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So I'm in need of a bit of a rant, I'm having a run of a bit of bad luck lately. (brace yourselves, it's a long rant!)

So, I've recently moved interstate to study at uni full time, which itself has been good. I've moved in with my boyfriend and that's been great, but I've had some bad luck with my animals since I've moved.

My cat died a week after I moved. It wasn't completely unexpected, since he was almost eighteen. But he'd been a big part of my life for those eighteen years, and his death was quite sudden. And I felt awful that I wasn't with him. I still do. He really was 'my' cat and he spent a lot of time with me, and I feel guilty for not being there when he passed, (I know it's a bit silly) or even before I moved, since I was so caught up in moving that I didn't spend enough time with him. It's almost like he knew that I wasn't going to come home for a long time, and that it was time for him to go.

Only another couple of weeks later and I get a call from the girl who is leasing my gelding. He's gone very lame, and from her descriptions sounded a lot like a reoccurrence of a serious, but undiagnosed, lameness he had about five years ago. We never could get it diagnosed, since it was somewhere in his hindquarters. Deep tissue, possibly. And since then he hadn't quite been the same even after he came good, which always had me paranoid that he had some serious underlying back/pelvic problem. The girl leasing him loves him just as much as I do, and was bawling on the phone to me saying she thinks he needs retiring, which is disappointing since he's only twelve. For the moment, he's been turned out, with five star care, which is making me feel a bit better. But I'm still heartbroken about it.

And lastsly;
It's taken me almost a month to find somewhere for my other horse to live, but I finally did. I've had her with me for almost three weeks now, and was just settling into a routine of balancing study and riding. She'd been out of work for the best part of three months, so it has taken a while for her to settle in her new environment, but overall it will be good for her. I was a bit slack last week, so she had a few days off. I went out after class yesterday keen to start a solid week of work into her. I find her waiting at the gate, looking a bit sorry for herself.

I look her over, and my heart just drops. She has a large, deep laceration on her hind leg. Instead of spending my afternoon riding, I spend it with the vet. Luckily, she hasn't done any major damage. She narrowly missed her extensor tendon, luckily didn't perforate the joint capsule on her hock, and somehow managed to avoid major blood vessels. How she actually injured herself, is a complete mystery! The paddock is clean, fences all intact. Both me and the property owner have has a bit of a look and all we can think, is that she's gotten caught somehow rolling/lying in her shelter. But there are no marks or blood on the walls so, we really don't know.

So my poor poppet has a few stitches (that might not even hold due to location), and is confined to a yard for a while. Vet says it's going to most likely be a month until I can ride her again, just because of the location of the wound, and that they take so long to heal. :( And of course, she picked a week where I have two uni assignments due, had to pay rent and have to buy more feed for her, to decide to try and amputate her leg and slap me with a vet bill! Damn horses!

You know what they say, these things come in threes! I'm just feeling a bit unlucky and down at the moment. Especially since I've only just started riding regularly again after a few months off. Needed a bit of rant to get it out. Sorry for the essay!