So I'm playing fox-hunter for the next couple of weeks.

I went and picked Mason up yesterday.  His young owner was sad to say good-bye.  I kept wanting to way "let me tell you good-bye doesn't mean forever" but I don't even remember who sang it so I don't think she would have got the reference at all and I'm superstitious enough that I didn't want to risk putting some kind of jinx on.  Its never guaranteed that horses will stay healthy. 

I rode him this morning.   He was not bad.  I forgot a crop but I was able to just ask him to move forward with seat and legs and he complied except when he was taking potty breaks.  He seemed to enjoy getting his chest and shoulders hosed off afterwards but didn't want the water farther back, especially after it was running cold.    He did crow hop twice but he is too smooth to be a scary bucker.  He was a wee bit scary when he was snorting at the conehead dog though.  Even though I was able to 'pop his clutch' on the bucking by taking him a tight circle to the right ( I think that is my stronger side, rather than he is easier to turn one way or the other)  he is big and strong and felt like if he actually went into a bolt I wouldn't be able to stop that; but luckily he really doesn't have any desire to bolt and I just kept him bending on the nice 100 foot wide graded section where they put in the oil pipeline and he.  I love that spot, its like a perfect trail/arena hybrid. 

He had sniffed Ole in his cone earlier and was OK, but just got a bit snorty looking at Ole up on the hill in his collar when I had turned him around to go back.  But that kind of worked out as it took his mind completely off rushing away from the excavator working on the irrigation ditch and/or trying to bolt for home just in general since Ole was between us and home.   I have no desire to try to trade Sadie for some kind of warmblood and get into an actual hunt club but I think it will be fun to mess with Mason for a bit.  It will definitely be fun to have his family come out,  they are good positive energy people.

My car got a new manifold gasket and spark plugs

So it will probably have a bit more oomph when I want to accelerate and hopefully this fixes the NOX too high (and we are high elevation and have some ozone worries so its probably good to fix that)  and I will be good to license the car for 2 more years and it will also keep running those two years.   That will have it over 180K which will probably be pushing the limits for the econo box model that I don't baby.  (well other than taking it in to get oil changed and checked out by my mechanic,  but even there I stretch the oil changes to 3500 or more vs 3000 miles and so on.)

Ole's leg is healing up and the lab reports came back as cancerous but clear margins so I guess it is OK that I went ahead with the surgery.  First pic is Sep 21, two days after his stitches ripped out and was looking pretty ugly.  Last two pics are from today.   Yesterday I rode Sadie and let Ole come as the vet has said we no longer have to restrict his activity.   She has had over a week to get used to the collar on him so I expected she would be OK but I was still pleased that she didn't give me any fake dramatics when he was bounding around as we were riding.   I kind of liked that collar, it made it easy to spot him vs him blending into the weeds and long grass.

Sigh my car failed its emissions test.

I must remember to call my mechanic tomorrow morning and ask if he thinks he can fix it, I should go to one or the other of the places in Brighton recommended by the air testing place, or start car shopping.   The car does have 150K miles on it.   The testing place said one cylinder mis-fired.  I suppose that could be something easy like a spark plug but if the cylinder is failing I can't see trying to keep the car going,  what a nuisance, the car has been kind of nickel and diming me this year,  bearing went out on the rear wheels,  then I had to have the front strut or whatever fixed because my tire was wearing excessively

   I really really hate shopping but I could ask my dad,  the only thing is he is not much of a bargain shopper but I think he actually kind of enjoys the process of looking at stuff like cars and such.   Well first I need to call my mechanic and get some input.  If the car can be made to pass the emissions test with a few hundred dollar repair I'll probably go that way even though I've got the Ugh, this thing is needing so much attention lately and something else will probably go  in 3-4 months if I get the "too much NOX" issue fixed trepidations.

Had OK rides on Sadie on Saturday and this morning with L.  Sadie continues to feel a bit ouchy on any rock though and I just don't know whether I need to be more diligent with the rasping, or what.  

I need to take pics of Ole's incision --which is now a gaping hole

Almost all his stitches ripped out and he has an over an inch hole in the skin on his hip.   So much for being proactive for his health by removing the pre-cancerous lump.   I hate hate hate when I was trying to do a good thing and end up with an ugly mess.  

He is getting antibiotics from the vets and I am resisting my urge to puff wonderdust on the wound.  repeat after me "He is not a horse,  he is not a horse he is not a horse"   Vet's recommendation is to put nothing on it and wash it off with water if he gets it dirty.   I want to create a scab but dog skin is different from horse skin so I'm so far forcing myself to just leave it.    I did look up dog wounds on the internet and they has some huge open wounds which presumable healed so that did make me feel a little bit better. 

