Well I'll have time to catch up on weed spraying Sunday. Not going to look at gelding

Owner called and said he had reacted to fly spray and has hives.   I'm not sure she understands that if I like him and I think I probably will it will still be a week or so to set up a pre-purchase and stuff unless she has already had a Coggins test done.    I don't want to set that up before I see the horse in person cuz I might change my mind on wanting him.   It would be no big deal except I'm sort of wanting to make some loose riding plans but not knowing when I might end up running up to haul a new horse home is putting a damper on that.

With the Vesticular Stomitis scare the place where he is staying may have sprayed some stronger fly control stuff on all the horses.   I am trying to keep Sadie sprayed and will spray the trailer with corral product mixed strong before heading to the ride next weekend but mostly just trying to keep the fly bait refreshed so its not a bunch of flies at our place and not getting gung-ho with spraying, face masks etc.  Maybe I should be being more paranoid but VS causes quarantine but is usually not too harmful if a horse gets it as I understand it.

Colorado has had VS before but this time it jumped from south Texas to northern Colorado.   Hmmm,  if you are in country illegally and LEOs shrug cause ICE won't deport if they arrest you maybe you scoff at following the animal control laws with health certs and the like.   Makes me wonder if there was any match racing near where this cropped up,  or could have been roping or barrels etc too.    Racing at a regulated track I believe they check paperwork a bit more.  

Having a JEF who ignores and waives the laws for large segments of the population is making everyone tend to blow off rules and laws.   That is bad thing with the laws like needing a clean Coggins test and health certificate to haul livestock around to prevent spreading diseases.  Reason #1997 why I hate the MarxSpewMedia.   The JEF would still be doing only minor damage in IL if they had not covered up his faults and invented good things to say about him.

Squee: going to look at a 4 year old gelding on Sunday

I had about decided that the seller was set against me as a potential owner or it was a scam although there were no red flags in the ad and she finally emailed and called me today (I missed her call but called her back)

I'm so excited about this guy,  it does make me a feel a little bit like I'm the crazy cat lady but with horses rather than cats but not really.   Other than hanging onto Lady because she floated around so much before the folks doing the lease to own ran into trouble and I took her back  and I just decided I'd hang onto her until the economy improved --so I'll probably have her for life, although I have it in the back of my mind that maybe she'll go back to KS to be a kids horse for my friend in a few years the only horses *I* have that I don't ride are Grey and Shade - and I do ride Grey occasionally, with his teeth I don't feel like I could keep weight on him and ride him much and Shade is too lame to ride; both of them gave me hundreds of miles of riding fun and earned a nice retirement.


Razz and CJ are dads horses and its not hurting anything for them to only be used for the odd trail riding that Dad does and the hunting trip.  It is a bit silly with CJ since the hunting is the ONLY thing every year but he is such a good boy for packing elk out and packing me around or giving other hunters rides back to camp when I've had my own mount and there were no elk to haul.

Plus Lady and Grey are good extra mounts when I want to ride with the family in Golden I've become friends with.

So just SQUEE,  so excited about maybe getting another horse and one that if he doesn't have an injury or something that the seller is hiding has the potential to be a Big Horn finisher.    Plus I have plans to haul out and ride with some other endurance folks on Saturday.   Finally feels like I'm getting some riding groove back.

rode Sadie 4 miles this morning.

I emailed the CL contact for the horse I've been dreaming over yesterday morning but have not heard from her.   Maybe he wouldn't pass a pre-purchase,  maybe she doesn't want to sell him to an endurance person, or to someone like me that only dabbles in it.  

Maybe she doesn't really want to sell him to anyone.    I would have called to establish myself as more serious vs just idly 'tire kicking' but she didn't have any contact info in her ad,  just the anonymous CL reply link.  I like their new option of clicking on a contact button so web bots can't just scoop up info to encourage sellers to give real contact info but she did not use it.

I finally ordered Mia some more dental chew treats.   She was in my face looking for attention yesterday and her breath was just nasty.  I suppose its been nasty but I hadn't been up close to notice.  Hopefully the dental treats help it.  Seemed like they did a fair amount of good before but I never got more re-ordered after using them up.

Asked dad to call our dog vet and ask what they charge for Previcox,  I think its time to put Ole on something regular for his arthritis.   He isn't horribly sore but he is consistently moving his RF leg in an odd manner which the vet previously said was due to arthritis in his back (where I dropped the hay bale on him --darn dog, but I feel like I caused it, even though it was an accident so I should do more to alleviate the after affects since I can afford to.

