I spoke too soon

I spoke too soon!

The brood mare plan didn’t quite work out, and I am largely to blame.

Initially everything was great, Katie’s fields are lovely, Sofie seemed happy in the fields. She wasn’t particularly impressed with the stallion, who bless him is only a baby, she chased him off every time he tried to say hello. Katie was giving me regular updates and her boyfriend was enjoying the quiet rides they were going on. Awesome.

I missed Sofie terribly. Giving her up was really hard. I tried to unsubscribe to all my horsey facebook groups as every horse that appeared just reminded me what I had lost. Unfortunately a lot of my friends are horsey friends so this made it almost impossible to remove horses altogether. I tried occupying my time with gardening and baby prep, but my heart wasn’t in it. In fact, horrid it is to admit, I have started to resent baby for costing me Sofie. Turns out I can give up my body, my career, my social life, alcohol, food, privacy without batting an eye… but giving up Sofie is more difficult than all those things together. Still needs must, and baring a weekly visit I was slowly getting used to life sans horses.

But then her feet started cracking, Katie got them checked by her farrier who said they are shockingly short and she is walking entirely on her soles. This is pretty upsetting to hear, especially when I thought her feet were doing pretty well when I dropped her off. Problem is, despite reading several books on farriery and hoof care and subscribing to the foot dissection blog channels – yup I am that odd, I didn’t really feel like I knew enough to doubt the farrier. There is clearly a difference in opinion between the farrier and my trimmer, but I didn’t feel qualified to say who was right either way. Katie did offer for me to talk to the farrier about this, but given I didn’t feel like I had suffient knowledge and knowing it would stress me out I declined. I am meant to be doing my outmost to not be stressed right now after all. I tried to be rational, Sofie will be the best judge of who is right. If she seems better with the farrier great, if she seems worse I will ask to get the trimmer back. That’s sensible right? Still, niggling anxiety persisted, especially given her previous lameness.

On top of this her sweet itch seemed to be starting.

I then went on holiday, tried to relax and forget about my Sofie worries, tried not to think about Sofie – failed miserably on both accounts. I was very excited to see her when I got back. Alas when I went to see her after my two week break she had sweet itch sores on her face, neck, tail and stomark. Her lovely mane had gone. She had put on weight and the feet had cracked further.

I tried not to panic. I went home and tried to think of other things, but I couldn’t stop fretting. I tried to right a list of possibly solutions with pros and cons to encourage myself to be rational. I promised myself not to have a knee jerk reaction to the situation. I tried talking to friends but still couldn’t quash my anxiety.

I didn’t want to bug Katie about it. We had already discussed the sweetitch, Katie was already treating it daily and explained that rugs were a bad idea when out with a stallion and I was already way overstepping as an owner of a horse on full loan. Also I knew there wasn’t much more she could do about it, other than removing Sofie from the stallion so she could wear her rugs… but that somewhat defeats the purpose of a broodmare home.

I then did a very silly thing. By Sunday evening I still couldn’t stop fretting so I thought – why not consult the internet? NEVER CONSULT THE INTERNET! I am part of a really friendly close fb group called haffy addicts and I naïvely thought an independent view who didn’t know me or Katie might help me find a sensible solution to the situation. I thought it would be reasonably anonymous and would not come up on my fb feed as it is a closed group. NOTHING ON FB IS PRIVATE. So guess what, I posted my concerns, Katie saw the post and understandably was very upset and asked me to collect Sofie by the end of the week.

So I was a nob and utterly blew a lovely home for Sofie, screwed myself and nick financially and endangered my babys health (via my stress levels – haven’t slept since) and upset Katie, all because I could not let go. Fan-bloody-tastic.