Thread 17 - TalkLair: "Okay, first of all, what's with the outfit? Live in the now, okay? You look like DeBarge."

[RasaSayangEh]

(Previous thread 16).

Spring is springing, daffodils blooming all over our LairGarden, which have not all been picked by a neighbour's kid...

In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, cosy rugs are down on the floors looking a bit stained by cat hairball regurgitation. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Poor dog! Must be very painful for her :-(

Thanks, she's been out and peed, though she fell over twice. I had to help her into her memory foam bed, she was lying with her back end out, the rim in her belly, she was panting.

Daughter thought it was charming, but once I'd chivvied her in, it stopped and she realised that it wasn't great.

She's got up and changed ends, any movement is a win in my eyes.

Thanks everyone. Bailey had terrible wounds but the vets were brilliant. Over about 3 months that managed to close the wounds and he's fine now (although very nervous on his now short walks). The owners of the lurcher paid all the bills, about £3000. I can honestly say that it was the single most traumatic experience of my life. I still won't allow myself to think much about the attack and I have very strong views about large dogs now. This lurcher nearly killed Bailey and would certainly have killed Daphne, who is tiny.

They are both sitting with me now. I'm constantly amazed at how close our specias can become. Sinner hope your lab is ok.

Tobacco users, good luck. It's very hard giving up but I'm sure Binturong is tight about the physical time frame. Problem is liking it! I doubt I'll ever smoke tobacco alone again, (but there are occasions when I dearly love a wee spliff)! I do love the smell of pipe tobacco too, I think because some lovely souls from my childhood smoked a pipe. My son bought me one years ago (to play with, after extracting a promise that I would never actually use it).

Today we are moving house and angelica is already getting sniffy about how long it's taking to drink my coffee! See you all on another side.. x

Good heavens, our poor thread animals are going through it at the moment and I'm sending love and healing thoughts to them all. I'll always love the lurcher/sight-hound dogs but owners need to remember that their prey instinct is incredibly strong and they can and will kill smaller animals because that's what they're supposed to do. Some don't have that instinct at all. My favourite dog who ever lived was a wonderful lurcher called Tinker who lived with cats, used to stay with me and my Georgie girl cat for sleepovers where they curled up together. Snoop's Seamus would probably kill a small animal if he could be arsed and is aware of cats, squirrels, etc but he simply can't be arsed to go after anything that moves when non-moving food is so freely available.

I'm glad the owners of the dog paid your bills which was the very least they could do and I hope they learned a valuable lesson as well. If Bailey had died their dog would almost certainly have been put down too and all because they underestimated his prey instinct which anyone with a sight hound should be aware of.

I'll post a couple of pictures of me with capybaras later as we went to feed them yesterday and stroke them and kiss them and in literal capybara whisperer - cos that's all I can do - stylee I got a capybara to lean right over against me and have her belly rubbed. She'd never allowed it before and the bliss on her wee face. They're a great bunch of lads.

Thanks, Sammidge. I've just taken her out for a pee and she managed, albeit unsteady. I'm glad to hear that the owner of the lurcher paid the bills, it's very often not the case.

Poor dogs! It's so difficult when they're hurt and ill and all you can do is try and help them be comfortable.

My Toby was a chaser but if he ever got up to what he'd chased he just stopped and looked a bit confused. He was great at manipulating humans but otherwise not very practical, bless him. If things were too much for him to comprehend, he simply behaved as if they didn't exist. This included the sea, which was disappointing because he completely ignored it, but he loved running on sand.

Poor Sinner's labrador, I hope she improves soon.

@FagsMagsandBags I'm eagerly awaiting capybara cuteness!

Meanwhile, here is someone enjoying the good weather on DH's lap.

Wishing your lab a very speedy recovery @SinnerBoy

Looking forward to the capybara pics and enjoying Rasa’s basking cat in the meanwhile.

Thanks, Kuc and artant. She's going back at 4:30 today and then sometime on Monday. I really thought yesterday was going to be a one way trip.

😥

Hope it went ok sinner

I will try to get a photo up tomorrow but I've forgotten how to share from WhatsApp to my phone so I'll do it when someone whose brain isn't morphine addled can tell me where I'm going wrong! Or get Snoop to share a photo not to WhatsApp!

I'm sending love your way, @SinnerBoy

I had horse therapy today with no idea what to expect except horses which as I love horses was fine with me. It turned out that it also included a lot of woo but oh my days, something happened that was so incredible that I still don't quite have the words for it hours and hours later but I will, I hope, be able to talk to you about it better tomorrow and while I'm not woo, I opened myself to it because it was all coming from a good place and love and that and that's what's important in life for me right now. I still smell of horse so I decided I'd stay horse until tomorrow because part of loving horses is loving that smell. There were two horses, male and female and they were both the most beautiful creatures with him so big and strong you think that to be too close to him would be scary. Oh, my dear readers, this will be where even those of you who weren't there will ask yourselves as I have done over and over since it happened "What on earth was that? How? Wow!"

