shoulda done this and I shoulda done that .....

I cant place the singer, or even song title if its not that refrain but it was that kind of meeting. I was remiss on making some calls and I have to grab my supervisor to show me how to do something. But computers were up and down and down, and I didn't feel like spending much effort being scattered.

Ok thats enough whining. Shade felt good this morning, she was cantering back and forth in their paddock looking to see if any hay was super special when I finished feeding this morning. I got a wild hair and decided to work Sadie on loading. Far from perfect but she did finally hop her front feet onto the trailer. I rewarded her for that and called it a day. Next time I'll ask her to wait a second and let me cue her to back out. All feet in the trailer will probably take some iterations unless something comes up where I have to haul her somewhere -in which case I'll have to get a helper to get her loaded. My wrist was so much better this morning that I skipped taking alleve and over-used it till it got a bit sore. So took alleve at 1pm and am trying to be good and use my other hand for more stuff again, but I'm guessing I'll be back to normal by monday.

quick post while I wait on another cpu

Shade is still a bit stocked up above her fetlocks. I'm pretty stocked up above my left wrist. Felt like a bit of tendonitis last week at work but both wrists felt good riding so I was puzzling, I didn't fall or anything. Finally remembered that Shade was impatient with me fumbling to get her halter off sat evening and she swung her head while I had my hand in there working on knot and I felt a good wrench at the time. She got some sharp tugs on the lead and then I took the halter off and forgot about it but my wrist has been sore if I over exert it. Seems to be getting better already, so its only a mild sprain or strain.

Dad noticed my car had leaked some oil in the garage and called to alert me to check it out. So I checked oil (for maybe the 2nd time in this cars 99,900 miles -I'm bad) it was still full but I ran it over to the dealer since it has never leaked before, I figured they had not gotten some plug quite snug enough. I felt bad, the desk guy called another one over and said ' S is here by himself and I don't want to tell him this' But I told them it was still full and I could bring it in tomorrow but they had me wait and checked it out and they did find something left loose.

Bit of a bummer, I like taking the car to the dealer because they know its specs and they never try to sell me brake service or anything I don't need and have competitive prices for oil changes etc -- and being a hybrid its got some differences but last year a co-worker noticed I was missing a lug nut a week or so after I had a service done and now this; I'm going to have to start checking quite a bit after I go there and maybe I should just go somewhere else for my only oil change servicings. They must be understaffed/rushed or having too much turnover to be having these slips I think. Sigh, I don't want to think about my car, I hate taking care of inanimate stuff that doesn't come and at least give me a LOOK if they need or think they need something.

I'm so proud of my steel magnolia

My nickname for Shade, started last year when we hit a gopher hole about 22 miles into a ride and took a good tumble. She skinned her nose, I scraped my cheek a bit. We had both had some minor wrenches but not serious damage and she finished that ride. She is made of steel under that magnolia pretty exterior. This pic is by Paschal Karl, Karl creations.

So yesterday I did remember to set my alarm. Good thing. I had put a water carrier in my truck friday night and didn't close the cab door right away because a cat had jumped in. Dumb, he could have exited thru the back window just fine. I didn't even notice when I ran out first thing after rising to give the bay girls more hay.

Off to the garage to grab the charger and extension cord Hook it up in the very dim light. Pretty sure I have pos/neg on battery but decide I need to grab a flashlight to make sure. Good thing, I had the battery right but had mixed the red and black on the charger. Plug it in and decide I'll let it juice the battery while I catch Shade, who had been eating with gusto all day friday -prepping herself for the ride.

Shade is too wound up to be caught so I let her into the diet pen in hopes that she will duck into the smallish pen off of it to see AJ. Well eventually I get her and my grey oldies in there, she does some laps around the pen while the greys are busy munching the hay I used to lure them in there. Truck fires right up so letting it juice for the 10-15 minutes of horse catching worked well.

I had to go get a stock whip to load Shade. -needed a pointer to keep her moving forward instead of backing up as we appoached the door. She hops in and I toss it next to the fence because she's usually a good loader and will be ready to come home later.

