The wee escape

Rode Shade today. A good dose of sanity. Dad got the tractor unstuck and replaced the eyebolt that broke and had the 3pt hitch catching on the tire friday and today I helped getting the brush hog hooked back up. So horses are back to their typical pens. Yay, less manual cleaning of small pens.

Getting to the title. Hmm I need a diagram. This is not quite lined up or to scale.
| P | |
| | S | P is the big paddock. S is Shade and Sadies 1/2 size paddock. M is mini's area. R.
|C J | [ M ]
| | |
|A|D| ( R )


LD was out to trim the mini's and Duke and AJ. I held horses for mom and even wrote the check --I'll take it out of my rent, I'm a nice daughter but not THAT nice. When LD was done with Duke and AJ I let Duke go in AJ's pen to clean up old hay, kicked CJ into the acre paddock from the little pen represented by the = signs. Then I let AJ into that pen, put Cindy and Grey back in the big paddock and opened the gate between Shade and Sadies and the big paddock so all those 6 could play and AJ would have fence visitors. Had lunch, rode Shade, warmed up in the house and went to separate horses to normal pens and feed. Think -gosh Shade looks so tall, then glance into the CJ pen and see 3 grey horses. Oh no wonder, its 16.3 hand AJ I saw in the paddock not 14.3 Shade. AJ wouldn't let me walk up and halter him but he ran to the gate to pen CJ which was barely open. Then ran to his pen gate and waited for me to open it. Headed for the water tank that serves his and Dukes pen and drank and drank. I guess the big gang had him too stirred up to drink out of the tank that serves the CJ pen and big paddock. Then after a little dinking around I got Shade and Sadie back into their pen and gave everyone their hay. Nice boring day. Then got my dose of annoyment. BHO is saying the crappy bill that Pelosi crafted must be passed soon. Nope --things are not urgent. The senate should throw it out and start over with a 1/3 size bill that is all stimulus instead of the 13% stim, 87% pork and sweeping social reforms. I've not got much faith of that happening. They'll probably cut just a few things, add some of their own pork and pass it. My poor country, this 'crisis' is being used to create the USSA, IMO.

picking our pockets while we look at the smoke and mirrors!

While I was stewing about Pel's HoR all pork, gummint moving into your life stimulus my fat @ss bill -newly passed by the HoR; the Senate just seized 2 million acres for wilderness.

I bet you are thinking- but isn't wilderness a GOOD thing? Well sure it is; I certainly didn't want the gummint selling existing wilderness areas for golf courses and condos to fund the stimulus bill. But what the omnibus wilderness bill just passed did is take 2 million acres of National forest, and BLM lands, 700,000 acres in Calif and the rest scattered around I dont know where all --this means they were already protected government lands and make them 'wilderness'. Completely doing an end run around the intent that congress is supposed to debate each wilderness designation and decide if a patch of land needs and/or deserves the extra protection.

Wilderness designations mean that you can't ride your bike there anymore, let alone an ATV or in *MY* case there most likely wont be any endurance rides held on the trails. Because any kind of competition on 'wilderness' is verboten. I only say most likely because there are 2 rides that pre-dated wilderness designations that still cross sections of wilderness but they both had decades of history before the designation and 1 is the famous Tevis 100 mile point to point ride and the other is a 100 mile loop ride and both cross about 6 miles of wilderness on the historical trails and the loop ride very nearly lost its 6 mile trail through a corner of wilderness a few years ago, but I think there was a successful letter writing campaign to the NFS district manager --which means that ride could lose its access again under a new manager.

The regulations would have to be completely changed for a traditional endurance ride with shorter loops to be allowed to have any of the loops cross through a corner of 'wilderness'. Like ride managers don't have to work hard enough to get permits to have a ride on NFS or BLM public lands as it is. Sighhhhh.