Wow indeed! I am now agog to know what it was, woo or not, and look forward to finding out once you have it clear enough to talk about it.

DH took one of our cats to the vet today. She and her sister are almost 18 years old, but generally speaking have been in pretty good health except that the other cat had a thyroid issue and had to have radiation treatment for it a couple of years ago as she is impossible to give medication to. This cat has been steadily losing weight, but doesn't seem to have thyroid issues, though she did have to have some teeth out last year. We've tried altering what we feed her and when, because she's inclined to gobble very quickly and then upchuck. The vet has now prescribed her prednisolone, and suggested a cat food for sensitive stomachs, so that is our next step. I'm a bit anxious about her because we're going away for six weeks towards the end of May. We have a lovely teenager who lives next door, who is being well paid to come in and feed them twice a day and scoop the litter trays (indoor cats) so I hope they'll be OK in their own home, but it's still a bit worrying.

I think these will be our last cats when they shuffle off this mortal coil. Any new cat we get is likely to outlive one or both of us, and I don't want to be the old lady discovered eaten by her cats. DH is not at all happy about this thought - he loves cats and they love him. This one we're concerned about right now is particularly bonded to him, and comes and lies on his chest every time he sits back in his office chair. He loves that. The other cat has always been more drawn to me.

Maybe you don't have to give up on cats but when these two lovelies go you could adopt a cat or two who are already very elderly themselves. It could be the perfect fit and a lovely solution for MrBrit.

Thanks, all. They cancelled the Saturday and had her in yesterday. She's mobile again and they gave her some tablets and booked her in for Saturday (I think - it was my daughter who told me).

What a lovely story about the horses, Fags. Animals of all kinds are therapeutic, even if its just a ladybird, or a butterfly.

Hope all goes well for your dog, Sinner.

Fags, that horse sounds wonderful, can't wait to hear more about what happened.

Thanks for the suggestion @FagsMagsandBags - DH might well go for that.

Well, here we go with the horses and some photos. I look very perturbed in two of them. I'm not, I'm just full of some sort of wonder which makes me look perturbed and I remained like that until I moved away from them again. This photo, however, is me and the Lady Horse who I later turned out was called Mary, which was strangely accurate. Gaby, who was leading didn't want me to have their names so that the horse could represent who or what I wanted them to represent. I may have already mentioned that but it's sort of important. This is Mary and I before we went into meditation and after this, Mary did not want to be touched because she had an injury and so we didn't touch but stayed nearly as close together although I was sitting down most of the time after this.

That's such a lovely photo - Mary looks so completely comfortable with you, as though she knows you aren't going to be a horse-botherer.

I think you both look very much at ease there. You're giving of a Jenny Éclair vibe, as an observation.

So, after this, we meditate and I had some pain that I hadn't managed to control. It disappeared while we were meditating which isn't really that surprising. I'm cool with meditating, it's the breathing that does it and you do tend to feel more grounded afterwards. We did it as a group and it was lovely. If I didn't mention that there was a yappy terrier there, there was a yappy terrier, Lady Scruff who became totally chill after the meditation. We were a group of female animals, the only male animal at the other side of the field. We talked about my life and that it had always been more full of women, the loss of my father at a very young age, the issues around my stepfather dropping out of my life and men being a distant thing. It's interesting and we're not woo at this point.

And then we get a bit woo. Gaby asks if I would like her to invite the boy into the group. I would, but if he doesn't fancy coming down to meet us it's all good because I don't want him to feel pressured. I'm going woo myself but also thinking the horse won't be that interested but he is beautiful. I'm asked if I want to call him something. I decide I'll call him my father's name. From here on in I have no one to blame but myself for mass woo.

Gaby goes to the horse, we talk about how good we're feeling. I'm glad we're taking it seriously even though it's not something we would talk seriously. We turn and this is what we see in the distance.

He isn't wandering over to us, he isn't taking his own sweet time. He is galloping and you can see the dust here. You think we'd be scared wouldn't you? I mean in the normal run of things, me sitting down and having a horse gallop straight at me should scare me but I wasn't even slightly afraid. I knew he'd stop right in front of me and he did. S knows the horse and has never seen him do this before. He stopped in front of me. I got up, we nuzzled and then he muzzled with is Mary and I'm in floods of tears and this is the most insane thing that's ever happened to me. The difference in my face between Mary at the beginning and me looking at him/them both now is huge but my head is mashed up. Do I feel like my daddy came running to be with me? Yes I do. Is that a nonsense? Yes it is. Something happened.

This is in the aftermath. We've left the horses because they're taken aback by it all too. Gaby has given me a heart to draw and write on to hang from a ruined beauty of a tree that looks magical. We met yesterday and this photo is just lovely. It's as though we've known each other for years and we're talking closely as we head to the tree, heart in hand. After this out came angel cards which should have made my heart sink but didn't because Gaby was so lovely and not long afterwards I was home.

And yes, I know. Snoop, S and I still can't figure out the what or the how we feel but that was horse therapy.