Arrive at the ride with almost 90 minutes till start. Yay. Get Shade unloaded and run to the portapotty while she munches grass. Then I drag out a hay tub and water for her and head to the registration area to sign us up. I'm ahead of the secratary, chat for a few minutes with someone parked next to reg. camper and then head off to get elytes mixed. See the sec. drive past before I'm 1/2 back so I use the portapotty again and walk back to sign in. The morning is calm and feels pleasantly warm. I wonder if we'll get windy or hot as the day progresses.

Manage to miss most of the ride meeting after vetting in, doing elytes, remembering to drink some rider elytes etc. No biggie, this is a familiar ride and I wont be leading the pack. Start off at the back of the main group. Proves to be a mistake, all 10-11 of us keep getting sucked along at the front-runners pace. We complete the 17.5 mile loop in just over 100 minutes. Way faster than what I've conditioned Shade for. I knew we were going faster than I really wanted to, but hadn't realized it was that fast. It is starting to get windy and clouding up. Poor Shade is chilly, even with the rain sheet thrown over her saddle to supplement the rump rug which the wind is defeating I have to walk her around to warm up to get her pulse down to the 60 BPM criteria. Well we've separated from the front runners a bit, pass the vet check no problems. I put on my rain jacket during the 45 minute hold to cut the wind and in case the clouds dump on us, pray that they wont. Shade munches some hay but is restless.

As we head out we are passed by a couple of riders really rushing and Shade is determined to keep with them. Luckily they soon passed a gal riding a sane pace and I tucked Shade in behind her. We still make quite good time around this 7.5 mile loop. Back at camp the wind has gotten cold, Shade is very shivery. I unsaddle to make the rain sheet more effective and still have to walk her around for 15 minutes before we meet criteria and she is still chilly. So we head to the trailer to get a wool blanket under the rain sheet even though its only a short hold. Shade munches more hay but is not diving in. She has cleaned up the flake of hay I had at the VC so I drag the hay tub back with us and she wears the wool blanket as I head back there to tack up & give elytes befor starting the next loop. Loops 3 and 4 are repeats of 1 and 2.

Start the 3rd loop with another gal. To prove the wind is cold it is now spitting a few flakes of powder snow, I send up a thank-you that we don't have wet stuff falling. It is not bad when we are moving. She is keeping a working pace. I notice that I twisted Shades headstall when I put on her hackamore like a halter. I decide I'll wait a few miles and fix it when we are under an overpass, out of the wind and with decent footing if Shade rushes to catch back up. When I do fix it it takes me a couple minutes to get it and Shade decides she is tired rather than needing company.

So we do the rest of this loop alone. Its a lollypop with a long stick and short loop and we meet several folks coming back which helps Shade not feel too alone. We walked quite a bit, Shade was really tired once the stay with the herd drive was removed. I felt bad that I let her expend so much energy going way too fast the first loop. But she gets a bit of a second wind about 3/4 way thru the loop and is drinking well and munching some grass when we are walking. I walked into camp from a pretty good ways and the wind was a bit less and some sun was out but I stripped the saddle off and stuck the wool blanket on right away, then we got our pulse. This worked better, she pulsed down in 3 minutes. Since it was finally warmer I pulled the blanket off for our trot out at the vet check.

Shade drank well and dived into into her hay tub. I left her tied and munching and went to the trailer to get another elyte dose for her, and top off my camelback, plus eat a bit. I have learned that I need to keep myself eating and drinking as well as the horse if I want to be functioning well enough to take good care of them at the end of the ride. We start our last 7.5 mile loop alone. Now she is not looking at another horse Shade is leery of the fire hydrant at the corner, LOL. We trot most of the good footing stretches on this loop, walking thru the deep sand bits and taking some quick eating breaks.

We walk across the finish line and Shade gets a drink and dives into her hay tub again. She is eating with such enthusiasm I tie her and walk to the porta-potty before doing our final vet exam. She was still munching as I put the saddle over her blanket and led her back to the trailer while bringing the hay tub. (I don't want to make a lot of extra trips) Back at the trailer I put away the saddle and swap her rain sheet for the wool blanket and she took a standing nap in the warmish sunshine while I went the to meal and awards.

