Oops

Forgot there was a talk at work I should have come in early to see.    Had a lovely time riding with L though.   I woke up earlier than my normal sunday and my holiday monday, thought I'd probably just reset my clock to a more normal time,  then tuesday I did not want to get up.   I'm torn, I still enjoy the tasks of my job; but I have really started to mind hearing all the marxist talking points. 

Loving the low inflation -snark

Target run was 150 bucks.   I have been taking more time between runs so that has some affect, I had more bags than normal but still, a serious Target run with buying lots of stuff to send off to A-stan for some patriot serving under the JEF of a CinC used to be 100 or a bit more.    I am very lucky to still have a lot of slack in my disposable income but this has to be painful for a lot of folks. 

On the brighter side I sprayed a bunch of goatsheads over the weekend and did some pruning but I also got some vitamin H(orse).    Rode Shade sunday evening.   Aborted the planned road ride because Ole stalled shortly after coming through the gate and Shade was nervous from someone doing some target practice so I did some flat work instead.   It felt like a fairly good flatwork session for me. 

Monday Lynn came out for a quick ride and we squeezed in 4 miles with her wanting to head back fairly quickly.   Its so much easier to get some endurance ride pacing going with another horse than riding Shade solo.    Then I put some wet cotton on Mojo's front soles with kids knit mittens over top to keep it on for about 90 minutes.  I need even more softening and/or better sharpening on my hoof knife to pare the frogs but my out of the blue idea of how I could moisten the mini's feet so it would not be like rasping on concrete is working out pretty well. 

Ended up the day long lining Sadie.   The soft crupper is not bothering her any so I need to get back in the saddle next time.   She will welcome the attention if there is some food involved.  

Dad mentioned that one hay grower that we were going to pick up some bales out of her field had called to cancel.  They couldn't get irrigation water to buy this year and don't expect to have any extra hay from what their stock will need to eat.    Good news is we have about 1/2 a years supply of hay on hand now but it might be expensive to get the rest. 

Applying weed killer is easier than hand weeding -but

You lose some of that benefit when you spray the whole unused corral with the hose end mixer/sprayer and then realize it was not sucking up ANY of the weed killer concentrate.   Fooled myself with not holding it level and not paying much attention.    On the good side once I back flushed the spray applicator it did work.    

Yesterday I did a good batch of pruning.   Not an activity I enjoy but my parents can't hardly bring themselves to cut off any live branches and I don't care to have the thickets.   Especially with having Russian Olives, snipping off the suckers and excess low branches that keep coming off the main trunk is an absolute necessity to keep them looking like a tree.   We are so close to desert even I would rather have the ROs than full sun beating on the house but they need annual pruning to keep them from becoming a nasty mess.  

Sadly I have been short-changing my riding time to do all this landscape labor stuff.   I hope I get my riding muse back soon.   If I was in full on "I WANT to RIDE" mode I'd let the landscape stuff slide and the parents would get to it eventually --although it would be after the goatsheads were so thick that disking was the only alternative for most of the paddocks.

If you support Tides, Heinz-Kerry, or Streisands foundations you support stalkers

This is everybody blog about Brett Kimberlin day.   I think Brett will feel the heat of bright sunlight focused on his thug activities.  But I hope the fact that Barbara Streisand,  Senator Kerry and his billionaire wife Teresa Heinz-Kerry, and every group that chooses to take money from convicted felon and known currency attacker George Soros  gets some scrutiny as well.    Handing money to Velvet Revolution or any group with one of these 3 people involved is just a sneaky way of hiring a thug to intimidate your opposition: Ron Brynaert, Neal Rauhauser, and Brett Kimberlin. (from the Patterico article) 

The "progressives" or "liberals" (I hate them for co-opting that term)  have to resort to this kind of intimidation because their twisted totalitarian socialism ideas cannot begin to compete against freedom and liberty with the price of individual responsibility in an even match up.

details will be all over the blogosphere today but this is a great starting place
Patterico describes his harassment by Kimberlin and BK's friends.

If anyone can still support groups or people who choose to associate with Soros or one of his favored tools for violent intimidation Brettt Kimberlin; I say they either have no brains or they have no morals.

Cursed chinese curse

I'm tired of living in interesting times.   I just got a sneak preview of what to expect when, please God, Obama is defeated and responsible adults regain the senate majority.   Sadly this was from a purported conservative.  Well holds lots of liberal views; is only 'conservatvive' in being pro-life and not wanting full confiscation of wealth.    Felt attacked that I don't agree that it is horrible horrible nasty that a horse rescue exterminated prairie dogs.   I don't like the rescue mindsets but I'm almost leaning to giving this one a donation now because at least they put their resuce horses welfare ahead of squeamishness.   

