..is driving me crazy! I am trying to give him at least a week off, with daily back reassessment, since our incident with the saddle pad that exacerbated the issue caused by my ill-fitting former saddle. SO. I cancelled my plans for Patriots Day in Greenville this weekend, and have not ridden him since last Thursday. Which makes today only the fourth day. Blarrrgg. I can’t imagine how people deal with months long rehab for serious injuries. I could be riding Desire but I am waiting on the new barefoot trimmer to come check her out, trim her feet, and fit her Easyboot Gloves or at least determine whether the size I bought will work at all or not. I’ve only tried them on with a few weeks old, non barefoot trimmer trim. And she is wicked sensitive riding out on the gravel roads, thus I’m kind of stuck waiting. SO. I am not riding either of my horses at the moment and for the next few days at least–about ready to saddle up my mini horse…

 Some photos from today of lil miss Sheza

I’ve decided not to take Blaze to Patriot’s Day I & II next weekend. His back is looking much better already, its not sore to touch or pressure and the knot has gone down almost completely. That said I know that this issue has been in the making for the last month or so in my endless battle with my previous saddle, so I’m not comfortable in saying “oh its looks good enough, lets go to a race!”  At nearly 15 years old, Blaze has lots of great years left ahead of him I hope, but he isn’t exactly a spring chicken. I love him dearly and want to prolong his days of fun riding as long as possible and as such, pushing my luck over a 25 mile endurance ride just doesn’t make sense to me. It would probably be a hot ride and if the trails are anything like last Patriot’s Day ride (though this is in a different location and not FEI) I would probably be fairly uncomfortable doing the ride myself, let alone whatever may happen with Blaze’s back. Plus my husband won’t be there to pick up the pieces if I heat-stroke out again! I spoke to C about it all yesterday, since she was only going to go to the ride if I went (it would be her gelding’s first endurance ride). She assured me she wasn’t worried about it either way and while I already knew that was the case it helped to talk it out a little bit with her and firm up my decision to not go. Of course this morning when I fed the horses and then palpitated and checked out Blaze’s back it was looking pretty darn good and the little race-fiend inside me said “heyyyy, maybe he would be okayyy..” but no, the rational and loving side of me just doesn’t think its a good idea. I have never had saddle fit issues before and the whole concept of my equine buddy suffering pain directly because of decisions about saddles, pads, and riding that I make..well, it doesn’t sit too comfortably with me.
 SO. Blaze is going to have a week or two off, depending on the situation of his back. When I do decide to hop back on him I’ll be doing a couple of short rides in the arena or just out the road and back to make sure his back isn’t taking any more wear and tear damage. I certainly won’t be using the Equipedic pad on him again. I’m sort of baffled by that pad doing so much “damage” to his back, I’ve used that sort of pad in the past with no issue. Of course every horse and horse’s back is different but I really never expected such a dramatically poor result with it. I’ll be going back to the new Free n’ Easy with just the numnah pads it came with, which is how I rode him at the Mendo Magic 30 miler with no issue.
 Sheza is 5 months old by the official week count, so she is going to be weaned here pretty quick. I think Desire is quite ready for that, there seems to be more ear pinning and youngster disciplining going on by the day, especially when it comes to Sheza hitting the milk bar. Its truly ridiculous how far down Sheza has to lean to get her head under Desire to nurse! My idea for weaning is to stick Desire in one of the big stalls on the east side of the property so she is at least out of sight, with the mini next door for company. I plan to put Sheza on the west side of the property, next to the house where I can watch her, in one of the paddocks with fresh, charged hot wire. I figure if she gets too nutty a few zaps from the wire is better than her crashing through a fence. Blaze will be in the other paddock right next to Sheza. That’s the plan, I have NO idea how or if it will work! Luckily I have a few weeks to iron out the details and seek more advice. Any advice from readers who have weaned babies before, sock it to me!

