damage trying to get Sharma out, the dog pen had been lifted to the top of the stable block, taken out the flashing at the top of the stable roof and then thrown the dog pen and kennels straight through our stallions paddock and a further 50 metres onto our neighbour’s farm. There was basically nothing left of it, it was pretty much kindling, even the 10 inch bolts that were holding the whole thing together were bent like toothpicks and the roof was gone.

Later in the morning we went to check on our neighbour’s and see if they were all ok. The neighbour on our left had power lines arcing on their front lawn and their fencing was pulled out and strewn all over the place, across the road their firewood had been thrown all over their roof and down the road at Alistair’s house his half round barn was gone. From what we could determine nobody in our neighbourhood had suffered any injuries of any kind and neither did any stock that anyone had. There was just a massive amount of repairs and clean up that would have to be done all over the place and quite a few insurance claims, including our own.

My father was astounded when he got home as he had been working in the City and had no idea what was going on, he knew the weather was bad outside but he didn’t in his wildest dreams imagine that we would be hit with a tornado overnight. Neither did we and none of us ever want to go through that one again.

We ended up being on the radio that day on the daily news and when we went to work the following day a lot of our co-workers had heard all about it and knew what was going on. Our insurance assessors came out and surveyed the damage to our farm, buildings etc and they came up with the conclusion that it must have hit our garage and somehow split taking out anything in its path either side of our house, their assessment was that it must not have been that much of a powerful one, the stables were relatively undamaged because they were in line with the house and somewhat sheltered, but either side of the house is where the Dog Pen and Cattery suffered the most. All of which were rebuilt and the stable roof was repaired as well.

Tornados are not a common occurrence in New Zealand, if I never see another one in my lifetime then I will be a happy camper! I have seen a few tiny little dust devils which are capable of picking up an empty plastic plant pot and swirling it around for a little while, those are cute, tornados are not! Mother Nature sure can have some fury when agitated.



T