I know the liberals I work with will pretty much confine themselves to pissing and moaning that somehow the evil R's rigged voting machines and feeling that science is being picked on to benefit Halliburton or whatever the new demon corporation is, probably taking a few longer lunches etc.  But what are the OWS types that the dems have been goading into a frenzy for a year going to do?  And how much intel has the SCOAMT been given?   If the top military folks have any sense they have been doing lots of sanitizing, but presidents get to make appointments to some high level areas and the 2008 senate were a bunch of wusses wrt to turning away commies in general.   

So sleepy/tired

I woke up with a headache.   Couldn't decide if it was sinus or not so I took a sudafed as well as ibuprofen gelcaps before breakfast.  I'm so happy I found those gelcaps.   Ibuprofen is the best NSAID for me but I had developed sensitive tummy to the IB tablets so I just used Alleve instead until my sinus infection in jan/feb 2011 that sent me searching for more relief.    It was also raining so I took my time before heading out to feed the equines but the rain petered out while I was out there --after I gave hay inside for most of the crew of course. 

The drugs did kick in and knock out the headache so after a long coffee break I took advantage of the moistened hooved and did some rasping on mini Frosty's feet and a bit on Mojo's front feet.   The sun came out so I headed out and used the hose end sprayer to finish spraying the mini's area and then moved the hoses and sprayed along the fence line where the cultivator missed and there were lots of goatsheads and then in the middle to use up the spray.   I just used what was in the sprayer w/o trying to ask mom if she knew what was in it because she's been sick.   I hope I was not spraying grass killer instead of a herbicide that will kill the goatsheads but the worst that would happen is having to respray to kill anything; I wasn't working anywhere grass was growing.  

After a long beer and web browsing break I put my new soft neoprene crupper tail piece on in place of the molded betathane piece that rubbed Sadie's tail and put a back cinch on her saddle since I undid the 3-point rigging and then I long-lined her.   No rubbing when done and no protesting bucks,  I even got a little bit of dropping her head.   I'll probably do one maybe two more long-ling sessions before I mount up with all the extra gear.   I am a bit nervous to get on again after the saddle turning and then the ill-fitting or user-error crupper rubbing under her tail but probably my general preference to be riding  will overcome that with a little more zero drama groundwork.  

New distractions needed

Ughh.  I just cannot make a complete break from the old horse board.  I'll get disgusted by some of the thread titles and 2 sentence intro's and back off but then I get bored or feel lonely and dive in back in.   But every time a new thread has me thinking "OMG what a flake,beeoytch, control freak......" I am just a little more annoyed with myself for having spent any time there. 

Farrier was out today.  I gave Grey his SMZs and Shade her Adequan while he was trimming RazzMo.  I determined that the CJ and Lady had no need of any attention and had D just show me what he would improve on with rasping Shade who also didn't have enough hoof to be trimmed.   The mini's should have been done, but I think he was tired and I can rasp them up some   I'll use that to get dad to do some tire swapping stuff for me.    I think I'm going to buy a hoof stand and a couple good rasps to have on hand so I can do minor hoof maintenance more easily.

  I never thought I would give up the convenience of having a farrier do trims and shoeing, but its so hard to find  a new great farrier when one leaves.  D is good but not great.  He just does not have the super good eye, feel, whatever to balance up the feet that R and L had.   But I hate to go through a searching process when he is good and does not do any long toe, no heel support or other messed up stuff.  

I need to expand, but I have been having interesting short email exchanges with a conservative from the farmers dating site.  It is so fun having the one on one exchanges with someone who 'gets it' wrt the political/media situation.

 I like the 'headquarters' but I can't type fast enough or commit time to get involved on non-weekend threads; so I need to scale back the lurking because I forget myself and spit out a comment sometimes, when I won't have time to read, let alone respond to any direct responses.    I know I've done that several times over the months so now most of the regulars just write me off as a rude post and run lurker.  Which I am too often, but then when I will be around and would really like to get some feedback I often don't get any and I resent that the trolls get tons of responses but I get none or just 1 or 2 depending on time of day.  Not that I want to get a bunch of angry retorts, but there are 'concern trolls' that suck people in to offering advise or explanations and have been pulling the same shit for days or in one case months on end.   If you can't be super witty I guess you get more attention being annoying or sounding clueless and in need of being set straight than being fairly normal but bland.

