If you read Butterfly's article Clumsy, you already have a slight idea how part of our week went... Let me tell it from my angle...
The kids and I were in the house when suddenly we heard a loud crash outside. Butterfly screamed, "Popaway!!!" Our 1,199 lb horse came tumbling out of a stall with the front wall breaking away in front of her! Our half tonne horse who crashed out of her stable has some wounds from her fall. I am doctoring her, and am grateful I know how to inject her since getting her to a vet is impossible; and THREE vets I called were not available. Having a dad who is a dentist and very scientific, as well as 15 children, I am somewhat knowledgeable in what to do in these situations. She will hopefully recover because not only is she a pet to our family, but our therapy riders, specifically Eddie, would be extremely upset if 'his horse' were not here. I am not sure how he'll manage knowing she's not rideable at the moment.
As with life in general, we have so many wonderful things happening that we can discuss, but this particular week, I hope you don't mind me keeping things real and sharing some of the unexpected things that have come up.
- We are still working on our paperwork, and it is frustrating dealing with it.
- Our car had TWO flats at once this week, stranding us just 200 metres from our home
- Our car also had brake issues which took THREE expensive repairs
- Our car has some clutch issues, too and needs new tires. One tire is repaired, but the other issues are in the works. We only own ONE car. Johnny did manage to take a tire to town on the small motorcycle to be repaired. It was dangerous, but he managed!
- Our large thoroughbred, as read above, crashed through the stable and fell. She is on antibiotics and recovering from internal bruising and a few screws poking through her body during the fall.
- Edith and Eowyn were both ill this week. Starry isn't feeling her best either.
- Our posts in our fences and our stables are termite eaten and weak causing our fences to fall down after being put up about 4.5 years ago.
- Our stables need repairs after the crash.
- And some GOOD NEWS! Someone wants to give us one, maybe two horses for our therapy program! This will increase our impact and allow more riders to come consistently!
- We need to build two more stables as soon as possible to accommodate these additions ($650). VERY exciting.*
- We also need to transport one of them to our farm on the 29th which is costly (not sure how much this will comem to yet).**
*If you peruse our photos, you will find that most sessions are filled with DIFFERENT children because we have far too many riders for our 4 horses! We need the children to come consistently in order to get the maximum benefit from our program, but at the moment, the riders must rotate who comes due to us only being able to accommodate 8 at a time. This is a good problem, I think, because it means the people are seeing the importance and need of what we do. With two more horses, we can then accommodate 12 riders per session.
**The horse(s) being offered will be loaned to us for free, but transporting them to our farm will cost quite a lot
($2.20/mile). The reason for this expense being so high is lack of horse trucks in Kenya. I have mentioned in the past that a horse truck/trailer would be a potential sustainability project renting it out to people. We could also bring horses to the vet in an emergency like our current situation with our thoroughbred. We could also take them to needy children in town and do some sessions there, as well as carry hay, supplies, etc. to the farm. So we are in the planning stages of how to meet this need in the not too distant future.
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