Ouch, my pride

At least its not my ankle.   Rode Tanza today and it went fine.  Was on the weekly garden thread and the gal that writes it up gave me a 'bless your heart' comment.   I guess I have been even more asperger posting all the time about goats heads than I am OCD about trying to control them.  She posted something about looking forward to the day I have eradicated them.   Oookaaayy.   I will refrain from posting about the burrs anymore.

I guess I should ride tomorrow morning.

Pretty good chance for rain so spraying goats heads would be a waste and it should be nice and cool.  Then I can water the trees and things in the afternoon to supplement the only .15 inch of predicted rain.  

Sunday predicted to be warmer and dry all day.   I should try to arrange a ride date but "how wild will my horses be after their layoffs, and how long will I feel like riding?"  Plus wanting to kill kill kill the goats heads and being on call for work so should not have too long of a day away from home so I will not try to set up anything before Wed for sure.  Since I'm going to go camping and riding next weekend I might just spend Wed spraying weeds too.   I really want to try and get them banished if at all possible cuz next year I want to be much more free to go riding.

I have to whinge about this somewhere

I had Shade buried on our property.  I wish we had known this was an option for earlier horses but water under the bridge.   Dad knew that our neighbor's friend has a bobcat with excavator attachment and they buried another neighbors horse for them and had made arrangements for him to come over on the scheduled euthanizing day.    So last week Shade injured herself and we had to move up the date from planned and they came over that same day.  So  nice of them.

So why am I whinging.   Because they left before I could thank them in person and pay them.  Dad offered to pay as they were loading up and they said "no need".   Well B.S. we don't even know the bobcat owner and won't be in a position to do some neighborly return favor for him.  So I had to have dad get his address so I could send him a thank-you card with some cash enclosed.   I'm not happy about sending cash via mail and I just generally resented having to go to the extra effort to get the address, find a card, write the note yada yada.    

Please people.  If you do something for someone that involved hours of your valuable time and especially if you used your equipment for them LET THEM give you an in person thank-you and some cash on the spot.  Don't make people go an extra mile to do the right thing.  Sometimes they will be so annoyed, distracted, depressed, whatever that they will not or can not get something to you via snail mail. 

Run Free sweet mare

Sweet sweet Shade on Monday.  It was obviously time to let her go but she was not showing a lot of distress.   Core of steel all the way.  

I made a memorial slideshow set to part of Rod Stewart "Forever Young"  song.  https://youtu.be/Ifq7WlwulNc


Shade earned the nickname Steel Magnolia at a ride in WY over 10 years ago.   It was my first year entering the 50 on that ride and about  18 miles into the 25 mile first loop after going too slow over some nice two-track and then having to go slow over a lot of rock we came to a nice looking stretch that was actually a meadow infested with gophers.   Sure enough I had just started to canter and Shade hit a soft patch.    She was always so careful not to hurt me, she managed to not go on her side and get my leg but we both had scraped faces and she had a bit of scraped knees but trotted sound so we went on to the vet check and she was sound for the check so we continued on loop2,  still sound, finished loop 3 and got the completion.   Back home she stiffened up and I ended up giving her a couple months off.

I miss her so much and will always treasure the ride adventures I was able to experience thanks to her grit.   I always kept the speed down because she had the offset legs which put her at high risk to develop arthritis and she had 10 years between LDs and 50s.  

Had to have Dr Mike come today to euthanize Shade

My big fear of her being on the ground and panicked trying to get up was not realized thank GOD.  But after coming up for early morning hay when I went out to feed grain she was tottery on her feet and couldn't figure out how to walk, I believe she injured her other front leg.  I had to cut the string and move her feeder from the fence to where she was and then come in the house, dry my tears and call the vets office to say that I needed to have her PTS today.  

Neighbor and his friend with backhoe dug her grave on the very short (16 days earlier than planned) notice and would not take any money from dad.  So that was very kind of them but I feel like I need to arrange thank you gifts.  Meh I am not going to shop,  thank you cash in a card will have to do.  

I found a photo album that I had put many pics of Shade in so I can scan those in.  I want to make a slide show set to the Rod Stewart song "forever young" in her memory.    I had a headache this morning from rain last night maybe and of course breaking into tears multiple times has made it worse.

I still do feel like Garth Brooks "the Dance" but

my heart is heavy lately.   I'm going to miss my steel magnolia so very much.  I asked about maple vs locust for trees that might work in a horse pen after getting established and got a comment that maple can be toxic to horses.   Rats.   But I'm thinking I don't know about planting a tree right in the smaller horse pen anyway because it could crowd the area.

And I think my cat Boots is getting old cat issues.  He has always been a bit fussy about not wanting to eat the last of a bag of food, but recently he seems to sour on any given food after just a few times eating it.  He is not getting super skinny yet but I have had him for 8 years and he was an adult cat when I got him.

I always say through my tears when I lose a pet that as much as it hurts I still feel like "the dance:  I could have missed the pain but I'd have had to miss the dance"  and in spite of the grief I feel keenly when one of my wonderful animals crosses the rainbow bridge I still love the dancing, they all add so much to my life.

