So I'm playing fox-hunter for the next couple of weeks.

I went and picked Mason up yesterday.  His young owner was sad to say good-bye.  I kept wanting to way "let me tell you good-bye doesn't mean forever" but I don't even remember who sang it so I don't think she would have got the reference at all and I'm superstitious enough that I didn't want to risk putting some kind of jinx on.  Its never guaranteed that horses will stay healthy. 

I rode him this morning.   He was not bad.  I forgot a crop but I was able to just ask him to move forward with seat and legs and he complied except when he was taking potty breaks.  He seemed to enjoy getting his chest and shoulders hosed off afterwards but didn't want the water farther back, especially after it was running cold.    He did crow hop twice but he is too smooth to be a scary bucker.  He was a wee bit scary when he was snorting at the conehead dog though.  Even though I was able to 'pop his clutch' on the bucking by taking him a tight circle to the right ( I think that is my stronger side, rather than he is easier to turn one way or the other)  he is big and strong and felt like if he actually went into a bolt I wouldn't be able to stop that; but luckily he really doesn't have any desire to bolt and I just kept him bending on the nice 100 foot wide graded section where they put in the oil pipeline and he.  I love that spot, its like a perfect trail/arena hybrid. 

He had sniffed Ole in his cone earlier and was OK, but just got a bit snorty looking at Ole up on the hill in his collar when I had turned him around to go back.  But that kind of worked out as it took his mind completely off rushing away from the excavator working on the irrigation ditch and/or trying to bolt for home just in general since Ole was between us and home.   I have no desire to try to trade Sadie for some kind of warmblood and get into an actual hunt club but I think it will be fun to mess with Mason for a bit.  It will definitely be fun to have his family come out,  they are good positive energy people.

My car got a new manifold gasket and spark plugs

So it will probably have a bit more oomph when I want to accelerate and hopefully this fixes the NOX too high (and we are high elevation and have some ozone worries so its probably good to fix that)  and I will be good to license the car for 2 more years and it will also keep running those two years.   That will have it over 180K which will probably be pushing the limits for the econo box model that I don't baby.  (well other than taking it in to get oil changed and checked out by my mechanic,  but even there I stretch the oil changes to 3500 or more vs 3000 miles and so on.)

Ole's leg is healing up and the lab reports came back as cancerous but clear margins so I guess it is OK that I went ahead with the surgery.  First pic is Sep 21, two days after his stitches ripped out and was looking pretty ugly.  Last two pics are from today.   Yesterday I rode Sadie and let Ole come as the vet has said we no longer have to restrict his activity.   She has had over a week to get used to the collar on him so I expected she would be OK but I was still pleased that she didn't give me any fake dramatics when he was bounding around as we were riding.   I kind of liked that collar, it made it easy to spot him vs him blending into the weeds and long grass.

Sigh my car failed its emissions test.

I must remember to call my mechanic tomorrow morning and ask if he thinks he can fix it, I should go to one or the other of the places in Brighton recommended by the air testing place, or start car shopping.   The car does have 150K miles on it.   The testing place said one cylinder mis-fired.  I suppose that could be something easy like a spark plug but if the cylinder is failing I can't see trying to keep the car going,  what a nuisance, the car has been kind of nickel and diming me this year,  bearing went out on the rear wheels,  then I had to have the front strut or whatever fixed because my tire was wearing excessively

   I really really hate shopping but I could ask my dad,  the only thing is he is not much of a bargain shopper but I think he actually kind of enjoys the process of looking at stuff like cars and such.   Well first I need to call my mechanic and get some input.  If the car can be made to pass the emissions test with a few hundred dollar repair I'll probably go that way even though I've got the Ugh, this thing is needing so much attention lately and something else will probably go  in 3-4 months if I get the "too much NOX" issue fixed trepidations.

Had OK rides on Sadie on Saturday and this morning with L.  Sadie continues to feel a bit ouchy on any rock though and I just don't know whether I need to be more diligent with the rasping, or what.  

I need to take pics of Ole's incision --which is now a gaping hole

Almost all his stitches ripped out and he has an over an inch hole in the skin on his hip.   So much for being proactive for his health by removing the pre-cancerous lump.   I hate hate hate when I was trying to do a good thing and end up with an ugly mess.  

