Sprayed Sadie with ultrashield last night -- raised hair today

Maybe she is allergic to the fly spray.   I think I better have her tested.   I was going to make sure early morning fly bites before I got up and got the fly sheet on  didn't set her skin off so I sprayed her with 'the good stuff, $$ anyway' and she looked almost back to square one this morning.   I'm so frustrated,  really need to figure out what I need to minimize for her.    If she is allergic to sprays then trying to find her a show horse home will not be an option.  Its not something I wanted to do but was thinking if she is going to need to be in a stall with a fan perhaps I should look into it.    I can't imagine there are skeeters when its been so dry this summer.    Why is it so hard to be a decent owner?  I'm not trying to achieve perfection.  

How dry is it?

It was so hot and dry this weekend that the mini's drank up all their water and were banging their feet on the bottom of the empty tank.   They know me too well LOL and knew they better TELL me the tank was empty to make sure I ran the hose.   I neglected to check it on sunday but they had enough left on saturday that it would usually have lasted until evening monday when dad feeds them.

Eat drink and be merry .....

I am bummed about the SCOTUS Arizona ruling.  I suppose that state's rights have had only the weakest of existence for decades now anyway but yet another hit on them just when the country needs to go the other way so that responsible states can protect themselves from the likes of California and Illinois.

I had been feeling rather hopeful lately, Barry seems desperate, Wisconsin thinkers turned out big to say FU to the we are extra entitled public employee unions temper tantruming over being told they can't have an extra candy bar. 

But Romney w/o a huge push from a more conservative congress will just push back the failure and it stings that the courts are stacked against individual and states rights and towards bigger federal powers.  Well perhaps things can still swing back.   Wilson had people imprisoned for sedition for criticizing WW1.   Roosevelt interred Japanese Americans and various other crap,  it may not be the end of having a Republic as long as Barry is defeated but he certainly has made fresh attacks on the rule of law and this ruling does not help that one bit. 

So my title?  Well it is patently obvious today that life cannot be set aside until "we win"  Going to be a very very long war and we need to keep ourselves refreshed and in good spirits or the the whiny, greedy looters will wear us down. 

How dry is it?   Even the tumbleweeds aren't growing as far as I can tell.  

I am topping off my redneck fly bait cups every day.   They will probably be dry after my weekend at the riding clinic.  I am so happy the clinic is in an indoor arena.   I'll probably still be wilting but being out of the sun makes a huge difference in this clime.  

Sadie seems to figured out that the fly sheet keeps those nasty flies off.  She is getting pretty easy to put it on.  I may get an SStack one.   They say they have a patented system to not have wither pressure.   I don't think Sadie is really bothered but I don't like how tight her weatherbeeta model seems when she has her head down to eat.    I've still got her on bendryl.  The original spots are pretty well gone but she has a couple of bites on her rump with pretty good welts.   Poor allergic baby.

I've been giving Shade anti-histamines.    She has not been coughing but her nose is still runnning.  I rode her tuesday morning and she was not coughing but she stopped a few times and was stretching her head out to remove any constriction on her trachea and wanted to stop.  I let her stop every time and did not ride very long.  Decided I would go full throttle on anti-histamines for up to a week to try to get her over this and ready to motor the rest of the year.  

How dry is it?

I've enjoyed monthly themes that some bloggers do, so I'll give this a bit of a go.

How dry is it?   So dry that rasping works on hoof frogs not just hoof wall (repeat)

How dry is it?   Its so dry that even the weeds are not growing and that the tumbleweeds have supplanted goatsheads as the noxious stickery weed around the place this year.
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Even though I am boycotting tv news as its almost 100% Marxist propaganda tool I still catch bits because dad has it on a lot.   I am about gobsmacked at how little of a story the drought and good sized fire west of Fort Collins is.  Yes they get coverage but with Republicans not in charge and king Putt up for election its just factoid items and oh the Ag secretary who controls the USFS is promising help to fight the blaze yada yada. 

What a striking contrast to the usual expansion of bad (which usually means dry here) weather into big stories about being a sign that we are wrecking the environment and we need to care more and shouldn't the government do something.  It is just incredible how a fickle miserly precipitation season is just one of those things since their messiah is in the WH and has put the nation so far into debt.   Where are all the human interest stories about how this is just so awful for farmers and ranchers who have been here for generations?  

