Monday, February 23, 2015

I KNEW we'd get winter later and I should ride more back in January

Oh well,  I did go in and work on Presidents/'Washington's Birthday' holiday.   Apparently the popular notion that they combined Lincoln and GW into presidents day is wrong.  They just took away Lincoln and put in MLK and made the 3rd monday the official Washington's birthday holiday according to the federal register or whatever.   Bit of trivia I picked up from one of the Ace ONT posts.

Aside from the tangent last monday was snowy and I was feeling too lazy to do any deep housecleaning at home and looking at the forecast Thursday was going to be nice and then more snow on the weekend so I went in and worked, have to love flexible hours at work.   Then took Thursday off,  got Dad to ride RazzMo and go with me on Tanza and we went 2 miles out and back and Tanza did quite well, in spite of Razz mildly acting like an idiot for a bit after we turned towards home and trying to take off behind us a couple times and Dad having to pull him up.  Dad did make Razz go in front when Tanza got 'sticky feet' and it really helped vs me having to ask, push, reassure him.   Then I rode Sadie 5 miles and did a nice amount of trot and canter.

Friday morning I rode Tanza for 20 minutes in the pen before work,  he is getting pretty good, I asked him to maintain a canter 3 laps in each direction at one point and he really is coming along.

We did get our forecasted snow Sat and Sun,  I was pretty lazy and it felt good to be able to have a lazy weekend.

I haven't checked forecasts but am hearing some rumors that we might get 10 days of cold and new little snowstorm systems moving through.  If its still icky but not unsafe roads this weekend maybe I'll work a weekend day and take another day off in middle of week.  

At some point I have to organize my stuff and do my stupid taxes.  I wish we would just have a flat rate and forget all the credits for 'saving gaia with electric cars' and deductions for anything other than the standard amount.   A good politician could sell it to LIVs if the media didn't shout out the message  "its clearly UNFAIR that rich fat cats with McMansions get a higher deduction than the working class with only basic houses"

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

scored at the MRER convention raffle drawings

We have cool conventions with ride managers donating entries + other stuff  with lots of names being pulled for the raffle not just a few.

And I SCORED.   Two ride entries to rides that I will try to get to plus a great hay bag.  I have one bag from that vendor and have been meaning to buy more.  Now that I have two I don't have to hurry on buying although I'll probably try to get a 3rd one early this summer.

I rode Tanza Sat morning because it was nice but forecast to get cold and icky Sunday which was true so I missed the morning talk.  It was on riding to achieve light collection and I figured "Ive gone to 5 centered riding clinics to learn this so I can really safely skip this lecture"

Afternoon talk was by a vet on 'alternative therapies'  A lot of times I find that rather BS, but I enjoyed the talk and was excited to find she has a clinic just down the road from me.   She has me convinced that I should skip vaccinating the horses this year because Sadie and Tanza have allergy issues and she has been involved in studies and they've found that horses have immunity for 3-4 years from vaccines and do not need annual shots and getting shots to things they already have antibodies for can cause allergy issues.

I take her word more than a lot of veterinary acupuncture and chiropractic practitioners  because she said *if my horse is colicking the first thing I do is give him a shot of banimine and then I'm going to do some acupuncture stuff*  well I'm pretty sure she didn't use the word stuff, but that was the gist of it.   She gave examples of when it would not be a good idea to use chiro or acupuncture treatments as well as examples of horses that were helped by them when conventional treatments had struck out.

She does something interesting where she draws blood and then injects it at acupuncture points to treat allergies so I will have her work on Tanza and/or Sadie if they have the skin allergies this year.  At least I will try it first,  the explanation of making an artificial bruise stimulated the lymph system and can reset it to be more normal seemed sensible to me.

And if Dr Mike is worried about not doing rabies or WNV shots I may have titers done if its not super expensive.  I really don't want to have to give a bunch of allergy shots every year and Tanza registered positive to a lot of stuff on his blood tests so I sure don't want to trigger anything else even though it was a stupid 'natural' fly repellent that set off his allergies.


Sunday, February 8, 2015

Blahs are still dragging on me

I was pretty productive at work last week but it did take some long days so that is part of it but it is not all of it.   I rode Tanza yesterday down the road.   Friday I took just a short ride in the paddock on him and he was quite good and it was a mood booster.   Yesterday I was exhausted when we got back even though it was only a mile out and then back.   It is a lot more tiring having to keep asking for forward motion,  turning back in the outbound direction,  reassuring the greenie away from his herd ... but I feel so old being so exhausted from a 2 mile ride.  I MUST crawl out of my hermit shell and try to find some folks to ride Lady so I can take him out with a buddy a few times and also get him loading better so I can haul and ride with others so I can get some miles on him and build up his body regardless of his baby mind and herd dependence.

I should think hard on what I *WANT* as far as house mate etc.  I get so irritated living with Dad at times and perhaps he would be better off if I moved out,  it would force him to find some new friends, maybe remarry or something.   He probably should have someone coaxing him to eat more decent food and do less snacking but I just will not even try to take that role, blegh just thinking about it in the slightest amount.   

But for now off to ride Sadie and I must remember that she has come so far, just last year I was thinking I needed a BTDT horse because she was OK at home but so crazy at rides and now she is my hop on and ride at home with no worries regardless of brisk weather etc and has gotten pretty good at rides.  Tanza will no doubt get there too,  the greenie horse stage is just hard. 

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Life is OK, busy at work

CJ seems much better.   We opted not to retest for fibrinogen but just give him tucoprim for 10 days.  He got a sore neck from the penicillin shots,  Dr Mike recommended using Surpass cream on the knots in the neck muscles.   If we had done the test and the fibrinogen was still quite high it would have indicated he probably has a tumor but we would barely change what we are doing.

We just met a fairly big milestone at work.   Still tons to do and I want to keep at it pretty well now and hopefully feel perfectly free to take time off to ride more this summer.

I did get a very short ride in on Sadie on Tuesday.   Poor Ole is feeling his years,  I had to double back to him half a dozen times.  It was seasonally pretty warm but since he lives indoors he shouldn't really have that much winter acclimation.   Oh well whenever I hear the "every rose has its thorns" song I think  "every cowboy sings a sad sad song its because they've had to send great dogs and horses across the rainbow bridge"