cant stop smiling

We had an inch of snow overnight. Possibly .2 inches of moisture with what melted in yesterday before it started accumulating, probably closer to only .1 though, it didn't seem like very wet snow, esp for march. Pretty much melted by 12:30. All the horses were dozing, so I gave AJ and Duke their grain and then Shade was up. She was such a good girl. Not an angel --this is Shade, had to hit the brakes for nothing much a few times and was a looky loo and would barely walk on a couple stretches but she was good. I went down a couple of ditch roads I haven't ridden in a couple of years. Then we went down one next to a newish subdivision. A mom and couple of kids were playing near the ditch right where there was a skeery V'd pipe across the ditch so I got off to lead Shade past. The kids wanted to pet the horsey. Shade was really good, she let the kids pet her and was aware of where they were. The mom didn't know any better and I was too slow to tell them not to go round behind her or stand right in front of her chest but Shade never bumped into them. She was starting to get a little restless right before we headed off but not too bad. On the way back we scared up a crane. Not very big, it flew up out of the ditch, and landed on the ditch 25 yards ahead of us and stood there. Shade is skeered of birds sometimes but she walked on towards the crane and didn't spook when we got about 1/2 way to it and it flew up again and went just a little way and landed again on the same side of the ditch as us. Well I didn't want to chase the crane out onto the highway crossing just a few hundred feet farther on so I went out in the summer fallow field and went around it. --Call it 10.5 miles for the conditioning logs.

Mom and dad were working on the manure pile when we got back so Shade had to go out with Sadie and CJ since the gates to her pen were open and Grey and Razz were in with Cindy. I gave them a teeny snack of hay, and then remembered I had promised Shade some horse cookies for being so good with the kiddos and crane but I'd forgot while I unsaddled, so I went out and gave her her cookies and hosed off the supracor pad. When mom finished up her spreading I opened gates between all three pens and let everyone mingle and romp. Sadie was being so arabian, racing around, with her tail flagged high. Not sure if CJ is taking the babysitter role very seriously or what but he ran after Sadie quite a few of the times. Unfortunately Cindy's in heat and CJ was running her around some. That was not theraputic for Cindy's sore foot -- Sadie kind of saved the day, CJ was chasing after Cindy and Sadie darted in there behind Cindy and CJ ran after her into the big pen so I shut the gate and let the 4 horses that wanted to clean up the hay scraps stay in the CJ/Sadie pen with CJ and Sadie in the big pen and access to Cindys pen until I was ready to feed and put everyone back in their standard pens.