Tag Archives: The Horse Herbalist

Giardia or the Alien Invasion at Avalon

by . Posted on
04 May

Ever since I first started living the rural Australian life near Tamworth 10 or more years ago I have been drinking tank water and relishing it. In Tamworth the water was pumped from the huge dam in the old lime quarry on the neighbour’s place or fell from the sky. In Kangaroo Valley it was trickled down from a spring in the bush behind the property or gifted by God in the form of rain (which there was plenty of!) and here, at Avalon, it is pumped from the river until we put a rainwater tank after Pickle was born. But I relish the fresh, sweet, water we drink here and from the river or creek on a run. I love just dipping my hands in and gulping it down on a hot day or just to cool down a hot flush. I don’t want to stop that. We have a horrible Richard Scarry book (we call it ‘the torture book’) about how the world works and we tell Benno that we don’t believe in coal powered electricity (it is old-fashioned) and that we don’t understand why they treat the water with all the chemicals . . . only now I do!

Before Christmas when the river was very low because it hadn’t rained for three months, we had friends to stay and for lunch and the following week we all had dodgy bellies of varying degrees. Then in February I felt sick all the time and had an ache in my tummy and foul diarrhoea and burping. After a couple of weeks I even went and saw our divine Doctor who, of course, prescribed antibiotics, thinking it was a bug. I was so sick that I went on holiday in The Tree House to rest, and I took the antibiotics for the first time in well over 20 years.

I did feel a bit better for a few days after that but then the symptoms came back and I was exhausted! Dragging myself around and sleeping after lunch in ‘quiet time’ every day. Then I figured it must be an ulcer because I’ve had one before and all the symptoms were similar – constant nausea, loss of interest in food etc. So I started myself on the heal ulcer diet – bananas and natural yoghurt all day. My tummy felt a bit better but my symptoms kept getting worse. Then we had all the floods and in addition to dragging myself through each day, I was hauling Ben and I over the raging river every day, hand over hand, on the flying fox. Every inch a huge effort, with a few rests on the way, and Benno counting me in for the last 10 metres each way.

It was a bit like morning sickness – constant nausea, feeling that there was a snake rolling and twisting in my belly, feeling a bit better with the first mouthful and worse thereafter. I was losing weight, listless, exhausted. It was horrible. Finally I turned to Doctor Google and found all my symptoms matched those for Giardiasis or ‘Beaver Fever’ as they call it in the US. Back to the Doc and as soon as I told him my symptoms he said ‘Giardia’ and printed out the prescription and the stool sample forms. I didn’t want to take the potent pills without a positive diagnosis but I got the script filled just in case (after all, we’re a long way from a pharmacy) and popped my poo into pathology.

Three days later, just before knock off time on the day before the Easter holiday, the surgery rang to say I had tested positive for Giardia. Thank goodness I had the pills to hand. I waited til Benno was asleep then downed them with some food and took myself off to bed (my very favourite place for this whole nightmare). Half an hour later I was bent double over the toilet bowl vomiting for the first time in many years. Those pills tasted truly foul coming up the other way. Sleep was the best way to process and I crashed out long before Ged came home.

The next morning I was up early and making everyone breakfast and tea and barking out instructions for the day. Ged and Ben looked at me in amazement. When I saw their blank and uncomprehending faces I said ‘what’s better – sick Mummy or bossy Mummy?’ With one voice, united, they replied ‘Bossy Mummy!’

She’s back . . . ! It was our very own Easter miracle, my own resurrection from the almost dead. Thank God.

Then we had Ben and Ged tested. Ben was positive, but Ged negative. Regardless, we decided they would both have the medicine, and in fact that week Ged started to feel sick and snake in the belly. I was tempted to let him suffer for a few weeks so he would have more sympathy for how I had felt for over 6 weeks, but relented in the end and organised the drugs. My symptoms then returned – obviously all the eggs had not been destroyed by the first batch, maybe because I threw up.

