I rode Abe at home today

 I almost punted on riding at all but it was nice outside, over 50F with no wind.  It was a mental training ride not a physical conditioning ride but that is okay.  Mental training of Abe and I getting to trust each other with no buddy horse along.  He is already a good riding horse, but I need to get to know and trust him and he needs to get to trust me.    I am glad I bought him.   He and Tanza were play nipping at each other while drinking out of the water tank that crosses the fence between them today.   It made me smile. 

 

New screen door is installed

 The Handyman did not get it perfect.   He should have left a bit more trim or whatever on the bottom of the door.   Its closer is overly tight and when it banged the door shut if not held to slow it down it was coming past the frame and then hanging up a bit to open it.  I will have to screw a bit of something on the bottom of the door I think but my quickie redneck solution was to put a paper clip over the frame to have a bit more of something to block the door and, then put a dab of crazy glue to hold it in place when it worked; that is still holding and I haven't motivated myself to do a better fix yet.   

The guy did show up and dig a grave, would not let me even give him some gas money.   Paul came over later after the vet put Lady down and laid her to rest and filled in the hole with the tractor.   I should text their friends and ask what would be a good thank-you gift.  I wish folks would just accept some cash for favors like that; trying to come up with a gift is a PITA and sometimes I just don't get it done.

 P and S invited me and housemate for T-day.   I haven't said yay or nay yet.   I was thinking I might see if anyone wanted to go riding but there is a stinking EHV-1 outbreak.  The friends that board are being told not to take horses off property.   I canceled riding with one to ride Taj because she had recommended riding at the close by fairgrounds, and their arena is closed, have to park at sales barn, which I was not quite comfortable with any equine disease warning.  I would feel ok going to a trailhead, but am not too excited to go alone.  

So I should text S and ask "what can I bring, whipped cream?  fruit salad?, ginger ale or seven up for fruit punch?"  P relayed that "you don't have to bring anything"  S and P's mom are great cooks, so most anything I would bring would not be as good as what they'll cook, last year I brought fruit salad and it was not great.  I should have gone to a regular grocery earlier,  wallys was mostly out of the canned fruits I use when I went just 1 or 2 days before t-day and I had to use some old cans I had around to fill in the recipe and the wally's grapes were not not great either.   I don't want to not bring anything, I'll just stay home and chill or pout if I can't get a suggestion of something I can bring that they won't hesitate to eat.    Housemate has been working long hours at ToysRUs and I haven't asked her if she plans to spend T-day or another day that week with her daughter in CoSp,  the store she got the job at is opening today and has not had a clear schedule for them,  has needed way more man-hours to get the inventory unpacked from the pallets and displayed then the boss had anticipated when she was hired.  The extra hours is good for housemate,  stupid Animal Sanctuary that hired her in Aug, supposedly permanently let her go with no warning in October.   I have zero sympathy for the A.S. getting less donations this year,  they were living high on the hog when the Ds were shoveling federal money at any non profit that pushed any of the commie narratives, and bought up land rather than building up a reserve fund to make sure they could make ends meet if they had a couple of lean years.   

Well I guess the handyman is going to show up soon to install my new screen door

 I'm a bit annoyed,  I guess I failed to ask if he could install a screen door for me quickly when I contacted him three weeks ago.  He simply replied yes and did I have the door yet.  I hadn't bought one yet and bought one at Lowes that same day.   When I let him know that I now had a door then he replied he was out of town until Nov 1.     Had I known he was booked up for 3 weeks I would have tried to get someone else.   But its okay, the weather has stayed very mild all three weeks so it was no problem to just leave the big garage door open and go in and out the garage door instead of using the main entry.   

I did not know that P no longer had access to an excavator attachment for the other neighbors bobcat.  So P asked another friend of his do come and dig a grave for Lady.   I finally forced myself to stop kicking that can down the road and schedule the vet to euthanize her today.   Supposedly the guy who does have an excavator attachment was going to come this morning.  Well it is still morning for a couple of hours, but I'm wondering if he will show up at all.  At least he wasn't here at 7 am before I had horses moved.  But I don't know if I can dig a grave just with the tractor bucket if mini excavator guy does not make it.  If I had known the situation I probably would have just had the vet schedule the guy to haul the horse away.  

I finally had a lovely week long vacation

 The end of the trip went a bit south.   The clutch failed on sister's pickup.  So she had to get towed to Cheyenne and have it replaced, cost her about 4K.   I told her I had about 3K to give her from CO refund, prius sale, and sale of dad's pickup early in the trip and she was "no you keep it,  I owe you some for skid steer from years ago"    I pressed the 1500 I had in cash for the trailer on her after the clutch situation.   I figured she would probably just rip up a check if I wrote her one for the full amount.   

