Bad timing Zippy!
Oh dear. Zippy coughed four times this morning. I do hope to goodness that I have not delivered Tia to a new yard only to start coughing and infecting the other residents :-((( Looking on the plus side, Zippy has always coughed occasionally after eating, so maybe it was just a bit more than usual of the same? I thought that 16 days was a long enough time for them to catch it if they were going to. I have my fingers crossed.
Zippy's cut leg is responding magnificently to the Aloe Vera. It's clean and closing in from the sides and clearly reducing the swelling of the fetlock as well. I think we have got away with that one, thankfully.
I took Jazz out again today and there is no doubt that his behaviour is improving. He is easy enough to control in the pelham with a curb chain, but he just seems like he simply cannot resist trying his luck at turning to go home. It's now a very half hearted try, and his sudden stops last all of 5 seconds before he walks off again, but he still does it. It's like the cats treading, he just doesn't seem to be able to stop himself !! I asked him "why do you do that?" and he said "I don't know, I just have to!".
I rode Tetley. Now I am REALLY CROSS. I spent SIX YEARS building him up into a magnificently muscled athlete, and in a matter of weeks THAT STUPID GIRL Victoria Brown has reduced him to a horse who doesn't have the strength to keep his front legs connected properly with the back ones. He was so weak that I was shocked. His back actually sank as I sat on him (I weigh a lot more than Mary Lou!). I rode him in a gentle walk for 15 minutes, turning and bending. By the end of it he was able to flex his neck and start to bring his back up, and when I released the reins he stretched down and did a lovely swinging walk. I will build up the work gradually from now on. When I got off, he looked so pleased with himself that we had been working, he's always thrived on it.
Now, to Tetley's future. I have been very worried about Tetley's future. We have all been though a terrible time, emotionally, physically, and also financially (it has cost nearly £1000 to rescue him). I certainly couldn't face that again. The more I thought about what I want for him, the more obvious it became that one person has already proved that they have everything that I could hope for - a deep and abiding love for him; an appreciation of what he can teach her; an acceptance of his physical limitations with his hocks, and more. What's more, that person paid significant amounts of money to lease him from Victoria when she could not ride him, simply so that she could be there for him and try to get him fed. Could anyone have done any more to prove that she loves him than Mary Lou? So, I have decided to give him to Mary Lou to own. We will have him here for another four weeks until we have built him back up, and then I am going to deliver him to a yard in Cambridge where Allan has spent a couple of hours with the owner, and very much liked what he saw and heard - a true horsewoman. I'm so pleased that Mary Lou has felt able to take on the commitment of owning Tetley full time. I hope that you will be too.
C
posted by cptrayes @ 3:43 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Three cheers for Mary Lou and Tetley! This is wonderful news and what may well be a perfect ending to Tetley's odyssey. You are right. There is no one besides you who deserves him more. A big thumbs up on this one.
Three jeers for v. I have felt that disconnection when one of my horses was "let go" for too long. The only consolation is that because of all of Tetley's previous training, you have the tools to bring him around again as he gets stronger. Poor fellow probably wanted to do it so right for you and just couldn't. How nice to hear the ride ended on a happy note for him.
A jeer and quarter for Jazz and a cheer and three-quarters. The jeer for still trying to stop and the cheers for going on again so quickly. He needs to get over this so he won't be "just have to stop" on the cross country. *G*
Do I cheer or jeer for Zip? The leg is well, the cough is not, but perhaps it was just an after-feed thing. I hope. Why is owning horses never simple? *sigh*
A lovely reward for Mary Lou's tenacity in finding you and alerting you to the situation and for her love of him!
Nice!
I started leasing Tetley in early November and continued right up until Caroline and Allan rescued him on the 13th of Feb. In that time I only had about a month of normal riding. By early December he was so congested from a respiratory virus that he couldn't even trot. Then he suffered dramatic weight loss in early January as a direct result of living out in a field 24/7 with no food, except when I came out to ride and feed. (At the time I didn't realize that I was the only one to feed him.) Thus from early Dec I was reduced to riding only for the purposes of stretching him and providing the companionship he clearly thrived on.
In that first month I came to realize what a kind, brave, wise, people loving horse he is. He has a work ethic that would put most of us to shame.
Perhaps victoria feels that she is a wise business person, who was willing to take advantage of a tried and true horse lover. I never looked at my loan contract but I'll bet that her part of the loan contract was to provide a healthy horse, not the emaciated, coughing nag he turned into. What a success she is - getting the loan fee from me under these circumstances. That's at least £500 she gained unethically. She leased out the horse you all saw in this blog for £250/mo! Is that ethical? It is pure and simple greed. So shameful. I gave her every chance to do this right. And at each crossroad she chose the path of selfishness and greed, at the expense of a beautiful animal who bears her no malice. It is a fact that it's not the first time. In fact, her attitude towards animals and people guarantees that it will continue to happen despite helping hands stretched out to her. Repossessing Tetley wasn't cheap either. More shame on victoria, making money on a suffering animal.
I have now joined an elite group of caring folks who have been evicted from Beckbrook. That was made clear the evening that simon cursed at me and shoved me around, desperate to get me off of his property.
I am truly honored to become Tetley's owner. To think that I can care for him properly and openly is a privilege I hardly dared dream of. Those of you that know me are cheering, I can hear!!!
Thank you Caroline and Allan. None of us will ever forget these times.
wondered why we hadn't heard further from you mary lou, you clearly cared a lot about him!
now, what we will want is you to start a blog about him
i was thinking, could we have a blog ring, like people have web rings?
That was beautifully written Mary Lou..Tetley is a wonderfull horse in all ways and he deserves the very best.
Now im all mad again thinking about what a deceitfull/sly person Victoria is(thats putting it politely).
The Victoria escapade has made me question peoples motives and if they are genuine..when I think back to how 'excited' she sounded it makes me sick!
But you really did bust a gut for him,trying to intervene when you were dealing with unpleasant, greedy people then tracking Caroline and Allan down...so congratulations all the best to you and most importantly Tetley!
Missed out on the Tia news,been working overtime all weekend :(, it sounds like the perfect home for her.
Nicola
ps Mandeigh..ive met superhubby ;)!
Agree with Claire re the blog!
Do you know, Superhubby and I have wracked our brains working out how Victoria fooled us. For goodness sake, I'm a Magistrate! I don't fall for lies very easily. And neither does SH. But she was SO plausible. She came 230 miles to see him. I never imagined that a "dealer" type person would travel all that way. She brought a mass of photos of an immaculate yard (and it is!). She brought one of her own liveries, who was a nice woman. She said all the right things both on the day and in half a dozen phone calls that we had about him. She gladly signed the contract (and broke it less than 3 weeks later!). She got a racehorse transporter to pick him up to save him travelling all that way in her trailer. She sent flowers on the day he left, saying "he will be loved" (Ha!) The only conclusion we can come to is that as far as she was concerned, she wasn't lying. She seems to believe her own version of the truth which bears no relation to reality. Even in the card that she left me when I picked him up, she says that everything Mary Lou told me was lies. But it finishes up "the only good thing about him being with you is that Mary Lou can't be near him". What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall when she hears that Mary Lou now owns him.
C.
Thank you Jean, Nicola, Ann, Mandeigh and Claire. Any of you would have done the same thing. I really had nothing to lose. The most logical explanation is that v is self delusionsal and is determined to stay so. As for the fly on the wall, I have wished many a time I was one.
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