L was out thursday and we had a good ride.  She went into one of her paranoid statements, "I'm afraid Ole will get infection and lose his leg "  which pizzed me off so I took off cantering.   I needed a good canter anyway so it was all good in the end but I cannot wait to ship Lady back to the family in Golden this summer, god willing and the creek don't flood as the saying goes.

Being/doing good is its own reward.

Ancient saying but I never realized its true meaning which is that neither people nor fate are going to offer you any rewards for striving to be a good person.   Or maybe I should say I was never 100% honest with myself.  I may have thought I was doing things just for my own internal warm fuzzy feelings; but when I'm trying to be extra generous and the world shrugs at my offers the negative feelings of being rebuffed (even when its not active, just ignoring my outreach) do often overwhelm my internal warm fuzzy.  

I need to work on that because the world is not going to change and give me a cheering section for basic decent living and I don't want to be one of those people that goes around saying "applause please, I just did some low level nice thing."  And I don't want to cease trying to be nice within the bounds of what I can do w/o burning myself out,  I do have that internal voice that says "atta girl" or "geeze that was rude/lame/selfish whatever"

L was out again yesterday to ride.

We did have  a nice ride.   Spooked up an owl.  Lady jumped and L squealed so Sadie went sideways one stride and I saw a cool owl taking off from the ground.   It must have caught a mouse a bit before we were coming and was eating on the ground instead of taking the mouse to a post or tree to eat.   Very cool since L stayed on,  both horses relaxed after single jumps and the owl was OK.  One of those 'should have a helmet cam' moments as it would have been cool to get the image of the owl but oh well. 

L is so funny, she was on high alert that the owl would be back in that spot or we would startle another one even though Lady had been pretty good, just jumping forward and not doing anything that dumped her.   That somewhat paranoid mindset from L is why it was so relaxing for me to have Lady go off to summer camp, but L is really appreciating her now.  Poor L, she not only had shingles, she thought she might have been bitten by a bat and so when she was in FL and having pain and a rash on the arm that had bite marks and those staff did not think about shingles she ended up doing the rabies vaccine series JIC, and after deciding it was shingles with her doc in CO she reads that it can be dangerous to do the rabies series if you have a viral infection, and she did have some numbness or something,  slight risk but could get a serious condition that could cause paralysis. 

I will go to work today in the office.  My normal route goes by the airport the NG is using for helicopter evacuations but if it seems busy I can always go around that bit and I need to able to work effectively.    I have a feeling our retreat location will have to be moved.   Pretty sure we were going to Estes Park and since the town flooded  quite thoroughly I don't see how the hotel could be hosting conventions again in 3.5 weeks. 

L was out to ride this morning, first dry day we've had since Monday

No flooding at her house and I think all the normal routes to our place were open today.   I've been resting a bit and also working from home a bit.  I don't like working on the laptop.  I'll have to ask our new sys admin how best to get a good VPN server/client whatever installed on the desktop mac. 

Lady was good for L and Sadie was good for me.  A few ouch steps from Sadie that seemed to be front feet,  I don't think the heel bruising has ever made her really sore.   The ditch road was washed out in the one spot where there is an ATV/horseback crossing spot, otherwise no visible water damage out on the field roads I ride.

 Its such an odd juxtaposition with all the damage I see shown on the news in Boulder, Lyons, Estes Park, Evergreen and now Firestone, Evans, etc with slower water flooding.   I'm not ready to put it out really widely but I did volunteer on the endurance FB page that we could take a few horses for a week or so if someone has barn and pastures underwater.   

I hope the possible rain overnight and Sunday is minimal and my work is back open early next week.  Power has stayed on so if roads are OK maybe they will open up, but if there is a lot of damage around town they might feel like they need to keep the buildings closed for an extra day or two to stay out of the way of cleanup efforts and stuff.  I'll be happier if I'm just going to work, if I'm home and dad has the TV on I suspect the news coverage will be shifting to a lot of the sob stories and I get annoyed.    

I almost wanted to reach through the screen and slap some idiot who almost got her baby drowned trying to drive through water on Thursday.  "I had NO idea it could be like this,  well at least she was shaken up"   but the media either seek out the whiniest cry babies and only air those clips, maybe the pathos gets more eyeballs, or there are an awful lot of people who just want to whine to the world when misfortune befalls them based on past news coverage when there has been wildfires and stuff.