I need to review my donations and catch up a bit.  I try to donate roughly what I would tithe if I was in a church.   Being a stingy conservative bitterly clinging to guns and tradition and all that instead of being a nice liberal and lobbying the government to raise everyone's taxes to do nice things.

Riding journal catch up

I rode 5 miles Thursday.   I was late getting started but was swapping offices with someone at work (which my boss was in a bit of a snit about - 'I would have quashed this if I'd known')   If I had not wanted to swap offices with B I would have gone to boss to quash it but even though the offices are next to each other I felt it would be helpful to be a bit farther away from distracting loud talkers.  So since my new office was possibly not even going to be set up until Friday I rode and didn't worry about lateness.   Turns out the office was ready early but I didn't worry about going in an hour or so late.

Saturday I slept in and decided to spray weeds right away after haying horses and then it got hot so I only took a quick 4 mile ride after 7pm.   It worked out fine.

Rode 10-11 miles today.   Quite a bit of trot and canter but Sadie got some short eating breaks in there.   She is such a great eater and general take care of herself horse I love it.

I am on the verge of buying a 4 year old horse being advertised in Cheyenne.  Related to Ls mare that I was so impressed by at Mountain Mettle ride last week.    If it were a bay horse I probably would have contacted the seller by now.  I am trying to figure out *why* I consider chestnut color as a bit of a negative,  I've always thought that I believed a good horse can come in any color but I look at ads and tend to pass over paints (Sabino is the accepted arabian horse term I guess) automatically and ding chestnuts too.

 I know my paint bias can be rationalized because white legs can be more prone to 'scratches' skin infection horses can get on their legs, plus white faces might have sun sensitivity etc.  but there really is no logic with chestnuts.  We've had some decent chestnut horses in the family but they have never been mine.  So only sentiment from having bay as my first horse and then having greys with GreyMoun and Cindy can explain me thinking 'darn I like the conformation and pedigree but the horse is a chestnut.'  

 Even with all my earlier logic to myself that with Lady plus Shade and Grey being retired but needing care and would I ride enough for it to make any sense to have 2 riding horses I am still wanting this 4 year old.  Realized how much when I didn't see his ad and was like 'CRUD I missed my chance' and was all relieved when the ad was there when I looked again.

And I've always tried to live the "if you can't say something nice just don't say anything"   It is hard when I think I should offer some kind of condolences or support to be nice because I almost always do but my head is just going 'selfish liberal, I want to shake you' so I need to 'say' nothing rather anything with that meaning slipping in.   Must give myself permission to just say nothing, most folks are not going to connect the dots to know that my 'silence' has any meaning. 

Bought stuff. I so love Amazon :)

Was looking for sunscreen powder and read a review of one that was "you could buy this stuff and make 10x batches for this price,  plus that one had no coloring it was just white"   So I looked up some 'recipes' and bought the zinc oxide and titanium dioxide powder and some bronze color mica and will mix it with arrowroot or corn powder and should never run out and have to use greasy sunscreen on my face again.

I did a search for leak-proof sprayer and bought one.   Had to laugh at one of the poor reviews "I did not factor in how heavy 4 gallons of spray would be, its too much for me"    I had *better* not have to fill it up for it to work or I'll write a seriously scathing review since most sprayers work fine just starting with 1/4 full or whatever.

Bought batteries for the GPS pace and distance watch receiver.   Now if I can find the actual antenna part and get batteries in it  I should have a tool to keep track of pace riding Sadie w/o buying something special.   I plan to buy just a basic heart rate monitor from super nice tack vendors at the next ride.   Decided it would be good to have more tools/info getting back into the distance riding with the Sadie so even though that stuff usually breaks or quits on me I'm going to try using some for a while since I'm not dialed into Sadie like I was with Shade.

I may have to avoid FB for a while, or if not altogether at least skip some posts.  I am not even FB friends with the irritant but seeing post(s) on group and from other folks who asked to friend and I did. And I'm feeling churlish for being annoyed by her "WooHoo,  son is WINNING on new horse and we got great awards for it"     She is a good horse person and if a horse is off they don't go out or they pull or slow down as needed and its not awful to enjoy winning as long as horse welfare comes first -- but that kind of post still often bugs me;  I guess because the posted verbiage does not go into the horse welfare comes first and is just "YAY we WON and the loot for winning was great"