He is getting antibiotics from the vets and I am resisting my urge to puff wonderdust on the wound.  repeat after me "He is not a horse,  he is not a horse he is not a horse"   Vet's recommendation is to put nothing on it and wash it off with water if he gets it dirty.   I want to create a scab but dog skin is different from horse skin so I'm so far forcing myself to just leave it.    I did look up dog wounds on the internet and they has some huge open wounds which presumable healed so that did make me feel a little bit better. 

L was out thursday and we had a good ride.  She went into one of her paranoid statements, "I'm afraid Ole will get infection and lose his leg "  which pizzed me off so I took off cantering.   I needed a good canter anyway so it was all good in the end but I cannot wait to ship Lady back to the family in Golden this summer, god willing and the creek don't flood as the saying goes.

Being/doing good is its own reward.

Ancient saying but I never realized its true meaning which is that neither people nor fate are going to offer you any rewards for striving to be a good person.   Or maybe I should say I was never 100% honest with myself.  I may have thought I was doing things just for my own internal warm fuzzy feelings; but when I'm trying to be extra generous and the world shrugs at my offers the negative feelings of being rebuffed (even when its not active, just ignoring my outreach) do often overwhelm my internal warm fuzzy.  

I need to work on that because the world is not going to change and give me a cheering section for basic decent living and I don't want to be one of those people that goes around saying "applause please, I just did some low level nice thing."  And I don't want to cease trying to be nice within the bounds of what I can do w/o burning myself out,  I do have that internal voice that says "atta girl" or "geeze that was rude/lame/selfish whatever"

L was out again yesterday to ride.

We did have  a nice ride.   Spooked up an owl.  Lady jumped and L squealed so Sadie went sideways one stride and I saw a cool owl taking off from the ground.   It must have caught a mouse a bit before we were coming and was eating on the ground instead of taking the mouse to a post or tree to eat.   Very cool since L stayed on,  both horses relaxed after single jumps and the owl was OK.  One of those 'should have a helmet cam' moments as it would have been cool to get the image of the owl but oh well. 

L is so funny, she was on high alert that the owl would be back in that spot or we would startle another one even though Lady had been pretty good, just jumping forward and not doing anything that dumped her.   That somewhat paranoid mindset from L is why it was so relaxing for me to have Lady go off to summer camp, but L is really appreciating her now.  Poor L, she not only had shingles, she thought she might have been bitten by a bat and so when she was in FL and having pain and a rash on the arm that had bite marks and those staff did not think about shingles she ended up doing the rabies vaccine series JIC, and after deciding it was shingles with her doc in CO she reads that it can be dangerous to do the rabies series if you have a viral infection, and she did have some numbness or something,  slight risk but could get a serious condition that could cause paralysis. 

I will go to work today in the office.  My normal route goes by the airport the NG is using for helicopter evacuations but if it seems busy I can always go around that bit and I need to able to work effectively.    I have a feeling our retreat location will have to be moved.   Pretty sure we were going to Estes Park and since the town flooded  quite thoroughly I don't see how the hotel could be hosting conventions again in 3.5 weeks. 

L was out to ride this morning, first dry day we've had since Monday

No flooding at her house and I think all the normal routes to our place were open today.   I've been resting a bit and also working from home a bit.  I don't like working on the laptop.  I'll have to ask our new sys admin how best to get a good VPN server/client whatever installed on the desktop mac. 

Lady was good for L and Sadie was good for me.  A few ouch steps from Sadie that seemed to be front feet,  I don't think the heel bruising has ever made her really sore.   The ditch road was washed out in the one spot where there is an ATV/horseback crossing spot, otherwise no visible water damage out on the field roads I ride.

 Its such an odd juxtaposition with all the damage I see shown on the news in Boulder, Lyons, Estes Park, Evergreen and now Firestone, Evans, etc with slower water flooding.   I'm not ready to put it out really widely but I did volunteer on the endurance FB page that we could take a few horses for a week or so if someone has barn and pastures underwater.   

I hope the possible rain overnight and Sunday is minimal and my work is back open early next week.  Power has stayed on so if roads are OK maybe they will open up, but if there is a lot of damage around town they might feel like they need to keep the buildings closed for an extra day or two to stay out of the way of cleanup efforts and stuff.  I'll be happier if I'm just going to work, if I'm home and dad has the TV on I suspect the news coverage will be shifting to a lot of the sob stories and I get annoyed.    

