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Relationship I Feel Like He Just Dgaf About Me.

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Sighs

MyPTSD Pro
My vet engages in a lot of potentially dangerous activities. I understand that not much in civvy life can match the adrenaline of being an elite paratrooper so I don't really try to limit what he does. I do wonder if there is some passive suicidal ideation involved, but I also understand that he doesn't want to die in a puddle of his own urine in a nursing home at 92 and life is meant to be lived so again, I don't usually make any attempt to stop him.

On Christmas Day he broke 3 vertebrae in his back when he had to bail out on a bucking horse which was trying to smash him into a fence. I saw the whole thing and for a time didn't know if he was alive or dead. I had to rush in like a rodeo clown and stop the horse trampling him on the ground. The horse then tried to kick him and then tried to squash him against the gate. This horse has malice and intent. I think it needs to be shot before it kills someone. (Animal rights people don't bother to comment on that because as much as I love horses I put human life above equine life and 550kg of animal that wants to hurt people is too dangerous to have around.)

Despite the fact that my vet knows how upset I was and that I didn't want him to ride the horse again he took the horse out yesterday while I was at work. (Yes - with the bones still unhealed in his back. He wore a safety vest - which he should have been wearing the first time!) This time the horse actually threw itself down on the ground which unseated my vet and then came at him on the ground. He then got on another horse and led the dangerous horse and it bit and kicked at the leading horse.
I told my vet he needed to chose between me and the horse. Yes - I know - stupid to give him an ultimatum, but I was really really upset. He says its his decision and he wants to keep working with the horse. Wants to give it "one more chance".

I feel as though he does not give a f*ck about how I feel. He obviously doesn't think I'll actually leave him. Just want to curl into a ball and cry.
 
How much do you communicate? Do you openly share feelings?

Sometimes saying stuff like you just typed out directly to him works best. Him not caring a bit about how you feel about what he's doing isn't nice, but maybe it's more of a lack of communication or miscommunication problem. He is a vet, but that doesn't me you should sugar coat everything with him, or not tell him stuff directly. Sending hugs :hug: Hopefully you manage to come to an understanding :)
 
I'd tell him that when that horse gutter stomps him and he ends up paralyzed, I'm not wiping his ass!

I'd be pissed too... He could at least wait for the initial broken bones to heal before he breaks more. Then pain = stress, and stress = lashing out at you (Note: Not everybody with PTSD lashes out, but @Sighs' vet does, and so does mine). ((Hugs)) girl. He'd be feeding himself tonight, and I'd go take a few hours to cool off.
 
@Sweetpea76 - lol - I swear that's pretty much what I said word for word. And yes - part of why I'm upset is that a bear with a sore head has nothing on a combat vet with PTSD in excruciating pain!

@Mallaky - his hobby. He's on an army pension as he can't work due to his PTSD. I understand he has to do something to keep busy and I understand his need for adrenaline but can't he get that doing something slightly less dangerous? I said nothing when he flat out galloped one of our ex-racehorses across country with a broken back. Why keep working with a horse that WANTS to damage you?

@Saelben - he knows. I've said it. He apologised for worrying me and said it doesn't mean he doesn't care. I then asked if that meant he would leave the bloody horse in the paddock. He said he was apologising for what he had done not what he was going to do.

Sigh!
 
Ah @Sighs. Would wrap you up in a big damn hug if I could.

No man left behind... Seeps into every damn area of my life. I fight it, hard. Had to finally come up with a mantra for civilian land "You can only abandon kids and pets." // Everyone else can take care of their damn selves. They may not want to, but they can.... :shifty: Course, that doesn't help with dogs & horses.

I used to specialize in working with neurotic horses. It was an accident, at first. Training barn, fulla all these babies with soooo much promise, racers... But I was new, hadn't made my chops, yet... Honestly just working student bit; trading barn work for saddle hours. So I had to do what every newbie had to; deal with the demons. Not training them, rich assholes just parked these guys here while they decided what to do with them. And they were seriously broken. Mean, flighty, jumping as f*ck, dangerous to even feed, ruined for racing, unsaleable.

They made sense to me. Made sense at a level I can't really articulate. I could just see what they needed. Sometimes rough, sometimes gentle, it was this dance... Of unbreaking them. Became a challenge I couldn't put down. I still can't. When I can see, really, truly, gut level see something? So much of the world makes no sense to me. But they did.

When I'm in that zone? See a need, fill a need? I think I might be "constitutionally incapable" of thinking of myself... In any way except how I can help. What I can do. Not what I need/want, not what's best for me, but what someone/something else needs. And then I do that.

That's always been a part of me. Trauma shit has just sort of compounded it.

