Still Alive

I even wrote a couple of posts but I was venting and couldn't scrub enough detail to make them public.  

I rode Tanza twice this weekend.   He was pretty good, so I rode him out on Sunday.  We were both pretty tense.  I was trying not to be but he was full on energy and a bit nervous about going out alone and since last time I took him out I fell off I was holding him up and trying to send my tension away but not succeeding all the time.   He is a good horse and the schooling work in one of the pens is good for him anyway.  I made an appointment with an equine dentist.  I'll have him do Grey, Tanza and Sadie and 2 of the other horses TBD.   Shade doesn't need done.  Probably CJ and one of the minis or 2 of the minis. 

Work is busy but not in an Aack way for me lately.   I was moody as a teen last week and now seem to be fighting a cold/sinus thing trying to start.   Trying a new sinus remedy,  putting garlic in my ears.  It seems to be helpful.   Yesterday I was trying to decide if I had only tension headache or some sinus pressure and after buying garlic on way home and using it the headache went away.  Today I have some stiff/sore neck muscles but no pain in front of my head.  

I should change my nic to falls2much

I came off Tanza again Sunday.   Grrrr.   All he did was wheel and bolt and I should have been able to sit through that and pull him up.   And I should have been able to head off the spook completely but I think I projected my concern of his reaction to wind blowing the corn to him so when I decided to turn around rather than have him being goofy he was like "and lets get out of here FAST" 

I'm not quite feeling like I have to sell him and get a fuddy duddy horse, but am quite annoyed with myself.  I might have realized he was going to be very high energy hanging with Grey and getting extra food and not ridden in 2 weeks so maybe I should just stay in the paddocks to begin with but nope, off I went on my still fairy green 5 year old like he was one of the old solid horses.  I keep conflating how well he has done doing LD and the family trail ride as being the same as a lot of wet saddle blankets and training, but I was very careful with him on the trail ride and have even recorded frustrations with his baby mind "aaack I'll die if I get held back from the group" mindset right here on my blog.  

Oh well "horses gonna be the death of me,  BUT WHAT A WAY TO GO"   I ride as a break from mental concentration of work and that is why I trail ride vs showing but I have got to learn to do a bit of thinking with the riding.  I'm getting too old and don't bounce when I hit hard ground.  

Sadie is doing OK with 'slow feeder' hay bag.   It does not seal at top so she is not slowed all the time I don't think and will not be until I add some clips or something so she has to only eat through the netting.   I've been feeding Sadie in hay bag and Lady just in trough, mainly because the 2nd trough keeps getting shoved way away from the fence and I was tired of having to walk out and move it back but I think its also good for Sadie to have to work on her hay so she is not done right away and then just being shooshed from the 2nd hay feeder.  

Now I should get snow tires out and on my car.  It is supposed to snow Thursday and I don't want to drive twisty mountain roads to PITA work review (with tiny 'retreat' aspects) on the "all" season tires that do not have a whole lot of tread.  

well darn it

Looked up Tanzas official record and the ride I thought gave us a completion has us overtime.  I am ridiculously bummed by this right now.  I shouldn't be, but after being called as a completer at the ride it was a bummer to find they changed their minds when they sent results in.  

Perspective, perspective,  He got the # of completions to get his name called at local region's convention, this last ride would have been an extra and he was not pulled with lameness, he is both sound and healthy.   Unlike the poor gal whose horse was having a bad colic, getting treated at ride with vet saying she need to move on to treatment at a horsepital overnight.  I still have not heard if the horse pulled through and it is not a given that he did, although I have the impression that IVs and gastro drainage in his situations are pretty successful, just $$$, but that is if it was not a deal with the horse having an unknown tumor or something.   THAT is a having a bad day, and the gal is one of the best horsewoman I know.  It is a reminder that shit happens,  the sport is strenuous, but one has to remember that shit also happens to horses who are just at home in an idyllic pasture paradise setting.  

lazy weekend

And it feels so good.   I did pull up some goat heads on Satruday and went to the area morondezvous.   It was OK.  I have a hard time with venues that have music blaring most of the time but it was good to see people again.  Everyone was a bit subdued, but with the GOPe showing that they fear the tea party and people wanting more conservative smaller government in general and are fine with the commie Dems what can be expected.

Today I read a book by a horde author.  It was quite good and I left him a review.  I bought another book of his but it didn't deliver to my kindle right away.  I had several books I had bought that had not delivered (I have not been wanting to start a book when I should do stuff so was only taking vague notice that I couldn't see titles I thought should be there) but I went online to get all of them delivered now. 

One of the mome attendees has written some history about Islam.  Not on kindle which initially bummed me out but if I get the dead tree versions I can put them in the library at work so that might be good.  I often have good intentions that I should read such things but only get a short way through anyways. 

I did laundry, dishwasher, and made waffles for supper tonight so was not completely a slug today.  Just have a pretty good list of things I should do.  Unhook trailer,  continue trying to get to garage shelves and general decluttering and searching for the Shade/Lady size hoof boots I'm sure I have but cannot find.   Get my tank dumped,  do some more yard cleanup and so on. 

I did not ride at all.  Feels ok to take a break there too.  Last weekend I took DL, R and Rs friend trail-riding and fetched Lady home from her summer in Golden.   Tanza was pretty good and Grey was good for R's friend.  They were both reluctant to cross a bit of mud at the start of the ride but were good otherwise.  R's friend seemed to have a blast, she really liked trotting and cantering Grey. 

sleepy saturday.