I was beginning to think that we would never be rid of this parasite. I felt like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, or maybe the colleague with the beastie erupting out of his belly . . . when would this nightmare end?

We all took the toxic chemicals, gladly if they would kill the uninvited guests. We all got our energy back, Ben started being happy again after I don’t know how long of crankiness, and Ged came home on the Friday night with a clear complexion after about a year of some strange, increasing, blotchy, spotty, red rash all over his face.

It looks like we had been hosting these little Aliens for a long time. Who knew how long?

Water is the most common source and I am now pretty neurotic about only drinking double filtered or boiled water. I hope I can and will relax my vigilance as time heals my body and the memories ease. I hope that this was an aberration, maybe caused when we have, by necessity, pumped still muddy water after a flood, or too low to the riverbed during the dry times last year. Or maybe it’s from drinking milk straight from the cow. Or maybe just from all the lovely poo we work into the veggie patch and simply not cleaning our hands carefully enough. Or maybe Ben had it first and Ged and I got it from wiping his bum and not scrubbing up enough or me cleaning the loo without rubber gloves – who knows. I don’t want to become OCD about hand washing or all Hyacinth Bouquet about Marigolds but I am becoming surgeon like! We will never know where it came from. We can only have all the water tested for E coli, not for giardia, so we will get the rain water tested and maybe the river water just to see . . .

We have some pretty vile herbs from Angela at The Horse Herbalist to make sure all the eggs are dead, and I have even been taking homeopathic arsenic so keen am I to make sure they can’t survive.

Fingers crossed it was an aberration and we will never be visited by these horrible parasites again – they are not welcome here!

Hoofprints on my Heart

by . Posted on
The Most beautiful Girl in the World
02 Jan

Baby had been so peaceful and happy for the few weeks before Christmas – she has been eating – well, like a horse! Loving her lucerne and always so pleased to see me. Ears forward, eyes bright, nodding her head. We have had some truly beautiful moments and I have cried a river of tears at the prospect of a life without her after 12 magical years in which she turned my life, and its direction, on its head. One night, she lay, with her head in my lap, and we talked, I sobbed, she shed tears and we shared our love. One night I sat back to her belly and reminisced and shared our thoughts and feelings. She was, without doubt, the most beautiful girl in the world.

But 10 days ago her Horse Herbalist herbs ran out and she went downhill. She had a Bowen treatment on Thursday with the instruction ‘kill or cure’ (because I could feel the sand of time running rapidly out for us both). And then she really started to be in pain. Instead of looking happy her eyes were stressed and fearful and sending out a silent plea. On Saturday night (22nd) when I fed and washed her down, it was clear that she was in pain and so the decision was made for the following day. Life never proceeds as planned, though.

I took Ged’s swag over there, planning to spend a last night under the stars with her, talking, crying, sharing, reminiscing. But when I got there she was lying down, her breathing was so laboured and she was gritting her teeth and holding her breath at the pain. It was clear that cancer was ravaging her. Only anyone who has ever seen that in another will know what that was like. I texted Ged to bring the gun, please.

He took a while, sorting a sleeping Ben out, and then came. By that time, she was up, and eating. But I think she used food as a distraction from the pain, there was a desperation to her hoovering. I never wanted him to shoot her while she was standing. I didn’t want her to crumple. So he went back to bed and I waited and watched and talked. There were so many things I wanted to tell her, I wanted to talk though my memories of her life. I wanted to thank her for being so amazing. I wanted to beg her forgiveness for the times I had shouted and lashed out, for the times I hadn’t understood her, had forced her or made her frightened. I wanted to say how amazing it was that I had always been able to ride her in just a rope halter, how beautifully she did her Parelli circling and sidestepping, and share with her the memories of how the two of us had learned to do all that at Kangaroo Valley, spending hours and hours together. She had said to me recently that her favourite time in her life was when we were living at Kangaroo Valley. I thought that was because she, like I, loved living next to the Grippers so much. She did, but it was because she got to see me and be with me so much, all the time, we were always in each other’s vision and never far from the other’s thoughts. That was why KV was so amazing. She loved me so much, it took her death for me to realise the enormity and selflessness of her love. Typical of me and my family, I was always focussing on the things that were ‘wrong’ with her and our relationship. I failed to fully realise the depth and breadth and wonder of it. The marvel of a love and friendship, a true partnership, the miracle of a relationship with a horse.

