Turn The Page

Sorry this blog has been so quiet lately, and my posts always seem so negative. This year has been a struggle, just one after another. Optimism is hard to come by these days. Just every time I feel like we've landed on our feet, the rug gets pulled out again and we have to start over. 

The future is always so uncertain, and never more so than at this time of the year. What will 2019 bring? Each new year I dream of better days. But each new year has just brought further darkness. It's hard not to see only the bad, looking back. More fuel for nightmares. Pain and death and horrible surprises at every turn. 

Skuggi started competing in agility in April. It has been some good, some bad. We only got one clear round out of 42 tries. He is definitely improving. It's not easy to give him enough experience running a full length course of 15 or so obstacles outside of actually competing, with my limited equipment at home. Back in October, Skuggi misjudged his strides at a trial and hit the jump bar at top speed, doing a full flip and landing on his neck. We got lucky. He wasn't hurt. After some rest and careful training to get his confidence back, we returned to compete at a two day trial in December. Skuggi placed 2nd twice and 1st once, out of six classes. We returned home late on Sunday night on an emotional high. 24 hours later we were rushing Skuggi to the vet suspecting he'd been bitten by a tiger snake on our evening walk. In the dark, the snake had been easily in striking range and combining that with finding corresponding marks on Skuggi's chin brought the high I was riding plunge all the way back down. Thankfully, Skuggi's blood tests came back clear. We got lucky. Again.

Sparkie's going blind. I noticed when we up in Sydney in March that she was unsure of her footing. Striped floors. Shadows. Those checker board tiles in the malls. She doesn't go out much now, and definitely doesn't work. She gets around at home okay so long as I don't change any layouts. I left the door open on Skuggi's crate one time and she walked into it, looked confused, and then walked into it again. She is still her happy, playful self aside from that though. The warmer winter we had up here did good for her arthritis.

And speaking of eyes, Logan's eye got an irritation last month. He had several treatments but it still took some time to heal. My poor little guy's always been accident-prone. His ear never recovered properly from being infected at the ear tag as a calf, and it grew folded over and droopy. And a few months ago it got a rip in it as well. Last summer he somehow cut the back of both his front legs, and the flies kept tickling it so he kept licking the scabs off, leaving permanent scars. So now
added to his scars and damages is a white smudge in the corner of his right eye. I suppose we still got lucky with that too. Once we had a cow have her whole eye removed after an irritation turned to infection and progressed too far.

There's more bad going on but I can't talk about that right now. Some things just have to be kept in the shadows for now. But we are going to get through this. As always, I can't wait to turn the page on this crappy year. I am beyond ready for some brighter days.