sunday night.

Shade has passed 21 now. Endurance rides, not years. I offered her and Grey beer on the leftover soaked feed from the ride when we got home, with some plain feed as option. Grey dived into the feed with beer, but Shade is either too health nut or too champagne taste and stuck with the plain feed. I had a small spurt of 'domestic' ambition and swept out the human space in my big trailer, and put in some rugs, duct taping the light ones that wont stay in place otherwise, put in a coat hook and was ready to put in 2 more but I couldn't find them.

I should have done some pasture fencing or bought paint/cleared my room but I was too lazy, I kept taking long breaks after every little thing I did. I did pack up hay cubes for Shade's ride, I had to sort them as some were moldy so I sorted a bunch extra while I was at it for the next trip or to have handy to feed. I think the bag got wet after I bought and opened it, not that the quality was bad at the store - still it took a lot of time and I did a bunch just standing bent over the bag--DOH, my back was protesting when I quit that session. I rode Grey Moun when C was out to ride RazzMo. Grey is sound after his hock injury --WooooHooooo! I took the dogs for a short walk down the road after C was done ridiing, Grey didn't want to go by the place that used to have calves, + goats and pigs etc. They have moved so there is nothing but bunnies and prairie dogs in the pasture next to the road but Grey took a couple really gimpy steps when he stepped on rocks right at that corner so I turned him around. THEN he went prancing and snorting towards home. I think he was faking me out with the gimpy act.

office humor fail

flowchart to determine if you are a racist -- http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024552.php

Printing this handy dandy flow chart and putting on my office door glass must have upset someone I work with, or my supervisor thought it would upset a visitor or high officer in the org. Ummm my office is no longer the first one people looking for an admin find though so more likely it was a)

So now I am trying and right now failing to take anonymous peoples discomfort in good humor. Nothing in there implies calling liberals racist although I flat believe they ARE the racist ones: "Minorities can't function in our world, we have to have nanny programs for them or their children will go hungry yada yada" That aint something us mean ole conservative types think. We think almost everyone can make their own way in the world and will do so if there is not a net preventing them from learning to soar. In fact supervisor gave me the BS line "cant vote for a black man" before election when I honestly said I couldn't vote for a chicago machine politician. LIBERALS always resort to name calling and it really does pizz me off that whoever was squirmy about this went to him instead of me OR he was squirmy about it but hid behind "it might be a friction creator in the office"

WELL this means war, but it will have to be nice and SUBTLE humor to prove my point that progressivism enslaves people to the state over them. Perhaps a step back to nice list of cowboy wisdom on the door to start. BUT methinks I may need an "O" Orwellian bumper sticker for my car within a few months. Heh heh heh.

guess I'm not testing the saddle change in the morning

In fact it does NOT look good to try to ride before friday morning. I guess I'll take a teeny ride then and maybe use the treelesss saddle with the foam to keep me from getting behind the stirrups the last 7 mile loop at my ride on saturday. I want to have the option of rotating saddles when shooting back to back 50's next weekend at the Westcliffe ride which will have some climbing. But looks like good riding weather on saturday so I hope that holds.



Tonight
Rain likely in the evening...mixing with or changing to snow after midnight. Snow accumulation up to 2 inches on grassy areas. Lows in the mid 30s. Northwest winds 10 to 15 mph in the evening becoming light.

Wednesday
Rain and snow likely. Snow accumulation up to 2 inches on grassy areas. Highs in the upper 40s. Northwest winds 10 to 20 mph. Chance of precipitation 70 percent.

Wednesday Night
Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of rain and snow. Lows in the mid 30s.

Thursday
Mostly cloudy. Slight chance of rain showers in the morning...then a chance of rain showers in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 50s. Chance of showers 30 percent.l

Thursday Night
Mostly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of rain showers. Lows in the lower 40s.

Friday and Friday Night
Partly cloudy. A 10 percent chance of rain showers. Highs in the mid 60s. Lows in the lower 40s.

Saturday and Saturday Night
Mostly clear. Highs in the lower 70s. Lows in the upper 40s.

sleepy saturday pet post

I caught Ole and Peekaboo on the same couch -not a very unusual situation, I've even seen them curled together outside when its cold but Ole jumps up before I can get a picture. Mia so enjoys coming in the house during the heat of the day to get away from the heat and flies. She thinks its her solemn duty to stay outside and patrol overnight though. She doesn't come inside at night unless its really wet or VERY cold, guess she figures the predators will stay in too if the weather is crappy enough.

New truck tows well & Shade is a 1000 miler

I mentioned to my friend that co-manages the Turkey Creek ride that it would be Shade's 1000 miles so I had some butterflies but was looking forward to it. OMG, she mentioned it to the other managers and they set aside a bunch of loot for us. Totally shocked me. Some rides ask for the horses mileage to date so they can announce if a horse hit a milestone and maybe they give you an extra completion award if they have a table to pick from. But C made some pillows, which will look wonderful in my 'LQ' and they gave me a sweatshirt with the TC ranch logo embroidered on it and a little dreamcatcher too and a little container of electrolytes. The beautiful t-shirt is the completion award.