But I couldn’t tell her any of those things, because all I could feel was her pain and I just wanted that to go away. I didn’t want her to hurt, I wanted her to be happy. My dead Grandmother had directed me, during the week, to read once more the book she gave me when I was a small child ‘Ludo and the Star Horse’ and once I read it, I knew I had to let Baby go. Granny Morton died a very slow and painful death in agony and she wanted me to put Baby out of her pain. So once she lay down again, I called Ged, and he came like a shadow in the night. The shadow of death.

I kissed her and walked away. It wasn’t peaceful, she was not peaceful, and I walked to the car and screamed out my pain. I heard the gun cocked and then the shot and my friend, my best friend, my first Baby, was gone. I waited until Ged said I could come, howling like a wild dog, into the blackness. When I went back to her she was at peace. She was so peaceful. And she was gone. She wasn’t in that body that I have loved so much, any more. I stayed for an hour just stroking her, as if trying to imprint her in my hand for ever more. As if I needed to. I told her all the things I wanted to say then, trusting she was there with me in spirit. And I realised, too late, just how much she had loved me. She had loved me enough to mask her pain for me so I could complete my own process and let her go with love. She had waited patiently for me to be able to let her go, to make the call, to allow Ged to do what he had long felt he needed to. He didn’t want to do it. He was crying too. But we both had to do the right thing.

I am ashamed to say that I have allowed her to suffer. That she has had some bad days in the past few months. But she has also had some great days, and has looked really well and healthy and happy. I can see now that I should have been braver and more prepared to ‘bite the bullet’ or let her. But I forgive myself for following my heart to try and heal her, for sharing the time that we both needed to get to know one another again after months of not seeing each other while she was in The Point Paddock. Like all of us, I have made mistakes, but I know that she forgives me and that she, more than anyone, understood my heart and my unwillingness to let this great love of my life, go.

All through my childhood I wanted a pony with every fibre of my being. Horses were my peace. My restless spirit was calmed and my heart healed in their great, gentle presence. I was in awe of them, loved them with a terrible neediness, and was sometimes frightened of them too. But my heart reached out to them and was soothed by them. I was 34 when I first saw Baby. I had to look after her for a few weeks at Glasson’s with a couple of youngsters. She was beautiful, round and solid with dainty little ballerina feet. And there was something of her in me – looking, longing, for someone to love her. We were the same, and so we found each other. And so began a great love story which has changed so many facets of my life and brought me here, to Avalon, and Ged and Ben. She is the Star Horse I wanted all my life.

Baby chose her spot to die, it was under a native tree,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachychiton_discolor) with star shaped pink flowers falling from on high at intervals. So she lay down on a bed of petals and was showered with petals where she lay. In the morning I went and placed flowers on her, folded up her old yellow stable rug that she had loved so much and placed it beside her with yet more flowers on it. I cut off parts of her mane and tail so I would always have something of that beautiful body and so I could have some keepsake jewellery made from it. And finally drove away. Ged went over and felled a huge old, dead, tree close by, and built the most beautiful pyre for her – truly a zen work of art. And when Ben was asleep I went over and took down the electric fence, and added all the broken branches and sticks and twigs that had been annoying us over the last few months and more flowers and then I lit a little fire at the base of the pyre, and Ged lit the rest. She burned bright and beautiful, with showers of champagne sparks high up into the air. Everything about her was so beautiful, and she loved, she loved us all, with all her huge heart.