Yesterday I met my riding buddy, C, at Lake Oroville for a ride. We parked at the far end of the trails down in town, at a large parking area down a few miles of dirt road. I think I’ve mentioned the parking area on this blog before as a rather sketchy spot that I don’t like to go to alone. If I hadn’t mentioned it before, now I have. Its just far enough down in oaky-town  nowhere (and by that I mean just far enough that the cops don’t feel like patrolling that far) that it doesn’t get much attention as far as security measures go. Anyhow I figured with two rigs we would be a little safer and we wanted to do a long ride from one end of the trails to the other so that’s where we headed. 16 miles and 5 hours later (more on that long ride time later) we came back to our trucks, hot and ready to head home and relax, only to find each of our truck’s broken into. We both had a smaller window on the far side smashed in and the rocks used to do it were still lying in the cabs of our trucks. C’s truck is an older model with a small, simple cab and a bench seat, no hidey holes and clearly nothing worth stealing inside. So they busted in and stole about .60 cents out of her change drawer. They wiped out my change, ransacked my truck which had a lot of crap in it, and stole my Coach purse that I  had gotten in Maine with my husband, J, when we flew there to get married. C and I both carry our wallets in our pommel bags which was a great thing, but when they got my purse they got my checkbook etc, so once again I got to go to my bank–this time with the horse still in the trailer and me filthy, sweaty, and pissed off–and close my accounts and get new ones. That makes three times in the last year that my banking information has been compromised, twice by Chase security failures and once by crackheads stealing my purse. I told the slightly-nervous bank guy that was setting up my new account that I was about ready to take my money home and bury it in the back yard since nothing and no one seemed capable of keeping it safe anymore, which got me a nervous giggle from bank-guy. He asked if anyone else had helped me at the bank that day and I said “Nope, I just walked in here, stood in the middle of the room with steam pouring out my ears and waited for someone to notice.” Someone being he, bank-guy, who had scuttled up to me right away offering his assistance. I did my best to be pleasant to good ole bank-guy but I was hot, tired, hungry, starting a headache, and pissed off. If you ask any of my close friends and family all those factors add up to a redhead rapidly approaching extreme boiling point.
 Anyhow, I made a report to CHP (once the sheriff’s office, State Parks, and CHP had bandied back and forth and decided who it was that was actually responsible for that parking lot….!). They offered to send an officer out right away but I told them we were all hot and exhausted and would rather just head home having alerted the police to the situation, to which CHP brightly replied, “Oh yes, you should definitely take care of your horses!” I don’t know why but that was not what I was expecting to hear from a CHP officer. It was actually kind of nice. I’m sure he was just relieved he didn’t have to round up one of his guys to drive out to bumf** and deal with it but I was relieved too coz I needed to get out of there and sitting around for another half hour waiting for the police sure wasn’t happening.  The bank is taken care of, I still have my wallet w/ driver license etc, and Josh is getting the window fixed today. Before you know it it will be as if nothing ever happened, and the tweakers will merrily go on about their lives thinking what a great thing it is to break into people’s trucks and not suffer any consequences. Can you tell I’m bitter?
 As for the reason it took us just over 5 hours to do almost 17 miles, I made a poor decision and put the new Equipedic pad under my saddle for the ride, with the thought of giving Blaze a much comfier ride…well Blaze dragged and lagged on the ride and despite checking for wear spots etc (even sweat marks, looked good) I wasn’t 100% sure what was going on with him. It was definitely a hot day and it was his first real exertion since the week in cool coastal weather, where his winter coat seems to have been triggered as he is getting hairier ever day..as it continues to get hotter here. So I wasn’t sure if he was just not feeling it that day or the saddle pad was an issue, but as we neared the trailer I became convinced the saddle pad was the issue and got off and walked him in. When I pulled the saddle his back was sore to the touch on the left side and a small knot, like a little knot of muscle, which had started with my previous saddle, was really raised on his back. So yeah, the pad did a real number on his back and further irritated the issue caused by the last saddle. I felt terrible. Blaze was gamely trotting down the trail with his back in serious discomfort. Caused by me. And yet he just did what was asked, where he could have turned real nasty about it. C was telling me her friend’s mare will go nuts and buck and rear if her tack isn’t fitted right. That would almost be a better reaction as you would get right away something was up rather than the perseverance of Blaze that allowed me to dither and his back to get more irritated. Sooo…I am on the fence about going to Patriot’s Day in Greenville next weekend, C and I were planning to go essentially together, especially since her gelding need’s Blaze’s quiet influence on the trail and for his first endurance ride. But I have to make the decision based on what is best for Blaze and I’m not confident his back is going to be feeling great in only a week. I will be keeping a close eye on it and kicking myself, in the meantime. And fuming about my purse.

