Maybe next year I will think to study up on how to do this well in advance of sitting in the truck waiting for the fireworks to start. And maybe it won't be raining. Surely that will make the difference (does anyone believe that?)
This week, every day, I am going to try to write about something that makes me happy. That will make me think about things that make me happy, so that I will then GET happy. I am normally pretty happy, if generally outraged, but this Tequila thing is tearing me up, and I am not going to allow it to choke me. Thus, the improve-my attitude plan.
Today's topic is Boogie. I love this picture I took of Boog this week. He looks so much like Sly to me in this shot, and that is always a good thing. Maybe it is the way he is standing, and maybe no one else can see it, but I see it loud and clear.
His leg is healing beautifully. Ignore the nasty pecker gnats that flocked to him as soon as I took off his wrap to re-medicate him today--they are gross. But his leg looks great, and he is being such a good boy when I have to change his dressing. The difference between his demeanor at this time last year, when he was just home from training, and now is remarkable. You would not know it was the same horse.
Obviously, his leg is not bothering him. It never really did, but he was having so much fun playing today while we built fence, that he made me laugh.
Again with the Sly imitation. Freaky
This one is even more Sly like. It is so interesting to see his babies grow up, and see the similarities in them. That cocky look on his face is all his daddy.
Boogie is staying in the front pasture with Diablo and Aries and their babies, and has taken a liking to Spike. They battle all the time, it is so funny to watch. From a distance, you would think Boog was Spike's mother, the way Spike follows him all over the pasture. They pick on each other like little kids. I should video it.
Yeah this pic is not good. I don't care, it is already on here.
Boogie looking happy makes me happy. I am glad to see him getting his self-confidence back, and healing so well. It is satisfying.
Added to good Boogie pics today is the amazing thing that happened here--Barry weedeated the farm. And not just a little bit--he weedeated a lot. The new weedeater is a bad ass. Then I Round-uped the areas he had done with the serious business round-up, which I normally hoard like it is free crack, but I was so overwhelmed by all the weedeating that I went a little berserk.
Strange how successful yard work can make a girl so happy.
Lookie there, that is two happy things in one post. I'll be damned.
This is Tequila on her last day, which was yesterday. She looks pretty good in this picture, but in reality, this is one of the few times she has been up and moving around by choice lately. We put her down this morning around 11 a.m.
Look at her silly face. I forget about that wonky eye until I see pics. 
She was in pretty good shape yesterday, I thought. Until last nite, when it hit me like a ton of bricks that she was not okay and was never going to be okay again.
I am glad I got these pictures yesterday. I need them to replace the picture in my head of her at the vet.
At least she enjoyed her last day, with good weather, and Barry home to see her.
We did not know how old she was, as we only had her two years, but conservative estimates put her at least nine or ten years old. That is very old for a Dane, but the speed at which her hips gave out on her shocked me. She never complained of pain, but even the five pain pills a day she was on stopped helping her willingly get up and walk around. She just got so weak.
RIP Tequila. I miss you already
I like this baby. She has no name either, I just call her the roany pony. Odd since the speckled one is more roany, but whatever. Anyway, she is doing some funky stuff. Look at her armpits
This shows it a little better--she is being helpful by showing us her pit
Well you cannot miss that the base of her ears are flat out nekkid. Just nekkid
And the hiney is nekkid. That is not foal scours nekkid (although God knows that would have been justified, as this was the one with the eternal scours).
You can really see it here. See that huge patch at the top of her thigh? And one on her side? and again under the armpits--and the inside of that right hock.
What the hell is this about? It reminds me of when Nita's hair all fell out. And then grew back--it looked like freckles at first.
Now I know babies shed weird. This is a whole other level of funk though. Something is a little out of whack with short stuff here.
Any thoughts on this?
I sure hope the name I put on these pics when I saved them to my computer does not stick--I called them "mangy ears. mangy butt, mangy legs" etc. She sure does not need to be called Mangy all her life
Diablo's speckles baby sure is cute. I do not know that I could have asked for more from her.
Except maybe a name. I just keep calling her the Speckled Baby, but that is not any kind of name.
All of these pics were taken in the space of 5 minutes--about 7:30 or a little later tonight. But in every pic, she looks like a different color
Even her hiney is cute.
I need to get back to making time to enjoy these animals. It always makes me feel better to have just hung out with them.
Twist is still under observation, but seems to be doing all right. I do not want to jump the gun and say the threat is over, as I am sure we are not totally in the clear yet. I am optimistic though for sure.
Today was a beautiful day, only about 80 degrees. I got to bushhog after work, which does my heart good to clean things up around here. Now if the weed-eater fairy would turn up.
Tequila is not at her best tonight. She was not interested in even hot dogs this evening, but seems to be perking up. If only she would rebound for real, I would be content.
