They Seemed Like Good Ideas at the Time

We went camping a couple of weekends ago, our 2nd Annual Camping Trip to Allegan County, Michigan with Dee Dee and Karen. The site is Silver Creek Campground (they have a website -- I don't know how to add the link here -- sorry) which has fabulous trails and strictly primitive campsites. No electric; no shower house; pit toilets; and for water, wells with pump handles -- not even spigots. Primitive.

(Did I mention the trails are fabulous? They are what makes it worth it.)

Dee Dee now has a slide-on camper on her pickup truck,















and Karen has a rig -- 2 or 3 horse (I forget which) trailer with living quarters.

John and I have this.......

So we had Bright Idea #1:  Clean the back of the horse trailer, put our blow up bed in there, and keep our supplies, clothes, etc., in the tent. Seemed like a good idea at the time. So that is what we did.

We hate having the horses tied up all the time. We had been at campsites where people made a little corral of sorts out of some stakes and electric fencing material. We figured, "Why can't we do this?"

That lead us to Bright Idea #2: So that is what we did. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

At about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., we were half asleep because we were freezing so much we could not get into a good, deep sleep, At about that time a woman from the neighboring campsite came to our campsite and woke us up. She had our horses in tow.

So there we were cold to the bone, and our horses had escaped from their little corral.

Well, they seemed like good ideas at the time!!!

Divna and I are Published!

My brother got me a subscription to Horse Illustrated for my birthday last year. One month they ran an article about Moon Blindness. This is a subject that hits close to home, because my Tennessee Walking Horse mare, Divna, lost her right eye to Moon Blindness about 4 1/2 years ago. She started out with an injury to her eyelid, which caused her to develop Moon Blindness, which in turn progressed to glaucoma and she lost the eye. The story of her struggle with all of this was one of my first posts when I started this blog. We (meaning Divna, John and I) all went through a lot trying to save her eye. She had 3 surgeries at Purdue's Large Animal Hospital at the Lafayette campus, and countless visits to the equestrian opthalmologist team there. They were fabulous, and I believe she got the best care possible.


So I read the article in the May 2012 issue, and decided to write to the magazine (e-mail) with our story. They published it in their August issue. Here it is.

 

 

 



 

I don't know if it is readable or not, but if I had it to do over, I would have written it differently. John is the writer in the family, and he said you should never submit something until you let it "sit" for a day or so, re-read it and edit as needed. Well, I did not do that. I just typed it up, attached the photo and sent it. If I ever decide to write the the magazinen again, I will do it differently.