Another Glitch in Gabbrielle's Training

I call Gabbrielle my bunny, because she's so soft and sweet and petite. My poor bunny somehow injured herself again, which is going to cause another delay in her training. I saddled her up and lunged her, but she didn't want to move up to the trot. I thought the heat was just getting to her, so I put the pressure on until she trotted. Once I mounted, I couldn't get her to move forward. Each time I squeezed with my legs and clucked, she'd take several giant steps back. She kept backing up in a circle until she was about to back into the metal step stool I used to mount her.

I was worried that she'd knock it over, it would go clang, and she'd have a big spook. I kept pressuring her to go forward to get away from the stool, but she just kept backing up. So, I let her back up and I steered her backwards around the stool. She missed it by an inch.

I could sort of move her forward if I turned her in circles to the right. However, she did not want to bend her shoulder to the left. She would stand still and bend her neck to the left and touch her nose to my toe, but she didn't want to unlock that left shoulder.

So, I tried circling to the right and coming out of the circle at a walk, but she got all jiggy on me and kept balking. I couldn't tell if she was confused or if she was testing me or if she was in pain. She shouldn't be confused, because I'm consistent in my cues and I've had success with her moving forward for several rides now. She seems too sweet to be the kind of horse to test me this early on in her education. I decided to dismount and get my husband to help.

I wanted him to lead her on the forward cue like we did when we first started her training. However, even with him holding the lead rope and walking forward, Gabbrielle kept walking backwards. When we did get her moving forward, she kept walking sideways into my husband. He said she was nipping at his hand to tell him to let go of the lead rope. This is a horse that has never tried to bite a human before.

My husband said he thought something was really off about her. As we were troubleshooting, my nosy neighbor came out on his porch to watch. Gabbrielle popped her head up and we lost her. She stopped trying to listen to us and kept her eye on my neighbor. I wanted to ask him to go back inside his house, so that we could finish our troubleshooting without distractions, but the guy has the right to sit on his own porch anytime he wants, unfortunately.

My husband was trying to stand back and watch her legs while I tried to move her forward, but we didn't think the problem was there. It was most likely her neck or shoulder. What worries me is that her dam had to be put down due to extreme arthritis in one shoulder. It makes me wonder if Gabbrielle might have inherited some condition in her shoulder.

When she started putting her hind legs underneath her like a dog when you try to drag it on its leash to the bathtub or the vet, my husband said he didn't feel comfortable doing any further work with her. I dismounted, untacked her and gave her some treats. Since the show was over, my nosy neighbor went back inside his house, making sure to slam the door as loudly as possible to spook my horse.

Lostine got Gabbrielle into a corner and tried to kick her, because it was feeding time. I had never seen Lostine do that before, so I hollered at her. Lostine then moved her rear and let Gabbrielle out. My husband pointed out that even though Lostine was kicking her, Gabbrielle still would not turn to the left to avoid getting kicked. So, it looks like I will be limited to grooming and massaging her for a while. If I don't see any improvement, I may have to take her to a vet or a chiropractor.

I did notice that she had not-so-fresh scabs on her legs as if she had fallen down. She could have been galloping around and wiped out, bruising her shoulder or tweaking her neck in the process. It's times like this when I wish horses could speak to tell me what happened.

Hindsight

Sorry for the graphic picture, but I need you to be my hindsight.

Once my horses get more experience on the trails, I want to relieve my family members of the job of helping me stay safe. I want to find other trail riders to ride with in my community. I put together the following ad, and planned to post it on bulletin boards at the local feed stores:

"ATTENTION: TRAIL RIDERS

Forming a small group of horse owners to trail ride together locally.

No fees, no meetings, no fund raising, no social obligations... JUST RIDING.

This is for those of us who work long hours and who just want to ride with some friends when we have a little spare time. Ride at your own risk. Each person is responsible for his/her own liability. The idea is to form a list of people to call when you'd like some support or company while riding your horse. Call..."

I have been hesitant to post the ad for a variety of reasons. First of all, I've been working such long hours that I desperately need my rest, and don't want to have to deal with the phone ringing either during the day while I'm working or in the evening when I'm trying to sleep. Secondly, because I've been working such long hours, I never know if I can follow through and actually go on a trail ride. I can't seem to plan anything. When I do get to ride, it is usually a last-minute decision based upon me getting an unexpected break from work.

Thirdly, and this is where you come in, I worry that I may be opening a can of worms. I really don't need anymore problems right now. I feel like I am setting myself up for hassles by starting this. I don't know what they will be, but I can just feel them lurking on the horizon.

For instance, what if a really annoying person wants to trail ride with me? Worse yet, what if a really annoying person who does stupid, dangerous things and who can't control her horse wants to trail ride with me? What if someone does something stupid that causes someone else to get hurt, and I get sued for it because I organized the trail riding group? I stuck the clause about liability in the ad, but I don't know if it would hold up in court.

What kind of problems have you run into on trail rides? What can I do to prevent such problems? I guess the worst part is that this is a big unknown for me, so if my readers can give me an idea of what to expect, maybe I can be better prepared. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Life Without Horses?