Truly hell hath no fury like a woman scorned if being blind to the level of media bias can be equated to being scorned.  I loathe those Barry worshipping MarxSpewMediaites and am full of disdain for the folks who are still being fooled.  I should have way more tolerance for those being fooled since I was so dumb myself for so long, maybe that will come if the country gets past the point of feeling like the damn commie looters could finally be close to destroying our Republic.

Just puttering today

Feels pretty good not to have planned to haul out and ride or have a big project I think should be done.   

Benedryl 2x/daily seems to be working on Sadie's hives.   Hopefully I can get them knocked down and if the amazon order does not come right away she will be ok to skip for a couple days, and then hopefully the fly sheet works out and we can prevent them w/o needing meds.   No big deal to giver her Benedryl now, but eventually I want to be able to take her to endurance rides and she'll have to be drug free, and even if it wasn't the rules its probably not a good idea to do somewhat strenuous riding for 4-12 hours with benedryl in their system.  

In the "Its really dry this year file"   I was rasping Mojo's feet yesterday and the rasp was taking off some of his excess frog just like hoof wall.   That worked out nice for me, I have been having little luck trying to trim them with the hoof knife.   Not sure if I can't get the knife sharp,  or the frog is just that tough.  Can't get a hold of the mini frog with the bulky shoe pullers and can't find our old nippers.  I don't want to buy nippers when I don't want to use them generally and I don't know if they would be too big also,  hoofshoe nail nippers might work but I'd never have a use for those if they didn't work out for clipping mini hoof frogs.  I could see myself possibly moving to doing trimming and using hoof boots in future if I had more time and money was tight but I can't envision myself nailing on a shoe.   I'll ask our farrier what works when he is out on thursday.  

TGIF

I wish that meant I had fun weekend plans but today it means I have a headache and I can't tell if its stuffy sinus pressure or just general so I'm just TGIF so the work week is almost over.  I've been taking so much NSAIDS for my ankle that is ridiculous to have a headache.   Probably mostly from too much stressing about work stuff + stressing about Shade and Sadie with their minor health issues.   I'm floundering a bit on just how to tackle re-arranging my ground based processing and stressing somewhat about my lack of any control over the satellite stuff. 

Aw well,  I should look on bright side that the horse health issues are minor.  Its no big deal if I have to skip the ride next weekend and right now there is not a reason for me to think I'll have to skip anything else.   I do need to email the RM again and say that the cough came up so I won't be sending a pre-registration, but will just pay the late fee if things resolve quickly enough. 

RAIN! Sweet

Raining here at work.   Not sure if I should hope its raining at home or not.  Hay guy has ~ 3.5 stacks, don't know if they are covered or not.    I certainly hope some rain fell or falls on the fire west of Fort Collins.

I am a bad horse mom.  Vet was out for health certs and I forgot that Shade has been coughing so I didn't mention it and have him listen to her lungs really good etc.   L was out and we rode and Shade had a nasty cough going at more than a walk.   Then when I got home and gave her her antihistmine in her feed she left most of it;  I didn't check if she cleaned it up yesterday when I put Grey back in.  Well if she has not been eating the antihistamine perhaps I can't say it wont do any good.

 I guess I will have to syringe her to make sure she gets dosed.  I should have known better than to feed her any of the dusty hay from the one last years stack that got rained on before it was delivered, I've been feeding the top bales from that stack to the mini's but some of the second and even third layer bales still had some mold dust .  Geesh I hope Shade doesn't get a respiratory infection and get knocked out for a month right when I was finally getting geared up to go to some endurance rides.  

Sadie is having allergic reaction to fly or other bug bites.   Dr Mike said I need to get on top of it or she could develop oozing sores and since this is mainly where the saddle sits that would be really bad.  So she got some benidryl(TM) and I ordered her a fly sheet.    Hopefully she wears the sheet w/o a problem and the benidryl kills the hives before they get nasty.    I bought a bottle of 1000 capsules via Amazon.  I'd like to avoid having to go to the store,  I just hit Walmart saturday, it was too hot to be productive at home and then stopped at Target yesterday but I was not thinking I should get benidryl at that point.  Doh, I have read folks talking about giving it for hives in horses before and had noticed Sadie was getting these hives last week but didn't connect the dots in good time.

WTG King Putt and Axlegrease

Make me lose sympathy for folks who experienced the wrench of having their company die by putting them on TV to blame Romney for their hurt.     Like its his fault their company was mis-managed to start with and available for Bain to buy?  Like its his fault the company or industry simply could not be turned around?   Like its his fault they didn't bother to have a rainy day fund so they could take advantage of COBRA etc when the company failed and were left w/o insurance and what have you?    