Nice surprise at awards Deb & Paschal Karl (Karl creations) had gotten a really lovely pic of Shade and Deb told me Paschal had printed an 8x10 of it. Of course I bought it, my crooked, coarse resolution scan of it is today's image. I chose a T-shirt, (yikes white) for my official award. passed on sunglasses since I need prescription or wear-overs and on notecards because I don't put pen to paper very often. Afterwards Shade was refusing to load. I took off the rain sheet and walked her around to graze for a few minutes while a couple damp spots dried a bit. Then she was still refusing, I was wishing I had thrown my hip pointer in the truck that morning but someone came over after a couple minutes of messing and with someone at her rump she hopped right in. I was a bit insulted, I try to drive pretty considerately when I'm hauling horses.

Shade enjoyed a good roll and the generous hay I gave her and Sadie. She's been wanting to be with her geldings instead of just Sadie so this morning after I fed and put some sore-no-more brand liniment on Shade I opened the dividing gate and also walked down to the pasture and opened that gate so they can wander out and graze when they finish up the hay.

dessert time

thats how to reverse being stressed right? I am so tired today and fighting a feeling of dread which I do fairly often get before a ride. I enjoy endurance riding but its not unusual that I feel like I'm not ready and especially for this first ride of the season I've got it big time. Oh well maybe I'll forget to set the alarm and wont get there in time to do the long ride.

Work has just felt so stressful this week. I've been getting my spring allergies, thank goodness I'm only affected a few weeks when trees are blooming. So started week feeling like I was getting sick till I figured out the allergies and had a really hard time concentrating and pulling things together for the wednesday meeting. I did get a few things together and was fairly happy with it but my boss thinks I'm too scatted and kind of shotgun. Well I am trying to examine multiple things I've done so its not trivial for me to focus it down, but he has a point.

And as usual, everyone 'says' they'll help you out but when asked to provide the simplest thing they disappear. Even my new boss who should want me to get things done so he'll get kudos for being an effective boss could not even bother to write me a 5 minute email to let me know the directory and example processing control file so I could implement some of his programs he's developed in my processing that he SUPERVISES. I feel like I'm slated for lay-off when no one will spend even minimal time to save me spinning my wheels or re-inventing their work. I sure hope this is just tiredness and not true foreboding.

On the plus side my mom called the big O tire store in Brighton and they had used tires the right size and she even took them in in her new car and got them mounted -all I had to do was hand her cash - so finally I can put them on the trailer this sunday and complete dads christmas gift.

wednesdays treadmill

The 2nd used tire store didn't have any used in that size. Gosh I thought it would be EASY to find 215/75/R15 tires. The only new tires they quoted me were $80 EACH. Since I'm quite sure I only paid $67 for a high quality trailer tire for the horse trailer last summer I was not going for that. So now one of my few errands I thought I had done is still hanging fire. Aaaahgh.

I want a personal assistant. We should have some kind of 1 click walkie-talkie so as I think about things I cant do right now because I'm feeding horses or driving or its after hours, etc I can click and say. Call around to find this tire option, make me an appt for my mammogram that I'm supposed to do annually and is now 2 years + the OB/GYN appt that is only 14-15 months. Oh and call the ride manager and find out for sure what time the ride will start on saturday. A gal can dream anyways. Nothing like building a netcdf reader (that most likely already exists in the sister program) because its faster to iterate thru building the code than to extract anything helpful from the person who would have wrote it, to eat up a day.

Endurance wisdoms says don't train the week of a ride

And boy howdy I'm there today. Only went a couple miles on Shaders this morning. Then I ran to the post office to pick up the new battery for my laptop which is FINALLY here from Hong Kong. Well it was the 2nd notice slip from the post office so I guess I can't really carp about the seller being slow. Since I was headed that direction I threw the tires dad and I took off the flatbed several weeks ago in my trunk to see if I could get used tires put on. First place is barely doing tires anymore and didn't have any in that size but she told me about a place right near the post office. I left the tires there. Yesterday I had Big O swap out my snow tires for the summer ones that still have a little tread. I only seem to have it in me to tackle 1 or 2 errands a day. So of course I'll catch up about the time I retire in 20-25 years.

