Sunday, December 3
Dec. 4th, 2023 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Our friend from the city came to get her little buddies today, and she seemed happy with how we took care of them.
We have had them for three full weeks, and I was honestly a little concerned about that length of time. It's a long time to have someone else's pets; you worry that the longer you have them, the higher the risk of something going wrong.
Anyhow, she is back, and her birds that were still at her house are all fine too.
She's dealing with her Mom's passing, and I feel that there had to be some complicated feelings going on with that, as most people are SAD about losing an elderly parent, but you usually see it coming and you generally have some time to prepare yourself for the loss. I wonder if there were some things she maybe didn't get closure on.
She's also got a horrible relationship with her sister, but I think it isn't all just her sister's fault. I'm not going to say anything at all to her about that.
It took quite a while to take all of the supplies she left for the animals back outside to her car. There was a big wire panel pen for the bunny, litter, bags of hay, dog food, two bins of things I never once needed, but I guess she wanted to cover all her bases.
I will miss them, as they were here so long. The little dog, Rocky was pretty much right beside me if not actually sitting on me the whole time. He was, other than not being the least bit house trained, a very sweet little dog and much nicer than most of the "toy" dogs I've met. He was friendly to the cats and Roxy, didn't wreck anything at all, was often content just to curl up and sleep in the chair, didn't bark much, and was generally a happy little dude.
He was super small though, and I constantly worried about him getting hurt outside, or getting cold, or even rolling over on him at night because he slept under the covers but was smaller than our cats.
Anyhow, the whole process went well, she seems happy with how we cared for them, they're back home and doing fine, and I said if she needed to, we could take them again.
Sprite did throw up when my husband fed the cats, but I decided to try feeding her several small meals throughout the day, and she seemed happy to eat, and kept it all down. She seems okay otherwise, and maybe something is just going on that she needs small meals. Normally we just feed the cats twice a day, and they eat it all at once.
Sprite has always been a little tricky with keeping food down, as she has a tendency to bolt it, and now even with the slow feeder bowl, she maybe can't handle all of her food in two sittings.
I helped my Sweetie for a little while outside, putting up a hand rail on a set of outdoor steps. He's not very happy with it, but maybe it will be at least safe if not super attractive.
Then we went to see River. It was just us, no other riders.
River is getting a bit confused, offering the "turn away" when I haven't cued it, so we worked on the difference between a normal "draw" circle and the "turn away".
Overall he did well, I know sometimes I can get bogged down on small things and forget to see the big picture.
He did well with our brief ridden work, doing spiral in and out nicely at the canter.
It started to snow just as we were wrapping up.
We came home and hemmed and hawed about watching a movie together, but I told my husband that given how hard it's been for him to get enough sleep, he should just hit the sack instead.
I learned that the famous Habsburg family still exists, though it was outlawed from Austria (and from being "royals") since 1918.
There is a person alive and well who would have been the claimant for the crown, named Karl von Habsburg, who still holds some honorary positions.
The family was actually banned from entering Austria for a while, (all of their property was seized by Nazis, who actually ended their royal rule, and was not reinstated after the war), but that was declared a violation of human rights, and has since been repealed providing no one tries to claim any of their hereditary titles or run for President.
The family has since made claims to try to get back some of their property, and it becomes a bit entangled with the compensations made to people who were considered victims of the Nazis, as the Habsburg family was probably only treated the way they were because they opposed the Nazis.
Some of their property was indeed used to help victims of the Holocaust.
I guess I didn't realize that the Habsburgs were still the rulers of Austria right up until the first World war, and I didn't realize that they were still an actual family without being royals, and still trying to sort out how to get back some of their property after it was seized, and so on.
It seems strange to think of them as being more or less recently/currently relevant.
I also didn't know that Marie Antoinette was a Habsburg.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/world/hapsburgs-ask-austria-to-return-estates-seized-by-nazis.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Law
Our friend from the city came to get her little buddies today, and she seemed happy with how we took care of them.
We have had them for three full weeks, and I was honestly a little concerned about that length of time. It's a long time to have someone else's pets; you worry that the longer you have them, the higher the risk of something going wrong.
Anyhow, she is back, and her birds that were still at her house are all fine too.
She's dealing with her Mom's passing, and I feel that there had to be some complicated feelings going on with that, as most people are SAD about losing an elderly parent, but you usually see it coming and you generally have some time to prepare yourself for the loss. I wonder if there were some things she maybe didn't get closure on.
She's also got a horrible relationship with her sister, but I think it isn't all just her sister's fault. I'm not going to say anything at all to her about that.
It took quite a while to take all of the supplies she left for the animals back outside to her car. There was a big wire panel pen for the bunny, litter, bags of hay, dog food, two bins of things I never once needed, but I guess she wanted to cover all her bases.
I will miss them, as they were here so long. The little dog, Rocky was pretty much right beside me if not actually sitting on me the whole time. He was, other than not being the least bit house trained, a very sweet little dog and much nicer than most of the "toy" dogs I've met. He was friendly to the cats and Roxy, didn't wreck anything at all, was often content just to curl up and sleep in the chair, didn't bark much, and was generally a happy little dude.
He was super small though, and I constantly worried about him getting hurt outside, or getting cold, or even rolling over on him at night because he slept under the covers but was smaller than our cats.
Anyhow, the whole process went well, she seems happy with how we cared for them, they're back home and doing fine, and I said if she needed to, we could take them again.
Sprite did throw up when my husband fed the cats, but I decided to try feeding her several small meals throughout the day, and she seemed happy to eat, and kept it all down. She seems okay otherwise, and maybe something is just going on that she needs small meals. Normally we just feed the cats twice a day, and they eat it all at once.
Sprite has always been a little tricky with keeping food down, as she has a tendency to bolt it, and now even with the slow feeder bowl, she maybe can't handle all of her food in two sittings.
I helped my Sweetie for a little while outside, putting up a hand rail on a set of outdoor steps. He's not very happy with it, but maybe it will be at least safe if not super attractive.
Then we went to see River. It was just us, no other riders.
River is getting a bit confused, offering the "turn away" when I haven't cued it, so we worked on the difference between a normal "draw" circle and the "turn away".
Overall he did well, I know sometimes I can get bogged down on small things and forget to see the big picture.
He did well with our brief ridden work, doing spiral in and out nicely at the canter.
It started to snow just as we were wrapping up.
We came home and hemmed and hawed about watching a movie together, but I told my husband that given how hard it's been for him to get enough sleep, he should just hit the sack instead.
I learned that the famous Habsburg family still exists, though it was outlawed from Austria (and from being "royals") since 1918.
There is a person alive and well who would have been the claimant for the crown, named Karl von Habsburg, who still holds some honorary positions.
The family was actually banned from entering Austria for a while, (all of their property was seized by Nazis, who actually ended their royal rule, and was not reinstated after the war), but that was declared a violation of human rights, and has since been repealed providing no one tries to claim any of their hereditary titles or run for President.
The family has since made claims to try to get back some of their property, and it becomes a bit entangled with the compensations made to people who were considered victims of the Nazis, as the Habsburg family was probably only treated the way they were because they opposed the Nazis.
Some of their property was indeed used to help victims of the Holocaust.
I guess I didn't realize that the Habsburgs were still the rulers of Austria right up until the first World war, and I didn't realize that they were still an actual family without being royals, and still trying to sort out how to get back some of their property after it was seized, and so on.
It seems strange to think of them as being more or less recently/currently relevant.
I also didn't know that Marie Antoinette was a Habsburg.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/world/hapsburgs-ask-austria-to-return-estates-seized-by-nazis.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Law