I almost wanted to reach through the screen and slap some idiot who almost got her baby drowned trying to drive through water on Thursday.  "I had NO idea it could be like this,  well at least she was shaken up"   but the media either seek out the whiniest cry babies and only air those clips, maybe the pathos gets more eyeballs, or there are an awful lot of people who just want to whine to the world when misfortune befalls them based on past news coverage when there has been wildfires and stuff.  

Wow, we are getting a lot of rain the last few days

I hope the heavy rains last night didn't wash out winter wheat that had been planted.   The county will have to work on our road again.    The sides are all washed out but at least the middle was nice firm surface to drive home on.   

Its probably good timing for Sadie.  I've been rasping on her feet while they were soft.  Did the back feet yesterday and her heels were all red when I rasped a little bit.  I don't know if its older bruising from hoof boots or from not having the boots Sunday riding her on the rocks up in Golden.  Hopefully the damp ground will keep it from getting too sore.   I wish I knew what would be best to do for her feet going forward.  I need to email the endurance mentor guy that is doing some barefoot trimming so I can pick his brain, get the boots with less heel strap if I decide to continue without shoes etc etc.   

So tired and cranky

I decided last night that none of the horses really Needs to have supplements or grain twice daily and I am feeling burned out and need to scale back and start getting to bed earlier.

This will help but I am just overall feeling like I'm surrounded by incompetent twerps.  Well I guess whenever I feel tired I tend to get cranky about the idiot factor at work.  Idiocy like we have geo-thermal heat and 'green' plumbing in the bathrooms which means we can't have hot water to wash our hands but just the lukewarm crap from the geo system and we have to flush twice half the time because the low flow systems won't grab the paper if wasn't in the bit of water at the bottom of the loos.  We have solar panels on our roofs but the lights in the parking lot are just on traditional AC lines so we will have a dark lot until they get around to digging to replace conduit because putting solar lights up would just be too easy.

Idiocy like we so so striving to be green that they took out the coffee machine and replaced it with a nespresso and Keurig systems because of course all those stupid little cups that have to be tossed rather than composting coffee grounds and filter paper doesn't matter if the coffee machine was a nuisance to the admin(s) that dealt with it. 

Idiocy like most of the employees embrace the CAWG non-sense instead of applying a little skeptical scientific thinking and they hire an org president who thinks attributing some slogan to that butcher Che Guevara gives the slogan extra authority or gravitas or something.

feeding Lady up for winter

It is good that I felt obligated to my leaser and fetched Lady home for winter.  She does need to put on 20-30 lbs.  I was a bad horse-mom.  I thought she would be on lush pasture so I only sent just a little grain to give her some joint supps in when she was caught to ride.  Then it was out of sight out of mind and I didn't tell DL that Lady normally gets a lb of grain daily when she is on hay not grass when Mason was harassing her when they tried to have her share the huge pasture so they put her in a nice paddock.  Plus I think that the ranch hay is more diet hay and all the regular horses there get 3-4 lbs of grain instead of the 1-2 lbs mine get since our hay is pretty rich for being grass hay.   

I'm sure DL would have asked me or just fed more grain if she noticed Lady dropping weight but Lady is one of those horses that is very hard to judge their weight.  She has a big belly, probably had a foal or two years ago and then years of eating hay has left permanent gut fill, plus she has kind of fat pocket or 'crest' on her neck -- but she always has backbone sticking up.  One really has to feel her ribs and look and feel closely around her tail head and the hip bones etc to judge her body condition and I didn't tell DL any of that. 

Lady still looks great at first glance, even to me when I picked her up. but she was standing with her body curved at home later and I noticed ribs so then I did the full check and she is not bad, but is thinner than I like, especially as winter approaches.  Lady isn't minding getting a little extra grain and some 30% fat supplement for now.  I'll have to show DL the places I check for weight loss or gain if we can coordinate and do camp again next summer. 

*  So today I'm feeling Lady's ribs going, hmmm I thought I felt more rib yesterday.   She really really is very hard to judge her body condition.   But can definitely stand to gain a few lbs and is enjoying extra groceries.  

I did ride the last 3 days...