After having more worries dumped into my lap on Monday, I couldn't sleep. I went for a walk at the crack of dawn in part to get some exercise and fresh air, and in part to search for the wrecked truck that belonged to the drunk driver who hit my kids. I figured the guy probably had it hidden behind a house or in a garage, but was counting on him being like most Northern Nevadans who use their garage for storage and park in their driveways. Interestingly, I found that the ATV / motorcycle mechanic had a pickup truck behind his house with a smashed up front end, but I knew it wasn't the right truck, because it was light gold instead of white and it had a camper shell. It was too far away for me to be able to read the license plate. The way he drives, I'm not surprised that he'd crash into something.

My husband ended up popping the rear bumper of our car back into place where it had separated from the body, and cleaning up the white paint smears and scratches. He opted to just touch it up with red paint instead of sucking up all of our time dealing with paperwork and phone calls to track down the driver and get him to pay for bodywork. We really don't need the headache right now, and that man will be paying for his stupidity by having to fix his own truck, which suffered way more damage than our car. Of course I want to hold him accountable, but we have so many other things going on in our lives right now that need our attention. Not to mention how insurance companies raise your rates even when the accident isn't your fault. The money we would have to spend on increased insurance fees in the long run would be more than what we would pay if we just covered the cost of the bodywork ourselves.

We bought this car with the expectation that it would get its share of nicks, dents, and scratches, because we bought it for the kids to learn to drive with. All I have to say is that I'm truly impressed with the way Chevy manufactured that back bumper on the Cobalt. It held up amazingly well when you consider that it got hit by a pickup truck hard enough to make the truck's front end collapse. All the tail lights on our car survived without a crack, while the truck broke some headlights of its own.

I went to work and had to struggle to stay awake, so when I got home, I quickly ate some spaghetti my husband made for us, and then climbed into bed. I had gone 48 hours without sleep and was beginning to have both visual and auditory hallucinations.

I had a dream in which my deceased father told me that I'm under too much stress and need some rest, so he shipped my horses off to a friend's farm in Northern California to be sold. YOU WHAT? I had to launch into a long tirade about how much time and energy I have invested into training those horses, how they were family to me, how I loved them like I love my own children, and how horse care was the only activity in my life that helped me relax and feel at peace.

In the dream, my father argued that I was spending too many hours of the day cleaning up manure, painting fences, staining the barn, cleaning out water troughs, bathing, grooming, and exercising the horses. He said that now with the horses gone, I had the free time to take care of myself. I explained that I love doing every one of those activities, that they keep me in shape and keep me sharp mentally. There is so much to benefit from caring for an animal. Without that responsibility, I'd probably just be sitting in front of at TV set with my mouth hanging open, wasting my life away.

The more I thought about life without horses, the more depressed I became. I couldn't imagine any other lifestyle. I told him that by taking my horses away, he reduced my life to nothing but work, cooking, and cleaning house. He took away my hobby and my goals. In the dream, I started crying uncontrollably. I managed to make my father so nervous that he had the horses instantly shipped back to me. However, when my horses returned, they were different. Living with other people had changed them, and not for the better. I worked with them to try to pull out their old personalities. Bombay then got that twinkle in his eye, stole my hat right off my head, and took off with it in his mouth while I gave chase. After that I knew things would return to normal.

In reality, we live in a somewhat rundown house with stained carpet, chipping paint, and cracked tiles. Everything is falling apart around us. Yet when I see people buying these brand new cookie cutter houses in suburbs where windows look right into windows and there isn't more than a couple of feet between neighbors, I can't imagine living like that and being happy. I need land for my horses. I'd live in an outhouse as long as I could keep horses there. I don't want to live in a museum. I need to live somewhere where I can track in manure on my boots and not care.

Horse property is getting scarce in my part of the state. People keep coming in and buying up land, knocking down barns and corrals only to subdivide and build more houses closer together. We are planning on moving, but not within the vicinity of where we are now. We know the patterns of this community and know that things are only getting worse. We need to find that hidden rural community somewhere out west that is close enough to jobs, but far enough away from neighbors, truck traffic, and crime. We need to find a place that hasn't been affected by the current economic problems of our country.

It's complicated. This isn't just about me and what I want. My husband loves his current job, and I don't want to take him away from it. My son doesn't need to be uprooted from his high school and friends. My mother doesn't need the stress of having to sell this house. We will move, but I need to be patient. We are fortunate to be able to take our time looking for the right community and horse property. A lot of people get a new job in a different state and just have to grab whatever living quarters they can find and hope that their old place sells.

A lot of things have to fall into place when you move, such as the timing of getting a new job, a new house, and selling the old one. When we moved into the house we are in now, our previous home didn't sell until a year later. That means paying two mortgages for an entire year. Most people couldn't survive a financial blow like that now-a-days, and they'd end up losing everything. Moving is a gamble, and it's not going to happen overnight.

Why Can't Bad Things Spread Themselves Out?

I must be at the bottom of my biorhythm. When I was a kid, I spent my summers on the Santa Monica Pier, and remember that somewhere near that famous merry-go-round that has been in so many movies, there was a biorhythm machine. You'd put a quarter in the machine, place your hand onto a hand-shaped pan, and get a printout of an X placed somewhere on a serpentine graph. If you were at the top of your biorhythm, good things came your way. If you were at the bottom, bad things came your way.