I'm blessed

I know it always but don't state if real often. Most days I really like my life. I have a good job which is challenging enough to be fulfilling when things go well. Parents who helped me and my siblings get educations. And of course this blog is mostly about my horses.

With an eye to the forecasted afternoon winds I took my dressage lesson on Shade today and then did our trail ride. V was pleased with how I'm using what she showed me before; today's main focus was my hands. She wants me to focus on keeping them low with relaxed wrists, says this keeps everything more relaxed and flowing. Thats an easy one for ridnig by myself. I'll have to try to remember this saturday at our first endurance ride of the season. Shade gets wound up and I'm holding her back with very high hands often. But I'll be using the hackamore, so with the power brakes I should be able to keep my hands low and maybe that relaxation will transfer back to Shade and she'll settle in better.

Shade was good today. We were walking off the 2-track because it had collected lots of tumbleweeds and she stopped dead a few miles into the ride. I looked down and she had felt electric fence wire on her fetlock. Very good girl Shade! then she let me back her away from the wire -we were between the fence line and this stray wire at this point and turn around and find the spot where the downed wire was covered in dirt so we could cross it with sure safety. She's still my AYrab, make sure I keep a centered seat though. She swerved at nothing so hard I was pretty much on her neck about 1/2 mile later. That was her only hard start the whole ride though.

woohoo

I rode Shade this morning; 6 miles for the conditioning logs; but the Hurray is for work. The system administrator in Oklahoma reset some thing with their 'rocketport' --dont ask I don't really know, just some computer thing that gives extra serial ports so if there are multiple devices that need to be plugged in to the cpu it can happen. Anyway our data flow is restored now. One thing off of my plate.

Now I have to pick some jobs for the processing computers to chug away on over the weekend. --Well now you know why I mainly blog the horse experiences. My work is too mind numbing; by the time all the technical background details are filled in everyone has nodded off.

Annual vet visit today

The annual SCHEDULED visit for all the equines. We've been having Dr Mike give spring shots as well as giving everyone a once over and I have blood pulled for coggins tests on horses I may haul out of state every spring. None of my horses needed any dental work today so I got off relatively cheaply.

Shade and Sadie were pretty good girls. Especially Shade, what a change from the mare that had to be snubbed tight to a V-notched tree and twitched for shots and gave a complete rodeo when she cut her hock (talk about a horse resisting tranquilizing!) when I had only had her for 3 weeks. Its been so good for her that I do the endurance/distance riding so she comes into a lot of contact with vets who just give her a quick metabolic check and watch her trot and don't have to treat her. Now she isn't so suspicious from the get-go she doesn't even react to the vaccinations, it helps that Dr Mike has a pretty deft hand for doing them.

Sadie was a very good girl too. Her only misbehavior was squirming around instead of standing nicely, but heck she is a just barely yearling AY-rab --its HARD for her to just stand still. Grey and Cindy were ok and mom was holding them while I caught other horses. Grey pushed thru the gate when I was taking Cindy out though. He's gotten to be a brat about that. Maybe he's getting bored with being laid off.

Hey its snowing

Certainly not shocking in our climate but it was 80F (about 27C) yesterday so it feels strange to look at snow out the window today. It was still sunny this morning. We had a chilly wind at times but Shade and I took a 5 mile ride and then I shuffled horses around. Sadie and Shade are now in pen with the pre-built shed I bought in Jan and CJ is in with RazzMo and Grey and Cindy in the bigger pen. I propped the gate open to the smaller pen with a tire (tied to the gate so wind cant just defeat this) Hopefully this will allow all the horses to get out of the wind if they cant share one large shed. I think Shade will share a shed (just not a food tub) with Sadie but that shed is in the middle of the paddock so Sadie can for sure have a wind break.