Not making excuses for your vet. Hell, no way for me to know if he's even coming at this from not giving up on the broken horse = not giving up on himself. Not leaving someone broken, angry, & dangerous behind... Just because they're broken, angry, & dangerous. My responsibility, my duty, to see them through. Blinded to everything else but do this, do this right, or die trying.

I don't understand when people try & stop me. It doesn't parse. This is something I can do. Why are you being an obstacle to that?

I forget they love me. I forget they're dealing with their own broken, angry, dangerous creature. Forget I'm needed, wanted, & something else hard to put into words. That I'd even be worth anything to them at all, if I didn't do exactly what they're trying to stop me from doing.

Whoops. Tangent. Again, not making excuses, just thinking out loud. Bottom line? He's being a f*cking idiot. Even if he IS coming at this the way I do, and not for completely different reasons, it's still about retarded to cripple myself, when waiting a few measly weeks = not crippled. Yeah, might be "best for horse" if ABC, but XYZ -aka wait until healthy- might mean more work later, but NO work can be done if I've gone and rushed in where angels fear to tread when I'm not wellest, yet. So suck it up, buttercup, get well first then do what's needed doing. Sigh. I hate that part. Also can't see it, usually. And fight tooth and nail over being made to see it. I'm. Fine. Dammit. Can't you see I'm fine? // No. Cause you're not. You will be, so stop kicking over acting like if you don't do it now, it will never happen. You've got the time to do this right, so do it right. For both of you, or it ain't right.

So my 2cents (10 years later, FFS, sorry I'm rambling) is good on for throwing the breaks on. Until he can go about this (horse & healing) in a non-retarded fashion? Hell yeah, he's gonna catch a bit of rage. Except in this case he's earned it. He needs to turn his damn brain on and think. What would happen to you, what would happen to his dogs, what would happen to this horse he wants to save... If he doesn't slow his ass down and do this smart?
 
Sigh! Yeah, I realise I should never have given an ultimatum unless I was actually going to enforce it. I guess at the time I never for a moment thought he was going to chose the stupid horse! And I was trying desperately to find a way to get through to him how strongly I felt about it.

He's not taking pain meds. His thinking is very clear. He assesses the benefits as follows: If he can gain the horse's trust then he has a horse which has all the physical traits he is looking for in a horse. He assesses the risks as follows: The horse may kill him. Oh well. You can only die once. The horse may injure him. He either recovers, or he learns to live with it like all his pre-existing injuries. He considers that wearing the safety vest and helmet are his concession to my worrying. He considers the risk to be quite small (and, in fairness, compared to a hot insertion (parachuting into enemy held territory) it probably is) and the potential benefit to be quite large.

Also, I think he is reading too much into the horse. It has scars which evidence mistreatment at the hands of humans. He wants to rehabilitate it. He doesn't want to give up on it.

The fact is that however he feels about me it is not enough to change his behaviour. So like @The Albatross said I either accept him as he is or decide I can't deal with it and leave. Sigh!
 
not giving up on the broken horse = not giving up on himself.
^^^
THIS! I get this. And he's already had to shoot one horse he couldn't get through to which had become bloody dangerous. He doesn't want to have to go there again. (I've volunteered to shoot the horse this time so he doesn't have to.)

(Sorry my earlier post was typed before I saw yours @FridayJones.)

What would happen to you, what would happen to his dogs, what would happen to this horse he wants to save... If he doesn't slow his ass down and do this smart?

And ^^^ THIS is why I feel like he just DGAF. He just shrugs and says I would be better off without him anyway.
 
I do wonder if there is some passive suicidal ideation involved,
I've kind of had this conversation with my T (a couple of times....HE brought it up! :mad:) He says there IS a difference between being an adrenaline junkie and having a death wish. He also said the people who actually have death wishes usually don't live very long. Especially if they engage in risky activities.

But, getting on a bad horse with several fractured vertebrae is sounds like "stupid" to me. Because of "what part of paralysis don't you understand" and because being in pain gives the horse an advantage it obviously doesn't need.
He assesses the benefits as follows: If he can gain the horse's trust then he has a horse which has all the physical traits he is looking for in a horse.
OK, here's my professional 2 cents worth. He MIGHT be right about the horse, but there are other ways to approach this besides a direct frontal attack. IMO this doesn't sound like a horse who's READY to be ridden. They need to establish a little trust first. Some kind of relationship. So when things DO get really scary, the horse knows he can look to your vet for support. Right now, he sees him as the enemy and he's trying to save his own life the only way he knows how. Your vet might want to stop and think about how this looks from the HORSE'S point of view and then ask himself how HE takes it when someone backs him into a corner and tries to force him to do something that's "clearly dangerous." You can tell him I said to look around at the scenery and see if some of it doesn't look a might familiar, if he looks at it from the horse's point of view.
 
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