I've been having dreams that always end in me seeing a human skull. For instance, in one dream a woman was folding towels. She pulled one towel out of a dryer, shook it out, and I saw that it had a line of skulls all the way down the length of it. When I have persistent dreams, I pay attention. They almost always mean something. Of course, a skull is a symbol of death, so these dreams put me on edge.

My husband has been going through a series of tests to determine the condition of his heart and arteries, because he's been having chest pains. My mother has been sick with flu-like symptoms and people who have tried to call her haven't been able to get through to her. My brother said he had some form of bone cancer only to change his tune and say he just needs to take more calcium. Could that be a play for sympathy followed by the truth, or the truth followed by a downplay so that we wouldn't worry? My son is learning to drive, which makes me very nervous. My neighbor friend has been missing for weeks and her son has been taking care of her horses and driving her car. These dreams combined with the circumstances in my life make me wonder... has somebody died or is somebody going to die soon?

After finishing work last night, I received a phone call from my in-laws. They informed me that my husband's aunt has cancer in every organ of her body. That was depressing news, and possibly solved the mystery of my prophetic dreams. Just a couple of hours later, my daughter and son came home from the gym and announced that they had been involved in a car accident. They were stopped at a stop sign, and some man in a white pickup truck rear-ended them so hard that his hood was bent into the shape of an upside down V. He threw a business card of an insurance agent at my kids and drove off. Fortunately, a witness stopped and told my kids to write down his license plate number as he was driving away.

All they got was the license plate number, a description of the truck, and a vague description of the driver. It was dark. We don't have a name, address, phone number, or policy number of the other driver. The name on the business card was that of a woman, followed by the name of some independent insurance company we've never heard of. My kids were too shook up by the experience to think clearly. They just accepted the card, trusting that an adult was being honest with them, and they came home.

My son said he thought the man was drunk, because he was talking loudly and staggering a little. Our rear bumper was cracked, warped and scratched up, and my son's neck hurt for a little while. My daughter said she was fine, but she seemed pale and in shock. She said the man scared her and she didn't want to get near him. I told her she never has to get out of the car in the case of an accident. She can lock her doors, roll up the windows, and call the police.

This is my failing as a parent: I've spent a lot of time talking to my kids about how to avoid accidents, but have spent very little time talking with them about what to do if they are involved in an accident. I've told them to fill out the insurance form we keep in the glove compartment of each car, but when you get hit that hard, your brains are scrambled and you can't remember such details. Just this past week I was teaching my kids to leave enough space between them and the car in front of them when stopping at a light, so that if the person behind them is coming up fast and looks like they will hit them, they'll have room to pull off onto the shoulder before they get rear-ended. In this case, the accident happened so fast that they weren't even aware that someone was behind them.

The man had said that he lived right around the corner from where they had the accident. I wanted to call the police, but my husband doubted they would track the guy down by his license plate number, go to his house and give him a breathalyzer test. My husband called the insurance company to file a report instead. Since the man said he lived nearby, I wanted to look for his truck to get his address. I doubted that the insurance card he gave my kids was legitimate. My daughter and I drove around at night only to discover that there is a white pickup truck parked in almost every driveway of every residence in our neighborhood. We decided to let our insurance agent hunt him down based on the license plate number and description.

I am thankful for the witness who stopped and advised my kids to get the license plate number. Technically, this is a borderline hit and run. The man did not properly provide the information that should be exchanged in an accident, and my kids were in too much shock to think things through.

The irony is that every time my kids drive somewhere, I worry. I always hear sirens after they drive off for some destination, and I fret that they may have been involved in a car accident. I have even gone so far as to follow emergency vehicles to the scene of an accident just to make sure that it wasn't my kids. However, they always come home unscathed. Just this past week I came to the conclusion that I need to relax and just trust that everything will be okay. The kids have been driving a while and have never had any accidents. Their car has a dent in it from when someone hit it in the high school parking lot and left without leaving a note. We couldn't afford to fix the dent, so we've been living with it. However, after being rear-ended, the car looks much worse and will probably need to have the entire bumper replaced.

I know the reality is that most teenagers have to have a car accident at some point in time. I did. My brother did. All of my friends did. However, I never thought the accident my kids would experience would involve getting rear-ended by a drunk. Usually, it's more like the kids, in their inexperience, misjudge the distance to something and get a little scratch or dent or fender bender.

There are so many things I hate about where we live right now, and living in a neighborhood full of drunks and drug addicts is one of them. Every once in a while the sheriff makes an arrest of some drug dealers that specifically came to our town to sell drugs. It astounds me that big time career criminals actually pick out my neighborhood on a map and move here with the intention to intoxicate our children.

Just the other day when I was outside watering the pasture, I was irritated by the number of people speeding recklessly past my house, easily going 55 MPH in a 35 MPH zone. Each time I heard the disturbing roar of an engine bearing down on me, I looked up to see that it was a man driving a pickup truck. That was probably just one more omen of things to come. I considered contacting the sheriff's department and requesting that they set up a speed trap in front of my house, but worried that somehow my whistle-blowing would come back to bite me. I didn't want to put too much energy into negative things out of fear that I would attract them. Isn't it ironic that by trying to relax and ignore the negatives, they invaded my life anyway?