OTOH I am so impressed by another riders development.  She rode in a 'winning is the only thing' manner and was winning on horses not ready for the speed and ended up with lame horses after a season when she started but with her DD getting into the sport in a serious manner and probably because of that getting mentored by a top level 100 miler rider she really seems to have the right attitude now.   She still rides wanting to do well but I really think she is doing the homework/moderate miles to get a good base first before going for speed now and enjoyed the experience on a tough ride rather than kvetching about the tough, probably 5-10% long, and not glow-sticked for all the night miles that had to be ridden course.    Adults can learn better sports and horsemanship :)

  Maybe there is hope for me to learn how to ride faster and still feel like I'm doing the horsemanship stuff OK and being a good sport, polite to vets, volunteers etc.  I've always worried that tired + caught up in possibility of winning might over-rule my best instincts and have tended to hold back (and have not had a great horse so little temptation to push the envelope)

I really should buy myself a new weed sprayer

The one I bought last year has started to leak.   It is not at all much money so I should just do it but I hate tossing the old one aside.  It bugs my enviro-nut side to discard it,  but it probably is not good to drip 1/2 cup of herbicide on myself every time I use the sprayer and I did tighten all the stuff that I could and its still leaking some just not as badly as before.    I was looking at some reviews last week and did not find any model that was getting raves for not leaking after hours and hours of service.  It occurs to me that *maybe* a battery model would be slightly less prone to leakage because it would never be over pressurized so I might go with that option even though I'd prefer not having to worry about battery charge.

I also need to order some sunscreen face powder online.  So annoyed, last year or year before Target had many brands of powder foundation with sunscreen and last week when I had used up almost all of my supply of powder the only foundation I could find with sunscreen was some nutragena and when I got it home it turns out  its cream@!# foundation.   It seems to be making the acne of my acne/rosaeta flare up so I'm eking out the last of my powder and need to see if I can find some powder sunscreen online.   I'm wondering if the FDA banned the active ingredient, hopefully its just some dumb social media scare or Obanomics has made the active ingredient pricey but I can get it online.

Sadie has her first completion :)

I have to get some unpacking done and get the pics I took downloaded (none on trail this time) but I am happy.   Tired but happy.   Did the 30 mile LD at Mountain Mettle on Saturday.    M had volunteered to ride with me "I'm going slow but my mare is bold on trail"  Sounded perfect but we started behind a Kenlyn group that was going fairly slow but Linda knows how to pace and I knew she'd finish in good order,  the pace felt good for Sadie but M and her horse were impatient to go faster after a couple of miles.  So I told her to just ride on, I was going to stick with this group.   That worked out pretty well for both of us I think.   We both finished anyway.   M had blisters because her horse fought with her wanting to go faster some places but she was happy to find the mare was sound after having 6 weeks off for a lameness issue. 

I was so impressed with the 4 year old mare Linda was riding, leading the way through slick rock and over bridges like  a pro.  Did get ancy when she was in the back at one point (was worried about bogie monster from behind) and wouldn't eat on the trail so I'm not envious of Linda.  Cindy did that "cant pause for one bite of grass' and never got over it so she was pretty much only an LD horse cuz she could get through those before hitting the wall.  Linda's young mare may well mature out of the 'gotta get back to camp can't even pause just a titch to reach down and grab one bite of grass'  but I'm glad that Sadie loves to eat.  It worked out well for Linda having me tag along with her too, because I was able to direct her the correct trail to take a few times having ridden the 12 mile trail with M on her other horse on Friday and studied the ride map more than Linda or G had done. 

Sadie continues to get more relaxed about other horses on the trail and was leading and in the middle of the two Kenlyn mares at times as we rode with no fussing about it.   She was so nicely relaxed at the vet checks that Georgette was able to vet her.   It was great to see Georgette vetting a ride,  I had lost track of her a few years ago after hearing she'd had a stroke.   She was moving carefully so must have some balance issues still but it was wonderful having her vet a horse of mine again.  

I locked my p/u keys in the cab Thursday night.  So much for brilliant thought of 'just put the keys in the ignition in case someone needs to move it in case of emergency.'   I bumped the door lock button as I was reaching in to do that and my mind did not click when I heard the "ok locked" beep.   But  another camper saw me trying to get a coat hanger worked in the door frame on friday morning and failing and came over and rescued me.   He said he'd locked his keys in same model of truck a lot and had to get in that way.  I hadn't been being aggressive enough on prying the door away from the cab to get the wire in and was thinking it wasn't going to be possible even though I'd had someone rescue me from locked keys in cab with my old dodge that way years ago. 

 Picture is of Sadie this morning after the ride.  I took the shells off this afternoon.  She did a great job of taking care of herself.