I suppose I should get mom a belated card

Because I'm SURE that working on her mini's feet, fixing fence (that my horses were in but the folks are the landlords,) doing weed control, etc etc  doesn't count for squat.   I just could not bring myself to do it in advance or even to to look through the assortment of household cards yesterday.   Just another sign that I need to change living arrangements in months not years I guess.  

Stupid Grey Moun gave himself a wicked cut on his left hind leg on saturday, I did not see it until that evening so I just bandaged with furacin to loosen the dried blood and encourage any nasty stuff to drain while having mild antiseptic properties.  I am still resisting having the vet come out at this point but the leg above the bandage was warm and swollen today so I hosed, cleaned the wound itself a bit with much diluted iodine,  wrapped over his hock which I'll probably try to make just a one time deal and it may not even stay on. 

Also bit the bullet on starting him on antibiotics.  2x/day syringing for 10-14 days oh joy, I didn't start antibiotics right away because I didn't want to spend the time and just a few doses of ABs would only breed super bugs if he has any bacteria attacking.  But I don't want to be negligent and have him develop a raging infection and have to be put down, even though I care less if he heals sound for riding or has a really fugly scar to show for his carelessness.  He has been one to get leg wounds throughout his life; but if anything he is getting worse since he hit his late teens.   I guess he is getting even more absent minded in his old age and does not think about what is near his leg before kicking a fly or whatever.   

Bought a neoprene crupper tail piece from a mule outfitter

Crap,  I keep getting the html vs compose tab on the STUPID new blogspot post editor and then it eats my paragraph breaks.

Now I have a good excuse to hang on to my Zilco crupper but just throw away the tail piece. Also I got L to hold Sadie for a minute and checked under her tail. It looks like its healing already and the sore spot is lower than where the crupper should contact so I should not have to wait too much longer than it takes to ship to me before using it.

Decided I would delay Shade's adequan shot until saturday because I was so slow ordering more. Today would have been 4 days, I would have gone for 5 days but I have to leave too early tomorrow. I did not notice any stiffness on the fetlock riding today. Shade was too busy keeping up with the Paso Fino to think about it for one thing but I think the 3 4-5 day spaced doses is kicking in and helping. Have to keep her going comfortably since I keep setting back training with Sadie with my stupid screw ups.

 Lady has a weird scratch on her vulva. It's at least a few days old but I thought it looked like it might be a bit pussy under the scab so I put some bag balm on it. Looks like she was scratching herself on a branch and got startled or something and scratched herself. Or maybe it looks like I'm doing weird tortures to my horses between her and Sadie.

 Ole came along and was keeping up pretty good. I hope he didn't over do it too much, he had a buffered aspirin last night. I guess I'll cut one in half if I even keep giving him something every other day. L got bit by a mosquito or possibly a horse fly. She was worried she might get West Nile, I told her I'm pretty sure it takes 2-3 infected skeeters biting to actually get enough virus to get infected, plus the birds have build up some immunity after all this time so I don't think anything carries that much of virus load. She is an active person but seems to have this notion that my county is full of snake bite, infected skeeter bit etc dangers. Well I won't tell her to avoid kids in Europe lest she be exposed to measles etc from the set that believes that vaccines cause autism and all that rot.

ARGHHH --damn crupper

I knew it didn't look right when I put it on today but thought, well its the same as Saturday, and when I flipped it over on Saturday it was worse so just went ahead. Saturday I checked under tail after longing her to see if there was any sign of rubbing. Today after long lining her awhile I noticed a flash of bright pink on the underside of her tail. OH SHIT, sure enough she got rubbed pretty good. I felt lower than a snake's belly. Guess I'll see if OrthoFlex still makes one. I want a nice round one that doesn't have an up or down. And won't be using anything on Sadie for 2-3 weeks until its thoroughly healed up. She is such a sweetie, I was rubbing her forehead and saying how sorry I was after I took the damn thing off and tied her up and she kinda leaned into me like "its ok, just don't do that again"

time keeps on drifting

I was not a complete slug this weekend. On both Saturday & Sunday I rasped Mojo's feet and curried him and Sunday I wormed all 3 minis so the older ones wouldn't re-infest Mojo right away even though he is the only one who looks like he might need worming. He has had a single dose of Safeguard, dose of Ivermectin and now a double dose of Safeguard. I might give him another double dose of Safeguard in 3 to 5 days to go for a partial "power purge" effect. No way I'm messing with double dosing for 5 days in a row though.

