Gunshots

Well Halloween turned out to be a looong nite. Started out giving candy to little kids in the neighborhood. That didn't last long, my partner bought 25 bucks worth of candy and gave whole bunch to the first kids he saw. We had call after call all nite with little break in between. Just as we were heading back to the station we were turning off McKnight onto Deerfoot, we get a call for a gunshot wound, and to hold back, at McKnight & 12 St. We just passed that. So, I was thinking of digging out my bullet proof vest, while we turned onto the ramp at 64th, when a lady in a car frantically flaggs us down. She said her boyfriend had been shot. I did a quick check around and called it in. The guy was able to get out of the car and onto our stretcher, he was covered in blood, but talking normally. He said he thought he may have been shot twice. Needless to say this was a load and go situation. The Superintendent wasn't too far behind, so we got him to drive fast to the Foothills while we tended to his wounds. We got a large bore IV into him and gave him enough fluid to bring up his BP. The wounds seem to have missed his lungs, as he was breathing ok. We got him to the hospital alright, and he lived to see another day. Such is the life of a Calgary Paramedic. Just when I thought it was getting too boring!

Higher Trails Horses

http://www.youtube.com/user/highertrailshorses#p/a

Alex on Bunky

The Ball on Willie

Willie is not on the ball, the ball is on Willie

Cattle Drive Today

So....I arrived at the ranch today to find everybody rushing to saddle up to drive 300 cattle from one pasture to another. So, Willie was there, and we got ready. Everything went relatively well up until we turned to go into the home pasture. A tiny baby calf decided to turn around and make a run for it. Ross headed him out with Shy and he ducked left and proceeded towards a barbed wire fence. Willie wasn't controlled enough to speed up to catch him and when the calf went through the fence it made a noise and Willie spooked. I managed to get him turned around but he took off like a bat outa hell. I didn't know he could move that fast. I couldn't turn him left into the barbed wire fence so opted to try and do a one rein stop to the right. What I didn't know was ( and this is totally my fault) that he had lost a bit of weight on the drive and his cinch had loosened up. When I turned him to the right and leaned on the right stirrup, while also hanging on for dear life, Willie almost came to a stop, but the saddle had slipped around and I came off. What really made me mad was that somehow I let go of the right rein. He took off and one of the other riders managed to catch him. I landed fairly good but I have a sore left leg ( I don't know how that happened, how can you fall right and have a sore left leg!?) My hat flew off in the process and Ross kindly went back to get it for me. He stuck around while everyone else moved the rest of the heard to the corral to be separated from the calves. It is a long way up to get on Wille and it was quite a chore getting him to stand still long enough to get back on. But I managed. I was going to go with Ross to help with the herd but Willie decided he had had enough and I had a great deal of difficulty just keeping him from freaking out. So we headed back to the barn. It was a good experience for Willie, only his second cattle drive, but he is still a very young horse....only 4 years old. I'm just glad nobody including him was hurt. I spent a little while in the round pen calming him.

The lesson I learned was do not trust a cinch pin...always back it up with a cinch knot. I will never do that again. OH and I need to get a cord for my hat!

I wanna drive

Majide the colt and Buddy trying to get into the car.

Willie Flexing Practice all by himself

Me & Willie

HIgher Trails Team

Spot and Queen

New Clydesdales at Higher Trails. Watch for us at parades.

New Horse, Willie

Taylor was traded in part of a deal for a team of Clydesdales for Ross.
Willie is the Paint on the left.

Taylor Kneeling Practice

Food is a Powerful Motivator

HIgher Trails Antics

Taylor is getting better

visit to Lori

Visit to Lori and her new Quarter horse. I even got to drive her mini.

High River Parade

Kinda rainy and wet today.

Spring Tack Up

Double click image to enlarge. Click on title to go to website.

Province takes away union's rights

Click on the title and read how the Province is taking away our Union's rights.

Pongo & Dollar.

Retirement???

