A brief update (well it started brief)

A quick update on the general state of Samuel and I (well mainly Samuel …):

1) He has had a haircut as seen in the photos below. I tried him with a blanket clip to start with but because he gets so excited about jumping, schooling, hacking, life in general … I decided to go the whole hog and give him a hunter clip. Snazzy don’t you think!

2) I have thrown away the jumper beautifully modelled in the photo. Mark said I looked like a cast member of the Archers and a couple of friends pointed out that horizontal stripes are never a good look. Shame really as I rather liked the old thing but I will admit that I won’t be breaking any hearts in that outfit.

3) Sam’s two large sarcoids have now dropped off. Remarkably cleanly in the end as you wouldn’t even really know they have been there. So we are now just waiting on the chemo cream to turn up from the nice man at Liverpool University. Hopefully once that arrives it will mean we can get rid of the horrible things once and for all. But he doesn’t seem to be feeling any the worse for them. In fact now he is back in at nights (due to the cold weather and him being a bit soft) he has gone a little mad just like he did last winter, which brings us on to the final update …

4) We continue on with our showjumping lessons although (thankfully) no recent photographic evidence. The jumps still remain pretty small as we need to work on the technique applied. Our current technique is attempt 1 – Sinead overreacts and throws herself up Sams neck before he has even thought about jumping the jump, then attempt 2 – Sinead waits and Sam overreacts, remembers he is a racehorse and hurls us at the fence, followed by attempt 3 which is when we usually make a pretty good job of it as we both remember why we are there but ruined by attempt 4 where Sam gets a bit complacent and crashes through the fence rather than over it. He did that in our lesson last week and I have to say I saw my life flash before my eyes! He smashed into the fence and fell forwards – I clung on round his neck like a limpet (my teacher’s words) and he (totally freaked out) then galloped towards the school fence with me still round his neck. Thankfully though through the will of either God, me or Sam (not sure which) he changed his mind at the last minute and stopped. Even my teacher said she thought I was a gonner for a second. Oh well I suppose these things remind me I am alive (or whatever the naff phrase is) …

So that’s it. Service continues as normal in the world of Sam and Sinead.