To have loved a horse, to have earned the love of a horse – there is no greater honour in life. To walk with a horse and to know one walks with you in spirit, that is one of life’s richest blessings.

She is running once more in the fields of the blessed, dancing in the Elysian fields, happy, at peace and sparkling with light. We will never forget her. She will always be here at Avalon and at my side. It has been a privilege and a gift to have known, owned, and loved her.

Real Rural Aussie Expats

by . Posted on
05 May

I went to an initial Pilates session to see if I liked it.  Mainly the woman just talked to me about being pregnant, but then we did eventually get down and do some floor work.  I didn’t really understand what I was  doing or why, and it didn’t feel like much at the time, but I sure felt the pain in the morning!  Still, she didn’t give me a programme to do, or a sense of what I was trying to achieve and I definitely didn’t feel like I’d done any sort of workout (you know me, I come from the ‘no pain, no gain’ Jane Fonda style of exercise) . . . think I’ll stick to yoga, thank you very much, so have been harassing poor Rosie for a pregnancy regime.

On Friday I made the long drive up to Ballina on the Far North Coast to spend the weekend with a client, finally meeting her and her husband, attending, assessing and addressing a two day course of hers to  forge a plan of action for the future.  7 hours door to door was a bore but thank God for my little Tom Tom sat nav which warned me about all the speed cameras, told me how far away I was so we could all plan accordingly, and generally got me there safe and sound and in one piece.  Angela Davison (www.thehorseherbalist.com) lives on a 100 acre bush block in true ageing hippy style (despite the fact that she is a down-to-earth pragmatist of the northern England variety!).  She lives in a hexagonal home made of mud brick and 200 year old timbers from the old whaling station at Byron Bay.  The loo is an outdoor long drop, and rainwater rationing is very strict.  Four huge dogs in the house give off that distinctive odour, but there are some gorgeous antiques and at least I was allowed to just wee on the lawn for my hourly nocturnal antics.
It was FREEZING!!  These are people who don’t believe in closing doors and like to live an outside/inside life.  But I was amazed to find that their solar system supported electric blankets (just wait til I tell my husband!) and so as well as loading my bed with every blanket in the house, I had the hitherto unheard of comfort of getting into a toasty warm bed at night – lovely!  Actually, I have been sleeping really badly recently – what with all the visits to the loo and the electric dreams, so on the Saturday night Angela dosed me up with some of her proprietary ‘Settle Petal’ and at last I started to relax.  On Sunday night I slept properly for the first time since we came back from honeymoon, and in the morning my belly had popped out!!  Bizarre!  I went to bed looking like me, and woke up pregnant!
The course was interesting but poor Angela had the full critique on Saturday night, and was chagrined when her husband (who had been filming it) agreed with all my comments (and up til now he has resented my control over her business life!).  Never mind, she’s tough, and while I was snoring my way through the night she was thinking it all through!  Sunday was much better and on Monday we had the day in the office to organise all her email marketing, computer filing, and assess product packaging etc.  On Tuesday morning we wrapped up the outstandings and I left for a speedy visit to Byron Bay to check out a teepee manufacturer and the very lovely www.natureschild.com.au where they have all the organic nappies and essential paraphernalia little miss is apparently going to need when she touches down on planet earth.
Then home, late and weary to a newly sanded and varnished sitting room,  kitchen and bathroom floors and both dog and husband ecstatic to see me.  How nice to come home to a warm house, a warm heart and a warm welcome . . . .
Angela and students on the Equine First Aid course . . .