Oh and this is going to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil how? One thing that BLM does allow is energy development. Nothing mechanized on wilderness. Not even a solar panel or wind turbine for green energy. Congress and the new administration could have worked with BLM managers to take a more protective approach, curtailing ORV use, and oil and natural gas development. But thats not complete control. Welcome to life with the U.S.S.D. party in charge.

OH yes, fuel IS going to go through the roof. And cities and states are all hot to move to monitoring odometers, if not putting GPS's on vehicles so that cheapskates like me that will not drive a car that doesn't get good mileage have to pay our share for road maintainence. Geeze, just suck it up and raise the gasoline taxes. --I'll tell you why they don't like that idea --its much easier to waive a licensing fee based on miles driven for your special buddies (ie voting blocs) but if the tax is at the pump its going to pretty much be applied universally and thats not likely to keep their voters happy. (they will come up with elegant labels but taxing based on GPS reports is about favors for key voters, make no mistake about that. ) Welcome to the age of Big Brother. George Orwell was only off by 30 years. Kind of makes me glad I never had kids.

Here's an article -very cheerleady but has most of the facts. I don't have a reference for the senate bill.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/15/MNO215B3BA.DTL

indulging in a friday whine fest

I think I have a mild cold. I woke up with mild dripping phlegm taste/sensation in my throat at 4. Let Ole in, I had figured dad would check for him being out when he went to bed, but guess I have to interrupt his lazyboy nap and tell him in future. Oh well Ole was letting me know he was cold when he came in but he didn't seem excessively chilled. I think he sleeps with the neighbors dog when he insists on going out late and I go to bed and forget him. Sometimes he's on Mia's bed on mild nights when she sleeps elsewhere but last night she claimed her bed and Ole came from the back of the house when I called.

Back to whining about the virus. Its very mild but I cant get the taste of phlegm or possibly zinc from the lozenge I took when I went back to bed out of my mouth. And its driving me nuts. I need a 'fire drill' project to take my mind off it, but alas there is only the paper I should be working on and keep pushing off because like most people I don't like writing science papers.

I've gotten into a bad rut of sleeping in and moving slow in the mornings, not getting to work till late (slow errands don't help) and then late home and to bed. Its warm today but I didn't ride. Dinked around and did a quick rough clean of Grey and Cindy's pen is all. The forecast is even warmer tomorrow, must throw off laziness and get some riding in. Then normal temps for sunday. Just barely above freezing. If its still maybe I'll ride anyway. I have NO desire to watch the super bowl this year. I'm only a mild football fan anyway and am annoyed that the NFL is getting in on the 'add BHO to our line-up schtick.' Even if I thought he's the eco saviour for the planet or whatever other kind of saviour he's being pinned as; why would I want to hear him in the middle of a football game? Its just ridiculous.

#*@*@*!@!* USPS -Brighton CO branch

Just charged me $21.30 for a flat rate box to an APO address. Hmmm according to the website it should have been HALF that, like I was expecting. And it was their lunch period and the staff that was working was moving slow as molasses in addition to ripping me off! GRRRRR GRRRRR GRRRRR. If my soldier doesn't contact me requesting tobacco, or special stuff I'm just using the Soldiers Agency website for a good portion of future care packages. I don't need extra aggravation in my life.

Thank you very much USPS for serving our armed forces so well --NOT! Oh well --the other VERY good reason not to go back to there is they had ET on. Yech. Of course the Obama family was mentioned in the time I was there (which was probably nearly 30 minutes!) Gag me. I have to ask some older people if it was anywhere near this bad when Kennedy was elected. I know they were a media highlight compared to other presidential families, I've heard about Caroline and pony on the white house lawn yada yada but I wasn't walking before JFK was assassinated. Thank goodness I was already pretty much tired of tv, but I may have to buy a tivo/DVR and make sure its used when I'm around. Just the commercials for the 'news' shows when moms watching sports or some drivel she's gotten into are turning my stomach.