That’s about how I’m feeling about summer at this point. That is to say, its been a great and productive summer and I’ve absolutely loved going to an endurance ride each and every month, but I am READY for fall. Sure we haven’t had horrendous heat waves or anything particularly dramatic, its just the ready-steady 90+ degrees every single day, on and and on unendingly. My taste of crisp air and sweatshirt weather on the coast really fried me on valley summer, too. I love everything about the fall, the air, the weather, the sweatshirts, the coziness and fires in the woodstove. Fuzzy horses..okay that’s not as much my favorite part but they sure look cute especially my tiny Blaze man. He really looks like a little fuzzy toy in his thick winter coat. Oh man here I am dreaming on winter weather as I sit my oven-like house waiting for the sun to go down enough to make being outside tolerable. I’ll try to justify my extreme whiny-ness with the fact that my skin is just not made for all this sun. I do pretty well with applying sunscreen every day, a few times a day, and my sun rash has only made an appearance once this summer which is great. My sunburns this summer have also been pretty minimal and for the most part only in small patches where my sunscreen application failed. But at the end of the day I just can’t take the beating sun the way my husband can and my natural inclination to be out and about and busy, whether its playing with the horses or just working around the place, is much at odds with my ability to realistically function in the summer heat. So anyway, this is just my long-winded way of saying, is it autumn yet??!! The acorns are falling, the acorns are falling. Sign of an early fall? Sure, I’ll believe any old wives tale at this point!

Blaze and I did go for an early morning ridge ride yesterday morning with some good hill sprints and I ran a mile on the way back down. So I don’t feel like a total horse-slacker. Tomorrow my *plan* is to ride at the Lake for hopefully at least 10 miles, maybe more if I am ambitious, but to do so I have to drop my husband off at 4 am to meet the fishing boat he is working on to help out a buddy. Then go to the lake and start riding in the dark? Or drive home and pick up the horse and trailer and go back out to the lake. Probably the latter, but it sounds so very early…well we’ll see! Tomorrow is supposed to have a high of 87 last I checked so lets just hope that is still the case and there is some truth to that forecast.

Found a barefoot trimmer to call to consult on Desire’s feet etc..just have to call her…the heat makes even picking up the phone sound like too much work…good grief. I’ll need a wedge of cheese to go with all this whine!

Its official, I own my first pair of Easyboot Gloves! This morning was my first time putting them on Desire; her trim is just over two weeks old and not done by a barefoot trimmer, so the fit could have been better but I did get them on and off successfully which was my first triumph. I am considering looking up a barefoot trimmer to look after Desire’s feet as opposed to my farrier I am currently using, since I know that the trimming philosophies can be quite different. I have ZERO experience using Easyboots so I’m going to be feeling my way along in the dark on this whole journey but I know I have a wonderful resource in the folks at GETC, where I bought Desire. Christoph Schork, partners with Dian Woodward at GETC, just won the 100 mile National Championship in Easyboots–I’d say you don’t get a more knowledgeable resource on Easysboots than that! Anyhow I am glad to see how easy the Gloves are to get on and off and Desire didn’t mind my amateurish application of them.

Today is the raffle drawing for a year of free shoeing that my farrier is doing. I have 25 tickets in the raffle and really hope to win! I’ve decided to keep Blaze in front shoes at least for the foreseeable future since they are working for him and learning with one horse in Easyboots is enough for me for the moment–so come on raffle, lets get a year of free front shoes for Blaze!

Oh and Sheza is 5 months old this week!! Weaning time before we know it!