Of course, the positive is that my kids are okay. I know plenty of parents who have lost their teens in car accidents, motorcycle accidents, and ATV accidents. If I had it my way, my kids wouldn't drive at all. They'd be chauffeured everywhere... but look where that got Princess Diana. Even the public transportation options aren't safe. The school buses in our district have been in many accidents. One school bus driver who lived down the street from us went for a quick, leisurely flight in a little plane with friends a few months ago, and the plane crashed killing everyone on board. The bus driver was the mother of my son's friend, and his friend had to move out of state to live with his grandparents. It seems that nothing is guaranteed as being safe, and this community has had more than its fair share of tragedies in recent years. Every bone in my body is telling me to get out of Dodge.

Who Says Horses Don't Have Manners?

I occasionally open the gate to the round pen to clean up manure, and all the horses pile in behind me hoping to find a stray stalk of hay on the ground. I usually have to herd them out when I'm done, but the other night I just put hay in their feed troughs to lure them out of the round pen.

Lostine and Gabbrielle immediately trotted out and commenced stuffing their faces. Bombay moseyed on out a short time later, got halfway to his feed trough, paused as if thinking, turned around, walked back to the round pen and shut the gate with his nose. He then looked at me with an expression that suggested he was beaming with pride. I said, "Bombay, you are such a thoughtful horse. Thank you."

I then locked the gate and closed up for the night, making sure that Bombay had settled into his dinner, since he seemed more interested in helping with chores than in getting his nourishment. I went inside the house and told everyone the story of Bombay's good manners. My husband said, "I'm not impressed. I'll be impressed the day he farts and says excuse me."

Gabbrielle's First Big Spook Under Saddle

After a seemingly endless series of seven-day work weeks, I was finally able to get back to training Gabbrielle under saddle. There have been so many interruptions in her training that I have to keep starting from square one. In these hundred-degree temperatures, I find that I don't have the patience nor stamina to do all the work I should be doing with my horse.

I had plans to take a couple of horses to the Fairgrounds Sunday morning, but when I walked out to the truck, I found it completely covered in dust. I couldn't even see through the windshield, so I had to wash it. By the time was was done washing the truck I was too exhausted to work with the horses. I went back inside the house and sat under a ceiling fan for half an hour to get my body temperature back down.

I decided to ride Gabbrielle in the round pen before the temperature rose even higher. I didn't want to waste precious time getting her into the trailer, driving to the Fairgrounds, getting her out of the trailer, getting her used to being off the property... By the time all of that would have been accomplished, we both would have been dead from heat stroke.

I lunged her a little bit just to make sure she remembered the forward and stop cues, then mounted her. Just as I suspected, she forgot the forward cue from the saddle and started backing up. I had to tap her fairly hard on the rump with my riding crop to move her forward. She kept lurching forward, then stopping, lurching forward, then stopping. I had to kick her in the rhythm of a walk to keep her moving. I don't like doing that, because I don't want her to learn to ignore my leg cues because I am giving them all the time. I prefer to only use cues until I get the response I want, and then release. However, in this case, as soon as I released, she stopped. I had to keep kicking her to keep her walking.

At one point she completely locked up on me. She stood stock still with her back humped up, completely ignoring my kicks, clucks, and taps with the whip. I tried turning her head to the side to get her off balance, and could not budge her head. "This is bad," I thought.

I knew something very wrong was going on, but was baffled by Gabbrielle's behavior. I couldn't read her. She had her back humped up. Was she going to launch me? She's normally so easygoing, and bucking isn't in her character. Did she need to pee? Did she hurt herself? She wasn't behaving like she was on alert or scared. Then it happened.

She bolted. She launched into this weird gait halfway between a trot and a canter. I pulled back on the reins saying, "Whoa" and of course, it had no effect. Something had scared her and I was having trouble bringing her back to me. I started pumping the reins instead of doing a steady pull, and she stopped. I looked over to see my husband standing in the backyard. Apparently, he had walked outside and was making noises that I couldn't hear, but Gabbrielle could.

My husband worried about me after seeing me nearly get into a wreck, so he came and sat in the middle of the round pen while I finished my ride. Even though Gabbrielle really didn't get further than half a rotation around the pen in her spook, I was shook up. The whole experience was reminiscent of the time I rode Bombay when he was only a few days under saddle, and he took off on his own accord. Only in his case he reacted to having the bit pulled in his mouth by launching into a bucking frenzy. After several minutes of bucking with no end in sight, I tried my own attempt at a dismount and broke my arm. Thank God Gabbrielle has a more level head on her shoulders.

I did my deep breathing exercises to calm my nerves. Gabbrielle was on alert now, feeling my nerves buzzing and wondering what is going on that is so scary. Horses never seem to make the connection that their action was the cause of their human's tension. They are always looking around for something outside of your partnership that is threatening.

Once I settled down and she was moving forward at a consistent walk, I decided to ask for the trot. I preferred that her first experiences with a rider in the saddle at the trot be controlled and relaxed rather than a spook. I kicked and clucked and tapped, and she walked faster and faster, but wouldn't move up into the trot. She'd get close to a trot on the downhill slope, so I decided to only put the pressure on as we were approaching the slope, and release the second she sped up, even if she was just speeding up her walk, then give her praise so that she would know that it is okay to go faster.