Wow I really should have pictures to illustrate the horse pens. Oh well I like to re-read my entries once in a while, they don't have to be clear to the rest of the world to serve the main purpose of being an on-line journal.

pass the tums and the coffee please

Going to be that kind of a week I think. But I'll take jingled curb chains it turns around. I launched an archiving run on friday last week. It hung up on saturday + hung up all processing. The sys admin tried to fix it by making a temp directory point to an external raid directory that could handle the load. Unfortunately the library module he had to change for this is used by computers that don't see the big external disk he used, so processing remained hung up. So I'm going to be playing catchup late into the evening tonight, and probably be scrambling all week to catch up and put in more safeguards to keep future processing from getting as clobbered. Fun with computers. I'm wasting time blogging it now because the sys admin has a dr's appt so he wont be able to fix things by mounting the raid on those cpu's till 3 pm.

I rode Shade this morning. Took it very slow because she got kicked or somehow otherwise got scrapes on the back of both hind legs, right where the big ligament runs. Since I was going slow I went her looky loo direction so then I couldn't tell if she was bouncy because of the LL's or if a hind leg was weird but she went better on the way home and I didn't feel any gait hitch. Dr Mike is out on wed. for spring wellness series so I'll just ask him about it then. I put some arnica gel on it when I got back. Shade was like "No don't put any stinging stuff on me!, oh wait I think maybe this just feels good" Gotta love an expressive horse.

Windy ride on Shade blew away the blues

It was so easy to leave Ole in the house after his bratty behaviour yesterday when I taking him and Mia for a run. But Mia was another story. I was trying to make her stay home too, but hadn't put her in the hourse and she wanted to come and she is SOOO stubborn .... Oh well an extra mile from doubling back to get her 1/2 way home before getting going the rest of my ride worked out fine. It was up one of the few hills on my route.

Whee I am so loving Shade this year. Perhaps Grey getting injured last fall is a blessing in disguise. Not having him to ride a LD on is giving me good motivation to really strive for conditioning Shade so she can go mutliple days. I still hope Grey comes sound and can do some slow LD's this fall; there are area rides I'd like to support the RMs but do new rides on Shade. We boogied quite a bit and did 15 miles.

good thing I logged out

Someone on my board that I'm a technical moderator posted something with a title chosen to needle others.

I don't consider it my place to delete or modify peoples posts but this one was really tempting to delete. Actually I ought to login and modify her title to show her state. She has no experience with other areas. But I need to go feed horses.

tues am eta: well found out posts cant be edited. Which I guess is a good thing overall. I had wanted to add words to a differenent topic title a couple days ago and there is no option for that. Life is sure peaceful right now by just not even reading. When I get bored and the melodrama level is back to only normal I expect I'll go back to it but I needed the break on many levels; so I guess I owe the flame heads a thank you. Maybe I'll even give it to them when I return.

Calvary crossed his final bridge today.

DARN IT! I thought he looked better yesterday. I've been worried about his stiffness in the neck and a stiff gait at times but he looked like he was picking up weight yesterday. He was being picky about his hay overnight and didn't clean up much brome but he seemed fairly healthy this morning, he wanted his goodies. but mom just called to let me know he had laid down and couldn't get himself up even with help this afternoon so they got V's vet out and he said it was time to let go.

He thought Calvary was closer to 30 than 25. Well I was a bit concerned when we got him that bouncing back would be pretty tough at his age, but except for the stiff neck I noticed starting on saturday he had seemed to be making progress towards health all this week. Well he's free from aches and pains now and his limbs have been restored to doing what his mind asks. Run free Calvary, Run free. Pic is from last week.

We finally got a spring snowstorm

Its cleared up now. I neglected to get pics again. Nothing exciting anyway. We had a gentle rain last night and it turned to blowing snow by morning. Sadie and CJ were grubbing thru last nights hay. When Shade saw me feeding she started over to the fence where the feeders are and then went 'heck with this and ran back to the shed' A nice little chuckle for me. I carried a flake of hay over so she could eat w/o being pelted with the wind driven snow. She actually earns her keep so she deserves a bit of spoiling.