OK, I feel better after that rant. I rode Shade this morning. Just walking, there was slippy wet snow most of the way. I was thinking I'll call this just a warm-up and ride more tomorrow but we're getting a 1-day cold front with some chance of snow overnight and thru thursday morning. But its supposed to be nice friday and saturday. I must decide how much of the MRER convention I'm doing and get signed up. I can use all the education I can get but it felt weird last year which is tempting me to only do the banquet, especially with the speaker for 2 of 3 sessions being an MD. I don't care about me right now, and doesn't seem likely an MD is going to have much info on providing best care for Shade.

blogspot weirdness

Its telling me 'You flagged this blog as having objectionable content' (any blogspot.com) including this one of mine. Everytime I'm viewing, with the you flagged message overlaying other text. I may have accidently hit the mouse to flag a blog but I would think they would have a confirm and probably a window to put in why which hasn't come up. But it feels funny to have that line showing as I'm trying to read a blog.

Played with Sadie on saturday

Sadie is a such a fun youngster. I don't recall having had such fondness for a horse I'm not going to be able to ride for another year. Of course other foals we had were never intended to be mine so that factors in too. But I really love this filly's attitude. She is friendly, but that takes a back seat to food, plenty of energy and she is right in tune with my "ok lets just do this" approach to introducing new stuff. A quick sniff of the pad and toss it on. Cinch of the surcingle -this she was unsure of but just a bit of dancing and a look. Not a hint of thinking about pitching a fit. Then I hopped on Grey Moun and we went down the road 1/2 a mile. She trotted a bit a few times to maximize grazing opportunities.

The pad was slipping the other way on the way out --I wasn't worried about it since there was no saddle tree to poke so I igonred it until I saw it was slipping farther and farther as we went. I turned back after only 1/2 mile and I was trying to grab it and pull it more centered. That was not working, and Sadie was not thrilled about that tugging but no rodeo, just gave me dirty looks and moved sideways out of my reach. So I hopped off Grey and fixed the pad. I gigured there was no reason to see how she'll react to pad coming under her belly and/or off when we're going down the road and I've only got the LJ on Grey, and can't even try to dally up and wait it out if there would be a rodeo - there would be a high chance of having loose yearling running down the road if she were to decide to pitch a fit.

I wont dwell on all the couch time the rest of the weekend. I thought it was supposed to be nice again on sunday so I skipped getting Shade out for any riding. Boy I should at least check the weather on saturday before thinking like that. It was brrr cold on sunday and I only ventured out to feed. Forecast says warmer to day but still staying below freezing. Supposed to get fairly nice tomorrow and thursday so I should buckle down at work so I can ride.

finally friday

Been a long 4 day work week. But after registering 40 for predicted weekend highs earlier, 47 and 48 and I think I heard sunny on the radio driving to work today, sounds pretty good. So I should get some vitamin D and vitamin H and I hope that will perk me up.

The week that started with breaking the tractor had some good moments but that has felt like the tone for the week. I signed on to 'adopt' a soldier (agree to send weekly cards and monthly packages) and I was matched, didn't print the page, just wrote down the password I was given and went to the login section --and could not get in. Boy that sucked all the warm fuzzy feelings right down the drain. I'm sure the org will straighten it up next week but in the meantime I've got the blahs.

And while I'm whining --my new phone was not charging from my car this morning. Darn it I hate when I cant get machines to work for me. I'm an engineer for pities sake.

honest I WAS happy this morning.

Really -- I enjoyed a nice ride on Shade and was all set to just let things go, and guess what - BHO wasn't the only one fumbling the oath. Robert's messed up the faithfully execute the office part first. SHEESH -- he may share BHO's disdain for religion but they could have practiced. Its not a long spiel and it IS the tradition in this country. --see I was already wrestling for do I laugh off the fumbling or do I give way to the annoyance (ok I'm diluting here) of them laughing off the (usually) solemn oath of office. That pizzant just makes me want to spit so often.

NOW I just found out the BHO topped Clinton in disdaining our military by blowing off the Medal of Honor inaugural ball. BHO couldn't fit it in between the MTV and BET balls + the usual slate of official inauguration balls the presidents have to attend.