Because I had used so much force to stop her when she ran away, she now worried that going fast was bad. She didn't want me pulling on that bit again. I finally got her to trot a couple of strides and then she came to a stop before I gave her any indication that I wanted her to stop. She just knew that when she went fast before, I stopped her, so she was anticipating the request for a stop. I praised her for the trot, then dismounted before the heat killed us. I wanted to end on a good note where we had a breakthrough. When the weather is cooler, we can try the trot again and I'll work on keeping her going.

It feels so strange to have to use my heels and riding crop so much with Gabbrielle. Lostine responds to voice cues, so I don't have to use my legs on her at all for gait change cues. Bombay needs the leg cues, but rarely does he need a tap from the riding crop on top of it. Gabbrielle is such a sweet mare that I feel guilty having to put any pressure on her at all.

After our ride, I gave her a drink, then walked her over to the trailer to see how much she remembered of her trailer training. She not only remembered everything, but she did a new trick of backing herself out voluntarily with no pressure from me. She went right in, waited a few seconds, then backed herself right out. That was without me in the trailer. I then had to work on getting her to get in and out of the trailer while I was inside. That took a bit more time and patience. I think she worried about squashing me, so I had to tempt her in with some treats, however, she eventually got so satiated by peppermints that she lost interest. I got one more loading effort out of her and ended the lesson to give both of us some rest.

By the time we were done, I had sweat pouring down my face, raindrops literally falling out of my helmet onto my boots as if there were a thunderstorm under there. When I removed my helmet, my hair was so wet that I could shake my head and water sprayed everywhere like a wet dog that just got out of a pool. Amazingly, Gabbrielle didn't sweat at all.

During the winter months we are usually in a weather pattern where it's clear all week and then rains or snows on the weekend. During the summer months, we have decent temperatures during the week, and then the thermometer skyrockets over the weekend. I wish we lived in a society that planned its work week around good weather, allowing employees to have the nice days off. Either that, or I wish Mother Nature wouldn't be so cruel.

Lock the Girls Up...

...and make them cry. Unlock the girls and set them free. That's a game I like to play with Bombay when I ride him around our property. Since he's at the bottom of the pecking order and often jilted by the mares, I like to help him feel empowered by asking him to help me open the gate to the round pen, herd the girls inside, and then shut the gate and lock them in. Then Bombay and I run off together laughing while the girls realize that they've been duped once again. Once he and I have had the run of the property without those pesky girls bothering us, he helps me open the gate to set them free.

I've been reading about Kate's lessons learned while auditing a clinic taught by Mark Rashid. If you haven't read her series of posts yet, you can find them over at A Year With Horses. In reporting what she learned at Mark's clinic, Kate wrote, "If you think about the different gaits as not faster/slower, but as having different rhythms, this tends to make it easier to get the transitions. That's how you avoid things like getting a faster trot instead of a nice balanced trot to canter transition."

I went outside with the intention to ride, but even with our "Lock the Girls Up" game, I found that Bombay and I were both bored. Then I remembered this idea of thinking in rhythms and gave it a try. I even went so far as saying the beat out loud. I found that Bombay's transitions were not only more responsive, but more consistent. As we walked, I said, "One two three four. One two three four."

As we trotted, I said, "One two. One two. One two." If I sped up my verbal beat, he sped up his feet.

Then I tried another experiment. I sang while we rode, and I didn't give any cues. I just sang and sat. Interestingly, Bombay moved in rhythm with the music. If I sang a fast tune, he went fast. As I slowed the tune down, he slowed down. When I finished singing, he stopped.

What a dude.

I spent most of the day taking the kids on a shopping spree in South Lake Tahoe. I'm trying to spend as much time as possible with the kids before they have to go back to school. My daughter will be leaving for her sophomore year of college before her 19th birthday, so I wanted her to pick out a few early birthday presents for herself. My son will be a junior in high school and he destroys shoes faster than I can buy them. We went to the Adidas Outlet and stocked up. My daughter and I have hard-to-fit feet, but Adidas usually come through for us.

I also love Adidas track pants and found some in black with pink stripes, then got a pink sleeveless ladies golf shirt to match. We found a cute boutique with the most amazing women's jeans, but I didn't bother to try them on when I saw the price tag. Let's just say they ranged from $100 to $200. I know that's nothing for people of high society, but I'm just a farm girl from Nevada. We also found another boutique that had much more reasonable prices and lots of cute clothes for teen girls. That's where my daughter hit the jackpot.

If you are ever in South Lake Tahoe, I recommend that you eat at a little burger place next to the Super 8 Motel called Big Daddy's Burgers. They make the best burger I have tasted in my entire life. I was so engrossed in eating my delicious cheeseburger that I didn't even get distracted by the college boys who dragged in a life-sized plus-size blow up doll in a bikini and fondled her at a table nearby.

A Great Day for Us...

...a bad day for fish.

But I digress. Let's talk philosophy. I have been trying to focus on the positive, because I believe that what you put your energy into is what you attract to yourself. This past week has been miserable for me, as I was forced to give up my entire weekend to work from 6:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night.

To top it all off, relatives were in town visiting us and I couldn't even go out to dinner with them, because I had to work through dinner. When they came in the door, I'd have to shush them up and close my office door because I was always in a phone conference. I hated being rude to them, but I had to get a lot of work done in a short period of time, and it was hard with these people who were on vacation hanging out in our house and socializing loudly where I was trying to work. After all the work I did, there were still some unexpected failures with the project, so we are still in emergency mode. Needless to say, my stress level has been worse than ever. I was beginning to think that unless I flat out quit my job, I was never going to get a day off ever again.