 Thanks to the constant whinging from liberals I am now inclined to look at those folks and think they were selfish lazy twats who probably dragged their company down rather than having any sympathy for them.    Heck maybe my granddad was not so super critical before he lived through LJB, Nixon and Carter.    I'm so lucky we had Reagan  boosting the country and setting up opportunities for me and other late 80's graduates by getting government somewhat out of the way of private enterprise.

   I WANT to get back to feeling empathy for folks who experience life wrenching stuff, but when big big big government is painting job creators as meanies and piling up trillions in debt so they can play at being charitable with other people's money it really tends to make one cynical about a lot of folks 'who are in need.'    Add in all the "rules and laws are only for you non-union crackers" BS and boom I find myself P/O'd at  tens of millions of people for STILL believing lies from the MarxSpewMedia and even worse directly from Barry's campaign.   

Beer thirty

Finished a decent ride with L.   We went about 8 to 8.5 miles and did some exploring.   Went down a powerline up access space through the middle of little town near hear and hit an irrigation ditch that  I had never been that far south on but figured should run that way.   It was kind of fun,  the powerline access used to be or is often blocked off from the way we came but was open today.   

I did a little tree pruning this morning.   What really needs doing now would best be done with a chain saw or some of it could be handled with a rope saw I guess.   I'm playing the girl card wrt to chainsaw.  I don't like messing with it, its hard to start, I hate the noise and vibration and also have that bit of worry that it will skip or something and I'll put a huge gash in one of my limbs.  

Put some wet cotton on all 4 of Mojo's hooves for about 3 hours and then did some rasping.   I need to call the farrier and see if I can move up our appointment by a couple of weeks.  If I just had one horse I think I could get into the just rasping them and booting for rocky trails but I cannot keep up with multiple horses and I'd just as soon take the shortcut with every  horse while I'm at it.   

Hang on its friday

Gads I had thought I was past getting frustrated by data/cpu glitches but not there yet.   Oh well I asked boss to ask the folks that want the data processed to send us the raw data in an easier format and its a simple virtual button push for them to select that.

We got rain last night but I think less than 0.2 inches.    Any is better than none, but 2 inches would have been better.    I thought L might come, she had said she might come again yesterday when she was here (and I had thought she might skip because it rained good in Denver and she didn't call  to make sure it was not too wet or anything)  so I dinked around a bit spraying weeds and rasped a bit on Shades feet since they had a bit of natural moisture before fetching my car from the mechanic and heading for work.   I didn't feel really feel like riding so I was just as happy she skipped but I guess I'm going to have to ask her to call before she comes.   Theoretically I'm around anyway but I'd like to know if she isn't coming and it would behoove me to try to get out early to beat the heat or whatever. 

Weed wise it feels like the goatsheads are not overwhelming me, hopefully they don't surge in July and August.   Tumbleweeds are thick this year though.   Its never ending just trying to get a less noxious class of weeds instead of the burr setting and sticker ones.   Tumbleweeds aren't as bad as the goatshead thorny burrs but I'd still rather not have them.  

Victory

Walker won in WI.   YES!   I am not a curse by contributing.   Well I was probably above 50% in 2010 on folks I sent a little money too wining but the 'dry wells' were so dis-heartening.     But I contributed directly to Walker and also to FreedomWorks.   I don't know if Walker and the WI GOP/Tea Party needed any help from the FW group but hopefully the FW group has gained good strategies etc for this November.   I think I'll give them more money and maybe a little money to a couple Rep.s in my state that I'm already on mailing lists for.   I am not interested in getting on any more individual mailing lists.

Personal victory front I rode Sadie down the road today.   First time down the road since the saddle slipped under her belly, that must be 6 or 7 weeks now.   I used the Barefoot Cheyenne treeless again and it seemed to stay put, first time going down a hill and though its not a steep or long hill its more of a test than the arena ride on Sunday.   Sadie had some angst but did not do anything wild, tried to spin around a bit but it was not a big fight over continuing.   I only went 1 mile and came back and kept the speed down.   We will work back up to longer and some cantering after a few successful rides. 

Jingling curb chains ...

But it looks like swapping saddles will work for both Sadie and Shade.    My Synergist that I had made for Sadie had started wanting to slide foward.   After a saddle under her belly incident, then crupper woes and the saddle seeming to be pulling against the crupper just doing some flat work and little mare was NOT happy when I got on her with that situation.   She did not blow up and buck me off but she was tense as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs as they say.