Too bad we didn't get this system on sunday night. My farrier would have had an easier job of trimming Grey, Sadie and Cindy. Shade gets shoes next week. I'll have to slap conditioner on her hooves over the weekend to try and keep this moisture in till tuesday. I rubbed a bit of DMSO on Calvary since I had on rubber gloves anyway for the wet. He thought was picking on him; so surprise, DMSO seems to sting a bit when applied but I feel bad about his neck being so stiff. I must remember to ask V if she'll sound out his owner about chiro work. On the plus side I think he looks like he's starting to gain a bit of weight.

What a lovely spring morning.

I didn't take any pictures of it, just enjoyed a fun 6 mile ride on Shade. Mia felt good this morning. She went a mile out with us and took herself the mile home while Ole tagged along as Shade and I did an extra 4 mile loop before going the mile home. I'm trying to keep more of a conditioning pace when we ride and I feel like Shade and I did well at that today. Someday I should start using the GPS gizmo mom got me for Christmas to really track pace and mileage when I ride. I just hate adding that extra monkey work to my fun though.

Today I asked Shade to maintain a trot for 2.5 miles with just a few 10-20 yard stretches of walking for short rocky sections etc. and a bit of canter at the end. Shade is getting really good about this too. I've had a bad habit of letting the horses drop to a walk to look at stuff or just because and I'm trying to break this habit and actually achieve some conditioning when I ride, as well as riding more miles than the last few years because I really want to complete 155 miles in 3 days at my favorite ride July 4-6. Then we walked through the CRP field with lots of pocket gopher digging and prairie dogs although I think the dogs are not over by the fence where I ride. Then we trotted some more and sprinted up our few hundred yards hill.

I really tried to keep my feet under my knees instead of letting them creep in front and also worked on sitting on my seat bones instead of rolling too far forward so my back stays flatter like V worked on with me in our lesson on sunday. Riding in the LJ and really working on trying to ride correct on my shorter weekday rides seems to be really helping me handle the longer rides on the weekends. Its nice not to be thinking 'well Shade is just well warmed up and could go double this distance but I'm too tired and need to just get home and collapse'.

Ride season starts Apr 26th and Shade and I will be tired afterwards; as I'm not achieving the weekly miles needed to cruise through a ride with ease but we are getting there. I feel good that by July we will be at that point and it will be only a bit of a stretch to ask ourselves to repeat the next 2 days.

Whew, we survived the weekend

Saturday morning I was going to be sweet to Calvary and let him hand graze in the ditch. He wouldn't graze. He would eat if I picked a handful but he wasn't comfortable to put his head clear down to the ground. He was a bit shaky on his back legs when he stretched very low. Poor old guy. So I took him back and set him up with a hanging feeder plus put his water tub and 2nd feed tub on tires etc. Then I decided I was going to have a nice ride to ease my mind.

I took a wonderful long ride. It was sunny as I saddled up and I almost wanted to get a lighter shirt but decided not to bother. Took off and we got some cloud cover and breeze. Not enough to chill but so refreshing. I let Ole tag along as I usually do when I ride from home. I wanted to explore some field roads I had found a couple miles from home. Well Ole was busy sniffing and I didn't wait for him. He usually takes hisself home if he isn't up to the pace. Since he wasn't along we really boogied along, and explored extra side trails etc and we ate up 15 miles. It was so lovely, until I got home and Ole was NOT there waiting for us. Durned dog, I'm always joking that I'm trying to ditch him and cant succeed but it wasn't funny when it was true. Still, figured he met someone else from our neighborhood and followed them home and was hanging around playing with their dogs until they shut him out. But he didn't show up, dad went down and called for him, and went down one neighborhood road. I drove my car back to the spot where Ole had dropped off and called. Then went down the ditch road towards home and let Mia run a bit. No Ole. Not a good evening. I knew he was missing his tags; I had noticed they were gone but hadn't replaced them yet so no one could call us. Oh sht sht sht.

