…and what you end up doing sometimes just wave at each other as they whiz by in opposite directions. This was totally the case for me today. The morning was set aside for getting a flu shot and doing several errands on this side of the city. Got stuck into my endless playing with Photoshopping new images for my upcoming shows, and the time just vanished. I did manage to get a flu shot but that was it for extras.
The afternoon was to involve a trip with a couple of friends to the Devic centre to check out the labyrinth and do some shopping. They’d never been before and we were all looking forward to the outing. Got home to a message that one of them was sick, so that outing was going to be postponed. No problem, I have a friend on a farm west of the city who has a new puppy I want to photograph. I could run out there with the “extra” time I now had, get the photos and do the errands I needed to do on that side of the city. I try to optimize my driving outings to encompass as many errands as possible, in the interests of time and fuel efficiency.
Phoned her to make arrangements, to discover that she had just made a commitment to visit with relatives in town and wouldn’t be home. OK, no problem, still needed to buy some art supplies and do a library run, plus the leftover stuff from the morning, so that would be my afternoon. Mondays are my only “non barn” days so I schedule running-around type chores for Mondays. But, before I could get out the door for the afternoon (having yet again been temporarily sucked into the depths of Photoshop), the phone rang, and it was my horse vet friend Sue, summoning me to the barn where Alpac could get his semi-annual health update (shots, worming, teeth checked, whatever needs attention) today rather than Wednesday as scheduled, since they were at the barn and had done all their other business early.
OK, I’m flexible, so off to the barn I go. Guess I can do all that other stuff later in the week sometime. I get to the barn where Sue says she has given him a pre-exam mild sedative (needed as he is very large and doesn’t much like most vet processes) and I can bring him into the designated examination stall in a few minutes. I brought him in and got him into the right stall to await developments. Things started to go sideways at this point. One of the vets noted a trickle of blood coming out of his right nostril. Sue didn’t recall seeing that when she gave him his shot a few minutes earlier, and quizzed me on any history of this happening before. Since she is head of field services at the vet college, and there are always students on the calls with her as part of their practical learning, she asked the students what this might indicate. Turns out one of the things it *could* suggest is a fungal infection of the gutteral pouch which in turn could eat its way through the carotid artery and cause sudden death by a massive bleedout. Often the first indication that this is the case is the owner finding the horse dead in a huge pool of blood. Not exactly what I wanted to hear.
Having had this suggested as one of several scenarios, I was pretty adamant that we had to do whatever it took *right now* to rule this out as a possibility. They would need to put a scope up his nostril on the affected side and do a visual check to see where the bleeding was coming from, and of course all the scopes were at the clinic back in town. As luck would have it, one of the experts at doing this procedure and evaluating the results happened to be at the clinic and not too busy to come out (a rare occurence) so he hustled out to the stable to do further investigation. We still don’t know what caused it, but thank goodness it *isn’t* the fungal infection, so now I will be able to sleep tonight, although I’m still pretty strung out a number of hours later by the thought of the bullet dodged. They plan to do a head x-ray to check one more possibility, but Sue assures me that the life-threatening options have been ruled out, and whatever it is will be something we can handle. Or maybe we’ll never know, which is always one of the options as well. So none of this was on the agenda when I got out of bed this morning to contemplate my carefully planned day, and I’ll be happy never to have a repeat performance of the anxiety-inducing parts that I had to endure.
I’ve been doing a few “fall light” shots of various sorts in the past week, which I am featuring today. No horse vet shots. I had the wrong lens on for that at the barn and was too distraught to do that type of shot, although I did take the camera out to the outside horses to distract myself with some “photo therapy” while we were waiting for the scope to arrive. Better than chewing my nails, but somehow my heart wasn’t in it.
Shot number one is one I took of my friend’s horse who is in a west end stall where the light creates interesting shadows in the mid to late afternoon if the big door is open, as it was today. I love shadows and reflections and will play with them whenever the opportunity arises.
Second shot is one I took on the way home from the barn yesterday, of the lowering sun backlighting the fall reeds and grasses of the prairies.
Shot three is one of a series I am working on of two stumps in a ditch. I found them by accident earlier in the summer on a side road between the barn and the city, and I pass by every now and then to add to my collection of photos of them in different light and at different seasons. Somehow they make me think of the bones of prehistoric creatures.
We had a “three day blow” here on the weekend, with huge winds night and day, and wind warnings issued for much of the province. Shot four shows the leaves piled up against the fence of the public swimming pool down the street from us. The fence is about ten feet (3 M) tall.
Shot five is of my hops vine on the trellis near the driveway, with the colourful leaves of the bush whose name I can’t remember in back. I liked the combination of colours and textures in this one.
©Copyright 2008 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Judy Wood’s website.
Here is the finished item! The horses are all very different and the owner was delighted. As you can see, in this final painting all the finer detailling is added. Constantly checking back and forward from the different reference photographs that every fine detail of light, shadow, vein and hair is correct. Well thankfully that is another one done and I can look forward to the next.
Today’s artist is 
Leslie often combines the power and majesty of the horse with the power and majesty of nature, putting horses together with rolling seas (Wave Racers, above; Beauty and the Sea, below), falling snow and even towering cloud formations.
One of the best things about being a gallery director is managing incoming exhibits. Every new exhibit is like Christmas for me. New works to see and enjoy. New visual gifts to open.