Sugarglider

by . Posted on
03 Dec
Phee found me a lovely treat on Monday.  We were on our run and when we got to the new Acer at The Triangle on The Other Side (I need to send maps, don’t I?) he hunkered down, intrigued by something.  I called him off, thinking it was a lizard or frog or something, but it was the most beautiful little furry angel.  Huge eyes, big, boney paws, tiny ears and sort of wings.  I thought it was a baby possum.  I was going to walk back home over the ridge with him (Mum was nowhere to be seen or smelt) when he found his own safe harbor.  He crawled up the sleeve of my long-sleeved tee and made a nest in the crook of my arm.  And there he stayed for the duration of our run!
When we got home I showed him to George who was entranced, but no closer than me to identifying him.  I put him in a box with grass and water while I performed my ablutions and then popped him back up my shirt for the winding trip up to the office.  By this time he had a name – ‘Chi Chi’ and he did quite a lot of wriggling on the jpourney, trying to find the best spot.  At one point I thought I’d lost him forever and had to stop and hunt – he was resting in the padded hammock of bra between my breasts!!  When we got to work, Ged identified him as a SUGARGLIDER and we Googled the sugarglider diet so we could take care of him, and introduced him to members of the local Comboyne community when he came to the shop with me.  As sugargliders sleep during the day, he was exhausted and preferred sleeping skin to skin with me.  When we finally went home it was dark so Chi Chi was wide awake and slipped out of my shirt and into the car.  Phee didn’t seem to care.  And when we got home I went hunting through the Pajero til his rustling in the back gave him away.  Man, they are fast!  So I decided to leave him out  of his box and in the spare room during the night so he could run and climb and fly while we slept.  Big mistake.  When we woke in the morning he was gone, I know not where.  But I have my suspicions about Phee who wouldn’t meet my eye when I was grilling him.  I had blocked up the gap under the door but maybe not well enough, or perhaps Phee spent the night creating a gap.  I guess he found him . . . but we are very sad.  He was just GORGEOUS.  Bye Bye Chi Chi.
The horses are returning to normal but we have taken hair from both of mine and Gypsy for testing by my Horse Herbalist to try and get to the bottom of the antipathy between them and we have found egg fragments in the Plover nest but so far no sign of the babies.  Mum & Dad are pretty busy defending something, though!  Every time the horses are on the river flat (normally at night) the plovers are screeching their warnings and by day they dive bomb any of us brave enough to go looking for the young.
I have been amazed by the prehistoric cicada shells decorating the trees and fence posts (and pretty much anything else that stays stationary for more than five minutes).  The shells split down the back to release the fully grown cicada and the shell remains gripping the upright – bizarre.  And if you have never been deafened by cicadas before, you are missing one of life’s most extraordinary experiences.  The high pitched buzzing screaming of a million cicadas ‘singing’ their strange and primal songs drills into your brain and swells inside your skull until madness feels moments away.  The relief when you move out of earshot is exquisite!
I have been cutting and pasting photos and being a one man band production line to get all the invites out this week so I can cross that off my pre-wedding list and get on with the next thing.  We went and interviewed two celebrants and now I can’t decide between the two . . . too many decisions to make!
Mummy very kindly paid for a Fowl House for us for Christmas.  I had spent hours on the internet trying to track down a good wooden house for my new girls and thought I’d found one and paid $250 for a removalist to bring it down from Brisbane.  It turned out to be cheap, shoddy and made of softwood which would last approximately three and a half minutes with the white ants at Avalon.  So I am embroiled in a battle to get a full refund.  Poor fools, they don’t realise that I always win in the end!


Two scared horses come home at last

by . Posted on
26 Nov

Baby has been a quaking, shaking wreck for a week!  I brought her home on Tuesday morning once my foot had returned to approximately normal size and I had spent several hours trying to find them on ‘the other side’.  I brought them back to the house side and as soon as Ged’s horses saw my two they started cantering up towards them, so I thought I’d just let them run together and let my two go.  Big mistake!  They were last seen by George heading up the old ‘road’ up into the hilly ridge and then they were gone all day.  Ged came home to help me look for them and after much driving around, we found them looking sheepish and heading back down the self same road they had last been seen haring up with the hounds of hell apparently at their heels.  By  this time I had locked Ged’s horses in the yards after counselling from my Horse Herbalist.  And I brought my two home, washed them down, soothed them with words and ‘Settle Petal herbal remedy, fed them their favourite tasty morsels and then, once they seemed normal and calm, let them go again.  Big, big mistake!