Finally late saturday night I figured I could call animal control and report him missing, but it was so late I left it till morning. Also asked animal communicators to talk to him. On sunday morning I called the published Adams county shelter/control # which was a recording of their hours and don't leave a message. So I dug in the book, called the city ac # and they transferred me to a county # that would take a message. Nuthin like red tape. I read the communicators post and was worried from what she got that Ole had been hit by a car and knocked into an irrigation ditch. There were no ditches steep enough he could have troubles getting out of them if he werent hurt and she had gotten an impression that he was in a hole, but she had a migraine so things were a bit fuzzy after accurate description of where Ole dropped out and him wagging his tale when she talked to him. But I know from experience that sometimes we cant tell if animals have died or not. So I drove back to the ditch and walked under the highway and checked really thoroughly. No Ole body. Drove down the ditch road away from home, fruitless search. Head home wondering what to do next. Walk in the door to a ringing phone. It was the pound and they had Ole, picked up wandering around, not hurt or anything. Whew what a relief. Mom had picked up the ph 2 seconds ahead of me and I let her deal with the lecture. I dug out the exact change $55 fine. Mom and dad fetched him home. Hey he got microchipped out of the deal.

Calvary ate and drank great wtih the raised tubs, rather then the merely good he had been before. I wanted to worm him but mom thought V already had, so we waited and called her when she got home from church. She hadn't but she figured we should play it extra safe and not give him a full dose so I gave him 15 cc's of safeguard. I haven't weight taped him and wouldn't know whether to worm the actual weight or what he should be. 23 cc's would be a full dose for 1000 lbs. For his size he should weigh at least 1200 lbs. I groomed him good, he is shedding and his summer coat does not look bad, surprises me for as thin as he is. I searched high and low and couldn't find my excaliber (sheath cleaner) but my vet has warned some horses have reaction to it anyway so I just took an oral syringe and some warm water with a bit of aloe juice and rinsed him. Flushed out a lot of crud and I may have even got a soft pair of beans -I'm not sure I know exactly where beans hide. Then I took a 2nd dressage lesson on RazzMo with V. It went pretty well. We mainly walked and did just a bit of trotting, but she showed me how I'm putting my feet too far forward when I post a trot and then moved the skeery cardboard the wind had liffted off the ground and flapped it against the arena fence so RazzMo could relax and just trot again and it felt good. I loff how V fixes my fundamentals and all my riding is improved so much after just a lesson or 2. But I must remember to replace the leathers on my saddle. We aren't using the ideal hole because it has a split. And I took the plunge and re-arranged horses. I put Grey, Cindy and Razz together in the portable shed pen --now its the diet pen. Shade is in with CJ, who has turned into a bit of a bully -grr and with Sadie. But Shade is shrugging off CJ taking first choice of feeder. I want to give her less alfalfa and more total hay -basically what Sadie and CJ have been getting. plus I wanted Sadie in that bigger pen. So crossing fingers that this works out. Razz is pushing Grey and Cindy out of food but perhaps they'll double up on him. Plenty of feeders so Grey and Cindy won't starve and they have even more spare than Razz.

Sadie's audition for the dog and pony Show

Thats what I call it when I pony a horse and the dogs are tagging along too. We got just a few hundredths of rain overnight. Settled the dust, and at least the mtns got good snow this year so the reservoirs will be full for irrigation and most of the hayfields are irrigated -and being just a few acres of sandhill we never get serious grazing anyway. But the sun was shining and it was quite pleasant this morning and since I rode Shade Tues and again Wed to beat the weather, I decided today was as good as any to see how it would work to ride Grey Moun and pony ms Sadie.

So I tossed the LJ over my supracor on Grey and grabbed Sadie and went down the road a little over half a mile. It was fine. Initially Sadie wanted to hang back and just follow Grey Moun and I let her, but then her normal personality came out and she wanted to see if she could cut in front --uh no missy we dont do that. Grey showed her how the best part of going down the road a bit is the 1 minute grazing breaks, not that Sadie needed much showing, she's an eater.

