"Thrive or survive seminar:July 06"

What a blast we had this time around. We always seem to have a lot of fun. By Sunday afternoon everyone had gotten a lot more than we had intended!!!!!

During the lunch break Saturday, whilst we are normally kicking back and taking in the gourmet refreshments and sampling some local wine, the girls in Las Madres decided to put a performance on. For those who had not seen a birth before they had an intense famliarization with three births within 90 minutes.

Jude and I were thinking this is not supposed to be a neonatal clinic and we're always apprenhensive when you have company that all goes well....well, it did...in the end. We had one particularly tough birth, the toughest for the year, one where we had to manipulate the cria out. But all worked out well. We were back in the theory room within minutes, after a bloody good wash!! All cria are well!

    

It was as if we were on show. All the seminar attendees were lined up on the house balcony that over looks the birthing paddock. By the end of lunch they knew that an armed raised over the head with thumbs up didn't necessarily mean all was ok, it meant ' it's a girl"! Raised arm and thumbs down....." another boy'!

Again we had a nice mix of new breeders like Fran Thomas from Kent Washington to old campaigners like Terry Casey at Port Angeles in WA. Carol Salerno and Donna Powlaski were up from Elk Grove, CA. Absolute newbies like Dennis and Chris Calkins made it over from Utah anmd two locals Bob and Robin from Albany,OR.  An old campaigner who has really worked hard to get where she is, LaVeta Roberts and her mate, Lynette " Princess" Jacoby filled out a very entertaining group. We didn't get as many pics as bormal because I forgot!!!! Too many births in a day but Donna Powlaski graciously gave me her pics to choose from.