What a bizarre day. I realize I say that a lot, but some days, it is even more apparent that my many lives collide into each other in some very unique ways.
Today, for example, I had the luxury of working a shorter day than usual, because my prison visits on Thursday and Friday took so long, that I had some flex time coming. It had to be used today since it was the last day of the month--even though it did not really work out for me like it should have. I slept in, ran some errands before going in, and got to work around 10:30 a.m. Once there, things went at warp speed, and my training session got cancelled. I hate me a jacked up schedule. I was eligible to leave before 4:00, when I went to dad's house to help him get the belt on his lawn mower so that he could mow and I could borrow it.
That was a spectacle in itself. Of course, there was a larger problem that required me to lay on the concrete and dad to yell at me that I was doing it wrong, even though he was not down there and could not see even if he had been. We even had to stand it up on end to see what is wrong with it. That turned out to be things we could not fix tonight.
Then I had to rush home, shower, dress up and go to a reception for the clerk of our court, who is retiring. I even wore a DRESS! That was a far cry from the workout clothes I wore to work for no good reason. I even wore heels for pete's sake.
The reception was very nice, with a lot of dignitaries there, including some Supreme Court justices, but once again, not my favorite one, which makes me worry about him some.
Just after this, the wheels started coming off the bus. I stopped by the farm to confirm Madison had fed. She had not been able to yet, as she had been babysitting. I helped, bobbling around in my heels and trying not to jack up my dress--which is just hard to do when you are carrying buckets with 25 pounds of feed in them. That is when I got to take these pics--some of my kids who are in the wrong pastures were reminding me of this by posing for me.
This is Boogie, whose cut leg is healing up nicely. And look at that grass. There is almost never grass in this particular pasture, but here is some proof that there is. It still amazes me.
This is baby Voodoo, who come hell or high water, is going to be ridden one nite this week. Which I guess leaves tomorrow or Thursday. Too bad he was not in the sun light, as he is so pretty when you can see his real color.
This is Squeaklet. She seemed to think this missing board area was designed for posing, as she was the first one to go stand there and show me how shiny she is.
I did what I could there, got Madison rolling on the rest of it, and debated bringing home a new bag of Strategy to feed the boys. I decided not to, even though I was pretty sure that they were out of feed. No big deal, they have hay and pasture to graze, so I decided to just stop in and see how they were, since I did not recall seeing the boys wandering last nite.
Good thing I did. I saw that they had a full water trough, which is good. There was more feed in their bin than there should have been, which was odd. No big deal though, obviously, they had been cared for while I was gone, as their water trough was full.
Then I happened on Twister, in a stall. We never use these stalls. Half the doors need new runners, etc, we just don't use them. We just use the barn as run in shelter for the boys. But all the same, there was Twister in the stall, looking forlorn. No water, no hay (of course not, I do not have any square bales at the house, so there could not be), nothing. I got him out and saw that he did not look good. He had clearly lost weight and was gaunt.
I moved him through, turned him into the pasture and went to watch him. Instead of eating the Strategy I had already poured out there, he grazed. He passed the water trough. It was odd. I watched a while longer, then came to the house. Keep in mind, I am still in my dress up gear, and have now tromped through yet another filthy barn.
I got to the house, and tried to convince Tequila to eat. No go. Not even with yogurt on her dog food, and she would not even finish her hot dog. Ugh--another bad deal brewing there.
I watched Twist from the porch for a while. He rolled once, but that did not concern me--any horse would after getting out of the barn, no matter how long they had been there. Sly chased him around a bit, and Fonzie followed Twist around, and he grazed some more. Then he rolled again.
Uh oh.
Graze some more. Get chased some more. He was walking sound, so he was not foundering actively enough to see anything. Still, I found it odd.
I worked on Quila to eat some more. Then I went out to see about Twister's deal. I looked in the barn--not there. He must have been hiding in the trees, as he moseyed out after a minute or two. He went to get some more water, and I watched him closely to see how much he took in. He was already filling out some, but definitely he had lost weight. He ignored the pig who by now had joined us at the horse feeding area, which is much further from the house than I thought he ever went. Only I have to deal with a potentially sick horse with a hell-raising pig underfoot, while I worry about the dog on a hunger strike, while simultaneously convincing Sly that really, I can do without his help on this particular mission, and do not need him to sniff my hair the whole time.
Back to the house I went, called mom to confirm when she last eyeballed him, and confirmed that he had been fine and wandering around the pasture when she last saw him. We speculated that perhaps he went walkabout somehow, and a neighbor put him up--but surely someone would have left a note, or called me--or for God's sake, given him water. My neighbors are farmers, they would know better. And why would Sly still be standing around if a stampede had occurred? I really do not think that would happened, as I would have seen some other evidence of it. Perhaps, Twist and Sly argued and Twist hopped the short wall into that stall--but then why would he not get himself out when he got hungry and thirsty? I just really do not know what to make of this.
