I am struggling a lot. I have been paying on the debt that resulted from all the damage and vet bills. I have cripples I have to take care of, two died and the ponies I used for lessons and bigger events are gone (either died or crippled). My daughter's expensive beautiful show horse was damaged too much to show and compete. My daughter finally found someone to free lease him and putz around on him and baby him. It is too painful for my daughter to visit him or get on him because he cannot ever do for her what she trained him to do, worked hard on for so many years. I know it is too painful emotionally for my daughter it was too traumatic and she handles it by avoidance.

I still do "some" of my business but not nearly what I had been doing. It is hard because being around them triggers me. I have not been able to go into the ring, I avoid it because too much sad happened in it. When I go out and take care of them, especially at night, by the time I finish I am in a lot of physical pain because my body pumps up with cortisol and adrenaline even though I don't want it to, I don't know how to fix that either, it just comes over me.

I was not prepared for so much sudden loss and expense like that and not having what I needed to service the business I had built up over the years. It wrecked my credit because I could not make enough to pay the higher interest rates and had to get into hardship payment plans, that totally wrecks the credit rating and mine had always been excellent.

My neighbors are still there, but I believe the dog that did the damage has died, after all it is 7 years this year and dogs generally only live until around age 12. My neighbors are "not nice" and want to "blame me" and do not want to be responsible, even though it was their dog and their containment system that failed and they didn't fix it and kept letting that dog out when they figured I would not see it, either when I was not home or late at night. You see, they were very aware from many conversations and even my getting the dog warden to talk to them about containing their dogs. The other problem I have had is leaving the farm, it triggers me and I put them in at night otherwise I would not be able to sleep and now they get upset "still" at night. Horses/ponies get a kind of PTSD too, they never forget things that hurt or severely frighten them.

It is so hard when the one thing I loved so much is now a constant "trigger" to me. People don't understand that, not unless they suffer from PTSD. I still have flashbacks of seeing that dog ruin everything I loved and worked very, very hard for. The bills come in
throughout every month to remind me too.

I spent a lot of time at PC, to "avoid" because of how much bad happened right here where I live, especially outside. It was really bad when I first joined PC. Often, I just want to think about anything other then what happened "right here at my home". I worked so damn hard for this little farm too, so much I did out there, I built so many stone walls, I have had masons come and be totally amazed at all the stone walls I built. I did so many things myself. There is a lot of personal TLC all around me. The only time I could get my mind going was here at PC on the computer because it was different and it was very hard to slow my thoughts down and PC helped with that. At first my posts were very long and racing, and I didn't even know it.

I was so bad for a while, I didn't want to go outside, outside was just blank, nothingness, could not interact with it. I went through about a year where I was very suicidal, every day was very, very hard. I was often so tired but could not sleep, like others who have complained, I was so tired but afraid to sleep and wake up in night terrors. It took me about 4 years before I found a "good" therapist. I wish so much that he had been right there for me in the beginning, perhaps it would not have gotten so bad. I was so full of anger and grief that my brain did not know where to go. I was also so tired because it was too many and too many months of every day doing nothing but taking care of hurt animals and then when I could not save my favorite one, it just got too hard. I could not hear my daughter crying anymore and my husband was not doing well either.

It has been 7 years, and other than the psych ward that only made me worse and didn't help me at all, got no rest I have not had a day "off" from all this mess since it happened. Just no "time out or away", just cant afford it. Often I don't eat because I can't afford the food, gotta keep paying on debt, debt I don't deserve to have to pay for.

OE