7 rounds of spraying burrs this weekend

And I am at that point of "Arrgggh, I'll never get rid of those horrible things"  I probably will never get rid of them, but I must remind myself that there are hardly any in the mini's pen where I got them sprayed 2-3 years in a row, and the spots in the big horse pens closer to the house only have a few of the nasties coming up.    I am reducing their territory and if I ever get a couple years of really getting them sprayed before they set burrs in the horse pens it can become annual moderate effort to keep them from coming back vs the huge task they feel like now.

I thought I should use the riding lawnmower and spray tank to make sure to not over-stress my ankle.  Well that didn't work out.  Bogged the tractor down after 10 minutes.  But I did find that the cam boot kept my ankle from getting sore tromping around with the backpack sprayer  and I did 3 sets of not quite half-full tank spraying on both Sat. and Sunday and 1 round this morning.   If I can keep up the morning spraying I may get the big horse pens covered.   I may have to find my shake siphon hose to get spray from the trailer tank into the backpack.   I don't know if I trust the mower even in the ditch or around the yard unless I at least reduce the amount of weight in that tank.  Sigh.

It was HOT this weekend so it was easy to spray and then take beer breaks and I didn't even think about riding.  However I should rasp Sadie's feet and probably ride her and probably should ride Tanza,  he will have gone 3 weeks since Sante Fe on Sunday.    But I think I give myself permission to focus on the burr spraying first.

I have been thinking about what tree to plant for Shade.  Canyon maple sounds good.  A smaller tree, tough and able to handle harsh conditions so it would be very like her.   I've been in envy of the silver maples but I read that they are bad to have in a yard because the fast growth comes with weak wood so they are prone to come crashing down on a house or car.   That would not be a huge risk where this tree will be, but the canyon maple is more true to her tough, no quit spirit, so I'll either buy one of those trees or start a honey locust? tree from the seed pods I have.   Those are pretty good trees too.

emailed my Dr about my foot or ankle

Rather silly that I don't even know where she saw the 'subtle fracture'  but for the first few days it did not matter since treatment was 'wear the cam boot for walking' either way.  But now I want some additional information so I can better plan how to deal with Tanza, riding, driving etc while the dumb bone heals up.  

I am getting texts from commie campaign volunteers.  Well at least they are wasted on me but blegh, and how are they deciding to target me?  Is facebook showing them I am spending hours in Boulder or ?.    I need to cut the cord with facebook but I hate to stop seeing pics of friends grandkids and ponies and is it FB or google giving my location and cell # to these moochers?  I need a guide for how to reduce these outfits from tracking so much of my life.

Whinge of the day

I mixed up about 20 gallons of weed spray and had gates open ready to use the lawnmower pulling tank sprayer with WAND attachment so I could still spot spray and the non burr weeds would just have to live or die from being run over.   I hook up the battery and the boom is spraying.   Switch that off and the knob for the wand hose on and zip zilch nada nothing.   I am so tired of asking people to do something and they don't do what I asked.   I specifically told dad I wanted him to make sure that wand worked but of course he always just guesses and nods instead of asking me to repeat when he doesn't hear what I say.  Oh I will feel dumb if the battery just didn't have enough juice to work the wand since I didn't even fire up the mower when I was getting no spray but could hear the pump running.

And I made appointment for Shade to be euthanized today.  I have and will shed lots and lots of tears over that; but I must cowboy up.  I don't know how I would bear it if I kept putting it off and she had the catastrophic leg breakdown happen and could not get up after falling.

I'm still halfway tempted to see if someone wants to ride Tanzaknight at LaVeta.  I should email the doc and ask what is broken and so on.  I don't know if I can ride in the cam boot.  It specifically prevents ankle flexing.  Not sure I could post a trot w/o plopping on horses' back if I can't use the ankle shock absorber.    Well I can't be too whiny; T who puts on that ride had to miss Tevis 2 years ago because she was on crutches from some knee injury.   Last year she won it, life happens; you take care of business and an opportunity for fun comes back around.  

Wearing a camboot, aka as Frankenboot is a PITA

Swelling in my leg was not going away so I got it x-rayed on Monday.   Doc thinks there is a 'subtle' fracture and put me in a cam boot this morning.   I am getting used to it.  Mainly I am still processing that I will not be able to ride at La Veta in 11 days.  Part of me is scheming 'could I have J ride Tanza and ride his gelding that can only do LDs that he is wanting to rehome?'.     Probably not even that in only 11 days, plus with the limitations on activity I will need that weekend to get the burrs sprayed at home.    

And my SiL wants money for Bro to go to a martial arts camp as his group wants to make him a 6th degree black belt.  She did not tell me how much they needed so I will have to ask.  I guess I can give them more now and then rebuild my rainy day fund and catch up on charitable giving since she said they got a grant to cover her remaining chemo and her cancer is in remission.   I thought it was already in remission and last few months of chemo have been making sure its good and gone already but whatever.  

I have 95% decided that I need to have Shade euthanized in a month.  I have to call the vet and see if he can expand the visit from scheduled health cert for Tanza and have dad call the 811 # to mark where we can't dig.  I'm still struggling with this but looking at the goofy bend in her leg a few days ago when I asked her to go into her normal pen I got that gut tingle that I need to let her go before the leg completely fails and its an emergency euthanasia case.