Thursday 15 August 2013

 

You just think that things are going well, all the birds are flying well, all the young ones are coming on nicely, the Falconry Weekend is getting organised well and things are on track for that. The young Martial Eagle is lovely and settling nicely, and we have been offered a male on breeding loan, and then something hits you that you really don’t expect.

 

We lost Rush today. I have been there for the deaths of 12 labradors, well 11 and orchestrated one from the US and it never never gets any easier. Two days ago Rush started to be very lame on and off, and he was crying loudly with pain. So I took him straight to Eden Tanners, who looks after the dogs for us. We had a job to get him out of the car and he was very quiet in the surgery. We could not find anything that was blindingly obvious, but they had concerns about him and so kept him in over-night. They did not have a peaceful night. He went through bouts of pain that had him yelling very loudly. Drugs kept it under control, and the following day he was X-rayed. This showed various problems with his vertebrate, particularly in his neck.
I collected him early that evening and he was gently crying, but seemed better when we got home. However by 11 pm he was back to crying, I managed to stop him for a while, but by 3.00 am he cried for the rest of the night, it was not a peaceful one for either of us. I took him back to the vets the following morning and they gave him more injections for pain, but over the day it was patently obvious that it was not working. If I or someone he knew was with him it was bearable, but if on his own, he could not cope. Sam Smith who is a great animal chiropractor looked at him as well and said there was not a lot that could be done for him, particularly taking into consideration his age.

 

So I weigh up all the pros and cons, and it was just not fair to keep him going. Eden came over with an assistant and Rush who had had as nice an afternoon as we could give him – constant people, tidbits of beef, never left alone, eventually lying in the sun (he had by this time started to collapse if he walked alone) was moved into the library where we all sit in the evenings, Angela whom he adored was there and we put him down………………….

 

The vets left, we toasted Rush and then gave him a royal trip down to the woods in the Golf Cart, which he would have loved. The ground was like rock needless to say, but Jimmi, Holly, Angela and I dug away and we buried him next to his mother Nettle. The other dogs sort of helped, although not exactly what we needed, and we left him in the wood with his family. So never again will he take my mug round the field early in the morning, or carry Angela’s keys, or refuse to get off the sofa to go to bed, and I will miss him, as I miss them all.

 

 

Recently I phoned the bank, now that to any of you will mean you understand why by the end of the third time I had had to give my bank details, date of birth, inside leg measurement, happiest day of my life and so on, why I wanted to feed the last person I finally spoke to, and a miracle it was that it was a real human, because many of the machines I spoke to were not!!!  - to my vultures.

 

All I wanted to do was make sure that my identity number was OK, well it was compromised – I have been compromised without even knowing it – well bugger! And if there was some way we could see the business credit card stuff online. 22.5 minutes later I finally gave up and could not face phoning the ‘direct line’ number they had given me, because I know that line well and it wants to know everything about your life including God knows what in the way of passwords etc, so I could not face it any longer I had had enough and hung up, so much for internet banking being easy and quite – I don’t think so. Although I did point out to the Scottish lady who was the last of the three people I spoke to, having had to give the same bloody details to a machine before everyone damn of them, that if she shut up and listened she might be able to help me. This was of course a hopeless thought, and none of them were even interested in helping. Lloyds bank, you need to sort out the system and if you really were taping the calls, I hope you got all my comments to your various machines, because they were not exactly complimentary!!!!

 

We have been very busy, at least I think we have, it seems like it anyway, the weather has been generally wonderful, although it has cooled off a little. Mostly the visitors have been really nice and fun to fly birds for. We have the occasional day where we think we had better not fly the vulture in case they are dead already, but mostly they have been a joy to have here. The gardens are looking great, although the very dry weather has meant that we have lost about four plants that I liked. And we have started the building of the new Hospital, which is wonderful.

 

 

 

Hello

I have to say that keeping a weblog can at times become compulsive and at other times a chore. Sometimes I am berrated for not keeping it up and sometimes I get wonderful comments from people who follow the news of the Centre.

It is fun to share the daily goings on here, some good and some bad, some funny and some sad, but all a part of our daily lives.
And as I said before its a pretty cool to be here and it is a great place to visit, you should try coming and watching the birds and meeting the staff and of course the dogs.

An interesting video on Lead

An interesting video on Lead

I find it staggering that people who want to hunt don't see the value in changing their ammunition from lead to a safer product. We have stopped using lead in petrol, in paint, in our water pipes, but they still want to use lead - ah well, apparently eating it not only kills birds but leads to reduced intelligence in humans......................

NO ONE is asking you to stop legal and genuine hunting, they are just asking you to change your ammunition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHZGQ8i8AwI

HC

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