A Happy New Year from (left to right) Larissa, Yvonne, Piccola, Lena and Greg.
There are a number of photos in this message. Click on them, maybe several times, to enlarge them. That's why the message is a web page, not a PDF document.
We've been sending this annual letter for ten years now. We had thought that the world problems of last year would be over by now, but in many ways nothing much has changed. It seems that the COVID-19 pandemic will never end, not helped by the surprising number of people who refuse to be vaccinated. The best we can say is that it has had very little effect on us: we're out in the sticks and don't have much contact with anybody. But it's concerning that, far from fading, the number of cases is on the increase round here, as world-wide. Hopefully things will be better next year.
House and garden
Last year we finally got round to planning a roof over the riding arena, and by the end of the year—only 9 months!—we had an application for a planning permit waiting for action at the Shire Council. It took until May before it was finally approved, but only after we had agreed to use Colorbond instead of straight galvanized iron, further increasing the cost by about $2,500.
After that, things were smoother. We got the building permit with relatively little delay, the materials arrived, the builder arrived and told us that the estimates for erection were deliberately too low, further increasing the price by another $2,000 or so.
But that was nothing. When they arrived, on 27 August, the builders found two problems: first, the surveyor had put the shed in the wrong place, which would have required removing the fences and significant earthworks. But that wasn't even important: there's a power line over the site, and you can't build there! We spent some time identifying a different location for the shed, but that would require significant earthworks. Another $10,000 or so.
More negotiation with the council for an amendment to the planning permit. At the beginning of 2022, we're still waiting on that. And so far the costs have risen to about 20% of the cost of the house.
Yvonne
Yvonne has had some health issues: in June she was treated for atrial fibrillation, fortunately with success, but she was under the weather for some time, and the medication that she needs to take is not easy to stomach.
Much of her activity rotates around horses and horse events. It has been over two years since the last riding clinic with Anke Hawke, but the continuous “lockdowns” and travel restrictions mean that we still don't know when she will be able to come again. So there's little activity on that front.
But she still enjoys improving her steady progress on their classical riding skills, with her horse Carlotta NS:
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Apart from that, Yvonne decided that her second horse, Valeta, wasn't the perfect match to become her backup riding horse, and she sold her to Jane Ashurst, the owner of Samba. To fill her place she was offered a young Tennessee Walker-Paso cross mare, Kybeyan Dana. But COVID-19 has delayed the transport, so by the end of the old year she still hadn't arrived.
The old year still had a sting in its tail, though: Carlotta became lame, and on the afternoon of 31 December Simon Pearce of Golden Plains Equine came and diagnosed hoof problems (“broken back”, which sounds worse than it is) that will require a significant amount of corrective work.
Greg
Greg seems to have done nothing interesting for years. Last year's report could equally well apply this year. He has done nothing and reported about it at great length. He continues to mess around with computers and the technical aspects of photography, has spent some time cooking, and that's about that.
Yana
Our daughter Yana is once again a “casualty” of the pandemic. She lives in Adelaide, and has suffered as the result of the “lockdowns”. Last year her finances kept her away, but this year, just as she was about to leave, she was identified as a close contact of somebody who contracted COVID-19 and had to self-isolate for almost exactly the time that she had planned to spend here.
Dogs
It wasn't a good year for our dogs. It started off well enough. We hadn't included them in last year's photo, but that was mainly because of the difficulty of getting everybody in position at once. Here one of the failures:
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That's also the background of the mediocre quality of this year's photo.
At the beginning of the year Leonid had problems that we thought were arthritis, but further checks showed that he had a fibrosarcoma on the triceps. Amputation was one possibility, but that's a fate worse than death. The only hope was that it wouldn't progress quickly.
It did. By the end of March, he was in pain and had difficulty walking. Goodbye, Leonid—he was barely 7 years old.
Yvonne was inconsolable and didn't want another Borzoi. She found a Staghound/Whippet crosspuppy in Mansfield, and only 5 days later we set off to pick him up. We called him Pedro:
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Clearly he wasn't a match in size for Nikolai, our remaining Borzoi:
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He's a nice dog, but somehow his temperament doesn't match our lifestyle. Gradually Yvonne came to recognize that we really wanted a Borzoi after all. We found a new home for Pedro in Ballarat, and after some searching—there are far fewer Borzoi breeders around in Victoria nowadays—we found Larissa (Lara), three months old, who arrived only 3 days later:
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That worked out much better, but then the unthinkable happened: a month later Nikolai had problems, and when we took him to the vet, we discovered that he had a broken hind leg: osteosarcoma. The same decision as with Leonid: we would have had to amputate the hind leg, not a real option. So he, too, left us, only a month after Lara arrived.
What to do? Lara missed him, of course, and it quickly became clear that we needed yet another dog. Lara's breeder told us of somebody in “Western Victoria” who had an 18 month old dog that she wanted to get rid of. Was it worth going there to take a look? Western Victoria has an area of about 150,000 km². But it proved that the dog was in Buninyong, only 20 km away and on the way to Ballarat. So we arranged a visit, and established that the dog (George) had serious fear issues, and that Peggy, the owner really didn't want to get rid of him, just to cure him. He was clearly no candidate for us, but we stayed in contact with Peggy, and he comes walking with us occasionally. He's gradually getting over his fear issues.
So what about a replacement for Niko? The only young dog we could find was a littermate of Lara. Some consideration, and in the end we took her. She was jumping for joy:
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We ended up calling her Lena. Greg had wanted to call here Elena (Елена), but Yvonne refused. But anything's better than their pedigree names: Georwitch Just Google It and Georwitch Just Sayin.
So that's the current situation. In the four months from 31 March to 23 July we had no fewer than five dogs. Now things are quietening down again. The dogs are coming on 10 months old and looking more like real dogs.
As always, if this letter isn't long enough, you can read about our 2021 in excruciating detail in Greg's diary. A Happy New Year to you all from Greg, Yvonne, Carlotta, Larissa, Lena and Piccola!
Maintaining the email list for this newsletter is a non-trivial task. Email addresses keep changing, and we get up to a third of all messages rejected. Did we miss you this year? Please let me know and I'll update the distribution list for next year.