Dorika's Ears

Dorika's Ears, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

We have a holiday starting tomorrow, the Eid el Fitr, also known as the Small Feast or rather irreverantly as the Cookie Feast. Tonight is the end of Ramadan and parents are madly shopping for new clothes for their children, and maybe even for themselves. My son and a number of friends have gone to our house in Sharm el Sheikh to enjoy a long weekend in the sun, but I am going to be spending the feast hopefully looking at scenes such as that in the photo.

The ears belong to my 17 year old Arab mare, Dorika, who was named for her first owner's Hungarian niece. She's recently been given a new chance on life after having been diagnosed with a disintegrating sesamoid, which would in relatively short order become so painful that she would have had to be put down. Luckily for us, a general in the police had a horse with a similar problem and talked a visiting American vet into bringing the one thing in the world that would save her life, a shock wave machine.

This is similar to the machines that are used to crush with sound waves the stones in kidneys and such. What it does is to cause microscopic damage to the bone that encourages the damaged joint to heal extremely well and quickly. She had two sessions two weeks apart and my vet promises that she will be 100% shortly. Meanwhile, she's already been able to go out for walks in the countryside, which is where I took this picture.

So I will take great pleasure in watching my neighbours taking time out from their work, since even the farmers take the Feast as a holiday. I plan to go for long walks with the love of my life, this savvy Arab mare, to see the children in their holiday finery riding the newly washed donkeys who are getting a break of their own from carrying loads from the fields to the houses.

Some of my clients have already asked if I would be traveling over the Feast and when told that I'd be around, they indicated that they might take the time to come for a ride. And now, for the first time in about 4 months, I can ride Dorika. Life is very good.