Saturday I tacked Sadie up in her new crupper. I guessed correct that light blue would match the color of my Zilco breast-collar that Sadie and Shade will have to share. It has snaps for all attachment points so that is easy enough and I only ever use a collar on Shade when riding serious hills but I want to prevent any more saddle turning incidents on Sadie. I may have to punch holes to make the crupper attachment a bit shorter yet but its close now. Then I longed Sadie in her new gear. She doesn't like that crupper giving her a wedgie but she didn't explode, would just do a couple of protest bucks and stop. After a few times I started asking her to keep moving when she bucked and when I got a complete circle with no buck I called it a day.

 Let the horses out to graze Saturday after working Sadie. Took a long break and then moved some manure from potty spots that were a bit deep to sandy spots - trying to ward of sand colic rather than improve the aesthetics of the paddocks. I feel like I am getting close to having a fairly sand free eating zone, I did not spend that much time doing this but it felt like it kicked my butt and I was pretty much couch potato the rest of the day.

 Sunday I had a nice ride on Shade, not real ambitious as far as conditioning for summer rides but she felt good. Moved a little more manure later in the afternoon. Tried to not concede any ground to the liberal mindset but not be indignant as detailed in last post. I should have worked on the paper review and some other things but I was completely mentally lazy.

Let Breitbart's spirit guide me

The Rita Crundwell story -- the Illinois 15K 'town' comptroller that embezzled 53 million over 20 some years to fund a lavish horse habit (very fancy rigs as well as high $$ horse to go to AQHA world congress etc) made NPR as a humor piece on "Wait wait don't tell me" So I just HAD to see if I could find any hints of her political party. No donations on the FEC page, coverage would be more widespread and condemning if she had any ties to GOP but probably more muted than it is if she had clear ties to the Dems. I made a comment to the person who posted the story about 'yeah embezzling $3375 from every man woman and child in her town is really humorous' Person responded that it was a little humor to relieve the situation, didn't mean to offend and I said I was sorry to come off snarky and I could come up with some Jeff Foxworthy type jokes about it "You might be an IL public official if you embezzle 53 million to fund your horse habit" and "If your first reaction to the story was 'LOL, the horse world finally got a piece of the 'VIG' from public official corruption' you might live in IL" Forced myself to stop before adding "If you voted for 'Blago' to fight corruption in state government you might be a sheeple following the MFM" or something like that. On comes the public school employee saying they think the WI governor is corrupt but just hasn't been caught yet. Well I'll try to avoid just starting an aimless flame war but I had to reply that he would have to be a genius to hide corruption with all the millions the unions have spent looking.

Hooray for friday

Jason has volunteered to be on call this weekend so I don't have to. All I have to do is finish reviewing a paper, by finish I mean do the whole review, all I've done so far is give the paper a fairly quick read. Yesterday when I rode Shade I noticed the rye grass in the pasture is already heading out. It will be yellow stalks they won't eat soon unless we get some cool rainy weather so I gave the horses about 2/3 normal hay this morning and let them out to graze.

 Its always so much fun trying to balance getting some benefit from the scrubby bit of grass that does grow out there vs not over-grazing and turning it into nothing but weeds. It should be re-seeded but without a crystal ball to tell me there would be enough snow or rain it wont happen since there is no way to irrigate to start new growth and the list of other improvements the place could use is quite long.

 Goatshead weeds are sprouting already. Usually they don't sprout with spring rains but its been that warm. I'm not buying the weevils this year, they don't make enough difference. I'll just coax dad to borrow the neighbor's tow behind sprayer for the paddocks and I'll have to get out there with a hand sprayer for the tighter spots. I have decided that just like I embrace 'better living through drugs' in terms of taking allergy aids and sudafed as well as ibuprofen etc I am going to take advantage of chemicals to control the noxious burr setting weeds. I don't have enough energy to keep up with just hand weeding and I hate having to disk them up after they get away from me because then sand blows in where the horses eat + the goatsheads love love love the loose soil and have advantage over other weeds that are not as obnoxious.

 I must set myself some goals and work on the socializing. I have decided I need to just force myself to get some practice and not worry about what kind of impression I am making as a start.

Crazy critters

Our farm yard has quite a lot of trees, mostly Russian Olives, (hey when you live on a sandhill no tree is considered a nuisance)  with a few Elm, cottonwood and assorted other species.  So I was suprised on sunday to notice a pair of birds nests in the one ornamental cactus  plant.   This cactus is perhaps 6 ft tall.   Small bird, possibly a swallow, they do build nests in the darnedest spots but I suck at identifying flora and fauna, especially birds.  Its smaller than a robin and no red chest is all I can say now.  There are two baby birds although the camera keeps missing them --I don't take dozens of shots of anything and don't want to run momma bird off.