Baby galloped up a vertical hill and just kept going.  I didn’t see where.  They were AWOL for two days and nights despite us both putting in countless miles on foot and in the car trying to track them down.  George tried ‘thinking like a horse’ and poking round in the dust looking for tracks – ‘don’t be surprised if I turn black’ he said but to no avail.  You can imagine how stressed I was!  Finally George dragged me out of bed at 7am after their second night out in the wilderness and insisted on going out looking for them with me in the car because he was determined we would find them out feeding in the cool of the day.  Sure enough, we crested a ridge and George said ‘turn around, that’s it, you can stop looking now’.  ‘Where?’ I said, peering left and right.  ‘Straight ahead’ and there they were.  Naughty children!  I got out and caught them and sent George home driving the Pajero (hilarious!)  and both Ged and George could finally relax again because I had a smile on my face.  Ged had taken his horses over to the other side so I shut my two in the yards to feed them, de-tick them and so they could see for themselves that the scary ghosts were all gone.  More ‘Settle Petal’, more sweet words of wisdom and love and more tasty titbits and I left them there for an hour or so to calm down and re-establish their territory.  Then I let them go.  BIG MISTAKE!  Off they galloped.  At least this time I knew where they were going so I tracked them and watched their meandering but determined trail up into the far corner of the property so they could hide behind the trees and keep a sharp eye on about 50 acres all at once.  Crazy horses!  They stayed away all day and night again so I got up with the birds again to catch them and bring them home again.  This time Ged came with me and we closed some gates behind us so they were confined to the long skinny river paddock (which they love) and then we had to go down to Newcastle for the day.
We had a four hour drive and just managed to fit in a wee and some sort of salad roll before my 12 noon meeting with the Bridal Consultant at David Jones.  Ged had to deliver his dirt bike and accessories to one brother (meanie Sophie made him sell it!)  and acres of camping gear to the other brother as well as a number of other chores to complete on the Central Coast so I was left to my own devices.  Not such a great plan as it turned out!  I didn’t realise that making a wedding list was not a simple matter of waltzing around the store with a mincing minion behind me, pointing out delectable items of homeware and saying ‘I’ll have one of those, two of those . . . ‘ etc.  No, no, no.  Five and a half hours trapped in an airless, fluorescent, two floor store, examining every item for sale, picking the ones I liked and then having to write down each one’s barcode, serial number, department number, price etc ., etc.,  I was on the phone saying ‘Honey, where are you?’ before the second hour was up . . . .!!
But once my pulse had returned to normal, my eyes had adjusted once again to daylight, and I had been picked up by the errant husband to be, I was able to report that I had chosen some really lovely things to make our house a home.  And as you all know how impossible I am to buy for, I am sure you will be glad I have taken the stress out of second guessing me in the matter of gift giving!  Ged was happy because I also spotted a beautiful handbag I fancied for Christmas so I’ve done his Christmas shopping too!
When we got off the highway and onto the dirt roads heading home we realised that while I had been in my artificial environment, and Ged clocking up the miles in the sun, it had obviously been pouring at home.  So we thought we’d better not use our normal through the river short cut, but go over the bridge.  I don’t think so!  We had only been gone for just over 12 hours and the river was up 4 foot!  So we flew home!  In the dark, no torch, and in our city finery on the flying fox over the raging river.  Phee was waiting on the verandah like the good boy that he is, somewhat surprised to see us suddenly appear in the yard with no prior warning!  (His nose is fully recovered, thank you, but he is currently waging war on all flying insects – he has got a bee in his bonnet about being stung again!)


George and I dropped a match in the big gully by the house . . . (is that the dragon Baby is so scared of??!!)