I'm stealing the towels.

Today was generally a gross day... raining, temperature hovering just below 60.  Naturally, I thought that by the time I went to the barn at 3:15 this afternoon, the horses would have been inside.  I mean, while it wasn't raining too badly earlier in the day, the weather had gone downhill since noon.  Imagine my surprise when I showed up to find this:

All of the ponies outside, soaked.  Now, I will admit, I generally don't mind throwing my horse out in the rain, but when the temperature is hovering just above blanketing temperatures, and will probably fall to blanketing temperatures once the sun goes down, forgive me for thinking that the horses should be brought in well before the sun goes down to make sure that they are all dry and toasty in time for bed.  I got Dee inside and spent the next hour and a half cleaning her leg and drying her off, so she would be dry when it came time for bed and a blanket.  I get the feeling the other horses were just going to be left wet, since they were all brought in at around 4, and no one who was working seemed concerned about it.  Kind of drives me nuts / makes me nervous.

Don’t Eat Stuff Off The Sidewalk

Today in random pictures...

Nomnomnom

Apple-eating Fail

Fat leg :(  Luckily the scrapes looked good today, and seemed to be healing

"Bye Mom, Thanks for the Apples!  Come back... never!"

The Terrible Patient

My horse is a very very very bad patient.  If anything ever goes seriously wrong with her, I have no idea how I will ever administer to her... well, I guess it would involve lots of drugs.

As you've probably guessed, Dee managed to bang herself up somehow.  When I brought her in today she had a big fat right front, seemingly caused by several scrapes on the inside and outside of the leg.  Not entirely sure how she managed it, but luckily it doesn't look serious.  I got to cleaning it, and she got to doing everything possible to avoid having it cleaned.... pulling it away, squealing, striking, stomping, and even attempting to lay on top of me at one point.  Eventually, after much cursing and threatening, I got her to let me finish cleaning and putting antibacterial cream on it, but man, she can throw a tantrum.

Imaginary Dragons...

No... not the band.  I am 99% sure Dee was seeing imaginary dragons yesterday.

When I caught her, she seemed quiet enough.  Then, as soon as we started up the path to the barn, her eyes started bugging out of her head and she managed to do some fairly impressive pretend-piaffe as she debated between bolting and behaving the whole way up to the barn.  Luckily her ground manners won out and she kept a lid on it (mostly).
I decided to just get on and see what happened, since I try to avoid lunging unless a) that's our only plan for the day or b) I think it would be unsafe to get on otherwise.  In retrospect I just should have started at b, but luckily she didn't do anything too terrible.  She did, however, feel as though she was half a second away from completely losing her shit when I got on, and when I asked her to trot, she had a mini meltdown in which she sort of bolted while shaking her head around and also traveling sideways.  I managed to get her back into a sort of normal trot, but we were very clearly not going to accomplish anything, so I hopped off once she was behaving, and put on the lunge line.  Very contrary to her usual good behavior on the lunge, she tore away from me squealing and running as soon as she was hooked up.  Absolute bedlam.  I eventually got her back under control and eventually went the other way (at which point we had bedlam ensue again).  By the time she finished, she was dripping sweat and still prancing around with saucer-eyes.  So, I climbed back on to let her cool out and maybe do some quiet trotting since, I thought, she must be exhausted.  false.  She was not exhausted.
I had her on the buckle because I wanted her to chill out and cool down.  She proceeded to try to bolt about 5 times in a row (there was some really impressive cantering in place as she debated between behaving and bolting).  Eventually I did get some flat-footed walking and some sort of well-behaved trotting and then I quit.  The ride was clearly not going to get any better as we went.  She was 100% checked-out.
Luckily it was a warm day, so I was able to hose her sweat-soaked self off and get her rubbed down with liniment, and then brought her back into the arena to hand-walk until she was dry.  Amazingly, she was still trying to bolt at every opportunity.  Darn those imaginary dragons!  Hopefully they will be gone or the hallucinogenics will have worn off by the time I get up there again.

Success!

Sweaty Fuzz-Monster!

I finally got to ride my fuzzy beast today.  I hesitate to call her a horse because she looks more like a yak these days.  I tossed her on the lunge for a few minutes before I rode, and she was pretty darn good.  We had one slightly squirrelly moment after she set off on the right lead, but then she settled and cantered along nicely.  All in all I was proud of her for keeping it together.