There is NO doubt that not just Chicago politics but punk attitude Chicago Politics has arrived in DC. Well America has a long history of resiliency. And this reaffirms that *I* have to step forward and support our military and veterans and not take them for granted, which I sadly have done these last many years.

HA this? is the 'smarter president'

video of Obama as he takes the oath of office

I am going to use this every time my goober lib co-workers say he's smart. Yeah, so smart he cant remember a few words (which he had opportunity to study beforehand) to repeat back as he is sworn in. I wonder if the justice broke it down into smaller chunks after that just for him or it thats the typical format?

Why am I not rejuvenated from my 3-day weekend?

I am not sure. I hope its not because I'm getting sick. I felt like I might be, but then felt better yesterday, now am feeling off again today. Hopefully just a blip. I hate being sick. Yeah who likes being sick? Well some people do seem to revel in the excuse to be lazy, but I manage to be lazy when I feel like it I don't need to be ill for the excuse; plus there are core things that have to be done like feeding the horses and it sucks when I'm sick and doing that wears me out.

But I'm not sick now, just stuffy and I can treat that.

I DID have a fun ride yesterday on Shade. I am SO blessed in my horses. I love them all and every one that is my main horse at the time has been a good partner to me. I think Grey is still my heart horse, he makes me feel better if I'm in a black mood but I think Shade is a better working partner. I took her out in the wind yesterday and she was somewhat on her toes and thinking I was crazy but she went for me, then the wind slacked off some for us so we didn't have to fight our way home facing into it.

Saturday L trimmed my horses feet. R did great in finding her replacement. L told me R is doing great in SC and just found out she's pregnant. So I guess she's going to concentrate on starting a family for a few years. I hope things continue to go well for her and her DH. I was a bit chilled and kind of stiff/sore after holding horses. Recovered for a few hours then cleaned Duke and AJ's pens and the mini's area.

Sunday was a bad day. I felt off in the morning, decided I wanted to drag my horses pens. They really need SOMETHING and I think dragging would have been a good thing. I thought maybe using the spring tooth or possibly the drags with a p/u would work well but was a bit concerned that I would get stuck, PLUS the spring tooth is behind mom and dads camper and I didn't want to mess around that much and the drag units were behind V's p/u bed trailer mom bought since V couldn't sell it and the auger and no way I could get them out by myself. Dad was not home, mom's no help so I thought, well I'll just use the tractor and the homemade 'gate' with chainlink on a wooden frame. I've used that once before and it worked, just doesn't cover much area. So I wired it to the brush hog and started and STUPIDLY tried to turn up the bank. The brush hog caught a bit, I raised it and was still not getting anywhere, dinked around a bit and found that a stabilizer piece on the 3pt hitch busted and I bent the hitch. *&*#@*! The hitch was catching on the tire and that is why the tractor was not rolling freely.

I started to take the brush hog off but wasn't sure how to undo the PTO. So the tractor sits in my still un-dragged pen; and I had to shuffle horses around so they wouldn't chew the seat up and maybe even mess with the hydraulic hoses. Still had daylight but I was too upset to ride.

But I got some extra diesel yesterday and rode Shade so that kind of salvages the weekend. And I was cruising blogs and saw on AWTM's that her church had an opportunity for people to sponsor students in Pakistan. So I signed on. Its only $130 to sponsor 10 months of school.

Had a fun friday morning

I took advantage of our sunny warm weather to ride this morning. Shade was feeling pretty good I think. Sure felt good from my perspective anyways. We only went about 3.5 miles total, WTC, plenty of it walking but it was fun. I'm glad I have the farrier coming tomorrow to trim. I was not moving very fast this morning --what else is new? But figured I'd want to get everybody that gets trimmed the day off and only ride lightly sunday or monday too So I figured, whats an extra late evening at the office and rode anyway. And I'll also probably ride RazzMo tomorrow since he's on a different trim schedule. Oh I hope things go well, its always a bit nerve wracking starting with a new farrier. Since R recommended her I think I'll like her work ok. I better get myself moving tomorrow so I have horses full and cleanish at least.