Still it took L asking me if I was going to try another saddle for me to realize DUH, that is exactly what I need to do.   So I tried Shade's treeless on Sadie on sunday and it stayed where I put it, I had it too far forward initially, moved it back and it stayed there.    This morning I tried the Synergist on Shade and it was not sliding forward that I could observe.  I think I want my  felt pad that I have folded to raise the front of the saddle a little bit and cut a spinal channel for using with the treeless because the saddle did feel a bit low in front to me, but main thing is it was not sliding and Shade did not feel like the tree was bothering her any.   

The treeless seemed more secure on Sadie w/o the felt pad.   If I decide she needs more spinal channel later I think I'll have to buy another thin felt pad and not have the fold in front, but just cut it to fit or whatever.  

Good ride yesterday ...

I hope I have not turned L against endurance riding.   She was a good sport but we went out with thunderstorms to the west of us and L is extremely jittery about lighting.  Well I am not one to go out when the lightning strikes are cracking myself but it was all distant rumbling so I just kept pressing on,  wanted to get some miles on horseback to soothe myself after the workweek stress + my drive over there, running late.  

We got down to the bottom and found a spot L was comfortable with for lightning safety and the rain showed up a few minutes later, started pretty soft which was nice since we had not grabbed ran coats off the horses right away.

Ended up waiting out a 30 to 45 minute rain shower with the horses tied to the hitching rail at the picnic area.   I was getting so much help from the bushes that I put my duster on Shade for a rump rug since she was shivering when I fetched the coats.   One advantage to the aging crap is I run hotter and don't chill so easily myself anymore.  

L still didn't want to ride the ridge because there were clouds over it and we were still hearing thunder rumbling.  So we tried to take the road but it veered too much west when we needed to go north and we found ourselves in a gated (bar across road but open paths around the bar) subdivision of $$$ homes with the road changed from gravel to pavement.  

We still pressed on a ways, there were trails just a few yards off the road most of the time but we were flagging down folks looking for info on how far it would be till we hit the county road we could follow back to the trailhead.  Third car that stopped gal was familiar enough with the area and understood what we wanted to know she said it was seven minutes by car to the gate at that end of the subdivision.   At this point it had cleared up and we had not heard thunder in a while so I persuaded L to just backtrack and take the normal trail.  

So it worked out pretty good, we got about 14 miles on the horses and except for the time under the bushes the weather was great; we never had sun beating down on us and it did not get steamy after the rain shower, but was nice trotting weather.   If L is not scared off I think she'll handle the 30 mile ride on June 22 or 23 just fine and Lady handled the work with no problems.  

More curmudgeon file, Galt feelings

I've been chunking along since 2008 thinking that if country wakes up enough to evict the SCOAMT I'll just try to be better at presenting conservative viewpoints and pointing out MFM BS and only if right thinking people stay home and let the dead and brain dead outvote them I might say to hell with meeting obligations and go Galt to whatever extent I could, but otherwise I would just keep chugging along trying to make things better and having some tolerance since I was blind to the MarxSpewing of the Media for so long myself.  

But I am finding I keep getting so angry whenever people I know actively pass along any Barry propaganda that I want to scream "Are you trying to destroy us all?!"  Screaming is no way to win any hearts and minds back from the dark side but Imma have to do something more than just bite my tongue or I'll make myself ill.

Curmudgeon today.

Gaah, I'm having to post here because I can't completely sit on my fingers.   Someone posted about their horse kicking at other horses 2x on a weekend riding trip.   Everyone is giving their usual flavor of advice. Is it vision issues or was horse scared & defensive, to you have got to lay down the law that kicking like that is unacceptable regardless of why the horse is doing it, take action to cut off the circumstances leading to kicking earlier etc.    I suggested the owner should retire the horse to arena only work and adopt a 'rescue' for trail riding  --not because any of the usual advice is wrong in general, but because my feeling is that it wont fix the problem.

  A horse that has been under saddle and out riding in public for years now and is pulling this shit?  An owner who describes staying on but being unable to keep the horse from doing a 180 to get into kicking position?    I just had a sense that offering any advice to correct the behavior or search for a cause that might be mitigated is just enabling right now.   This is a horse/rider combo that needs to not be out in public where another horse or rider could end up with a broken leg IMO.   But I expressed that opinion once and I need to not be starting a flame war over other people recommending possible fixes rather than seconding my "stay off the trails on this disaster waiting to happen"  advice that I tried to give in less curmedgeonly fashion than this.    I need to put down the laptop and get to the tasks of the day.