Last Thursday I lost my bestest mate and wonderful riding horse Merlin after colic surgery following a severe colic attack from strangulating lipomas, I never realised how common a problem these are for older horses particularly geldings. Merlin was 15yo.
He had over 3m of lower intestine removed and lots of lipomas were taken off and we all thought he would recover as he was doing so well but it obviously wasn't meant to be and on Thursday his lower intestine ruptured further past the op site so sadly that was the end.
I bred him myself and had broken him in and trained him all his life so it was terribly sad for me to lose such a wonderful kind horse.
We managed to get an animal burial and retrieval company to bring him home and he is now buried in the corner of one of our front paddocks. His best buddy Zeus [my 4yo PRE stallion who he was minder and best buddy with] was pretty upset when I had to rush Merlin off to the vet clinic but he has settled down over the past week and is slowly getting used to life on his own now.
We are all still very sad about the outcome but that's life with horses isn't it.
This week's disaster on Wednesday was a stupid young girl T-boning my Ford Ranger farm ute from behind at warp speed while I was doing a right turn into a small local country road.
There I was quietly driving myself to work and had slowed to about 15-20km/hr to turn right into the road which is on an oblique angle to the main road and has limited visibility of the intersection for traffic coming down that little road so you have to go into it quite slowly when WHAMMO!
My reaction was like - seriously WTF was that?!
I hit my head on the door pillar and had a wee bit of whiplash but generally felt ok, I drive with a thumbless grip on the wheel so that if anything happens to the car I don't end up breaking my thumbs as the wheel whips around.My bet is that she was either texting or on the phone or gawping at something else instead of the road and didn't see me until the last minute whereupon she stupidly decided to pass me on a blind bit of road, collected the side of my car and then shunted me sideways along the wrong side of the road while she did low flying airplane aerobatics - hit a handy power pole, went down a bank and ended up parked into a farm fence.
The police officer said she said she was blinded by the sun - which was "interesting" considering the sun was almost directly BEHIND us as it was only about 8.15am in the morning. 
I had a moment of panic when I couldn't get my car door open but eventually managed to kick it open and get out. The other driver eventually climbed out of her wreck with phone in hand... I can't be sure but I remember wondering why she seemed to be talking on it already....
I'm so glad she didn't hit the local school bus or a mum with kids in the car going off to the local school, and that my ute is built like a brick dunny so it absorbed most of the impact and didn't roll, luckily I kept it on the road and stopped fairly straight, the steering is smashed and the front wing and drivers door and sills are crumpled, it could have been a LOT worse. The Nissan Tiida she was driving will probably be a writeoff as the entire body is smashed up including the roof where she hit the pole. She was lucky to come out of that with only sore ribs and bruising according to the ambulance medics.