I've gotten in short rides on Sadie the last 3 days.   I so want to call it quits on the weed spraying but my obsessive dislike of the goatheads is  making it hard when I'm seeing where I missed weeds in the ditch.  OTOH only a few of those missed ones are anywhere close to the driveway and I really should turn some energy to de-cluttering the house and plus try to get enough sleep that I'm not nodding off at work until I get my later in the day energy spike. 

So I should probably ask dad to do any winterizing on the backpack sprayer and put it up for the year.  The flies are going gangbusters it seems.   I'm trying hard to remind myself that they are not so thick they are buzzing in the feed room and garage and very few are getting in the house so I have actually kept the population lower than in many past summers.  There is only so much that can be done with bait stations and I don't want to take out the bees or neutral bugs with any kind of broad scale pesticide application. 

Lady is home,  yesterday I went and picked her up and DL rode with me in the pasture where Mason is boarded.    I had forgotten hoof boots for Sadie so we contented with a short ride with just a bit of trotting up on top the one spot that didn't have rock.  Sadie did pretty good,  she had several steps of 'ow rock' shifting her weight suddenly off that foot but was not ouchie every step and it didn't hurt her to figure out she should look for rock free spots to set her feet down.   Lady was noisily happy to see Sadie again and Sadie was whinnying back vigorously as well.   Lady is not nearly so happy to back in with Razz but as before she is OK.     Lady either doesn't look out for Razz or move away as quickly as Sadie who just shrugs, moves off, and goes to the feeder Razz just left so Razz is running her a bit and did give her a bite on her rump but they've done that before.  Razz doesn't corner her, or kick so she is just going to have to live with the slightly abrasive herd dynamics they have. 

Saturday and this morning I took short rides down my ditch road spot with Sadie and did a little cantering in the empty field.  Ole has been excited to come even though the ditch doesn't have water any more,  I think they are done for the year.   Thursday Ole goes to the vet for getting his lump(s) removed, so its good to see him feeling more lively than he seemed mid-summer when I was wondering if he was healthy enough for it to make any sense having veterinary surgery on him to remove a precancerous lump.   Its sad that I feel like the vet clinic is kind of money grubbing so I don't completely trust them when they say precancerous and so on.   I guess they are honest, they just have a "best treatment" mentality vs.  "what is really cost-effective and fairly safe" which I feel like would be good enough for pets. 

The neighbors probably think I'm off my rocker

I was spot spraying goatsheads in the pasture again today.   *I* myself think I'm foolish spraying so late in the year, but there were some that were still growing and blooming so I feel like I've cut off some burrs from forming even though a great number have already set.    I just couldn't bear not trying to reduce the # of burrs where it was possible that spraying would help.  

I want to see about renting a no-till grass seeder and buying some grass seed to plant this fall too.  I'm just tired of having the weeds everywhere and I guess also I want to tackle some farm improvements this year when it feels like it makes more sense to just wait until next year to haul Sadie to rides.   There is no ride less than 6-7 hours drive away for the rest of the year; partly offering to take the draft cross was an excuse for "oh now I can't go to those rides I committed to ride M."  I'm sneaky with myself sometimes.

belay that,

I guess I am going to be taken up on my offer to ride the draft cross for 2-3 weeks.   Me and my impulsive offers.   Oh well it will not be a bad thing.   Not as good as if they were using a trainer, mainly because I suck at explaining things so while I'm thinking the cross will be fine, as he was when I rode him for a mile or so the one time, I won't be able to give nearly as much info for them to apply when he goes back.   Oh well I guess I can write about what I did every time I ride or long line him and pass those notes along.

I'm going to give them two options.  A) I take him this weekend when I pick up Lady.  Bring him back in 3 weeks and show them how to long line him.  Then they can long line him for a week before R is cleared to ride per her Docs orders and while he settles back in and start out with long-lining him for work and the first rides being just cool-down sessions so he gets the idea of R is the boss but riding is the easy thing.  

B) I take him starting in 2 weeks and they can come out and ride at our place at least once before he goes back.   I really don't know which would be better.   He might be nicer for R away from the environment where he has started doing his bit of acting up, but then he might revert back at his home base more easily than if he gets some boot camp and then she does some long lining there before she starts back to riding.    This is why I'll just give them the choice, they are pretty good at the animal psychology and at least it won't be have been my call if it doesn't work out perfectly.     