I have some things I want to get done, so even though there is nothing critical I do need to summon some energy and get a few little things going.

I should decide I can read books and then leave the book/kindle aside.   I have been better than when I was younger but I still have a tendency to think "can't start a book, I need to do stuff in a bit", and then I surf the web but find myself irritated at drama llama stuff and bored and feel like I deserve to be satisfied before I shut the screen down and do stuff.    If I could give myself a magical power I'd use it to shut down drama llama posting modes on the boards and FB.   I enjoy hearing about life snippets, just stop trying to turn everyday hassles into your heroic drama tale. 

TGIF

Work.  Still pretty busy and I am trying to get some things in place for proposal we will write to expand ground based processing.   Very weird feeling, yesterday my boss for ground based walked into my office and announced he will put out an ad to hire an associate scientist.   He has extra funds from current project that needs to be spent and there is much work to do.  Letting me know so I don't go WTFFF when I see ad.

Okaaayyy, so I am going wtfff now instead.  I was not slammed on the main project this summer and could have done work on the ground based if informed there was funds available and tasks he wanted done.   Oh well,  I am trying to remind myself that I have long thought that I would dearly love to go to about half-time in 2-3 years so it is a great thing if I get made redundant in a couple of years and they only need me to continue on a part time basis to allow for people's vacations and extra stuff that comes up and so on.   Frankly I will not be shocked if the global doom hits in that time frame although things could very well totter along for another decade or 2 before math and reality assert themselves.  I have no feel for timeframe, just a big gut feeling that economies around the globe are not sustainable and since our own is now on top of that list there won't be any rescuing when bubbles start bursting.

Had appointments or errands 4 days this week and was running slow in mornings so didn't get to office very early even though I didn't even think about riding.   I have got to do better at decluttering around the place and being more organized,  I'm tired of feeling like everything is on the verge of boiling over before I get to that pan to use a cooking allegory.

There is a lot churn in the office, as well as overall company lately and I hates it.  I don't do workplace intrigue and politics and I am  unfortunately hearing bits and pieces because of where my office is located and don't have the full context and don't want to gossip or go interrogative on the folks I am overhearing to get the rest of the story.  YUCK.   I'm feeling like one of the newer hires is stirring the pot and at the same time feeling guilty for thinking that because its a stereotype that I have formed based on a few novels and I don't have any evidential basis for it.  Just a vague impression that she is twisting some things in a way that is escalating some ill feelings when she could be soothing them.

I should shuffle horses to put Sadie and Shade together to be on more diet rations and Tanza and Grey for extra calories and I keep resisting making the move.  But Tanza and Sadie need to be less attached to each other and I need to simplify the horse keeping so I'm not having to pull horses out for extra feed.   Lady is coming home on Sunday so everything will be shaken up then anyways so I really should do the calorie sorting as well.

I MUST check my calendar,  I may be late on giving Tanza his allergy shot.  This is going to be a pain remembering with the long intervals but I must find a system to make that work.

There is a good note.   I started jogging again.   Wed was tough,  I went short and slow just to do it since I missed Monday and Tuesday had volunteered to join on staffing a table to showcase our group at the overall company trustee meeting.  But last night felt good,  I think I will be able to get more fit over the winter and be able to do 50s with Tanza next year.  This year I felt like he maybe wasn't ready and I certainly wasn't.

Learning Distance ride with Tanza yesterday

I found he has a big issue with separation anxiety, and on trail this comes up if I even ask him to slow down and not keep with a group he's been with.   I need to find a way to get him to key onto me for when I need to slow him down.   All horses have a bit of "NO, I must stay with the herd",  but my previous horses would get over that within 10 minutes and just go into a conserve my energy mode until a horse behind them caught up.   Tanza stays keyed up and wastes energy fighting to go faster.  Really caught me by surprise because in Basin on Labor day weekend he was a bit tired and was like 'nah I don't have to keep up'.   But last two rides I thought he was having some minor lameness so I was pulling him back when he was not tired.

I also decided he does a skipping thing that feels like lameness when he is wanting to go faster and I'm holding him back a bit.  I'm not positive that was the only gait issue either ride but now I know he does this and he was fine on trot outs at vet checks both rides. 

And I have been just ignoring him stomping non-existent flies whe he is crabby and yesterday he escalated to actually doing threat kicks (not connecting but definitely waving in people's direction).  Of course I got after him for that, but now I know I should have been telling him to knock it off with the stomping.   I've had so many horses that were just sweethearts that I didn't realize I was creating a monster by not correcting the milder naughtiness.

But they called our name as completing (we were down to wire on pulsing down to stop the clock which is the finish time for LDs, and then he failed his CRI at when I tried to vet him just several minutes later and I was not sure I was within the hour limit when I got him back for recheck.)  He was fine on the recheck.   He was doing a pogo act the last bit into the vet check with first place 50 passing us and a train going by a 100 yards or so away and had been wasting energy most of the loop so in retrospect not surprising he was all stressed; but at the time I was very worried he had a lameness issue even though the vet hadn't said she saw anything.

A VERY excellent horse woman had her good horse colic.  So scary.  I know there is the shit happens at rides, but seeing it in person with someone that I know is top notch about taking care of their horses was a reminder that it is a demanding sport.  I had to remind myself that shit happens to the horses that are only in easy work or even just pasture paradise too; so not having any aspirations would not be any guarantee of avoiding a sick horse.