I needed this: ROFLMAO

Shamelessly stealing this from http://theblacksphere.blogspot.com/ and making my imaginary reader(s) copy/paste to get to his blog.

This is wrt to the mob expected for the inauguration of BHO.

"The thing that most liberals are, be they rich or poor, is cheap. The tie that binds.Rich liberals are the types who will tip you $1, no matter what the cost of their meal was or whatever service you performed."


OMG! Its like he has actually met my liberal co-workers who stiff the coffee shop barista's on a tip. type #1 orders that latte he got free after buying 10 plain coffees that he didn't tip for because they were just coffees and doesn't tip for the latte either. -because xx percent of zero is zero after all.

type #2 would order the 1/2 caf, with almond syrup, and can I write a check for $10 over and use you as my ATM? And then write the check for the latte price + $10 and no he never dug some change out of his pocket for a tip either.

Now myself, independent conservative who leans republican but has voted moderate dems and I am cheap in many ways usually tips, & I always tipped extra if it was my free latte.

And the libertarian leaning co-worker tipped better than I do, and hardly ever got anything but a black coffee. He is happy about the elections though. --but I have faith he'll get dis-illusioned quickly enough when the $$ start going down the sewer.

Well we never go out for coffee together these last few years so I no longer have to cringe. --and I've taken to usually only getting a latte at the starbucks inside target or safeway when I'm doing errands (Yes I often bribe myself to do errands) and they don't have tip jars so I get a free pass.

But I have that site bookmarked. Between him and my horses I think there is real hope that my sanity will survive the BHO administration.

-

I did ride this weekend

Had a blast riding Shade on sunday. She decided she'd enjoy a good run at one point. I felt like I could stop her if I wanted with the little S hack, first test of it, she's been quiet on previous rides since I got it, but I decided we were both having FUN having a good gallop so we went 3/4 around the perimeter of the small cornfield that I'd decided looked like good footing.

Today I finally got Cindy's bandage re-done. It stayed put for 3 days which was REALLY nice, since it snowed early monday morning and it would have been tough to get a bandage on well enough to stay in the cold wet stuff, then yesterday I was running behind to get to my chiro appt.

My completely non PC viewpoint about Gaza and Israel

h/t for the youtube from Educated Shoprat. Unfortunately I tried to share this video to spark some in depth discussion on a generic bb and it was taken down and my IP banned. Oh well, I'd already been very well on my way to tiring of the majority of posts there. One can only take so much triteness and whining about the weather you know?

The banned in Bloomington ILL youtube video


lyrics to the song

I cannot understand how they (Hamas and all supporters) can get away with saying Israel is not letting relief supplies into Gaza when they have a border with Egypt as well. Call me a big 'ole meany, but if Egypt is not working with the UN to get relief supplies into Gaza, perhaps there isn't really much of a crisis? Or it is not only Hamas that WANTS suffering palestinians for propaganda purposes. I know U.S. education in geography is pretty weak but come ON.

Big bad cynic that I am I am also wondering how much the families of civilian casualties get paid? I'm sure its not a big jackpot like having raised up a suicide bomber, but there must be some reason some of the palestinians are encouraging their kids to play on rooftops and in lots next to Hamas weapon's caches in the middle of this brief war action by Israel.

Israel tries to minimize civilian, especially child casualties and especially of their own citizens, building bomb shelters against the rocket attacks; but also pre-warning gazans in the buildings they will strike.

But they are fighting a group that celebrates death. Death to the 'infidels' but they also celebrate the holy martyrdom when their own youngsters die. Although they put on a few minutes of tears and outrage for the cameras to sway westerners, since they know we value life almost as deeply as the jews.

banned in Bloomington

Or relatively close. Wonder if I'll get more work done now. Probably not much. I've been enjoying exploring new areas.