I had written a post about it, but decided not to publish it, because I didn't want to dwell on my frustration over rarely getting time off to relax. Plus blogging about it wouldn't serve any purpose beyond letting me get it off my chest. I felt depressed, because my daughter will be leaving for her new job at college in a couple of weeks, and I haven't spent any time with her outside of work. I had also promised to take my son fishing before the river got too low, and the river is already too low in spots.

I'm supposed to be getting every Thursday off from work, but my boss keeps scheduling meetings and deadlines for me that make it impossible for me to take Thursdays off. He scheduled yet another meeting for me on Thursday, but didn't explicitly say I could not take the day off, so come Wednesday night, my son and I raced out to the market to buy fish bait, hooks, sinkers, and fishing licenses for Thursday. Normally, I have my equitation lessons on Thursdays, but I felt it was more important to take my son fishing ASAP and not wait until the weekend when all the tourists would be out.

My decision turned out to be perfect. While I was packing lunches and drinks, I asked my son to feed the horses. He walked outside and found this beautiful rainbow above our house. These are some pictures he took with my camera...



Then, as if to make a perfect beginning to the day even better, one of my favorite little buddies appeared to say hello...

My son just turned 16 and is trying to put in all of his required hours of driving with his driver's permit, so that he can get his license. I let him drive us into the mountains for our fishing expedition on the Walker River. I was nervous, but he did a great job at the helm. A bunny ran in front of us and he was able to make a split-second decision to prevent both the bunny from getting squashed and to prevent us from getting into a head-on collision.

We went to a bridge where we always see a lot of fishermen. I suspected that the Dept. of Fish and Game probably stocks the river there. We could see fish swimming around from the top of the bridge, and I caught two fish right away, but they were too small to keep, so my son released them back into the river once I removed the hook. We drove to another bridge further up the highway, but didn't get any bites. The entire underside of the bridge was covered with swallows and their nests. I wanted to get a picture of it, but left my camera in the car. The swallows were swooping down on insects that were dancing on the water, so I thought that where there are insects there will be fish, but I was wrong.

I really wanted my son to catch some fish, because in years past I've caught fish, but he hasn't, so he ended up not having a very good time. We were about to pack up and go somewhere else when I noticed a shady spot underneath a cliff. I thought perhaps the fish would be hanging out in the shade, and headed down there only to find a really nice pool where the river wasn't running fast.

I threw my line in and instantly hooked a fish, then another, then another. These fish were much bigger than the babies I had to throw back, and I love to eat fish but can't afford most of the fish sold in the supermarket, so I kept these for dinner. My son joined me at the same pool and he too started reeling in the fish. We thought we had caught around 8 between us, but were surprised to find 13 Rainbow Trout in our creel. We decided we were being gluttonous at that point, so we told a nice couple about our lucky hole and hit the highway to search for an outhouse. Fortunately, there were several campgrounds along the way.

We wanted to stop to fish just a little longer, more for the enjoyment of the outing than to catch anything. I doubted our freezer would hold much more fish. We were looking for a shady place to pull over to eat our lunch and fish. When we found one, we were almost on top of it. I said to my son, "Pull over here."

He pulled off the road and braked so hard that the cooler in the trunk tipped over and slid forward into the backseat, where we had folded down the seat to make room for the fishing poles, throwing fish and ice cubes everywhere all over the back compartment of the car. We were laughing so hard. It wasn't easy picking up all those slimy fish and cold ice cubes with our hands to pack them back into the cooler. We had to make sure we didn't miss any fish, because it's really hard to get the smell of dead fish out of a vehicle.

I don't remember fish as being so slimy, but neither of us could hold onto a fish with our hands. We had to grab the line, then clamp the fish between our thighs while we removed the hook. There were a couple that got away after being brought to shore, because we couldn't get them into our laps fast enough. I'm glad we wore jeans and not shorts.

After a while it started raining and the fish started biting again. My son caught the last and biggest fish of the day, a 12-incher, bringing our count up to 14 fish between the two of us. We'll be eating well for a few weeks.

Irony of all ironies, right when we got into the left-hand turn lane to drive the final mile toward home, a Tribal Police Officer came up from behind us with his lights and siren on. My son had to pull off to the right to let him through, which forced us to go in the opposite direction from home. My son said we could drive out to the Fairgrounds since we were derailed in that direction anyway. I wanted to see if there was a horse show. No horse show, but a lot of thunderclouds. It had been pouring chubby rain by the time we left the river. It was then that I realized I made the right choice to go fishing instead of taking another riding lesson. Fish bite well in the rain. Horses and leather saddles don't fair so well.

Say Hello to My Little Friends

My daughter says she wants to be called "The Bunny Whisperer." When she's outside exercising in the evening, jackrabbits appear out of the brush across the road and hop right up close to her to eat apples that have fallen from our apple trees.



I don't know why I get so much joy out of seeing bunnies on my lawn and driveway, but it truly is the highlight of my day. This one reminds me of the Playboy bunny...

And this one is the centerfold...

I love bunny tails...