When we first turned towards home Sadie was being a pretty good pill, really trying to take off and cut in front of Grey or bump and turn him and throwing a fit when she put the lead rope over her nose (I may want to use the other halter with a fixed ring instead of a slider next time we go out). But Grey is such a good boy for me and only did a bit of prancy trotting as I held him back and dealt with her. We got her sorted out and she led pretty well after that few minutes of tantruming. CJ was running the fence when we got back. He's so happy to finally have a horse, especially a mare, that he can boss around a bit He's not mean about it, just knows he's bigger and Sadie yields to him, so he thinks he's finally Da Boss Man. ROFLMAO

The forecast made me do it ....

60% chance of rain or snow tomorrow and a high of 40F when I peeked at the wunderground forecast so I HAD to ride Shade again since I don't like to ride in cold damp weather - I only do that when I've driven many miles and paid an entry fee already. We have enough dry weather I don't have to ride in the rain to get plenty of saddle time. Ride in the wind yes, in the rain, no.

So 5 slow miles for the conditioning logs and Mia came about .7 miles and then took herself home when we got to the stickery stuff. I would have preferred she just waited in the prairie dog town near the corner till I was done because I don't trust her car sense but she did make it home okay and I didn't have sad doggy eyes begging 'take me for a run ' from either her or Ole when I finally got myself in the car and rolling towards work.

And Calvary is holding his own. He looks plumper already, he must have been dehydrated, its too soon for him to have put on non-water weight. V put Diamond in the adjacent pen so he has a buddy right there all the time and he's happy about that. Diamond seems to think its okay not having to compete with 4 other grubby mini's for hay and has been visiting with Calvary nicely --as well as sticking his head into the pen for some food snatching, lol. I have been putting a tank heater in Calvary's water barrel any time it might freeze so he has 24 hour access to water w/o having to break ice and drink the icy cold stuff. They both got heaters monday night when we know it would freeze pretty good overnight I'm pretty sure Calvary didn't get heated water all winter. T had lost a mini from a defective tank heater that some farm sitter put in a tank early in the winter.

V did have to help Calvary get up on monday again like I did on sunday but I haven't heard about any more cases of that. He's either sleeping only on his feet, or has gotten enough strength to get up. If its warm over the weekend I do need to clean his sheath . Its full of sand and his belly is often damp right in front of it, poor guy. I also want to get 2 or 3 of our little loader scoops of sand in C's front pen.

Rode Shade this morning and ponied Grey

Only ponied Grey to the 1/2 mile corner. Then I did some faster work on Shade for 3.5 miles and led Grey home. So 4.5 miles for Shade's conditioning log and an easy mile for Grey. I need to call Dr Mike and ask him to schedule a bit more time and do a lameness eval. on Grey when he does spring teeth and shots. I think he is not quite right when he trots fast in the corral. No big obvious grade 2 or higher, with a head bob or anything but he is maybe short-striding a bit on that right side. So he may not come sound to do any more LD's. Oh well I'll still enjoy horse vacations with Naomi on him if he turns out only sound for trail-riding and no more fast trotting, and he might be fine next year.

and I was looking through my purse to see if I had a sympathy card for an endurance acquaintance, I don't know him well but he's just the nicest guy in the world and really practices excellent horsemanship, just found out he lost a horse in a tragic trailer accident. Don't drive tired folks (news report says accident happened at 5:19 am) and we really should all have beefy vehicles for the amount of trailer we have -the report says the trailer started fish-tailing and he wasn't able to correct and the trailer rolled. http://easycareinc.typepad.com/karen/2008/03/trailer-acciden.html#more

Anyway I am such a scatterbrain. I found the envelope with my traffic ticket and fine I was just paying -no contest - that I THOUGHT I had mailed on Feb 9 when I wrote the check out! Luckily when I tore the envelope open and checked the ticket the court date is Apr 11, so I still had time to go online and pay the fine and just void the check. I could have even mailed it still but I didn't want to have such a tight margin.