The weekend .....

Nothing much exciting from the weekend.  There was a show on Saturday but I didn't take anybody.  And I didn't even go to the barn on Sunday.  That's one of the nice things and one of the bad things about boarding.  I don't have to go if I don't want to which means that sometimes I don't go.

Today I went to the barn but didn't really do anything constructive.  I just gave all the curlies a beauty treatment.  I groomed and combed tails and treated manes and tails.  I have to say that Moon is by far the least work, lol.  Emmy's got some beautiful spirals going on.  I haven't been good about keeping up with their treatments this summer.  Hopefully we'll have some manes going on by spring. 

I groomed all 4 curlies including down and dirty brushing.  All 4 curlies and I didn't use my rescue inhaler once!!  Makes me sooooo happy!!!

Everybody looks so good!  Sailor is fat as a hog but has shed his sunburned hair.  He's all slick and shiney.  Emmy has also shed her scruffy stuff and is a beautiful dark chocolate color.  Her hair is so soft.  She's never been this soft.  I think it's the coco soya oil Denise recommended.  She's got chevron curls on her butt.  Moon has also shed and he's getting ripples on his neck and sides.  Murray is finally starting to lose his burnt hair.  All of them are fat and happy and that makes me happy, lol. 

Emmy is so funny.  We had to move Sailor to the stall next to hers because she and Sammy were fighting.  And well, Sailor was a pain in the ass being in front of the crossties.  So now Emmy and Sailor can hang their heads out together.  They get along remarkable well.  They tend to stick together anyway.  Sailor had a jolly ball in his old stall so I moved it to his new one.  They play with it quite a bit, bonking each other in the head.  There is also a chain that hangs between them.  It's for an extra set of crossties.  Emmy apparently likes to play with the chain as much as the ball, lol.  She's got one of those low key personalities.  She's sneaky though with her humor.  You expect funny things from the boys but Emmy?  Who'd guess she'd enjoy a chain like that? 

Thursday - 9/17/09

I did get to the barn last night.  Wednesday A took the chain saw to the path to KOW.  Now we can ride directly off the farm to KOW and it's miles and miles of trails!!  I'm terribly excited!!

I sort of adopted a kid last winter.  Her family doesn't have much money but she's horse crazy.  So I took her under my wing so to speak.  I gave her lessons on Dusty then later on some of A's horses.  A gave her her older mare, Misty.  Misty is an awesome babysitter but she's 26 and has had a hard life.  We've taken her to shows with Misty and she's got her own saddle and stuff.  Late this summer, Misty started going down hill.  She's just not capable of doing the things a 12 year old girl wants to do.  The other girls run barrels and stuff and Misty just can't do it.  She got a little thin so we made the girl quit riding her.  I tried and tried to get her to tell me what she wants to do.  The other girls run barrels.  A shows her walking horses.  And we all trail ride.  She said she wanted to run barrels.  So we hooked her up with one of A's horses.  He's a bit of a nut but for the most part he's good.  He scared her pretty bad and she decided she wanted to ride gaited horses.  So A let her ride Bonnie.  Bonnie is a super, super nice twh/ssh mare.  A was even talking about taking her to Shelbyville for the ssh celebration.  But it takes some effort to ride Bonnie well.  The kid really wasn't interested in that either.  Then school started.  All of a sudden, the kid had another way to get out of doing chores.  It'd been nearly a month since she'd been out.  So last night, I brought her to the barn.  One of the other girls has moved up barrel horses so Twister is currently riderless.  The kids were going to practise on barrels and we adults were going to ride out the back.  I asked the kid what she wanted to do.  She said she wanted to come with us.  So I had her ride Dusty.  That didn't suit either.  Dusty isn't smooth when you don't make him jog.  That hurt her butt so she doesn't want to ride him either.  I really don't know what to do.  She's not my kid.  I'm not going to tell her what she's going to do.  But then I might.  I may tell her that she can ride Dusty until he sells or she can ride Twister but either way she's going to have to ride and learn to ride that horse.  I'm frustrated and I don't know if maybe I'm interferring where I shouldn't. 

So A rode Bonnie, the kid rode Dusty, C rode Sammy and I rode Murray into KOW last night.  We had to ride along a couple bean fields to get there.  With all the rain we've had, the ground was very, very rough.  It's all flat, but rutted.  I was sooo proud of Murray.  My biggest fear is falling.  He was so surefooted!!  He didn't stumble even once.  He was just sauntering along.  We saw a couple deer and he barely pricked his ears at them.  Apparently Dusty spooked a couple times but Murray never did. 

We're headed to the Shawnee National Forest this weekend.  I'm nervous!!  I've only ridden there once and that was on Dusty and it scared the crap out of me.  This time I'm taking Murray.  I just worry that the steps and stuff will be too hard on him with packing me.  I may yet chicken out ....  We'll see.  I may take Dusty .....

Tuesday and Wednesday

I have class on those two nights so I don't get to the barn.

My dad was scheduled to have surgery today.  He tore a ligiment in his shoulder during the ice storm and it needs to be repaired.  It's supposed to be an easy surgery but painful since they have to put small pins into his shoulder then sew the ligiment onto it.  He was scheduled to have this surgery 5 weeks ago.  He had to have a stress test first since he has had open heart surgery.  They found a problem on his stress test so he had to have a heart cath.  During the heart cath they found 2 blockages.  Because he has kidney problems due to his diabetes medicine, they couldn't put the stints in when they did the cath so he ended up being in the hospital for 3 days and having 2 caths.  He had to be on plavix for the heart issue.  So they rescheduled his shoulder surgery until he could go off the plavix.  This morning the anethesologist called and cancelled his surgery again.  This guy wasn't comfortable doing this surgery on somebody who's just had stints put in and especially on an outpatient basis.  So .... it has to be rescheduled again.  He'll have to be admitted to have it done. 

Dad's very upset of course.  He's got so much going on with him, nothing's simple.  Because of all his other problems, he can't take alot of the anxiety/anti-depressant medications that he probably needs.  So he's incredibly depressed right now.  I have no idea when he'll get to have his surgery. 

Mom and I had totally rearranged our schedules (twice) so that somebody could be with him 24/7.  Mom was going to be there when I was at work and I was going to be there when she was at work.  Now all that's changed, again. 

The only good news here is that I will get to go to the horse show on Saturday.  I was supposed to stay with Dad but now ....  This is the same show that Sailor won the 2 and under halter class.  I haven't taken him back to that show.  We got all caught up in the barrel stuff and haven't been going early enough for the rail classes.  I think I am going to take Sailor this weekend though.  He's grown enormously since April.  I'll be excited to see what reaction he gets!