Quick catch up post

Lets see.  After my Thursday the 20th ride I did skip riding that Friday and I think I also skipped on Saturday.   L came out intending to ride with me late morning on Sunday and Lady was limping with a swollen left knee.  I suspect Sadie must have kicked her.   L was a great sport, did not want to ride Lady and possibly aggravate an injury w/o me saying anything and just hung out for a while using the shedding blade on all the paddock horses and I went ahead and rode Sadie about 4 miles.   Ole had been excited to come but then when L was not coming and dad was outside he decided he had to stay; dad let him back in the yard while I was riding.  I put some ointment on a small cut and wiped some arnica liniment on Lady's knee. 

Monday Lady was quite gimpy, with more swelling of the knee and the weather felt cold and nasty.  So I gave her bute and a powdered antibiotic and just put some furacin  and DMSO on the knee then called Dr Mikes office with a request that she be seen within a few days.   They called back and he could swing by on Tuesday 'about 5pm'.

   Trying to force myself to work one early shift results in a totally unproductive day so I took PTO Tuesday.   I ran my car over to get serviced and rode Sadie about 6.7 miles.   I was going to ride only 5 miles but after leading her across the irrigation ditch she was all worked up and since I had plenty of time I just rode her back to the highway to use the road bridge.    Dr Mike made it out about 6 pm, I had expected that 5 was best case time,  While waiting I finally got around to putting DOT reflective tape that I had bought over a month ago on my big trailer.   I have a rather random pattern of tape strips but it should be nice and visible now.  I had noticed when feeding with the headlight this winter that the DOT tape on my little trailer really popped in the light and 'huh, my big trailer doesn't have any tape on it.'    

Lady got a full leg compression wrap (because otherwise a knee wrap slides down) with instructions to take it off on Saturday and keep giving her the antibiotic for 10 days and bute for a few days as needed.   She got bute Monday, Wed. and today as she didn't seem very sore Thursday or Friday and I figured I'd give her a dose for the anti-swelling effect with removing the wrap.   She was a pill to get tranquilized although at least she didn't rear and fight hard, was tense as could be and then kept jerking her head and shifting the needle.   She was a model patient once the sleepy drugs worked and has been good in the pen by herself.  We shall see how unwrapping the leg goes but I think she'll stand fairly OK tied up.

Wed I took a quick ride because it was predicted to be cold and damp Thursday and into Friday morning.    There was a fair breeze and Sadie was all stirred up so I discarded vague plans to ride out and back on my usual 4 mile quick ride and just made her do circles in the oil line pipe strip that I use like my personal arena.  We worked away down to the irrigation ditch and back heading east and then I did serpentines (is TOO a word) on the strip that runs 500 yards or so north and back.

Thursday there was a trace of snow on the ground but was sunny and warming but I slept in and was dragging.   I have some allergy sinus thing going that is making me batty.  Not full on sick but I get stuffy and tinges of the pressure I get when I have an actual sinus infection.  Plus my nose has gotten all sensitive.   Wish my vision would improve and the sense of smell fade but no such luck.   Friday similar weather but a bit of a cold breeze + I decided I needed to get the snow tires off my car so I skipped riding and went to the tire place.   I guess it has a new owner since I last bought tires, still somewhat of a vibe of 'oh okay I guess we can accept your business if you insist.' but not quite as much.

I worked late Friday night.  Stupid coding mistake on my apart,  declaring a variable inside an if statement in perl means the variable is only defined within the if -endif brackets.   I may have known this at one time before, but what a tarball at the end of the week trying to figure out how I had broken the program.