Yesterday marked the last day of horse camp. That's it: I survived a summer of doing something I'd barely done before, and not only was I successful at it, I learned and I grew in my faith and my trust in God.
It's not over yet, though. I'm going back for one more week, doing cleaning around the campground and getting ready for one more family camp through Labor Day. September 1st marks my last day at camp, and that's when I will be home again.
This week was somewhat frustrating, and not my best week. I started it off on the wrong foot, being tired and expecting a group of high school girls I would bond with and be excited to teach. That's not what I got--they were reticent and unenthusiastic for the first few days. It was a struggle to even get them to respond to "yes or no" questions. I mean, really? It's not like I bite or something. They warmed up toward the end of the week, and we had fun, but it definitely wasn't a high point of the summer.
On the bright side, my etude is essentially memorized now. I have a lot of polish work to do on it, but it's there. I played it at Fancy Dinner Friday (even wore my strapless dress--yessss) and it wasn't perfect, but I got through it. It's helped a lot that most of the practice I've done this summer was in front of other people (all the pianos at camp are in public places). It's desensitized me a lot to that feeling of being watched, and I'm hoping that I will be able to perform even better this fall.
On Saturday we had to work until 4 in the afternoon because of a guest group that wanted trail rides, pony rides, and a hay ride. On top of dealing with that with a small staff (there are only three wranglers and Indy now left of the larger group of ranchies), one of camp's older horses, Anton, colicked badly. Colic happens when a blockage forms in a horse's intestine, causing a backup of food and/or gas in the gut and causing excruciating pain. Colicking horses bite at their sides and try to roll because of the pain in their abdomen, which doesn't help things (rolling can sometimes cause their intestines to twist up and they can't always be untwisted). Walking them out can usually help the blockage to pass, and if the colic is bad enough, a vet will pump oil into their stomach to aid matters as well. We started walking Anton from the time he came up to the ranch from the pasture at 7 am until two in the afternoon. The vet came, gave him oil, and doped him up to dull the pain; but in the hour I walked him from 1-2, he tried to roll numerous times and the painkiller had definitely worn off.
Colic surgeries cost from four to twelve thousand dollars and have only a fifty/fifty chance of recovery. Older horses like Anton, at 26, have even a smaller chance of surviving that. At 2 pm, after calling the vet about Anton's chance of walking out the colic at that point, Indy decided to have him put down. He had been a camp horse for 24 years, one of the best there were.
It was not a high note to end the summer on. But life happens; you have to keep moving on.
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