WooHoo, pretty sure my offer of bootcamp is going to be ignored

I can feel good about making the offer and not actually have to carve out time to ride a horse that I don't own.    I'm certainly not going to push it; I think sometimes the family feels like they are being pressured and that is not what I want.    Probably they are going to be just fine to work through things with the sometimes difficult horse; and I can go back to reminding myself to bite my tongue and not say something snarky about the first owner 'dumping' him on them.   They do have amazing skills at reading critters and shaping general animal behavior so they are not in same boat as rookie owners who cannot draw on the pool of general animal behavior knowledge would be.  


   I only know that the mom posted a few things that led me to think first owner had given them some expectations that she'd pick them up to join in some trail rides and has not done that so I really should not be assuming she was not 100% frank about her issues with the horse.  I do hope it works out for them to take Lady again next summer because it was really nice having her (and her leaser) off my plate for several weeks.   Lady is not a huge amount of work so I was surprised how much more peaceful I felt when she was gone, even though I had got to a point of feeling like the leaser coming out to ride was a stress added to my morning rides rather than a fun bit of riding company.

catching up on riding log

After riding Wednesday I skipped Thursday and Friday and just did insect and weed control stuff before work.

Saturday I rode about 6 miles, did some canter in the field that isn't planted.  Its pretty good footing not an intense workout like a deeply cultivated field.  It was pretty fun.

Sunday dad and I went to White Ranch open space and did some trail riding.  My fun day for the weekend.   Sadie and Razz both did pretty good.  Sadie led a lot at the start but she got hesitant at some technical stuff and dad made Razz take the lead the last third of the trip.   Met lots of bikes and some hikers, everyone was very polite, just as I remembered this place being years ago.    I had some energy at the end of the ride, even after removing hoof boots from Sadie so I decided it was time for her to go back to riding in the 2nd stall rather than getting to have the very back which I'd been doing to make loading extra easy.

Monday I just sprayed and did some hoeing and bagging of goatsheads.

Today I took a three mile quick ride,  then had to have dad drive me back to search for Ole (well I could have just driven myself but I'd had a lead on him and I wanted dad to drive in case I ended up walking trying to spot if Ole had got the lead hung up)   He was making his way home so we just gave him a ride the last few hundred yards.   I should have made him stay home I suppose since it was fairly hot but he really wanted to go and he is OK, just took a few more minutes of my day.

I suggested to the folks that have Lady that they should send their draft cross to the trainer his former owner used to use for a tune-up before the 12 year old girl takes up riding again after breaking her collarbone.  Collarbone was not a horse-fall injury but the horse had been acting up a bit with her before she was injured and they posted on the horse board that he did some little "twist and jump" and dumped a little gal that was riding him on Saturday.   They had invited friends out so the daughter 'could ride vicariously.'  Lady was very good for various tweens riding her, so that is good.

But I also volunteered that if their budget was too tight, I could take him for 'a short boot camp' session when I brought Lady home since I saved having to feed her a fair amount of hay while they've had her.   I can barely believe I did that.  I try to maintain a personal policy of not riding other peoples horses as I am no trainer.  But the horse does not need training,  I don't think even remedial training, he is just taking a bit of advantage and could use several rides from someone who will not allow, let alone make, any excuses of "he is grumpy because he is itchy from deer flies, or he was jealous of Lady...." if he acts out in any way.  Plus no deer flies at our sand hill so his itchies would probably clear up.   I thought of offering to come ride him  there, even making up some excuse of having to come early and stay later at work for collaboration with european and asian counterparts but could take a long break midday and he is much closer than going home --- but he lives on 300 acres and I'd wear myself out if I had to hike up the steep hill to catch him to ride,  if they can't just send him to a trainer and have the girl take a lesson or two which would be the very best option but are open to having someone with decades of riding experience give him a wee tune-up I'd rather just haul him home, ride him 4 times a week for a couple weeks then haul him back. 

  I am on of several people on the board that has been vicariously reliving childhood horse love via this girl and we are all inclined to want to ensure that nothing happens to dampen her love of riding and I'm a bit worried that with the collarbone and lay-off, the horse might be too strong for her to manage if she has to start with a horse that needs to be worked through anything the first few times she is back in the saddle.