It has been hard to get back into work and taking care of the place now after having had the time off.  Does not help that work did a big reclassification of all the 'scientist' job titles and we got merit raises and I am the same level I was just with a new job description and my raise is just the midpoint raise.   In previous years the UCP director would stress that almost everybody is getting the midpoint raise, if the new director did that I missed that meeting.  The money is decent and its not like they gave me a lower raise for not hitting th e'meeting, and sometimes exceeding expectations' mark.  But I used work as the distraction from sucky life the last couple years and saved their bacon a few times from outages and it feels like our group director has ZERO appreciation.   

But I need to just take this as "here's your sign that you need to not shortchange home life, horse fun, etc. for those ingrates"  Well, mostly not ingrate(s),  just the director; but the rest of the group tell me thanks, etc. but that is as far as it goes.   They mostly feel overworked as well.   My supervisor and the sys admin ARE overworked.   Others, not so much.  

Thinking about buying a Rushcreek bred 12 year old gelding

 I rode him in the LD at Fort Robinson on Sunday.    We ended up going really really slow and pulled at the vet check because we were past the cut off time.    Lisco and I were a bit nervous with each other the first few miles so I wanted to just walk,  then after climbing up a long canyon he had settled in enough that he could started doing a slow endurance pace but the green bean I have been hauling to rides and helping a bit was struggling with her pony being ornery.   After we had gone several miles and he was refusing to go up yet another hill and she was going to lead  him up it my stubborn red headed red neck, year of the dragon self hit the wall and I told her to lead Lisco up the hill and I had a short come to Jesus session with Chip and made him carry me up that hill.   Another rider had caught up to us,  Lisco wanted to trot after she passed us and Chip was being ok with  trotting so we did make a decent pace to the vet check those last couple of miles.   

If I had been on Taj and had a longer lead rope, rather than on an unfamiliar somewhat nervous horse plus shortish lead rope I might have put a lead on stubborn Chip, but the endurance saddle is not really set up to pony a horse plus I would have had some nervousness that Chip fighting the lead could have caused him to step off the trail and fall down the hill even on good old Taj so I don't know if I would have done that or not.   Chip and rider have a ways to go to get to endurance riding,  she gave in too quickly when he got stubborn, although to her credit she led him a ways and got back on every time but I think he figured out he could at minimum not have to carry a rider up the hills if he acted up,  and she was nervous about trotting downhill.   I get that, but on very gentle grades with a ride that is hilly, which is most rides in this area one needs to trot to stay on pace unless it is a steep downhill slope.  

Maybe Tanza is less lame than I thought.

 Yesterday when I came home from riding the horses all went tearing and Tanza really cantered hard.  And he seemed fine afterwards, and I didn't see anything today when he was walking.   I didn't ask him to trot.

An endurance family posted an 18 year old arab, they are wanting to rehome for free,  sound for 25s they think, but would 'need work' to stay sound for 50s on Saturday.  "Bully at feeding time, we would want first refusal"     And I thought about it and was like "no, I don't want essentially another feed lease,  I would want to pay something for the horse, and I would give first refusal to them for free if I just needed to downsize.  But I felt scared that they would think I was not providing good care if I asked to try him and they agreed.

And now if Tanza is maybe going to be sound I don't know if I want another horse.   I have so many now.  But I'm still tempted by the "spicy but seasoned" 15 year old I saw on CL.   But it would be kind of crazy to pass on a horse with an endurance base for the CL horse.  

Toby was pestering when I went out to feed and I yelled, (not super loud) at him "shut up dog",  and I think my housemate heard, may have thought I was yelling at her dog, and even if she knows, I was talking to Toby may be appalled that I talked like that to 'my' (not really, Toby is still Dad's dog, even though Dad is dead now) dog.   And sister has not called and I didn't get her called today, nor did I get online to Progressive for car insurance and call the poor service + stupid $$$ outfit to tell them I'm canceling.   I did text housemate that I was talking to Toby.    Just ughh,   hopefully I'm making mountains out of molehills.     

Thinking about getting another horse.

 There are a couple of completely different ads that have me intrigued.   One for a 'spicy but seasoned' 15 year old small bay gelding.   That is close to what I thought I should get, old enough that I won't worry about how to rehome a prime of life horse if my health fails but young enough that it should have 5-7 years of being able to do the shorter endurance rides.  

The other one is a 5 year old Arabian.   Actually I just read through his ad and he has zero rides.   So I'd have to pay someone to put at least 6 weeks on him,  I can deal with a spicy horse or a green horse, but they have to be good with my somewhat clunky mounting and I would not trust a horse that had only had ground work to handle that. 

 I also found an ad for feed bunks on FB that might? work for keeping horses out of big bale hay net.  It is a falling apart feedbunk, so I would just take the top off and put the frame that holds it up over the hay to minimize horses putting feet in the hay net.  But I've no ambition to contact either seller and maybe check them out.  

 I was pretty productive yesterday.   I did two loads of laundry, ran the robot vacuum on both floors and cleaned out the BATs mangers,  I need to sweep out the crud on the bottom, yesterday I just scooped out big chunks of wet crud ; then I need to put back the buckets I want to have for trips.  And I should clean out the tack compartment today.