...bunny ears and bunny eyes...

Unfortunately, every time I'm taking pictures of bunnies, some neighbor has to come out to investigate what I'm doing, which scares them off.

My nosy neighbor spent quite a bit of time sitting in her car doing surveillance in front of my house today. Each time I went outside to move the hose around the pasture, she was either parked in front of my house or driving past very slowly and staring. I made ape faces at her, which only made her stare even harder trying to figure out if I was insulting her or just having a seizure.

I felt another pair of eyes on me and turned around to find this nosy fellow...

He likes bunnies too.

The Not-So-Great Cable Caper

On Saturday night our cable connection started getting flaky. We have one of the fastest cable subscriptions, but it was taking over a minute to load a single Internet page in a browser. Our cable company has been on the verge of bankruptcy, and we have experienced connectivity problems repeatedly over the past few months. We never know from one minute to the next whether we will be able to get onto the Internet. This affects me very negatively since I VPN into work from home. However, my company is at the mercy of the same cable company, so I wouldn't have much better luck working from the office.

In the past, my gelding Bombay has dug up the cable and bit into it, because he thought it was a root. I've had to get the cable company out here twice to lay a new cable, and they always lay it across the horse paddock. So, I piled river rocks over where they buried the cable to prevent the horses from digging it up. The last time the cable company came out, it was because they had laid the cable right over the top of our septic tank cover, and the septic tank pumpers broke it.

I said, "Enough is enough! You have to change the route of that cable!" I made them bury it along the outside of all the horse pens, following the fence line so that we always know exactly where it is. However, they didn't have time to bury it more than half an inch under ground. They said they'd send out a digger crew to take care of burying the new cable, and I called for them to do this twice, but they never showed up.

So, within a couple of days my neighbor's gardener showed up with a weed whacker and started whacking along the fence line where the cable was strung. I warned him of the cable not being properly buried, and asked him to be careful not to cut the cable. Then when I let the horses out on the RV lane to eat weeds, they always made a beeline for the location of the cable, because the cable company had disturbed the dirt there just enough to make a lot of weeds grow along the path of the cable. I had to keep shooing the horses away from that area and encourage them to eat elsewhere.

So, on Saturday night when our cable got flaky on us, I remembered my mare Gabbrielle had been eating along the cable path again. My son and I grabbed flashlights and went outside at 9:30 at night with me in my skimpy pajamas to inspect the cable. I wanted to see if Gabbrielle had dug it up and bit into it. I wasn't worried about going out into the dark in my skimpy tap pants and pajama top, because who would see me other than the horses and my son?

So, I walked out my sliding glass door with my flashlight, which spooked my horses, triggering a stampede. I looked up and there was my nosy neighbor standing on her porch staring at me. She was on her way into her house after walking her dog at night (probably getting a good look inside the neighbors' windows which are all open to let cool air in), when she spotted my flashlight. Apparently, she thought that burglars were trying to break into our house, so she called to her husband to come out. The two of them stood on their porch and stared at us.

My son and I started talking, they heard our voices, and the woman said, "It's them."

At that point I thought they would go back into their house since they realized that it was just us and not burglars, but no. They continued to stand out there and stare at us while I was half-naked in my private yard digging around in the dirt at night with a flashlight. I had to be careful to keep my top closed when I bent over, because I figured that by then they probably had out their binoculars. They were so curious about what we were doing that they did not go back into their house until we went into ours. I was so irritated over the whole thing that I missed my opportunity to drop my pants and shine the flashlight on my butt. Actually, I considered it, but didn't want to embarrass my son.

I suspect they were still worried about burglars, because when I went outside in the wee hours of the morning to feed my horses, they had set their dog loose in the neighborhood to alert them if anything suspicious was going on. Everyone hates it when they do this, because their dog chases other people's pets and horses around terrorizing them. Of course, the dog started barking at me and running all over the place in a panic because God forbid the neighbor came out of her house to feed the horses. And how many mornings for how many years has this dog seen me do this? Anyway, the barking probably woke up the entire neighborhood. I said, "Awwww, shut up!" as loudly as I could to let the neighbors know that I didn't appreciate their rude awakening. I was still half asleep from working 7 days a week, 10 to 16 hours a day, and didn't need that.

I couldn't find a place where Gabbrielle had dug up the cable, and the Internet is fine this morning, so it must just be Charter Cable acting up again.

More Humor

This morning my son came walking into my office with a frozen glass filled with one ice blob. I asked if he did that for some reason, and he said, "No, I was just really tired last night and thought I was putting my water in the fridge."

That reminded me of how I was so tired the other morning that I carried a basket of laundry out to the horses to feed it to them! You know your employer is working you too hard when you start doing chores while sleepwalking.

A Top Hat and Cane for My Horse

Quick! Somebody get a top hat and cane for my horse! Bombay has been a real source of entertainment lately.

We had another Friday meeting at work in which we were told we all had to work through the weekend. No one bothered to ask if I was available. I've got company coming into town and had plenty of plans. Anyway, amongst my 10 to 16-hour work days, I occasionally get up from my desk to venture outside for fresh air and to pet the horses. Each time I go outside, Bombay makes me laugh.