I need to find some horse friends that believe in free speech, and other former american values. Censorship is really quite ugly, especially when its anti-semitic -or anti Bob Dylan. Who has a problem with Dylan though? Ah well I just couldn't toe the line there. Its against my religion to worship people and that was pretty much required.

A redneck mudroom

My christmas present to myself was a pair of shoe shelves. Of course mudroom shoes are not dress flats, and don't fit on a short shelf, but its perfect for gloves. The paper tubes are nice for getting some air inside my waterproof gloves for dunking horse hay. Ah the fun I have caring for the equines. We've been using the bookshelf for shoes for years, but it was overflowing.

Speaking of fun with horse care, I cleaned horse pens today. I did two bucket loads with the tractor and two cart loads. Dad helped me unload my first barrel of diesel, then brush-hogged some of the tumbleweeds from the 'pasture'. Not my normal vitamin H but not bad. Feels much better having had some energy on a saturday. Although there was a lot of errands I should have done today and decided they could wait so I could stay home.

TGIF

Is there any more to say? Work actually is ok. I am just feeling low. I've tired of something but I don't have a good replacement for it and am feeling deprived. How lame is that?

Well at least Cindy is better

Mebbe the vasoline did some good after all, she has a little open spot above her heel bulb, up in the coronet band where I smeared vasoline and it actually stuck since it wasn't wet. This spot is higher than the wet cotton in the easyboot reaches, but I put in fresh cotton today anyway. Not having her foot dry and hard as a rock can only help with the pain. She is walking better but still waits by the feed tub and hay troughs for me to bring the food rather than wandering around. I put some cool green jelly on the open spot on the coronet band. Its got some good anti-germ ingredients, and was handy.

Ole's owie is not looking quite as big today, more quarter sized. Poor guy is either very embarrassed, or scared I'm going to take him to the vet and doesn't like me to notice the boo-boo. What a goofy mutt he is. I took a bunch of pictures yesterday and now need to find my downloader gizmo. It was not in any of the three spots I though were most likely.

Pulling hair --Mom ran water in Dukes tank last night. So it was even more full than yesterday when I decided I'd let it get good and empty since its a real pita to get out of its spot and the low was only going to be 40F so it didn't need to have water over the heating element. If it was low enough she NEEDED to run water she should have only put a few seconds worth in --its not even worth wishing she would scrub it herself, I honestly don't know if she'll EVER get back to that state of fitness and ambition. Yeah sigh sigh whine whine whine but I realized this morning that I really would rather not be practically working for the government anymore. But options are limited when I feel like I have to stay here because she cant/wont take decent care of her critters. Well I have to shake off the ennui, perhaps actually sort of keeping my exercise resolution will be slightly helpful.

whee windy ride

Shade was having a fine time acting afeard of the tumbling tumbleweeds. I loved the energy of it, and the exhilaration of the wind blowing through my helmet. Only went 3 miles, but it was FUN. I really want to grab my camera and get some pics for some photo blog ideas but I didn't get it done today. Hmm, maybe I don't really want to. But methinks it could be a bit fun and worth the time spent getting pics downloaded from the camera and uploaded to the web.

I felt bad last night and tried to give Cindy some bute. Not sure any made it into her system, she spit some out because I'd already given them hay, and I was lazy and didn't even halter her, let alone, halter, remove food from mouth, then squirt in bute+yogurt. But she was a little better this morning; and moving pretty well after I put an easy boot on her with wet roll cotton sprayed with a bit of iodine in it. I made sure to have some cotton over the back strap, I think the bruise is near a heel bulb and will probably come out the top + sure don't need to bruise the heel bulbs with the boot strap.