The new truck towed well and I will become spoiled now, its smooth, has a CD player which I forgot to grab any CD's to play and its SO quiet (the blue beast, 93 dodge had a gap in the door and I had to crank the radio to counteract the road noise). I'm thinking I have to buy a toolbox for the pickup bed because now that I have the crew cab with nice leather bench instead of just storage area behind the drivers seat I cannot have antifreeze and diesel treat, etc in my cab, LOL.

And Shades eye looks much better, it was good at the ride and still looks good this morning. I am going to try to get some fencing and brushhogging done this weekend and move her and Grey to a bigger paddock. I have to talk to mom about hay for Duke though. Maybe he and Shade can live together some months but she might need to buy some more of the hay I picked for Shade. I think she is thinking she will feed it to Duke but I don't want to have to isolate Shade to make it last for her. I'm already thinking I have to use some of the dusty hay mom bought earlier this summer and just dunk it for a several weeks in the fall and spring when its not a big hassle to dunk hay to stretch it enough for Shade and a rotating companion horse with her --whoever looks a bit thin on the hay she bought.

Next year I guess I will have to do all the hay buying. For the quality it is she really paid too much. I did feed the sample bales and thought it would work ok but I was thinking in terms of 2-3 stacks to make sure we had time to find better hay and she bought 5-6 stacks of the 100 bale stacks of it, SIGH, its the second or is it the third year in a row I have to manage second rate hay, feeding on the ground to reduce dust inhalation and dunking for the most sensitive horses, and the hay is not even a good dollar value per lb. Have I mentioned that I HATE SHOPPING before? But sickly/slackly has managed to make it the lesser evil now.

CJ's owies

CJ's hock cut is healing nicely. Its filled in pretty good around the edges and doesn't look to be getting any proud flesh. He has a little dime size scrape on his fetlock that I have been babying with ointment and bandage. At some point before too long I'll tire of that and decide it just has to get wonder dust and heal under a scab but I like to have a nice wound that isn't weeping or anything first and yesterdays bandage change was the first time it looked like that. I'll give it a brief chance to grow some skin if it will, since its down there where the dust will constantly be in it but wonder dust does pretty well.

Breaking in the new to me pickup -with pics

Yes there really is a physical pickup, and my worries about inflation eating up all my savings value are much reduced now LOL.
The pickup have been used to run and buy sample hay bales from 5 different growers (needing 2 types for different horses) Finally found a source that passed the horses taste test with flying colors and also passed my tests of value and nice 'clean' hay. I think this was put up just about perfect, the bales are really nice and dust free. No dunking should be required, YAY.

Kind of sad today

I want to still be interested in something, I keep picking it up but just can't engage myself anymore, feels like a dying friendship but thats a bit dramatic, I can get most of the good things I found there elsewhere now.

Shade's eye is still swollen, I stopped the eye ointment yesterday I thought her eye looked a bit cloudy and Dr Mike warned me to stop if the eye got cloudy.


Yesterday I put her in with Grey Moun to get only soaked brome hay and less exposure to the paddock weeds in case it wasn't the flies that got her eye irritated.

We bought sample hay yesterday. The horses don't care for the hay that was a better value per pound so now must decide to buy the light bales, or just let the horses pick and choose a bit, they are not going to waste away --OR-- keep looking and I don't want to have to mess with it. I want to throw a liberal snit, things should just be handed to me on a platter -insert pouty or tongue in cheek face here. I should put the batteries back in the camera and see if it will take a few pics. I'm beginning to think having the camera take AA batteries instead of needing special ones is not so great after all, maybe the cameras with special rechargeable batteries hold a charge longer and better. I guess I should break down and buy some new rechargeable batteries but I think I have a big pack of the disposable ones in that size floating around somewhere.

New truck is home

Still no pictures. Too busy running around changing bandages on CJ and Grey Moun --I think Grey only needs 1 or 2 more after this and CJ's little fetlock booboo is starting to look like its healing. Not bad -the first bits on that one were getting the dried blood off and a saline wrap to pull out any gunk. Plus I had to put goop in Shade's eye this morning. Dr Mike was out yesterday, no ulceration, he thinks it got itchy either from the flies or possibly a bee sting and then she has been rubbing it and keeping it swollen. She gets eye goop 2x/day for 5 days and 1 gram bute for a few days. She also got a chiropractic adjustment today. She was due for a little bit of tuneup. Her withers were stuck and are a bit sore and inflamed. I'm supposed to ice her. Since she is getting bute for her eye I feel ok in skipping icing until saturday. I didn't have him adjust anyone else. Feeling too poor after all the unplanned expenses the last few weeks. CJ and Grey need to stop cutting themselves and costing me $$ in vet and elastic tape. They aren't working so they don't need to be tuned up 100% anyway.