Hi everyone,
Welcome to another MUSINGS WITH MEL newsletter and another new year. Wishing you all best wishes for this new year – health, happiness and prosperity and especially lots of happy horse times. I really do plan on staying in touch with you all a lot more this year. The latter part of last year was quite disrupted for me last year so things got pretty quiet in the communications department due to having a pretty bad accident.
In September I got kicked in the face by a student’s horse in a lesson.The horse was escalating his behaviour and I was foreseeing that the student was going to get kicked so I stepped in there to help and wammo it was me that got kicked. Just a good reminder for everyone about how easy accidents can happen. I have a pretty good track record with no broken bones and no horse accidents where I needed to go to a hospital prior to this and also very, very minimal accidents ever happening with students in clinics. I am always taking caution, but this just shows how easily and quickly things can happen. Not trying to scare anyone or put people off but we do need to remember not to be lax or lazy and always be aware. It really emphasizes the importance of paying attention to all the safe practises that we should have with horses, reading horses well and not taking them for granted. In this case I wasn’t actually being lax and I was reading things very right – I just wasn’t quick enough. The end result was multiple fractures to my nose and cheek bone.
I had to have one op to rebreak and straighten my nose and maybe will need another one after April this year when all the fractures are properly healed. Nothing more can be done until then. We are also waiting to see if my breathing returns to full capacity by then – it is still restricted at this point. However, in general I have healed up very well and thankfully there is very little disfiguration now – it did look pretty horrendous for a while though !!!
I soldiered on and kept teaching the six week course which was reduced to five due to covid and also with very minimal numbers because a lot of students couldn’t travel. Somehow I got through teaching the course. It was pretty tough. It was all I had to get through the day teaching and I was often in bed straight after teaching – very unusual for me. I guess healing requires a lot of energy because I was very tired. Hence, not much happened in the office, admin and communications department at that time (only the most urgent was attended to) and then for the very last part of the year right up to Christmas I was chock-a-block with teaching trying to catch up on all the courses that had to be rescheduled due to covid with only a few days at home in the last couple of months.
So if you emailed me and didn’t get a response, sincere apologies. Please email again. I have been flat out the last 3 weeks trying to get caught up with things in the admin department and setting up courses for 2022 as well as learn video editing – a big learning curve.
I am looking forward to a great 2022 and as always continuing to expand my own learning. While doing the video editing I was looking back over old videos and it is so interesting to see just how far I have evolved over the years. Also looking forward to supporting you all more in your learning too. Thank you for being on the journey with me and I am sure your horses thank you too.
Go well, be inspired and inspire.
Mel
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