I have to write an ohh Ole post. I got pics, but have to download them. I thought he had learned to watch out for barbed wire, but he snagged himself today when I was riding. Has about a silver dollar sized hole in his skin, high on his back leg. I put some wonder dust on it. If the local vets weren't so pricey I might have had mom run him in --but they are, and I really don't like giving antibiotics all the time anyway. If he leaves the wonder dust and lets it scab it should heal up pretty quick. They always say dog skin is elastic and they can stitch but we have terrible luck with the lampshade collars breaking right away and that would be the only way to keep him from ripping stitches out.

So this is 2009 for conservatives?

Yesterday when I went to start my car the battery was dead. My own damm fault, I fetched something from it this weekend and the overhead light didn't come on when I opened the door so I turned it on ... and left it. Well the handy dandy battery charger got it going in a few minutes so that wasn't so bad. Stopped at safeway and got mom some press and seal which she will probably get little use out of for her pic line. I'm pretty sure cutting a sleeve from a newspaper bag and a couple rubber bands would work much much better but perhaps they don't want the compression on the line. I didn't even mention it cuz its either talking to a brick wall, or get my head bit off if there is a reason. I'm not seeing any progress on her health either. And I STILL cant completely shake the feeling that she doesn't want to get to healthy and have no excuse not to try to work at her career; although she sure doesn't want to be this damm sick. Pbbbbt spellchecker, I'll use mm instead of mn if I want to.

Today when I grained I noticed poor Cindy has an abscess in her RF foot. I wanted to attend a seminar to show team spirit and was already running late so I dashed to the garage and sprayed some hoof marvel stuff on it and smeared some vasoline on it. Which really didn't want to stick because I hadn't waited for the spray to dry. Both things a pitiful attempt to soften her foot so the abscess can break open and relieve the pressure. Tomorrow I'll put a wet poultice of some sort on it. Probably just betadine/saline on cotton, but maybe I'll try potato. It just occurred to me that if I just sliced the tater instead of grating, it might stay in the boot better. OTOH, wet cotton always stays pretty good, it just doesn't always stay wet, and may not soften as quickly at potato juice, but I haven't ever got potato to stay in place to tell if it softens any better. Sometimes internet ideas sound good when you read them but they don't work out in real life applications.

Oh and I was still a teeny bit late for the seminar so 50/50 was it positive or negative to not just bag it, staying home to doctor Cindy and then grab a ride? Oh well, I'm doing that tomorrow and just working late.

winter doldrums

Except its been breezy many days. Just too cold this weekend to want to do much. Somehow I am very very rarely inspired to tackle indoor stuff. Well I guess thats reasonable. I mostly should toss stuff and who wants to cart stuff outside when its freezing? Well thats my story and I'm sticking too it for now.

I did have a lovely ride on Shade to start the year off right, and I took Sadie out on sunday.

I had her and Shade out for grain, then put Shade away and opened the connecting paddock gate so there was some playing going on. Sadie was wound up but she quit dancing around so I could untie her and backed nicely so I could open the driveway gate.
She was full of energy but mostly keeping her nose in the grass. I loff this trait, bodes well for future endurance career never being too excited to want to eat. The neighbor horses across the road got a little stirred up seeing Sadie in the ditch -they were in their pens about 40 yds back from their pasture fence that borders the road -- then one got its leg hung up a bit in the panel

So I tied Sadie to their fence right by their driveway gate where its a sturdy post and panel gate on one side of post but still twisted wire fence on the other and ran and knocked on their door to let them know. Thankfully they were home and got the horse extricated quickly. Normally I would have trailed to make sure they didn't need help but with both of them home I hustled back to get Sadie; I don't normally tie horses to a wire fence, let alone 20 month olds on very brisk days.

Sadie did good though, she was pacing a bit as the lead allowed but didn't get extra wound up or paw at all. I finished our walk to the corner, then she had the edge off her appetite and was in go mode on the way home. I didn't let her have extra slack in the line -dont trust her yet if I would get behind her butt, she pranced and even did some 2-track at times when I put my elbow out to make sure she didn't crowd me but she never dragged me or ignored the elbow. Sure hope she stays sound and healthy, I think she's going to be a fine trail partner in a few years.