I started to worry, so I decided to give him some banamine, just in case. By this time, it was after 9 and getting pretty dark. But even though there was banamine in the little bathroom--do not ask me why--there were no syringes or needles. Off to the farm I went AGAIN.
There I find that Haidagirl has evidently been arrested for something, as she is now in a stall. I am sure Madison put her there-I wondered why, but she looked fine, and there was no note, so I left her there to worry about tomorrow. After all, I already had a gelding to handle, a pig on the run, and a skinny dog to address. Tub o lard HG could wait. My triage system was already in overdrive.
Also there, I saw that somehow, BOTH babies had put themselves in with Grandpa in the run-in shed, and at least one mother was distraught about it. I detoured to open that gate to reunite everyone, thereby letting the mamas loot G'pa's high dollar dinner, but as I may have mentioned, I was out of interest in any more predicaments.
I got the syringes, needles, etc and decided that my black market dipyrone would be the best call for a potential colic, and headed back here. Upon my arrival at the driveway to the house barn, I was assaulted by that nasty bastard dog from next door. He NEVER shuts up, plus looks a little mangy and has a history of biting. I told him I had needles and multiple bottles of drugs that I was not afraid to use, and threatened to kick his ass and headed out to find Twist in the pasture.
By then, it was almost completely dark. That is when I got tickled about how absurd this whole thing was. I was hiding the halter, I had a syringe in my teeth, but at least I had dressed out of my lawyer/reception suit and had on flat sandals instead of heels.
Twist gave me a second of considering whether he should be involved with me--but forgot about it when he decided to get another drink. I gave him a shot just as Sly bit him on the ass, and I gave up and came in, thinking I have done all I can do tonight, and praying that this is all unnecessary.
In one day, I have done the job of home-maker, lawyer, social/professional function-goer, lawnmower mechanic, pool cleaner and medicater, horse caretaker, vet stand in, and briber of dogs. All this with only two changes of clothes.
Tell me women can't do it all. We don't have any choice; we have to.
And on that note, I am going to bed so I can get up with the sun to confirm that Twist is okay, and to start over again with another day of doing it all.
It is actually kind of funny, how my day went. I left the NW suburbs of Chicago around 9 am--thinking I was so smart to wait until rush hour was over. I was smart. I got here a little after 1 which is amazing, but meant I had to take two vacation hours. No big deal. During the course of the day, I caught up on the workplace news I missed, reported on my prison visits, and found out that Squeak just flat will not get with the program to be bred, so she is out for the year.
I picked up Tequila from my parents after work--she behaved pretty well there and was getting around okay. I came home to start dealing with pool chemicals and that is when things started going a little berserk.
Got that started and then threw on some basketball shorts and a tank top to go to the farm to feed, and mow. I mowed two strips and ran out of gas. Of course. I found a tank, and went to the gas station. Came back and realized my shorts were on inside out. Even worse, Madison had known it the whole time, but for some reason, thought I did it on purpose.
Fine.
Got that yard mowed, and was feeling pretty cocky about that. We re-wrapped Gaandpa's support bandage--looking good. Boogie's ouch really looks good, especially since it has not been changed since before I left last Thursday.
Then it was time to hook up the red trailer to haul the mower to the house. I HATE that trailer, I cannot explain to you how much I hate that trailer. I previously tore up the dually fenders turning too tightly with it, and have been scared of it ever since. Somehow, I managed to get that hooked up. I went to load the mower onto the trailer, and that is how I found out that I had forgotten to lock it down on the hitch. Doh.
Start over and I cannot get it right. I was calling BS to ask if there was a trick, but Madison figured it out. Now that it was securely latched, I re-set the ramps. And got an inch long splinter in my hand. That had to be dug out with a needle. Fun times. I tried again, and got the stupid thing loaded. The parking brake would not set, of course. Madison got the ratchet straps out of the tool box in the back of the truck and we got it all trussed up---after about four attempts to get out of the driveway, I was on my way. That is when I realized that we had not put down the lid of the tool box, so I could not see out of my rear view mirror. I probably did not want to know what was going on back there anyway. By the time I got to my house, there was a pack of motorcyclists behind me. I was not convinced they were not coming to kick my ass for dropping something in the highway and not knowing it--but evidently not, as they continued on.
I got here and realized that I could not get the damn thing detached from the truck. Fine. Move on to something else. I mowed mowed mowed and mowed and then something started rattling. Before I knew it, when there was just a couple of strips left in random places--something fell out of the mowing deck. I thought I fixed it, but evidently not, as it is a real mess now. I think just being around it causes the mower to attempt suicide.
I gave up and came in the house. That is when I realized that I must have left my razor in one of the three hotels I have been in since I last was here. Of course I did.
On a good note though, the cleaning lady came back! Total for the gutting she and her employees did over two days--$185. Totally worth it
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