Well...my retirement date is March 29th. This was done in order to take advantage of the 7 tour holiday retirement bonus that the City of Calgary offers and AHS does not. Also there is the matter of 2 years of paid benefits. I have been guaranteed a position with AHS(Alberta Health Service) as soon as April 2nd with no loss of pay or seniority or hall pick. I have arranged a holiday til the end of the month. This will give me a needed break to get my head together. I know I can't live on What pension will pay me that is for sure. There is something wrong with that after 35 years of work! Retirement should mean...I get the same as I did before, only I don't have to come in! Fat chance. No wonder there are so many "retired poor". Frankly I don't trust the Government when it comes to anything. I have never seen anything actually "improve" with a Government takeover. Just look at BC ...mostly EMT's not Paramedics. We have been given a lot of promises, but the promises only seem to last one year....then they get to do what they want. Hey any industry out there need an experienced Paramedic...give me a shout!

Higher Trails Horse

My new horse Taylor that I have been assigned at Higher Trails. He is an 8 yr old Quarter horse/Clydesdale no less. He has been only greenbroke and has been pastured with an appaloosa named Slim who is his "buddy". The saddle & bridle are assigned too. The saddle fit perfectly, I never even had to adjust the stirrups. He is using a D ring snaffle and doesn't do much. We went on a trail ride last nite and as long as his "buddy" was there he moved out ok. He seems to have a smooth trot, but we didn't trot much as we had a couple of green riders with us. Funny thing...I was attracted to him immediately. I could at least tell who he was amongst all the others. They have a lot of Standardbreds which I am not too fond of anyway. He had a machinery injury to his left back leg...as you can see. It is still bumped up and needs to re-grow some hair. He is a bit skittish about picking up that foot. He is going to take a lot of work, so I hope I can afford to drive all that way more than once a week! 77KM one way.

Lori's concert

Proud of you Lori!

Foxes Mating

Near Didsbury, AB. Sometimes Photography is being at the right place at the right time.

Stairway To Heaven

Someday I'll learn the solo part! Nice lip sync eh!

Christmas

Well...another year...another Christmas. I don't remember a colder December. Global warming...HA! Bring it on! I'm working for Dennis McAreavy to pay back a sub he graciously did for me to enable my Great Divide Ride! Thanks Dennis!!! I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT CHRISTMAS!!!

Finally completed Jason & Melanie Video

It's on it's way Jason. Hope you enjoy it.

MAC Stuff

Well I have been upgrading my Macs like crazy. I put 1 G of Ram in my Ti book. the poor little 160 drive was bumping out to the edge, so I thought I'd try a thing called "Drive Genius" which includes a slim drive function. Well...if you don't know what the hell you're slimming...it is not good. Suffice it to say I recovered 40 G of space from my 250 in my G5, but totally screwed the 160. Good thing I had everything backed up to the nth degree!. It would mount to the point I got a screen, but nothing else. So I decided to put Leopard on it and erase it. It is amazing how much SHIT accumulates on a hard drive that aren't necessary. Steve at Westworld said he reformats his at least once a year to get rid of it. So I thought I would pair down my mp3's and photos etc. Well I ended up with 22 GB free now. So I guess it was worth it. I was told not to import that data directly or it would import all the crap...so I did that later. It was a bit of a challenge getting everything to work again. But seems to be working now. It doesn't allow you to pick and choose enough..so it was a challenge getting what I wanted. Seems to work now though.

I put a 1 TB drive on my G5 and now think I need to put another one in place of my baby 250. I have lots of externals kicking around though. It is amazing...it is like a garage...it fills up the space you have available. Unfortunately I need to find a 250 external that I can use when I get my NEW ONE. (Whenever that will be). Otherwise I'll run into the same problem. Then I can just clone the drive to my new one.

I love Leopard, it is working great!!! Filemaker 6 works but Photoshop 7 sure doesn't! Guess I'll need to get Elements, don't think I can afford the full version. Aperture is working great for RAW images, actually has a lot of editing properties in this program.
Now if Apple will only make a movie program that puts chapter markers on a DVD....how ridiculous that Imovie 8 doesn't do this!

EPCR First Day

Well...glad we didn't have a cardiac arrest!!! It took 3 hours to do the first call. After having done it, some how it created two, so we had to find which one was the real one, and redo that one with all the information. (Long story!) We ended up with two hours overtime on the last call because we got it at 4:30. Oh well....at least they paid for their insistence that we go cold turkey!

Today is another day!

EPCR

Well...today is the first day of the new EPCR (Electronic patient Care Record). We get to be the guinea pigs. It should be interesting. For the first time...I hope our first call keeps us at the hospital for a while...cause it will take a while to enter all the data into this thing. It is basically a Panasonic 12 inch toughbook, with propietary software.