Where to start...?
Oliver:
The office I work at, just so happens to be a house. In a neighborhood, in Lakewood.
I was leaving work on a Friday, or I thought I was leaving work. I walked out the door and to my left was this little white face staring at me. A cat.. great. I am so allergic to cats, but I am an animal lover through and through, so of course, I could NOT just leave him there alone and hungry. I came about inside and grabbed the only cat worthy thing we had in the cabinet for our lunch which was two cans of tuna and I fed them to him, gave him some water, said goodbye and finally went home, an hour later than I wanted to. I didn't know at this time if he was someones cat or if he was really a stray. I didn't get to close as I didn't want to bring any fleas home to Gucci, but he was purring away and trying to rub on me and talking to me. I came back to work Monday morning, and guess who was waiting for me? Yeah, that cat. So of course, me being who I am, I went out and stocked up on wet and dry cat food for this baby. Now assuming he was a stray because he was here waiting for more food after a long weekend of me not being there, so who knows if he even ate at all. I kept telling myself to just feed him and let him be, there was nothing more I could do for him. He was not a kitten, he was not neutered and again, I'm very allergic. So i continued on just feeding him for a few weeks, then feeding him turned into him coming into my office to eat and then he would sleep on a blanket at my feet all day. He knew when it was time for me to leave for the day and he would gracefully get up and go back outside to wait for me to come back the next morning. When I would leave on Fridays I would try and leave as much dry food as possible for him so he would have something while I wasn't here, but I'm sure that didn't work according to my plan considering our resident ground hog is fearless and quite fat. This whole ordeal went on for about 4 or 5 weeks before I noticed that he was limping. I finally got a closer look at his paws and his one paw had a cut at the top of it and the other had a chemical burn of some kind on his pad. I obviously saw that he was in pain and I tried not to worry to much about it, after all i still didn't know if he belonged to someone and was just coming to me for food or if he was really a stray, but either way he was not my cat to take care of. After a week or so of watching him limp, or walk or three legs, I caved. I came up with this plan, I was going to take him to the vet, get his paws fixed and then get him neutered and let him live his life at the barn free, fat and happy.
I made a vet appointment and I named him Oliver. Then of course things couldn't just go the way I had planned, it would be too easy. He came back FIV positive. Yes, I know that they can live with FIV, but under the right circumstances, which I did not have for this poor guy. I had already contacted rescues and shelters and tried to place him through friends, but nobody wanted a scruffy outside cat that was not fixed and the rescues are all so over whelmed with cats and kittens. I was faced with having to put him down or watch him go back outside and infect other cats and get more sick and eventually die outside, alone somewhere. So my friendship with Oliver came to an end on August 20th. I was devastated, I have never had to put an animal down and for at least 3 days after this all I could do was cry, I felt like i killed him. Like i should have just left him outside and never even bothered with him because now he was dead and it was my fault.
He was such a sweet boy and in the short time he was hanging out with me, i loved him and his company so much. I have never met a sweeter cat in my life.
Also in the time I found Oliver, i found a sick little kitten hiding behind him one day (he was not very happy about it might i add). So again, being me, I saw this sick baby hiding under a bush, I wrapped her in a towel, wiped her booger nose and rushed her to the shelter. She was very very very sick. When I wiped all the dried snot off her nose, it all came pouring back out like a waterfall, she was very skinny and seemed to have an eye infection. For her, bringing her to the shelter was her best shot, I couldn't have saved her. I have a friend who works at the shelter and on the following Monday i sent a text to find out how the baby was doing, and she had passed, the night i dropped her off (Friday). She just couldn't fight anymore. That made me really sad too, but I did the best I could for her.
My heart still aches of Oliver, but I don't know what else I could have done. I hope he understands that I made the best decisions under the circumstances at hand. My little angel kitty <3
Shadow:
He is doing fab.
He has started doing some work over cavaletti and he just wants to canter, canter, canter.
Trotting is nothing now, we could trot all.day.long.
His cavaletti work is not the prettiest, but he is working over 2ft, and doing a great job, we just have to get on the same page with timing and it will be fine. We are going to stop at 2'6" probably, as I don't want to push that stifle to hard. He is taking these 2ft cavaletti at about 3ft, but that okay, we don't need to actually do 3ft. lol
His canter transition is flawless and he just goes and goes and goes, he still needs some fine tuning, and some balance, but he is really doing great.
He is like a totally different horse from when this season started and sometimes I can't believe my eyes. Shadow is 16, going on 5. He we are working over the cavaletti he is so forward and so excited and he anticipates the cue to canter every corner, which I am trying to work him out of because i cant have him rushing corners and breaking stride to do what he wants all the time.
I had a wonderful lesson with him and Dom with past Saturday and the the Saturday before I wasn't there but Dom came to ride and Mike snapped some beautiful photos.
This spring/summer with Shadow has really put all my doubt as to what he can do behind me and he has turned out to be everything I wanted when I started my search for a horse. He is such a love.
here are some photos from Dom's ride with him two weeks ago:
Stretchy Trot!! He looks so beautiful!!!
Thanks for reading!!
No comments:
Post a Comment