CASE #1:
I let the horses out to pick weeds on the RV lane while I cleaned the paddock. I had my truck and horse trailer parked on the lane, so the horses had to squeeze between it and the fence. You may recall that Bombay has a phobia about squeezing into tight spaces, passing between signs on a trail, walking through gates with trash cans next to them... When it was time for them to go back into the paddock, I pointed at the gate and called out, "Let's go in!"

Lostine and Gabbrielle went right in, but Bombay took off at his silly sideways gallop, throwing his head in the air and laughing. He galloped right in between the fence and my trailer without any concern. I grabbed my lunge whip and said, "BOMBAY! GO IN!"

He did his silly sideways gallop all the way back through the gate, passing through that narrow aisle once again with no hesitation. I think next time he feigns fear at tight spots, I'm going to call his bluff.

CASE #2:
I had put the bar window back onto Gabbrielle's stall to get it out of the way while we stained the barn. I walked outside to find that Bombay had unlatched the window and was swinging it back and forth with his nose for entertainment.

CASE #3:
I walked outside and noticed a Magpie walking hurriedly along the sand in the paddock. Right behind it was Bombay, pushing the bird with his nose. Bombay herded the bird right out of the paddock, then turned up his nose and marched off with a sense of self-satisfaction.

CASE #4:
I was cleaning the paddock and tossed some manure into my Ursa Wagon, only my Ursa Wagon was no longer where I left it, so the manure landed on the ground. I turned to see Bombay with his hocks pressed against the wagon and walking backwards, pushing it as he went. I took the wagon away from him and said, "At least you could push it to where I need it to be."

Almost as if he understood me, he backed into it again, and pushed it alongside me as I moved down the fence line picking up manure. Now that's a helpful horse!

I Miss Riding

I haven't been writing posts, because I haven't been riding. Each time I attempt to make some time to work with the horses, someone or something takes it away. I had to postpone yet another vacation day thanks to another important deadline at work. I'm suffering through the project from hell that seems to be a bottomless pit.

Today I took a lunch break with the intention of taking Gabbrielle for a walk, but when I got outside I discovered that the water troughs were getting low and needed cleaning. But first I had to change my shoes so that I wouldn't get my good shoes muddy. Then I had to find the bleach. On and on it went and by the time I finished dealing with the water troughs my lunch hour was over. I fed the horses their lunch and returned to my office feeling defeated.

This is also the time of year when we have a stream of visitors who are vacation, which forces me to juggle my work hours with their visits. It frustrates me that everyone around me seems to be on vacation, and I have to fight for one lousy day off. I feel like I have to clean house for them and do the marketing, so that we've got plenty of food and drinks on hand. Trying to fit in a ride is almost impossible with everything else that is going on. To add insult to injury, my husband was just told that he is required to take 2 weeks off from work by law and is being pressured to do so. My company, on the other hand, has no concern about the law.

I had the manager of a different department at work contact me to be on call to answer the customer support phones for the next several weeks. He started out the conversation with "Sorry you haven't been able to get your vacation days, but..."

He said we are all in a crunch right now. Ummmmm. If that's so, then why have so many other people been allowed to take vacations in the past few weeks? I had to work double-time both last week and this week, because people we depend on were on vacation and I had to do their tasks for them.

I was hired as a software engineer, and now they are trying to get me to answer phones. I feel like I am too old, too cranky, and too impatient to be working with customers. I'd embarrass the company by saying something we all would regret. I'm a hermit, which is about as far from being a social butterfly as possible. I hate phones. Every time one rings, I jump out of my skin and scream an obscenity, because I know it's going to be someone who wants something from me. No one ever calls up and says, "I'm calling because I want to do something nice for you."

Fortunately, they didn't have an extra company phone line to give me and didn't want to route customer support calls to my home phone, so I was relieved of that duty. I suspect the man sensed my stress and lack of phone skills too, probably deciding I wasn't the ideal candidate for the job. My philosophy is that if you don't want to flip burgers, just keep dropping them on the floor. I'm already working 60 hours a week. Do these people want me to die of a heart attack? I don't have much more to give.

Anyway, back to the horses... I miss them even though they are just outside my windows. I get jittery and cranky if I go too long without being able to ride. I've ridden enough these past couple of years that I feel more at home in the saddle than on my own two feet. I have had to cancel the past two weeks of equitation lessons thanks to my job. I finally had to tell my instructor not to call me, because I doubted I will get a day off anytime in the near future. I told him I'd call him if I ever do. I worry that winter will come before I can even get Gabbrielle 30-days under saddle, which was my goal for this year.

If this truly were just "a crunch", I'd deal with it and look forward to better days. However, every job I have had for the past 11 years has put me in a crunch. It's the nature of the software industry. People have to work as hard and as fast as possible in order for their company to survive, and even then you sometimes still get laid off.

After suffering through two lay offs in recent years, I desperately work as hard and as fast as I can to make my company successful. I've experienced the correlation between employees who slack off and companies that capsize. You have to keep steering the boat and baling the water out at the same time, or everyone drowns. But there's always a balance between doing that and trying to not drown yourself in the process. I will continue steering and baling, but someone else is going to have to oil the engine... and if I happen to be able to lift a leg over a saddle at the same time, more power to me.

A Day in the Eastern Sierra

On Sunday my kids and I went to the Twin Lakes area in California to visit their grandmother. We each brought our cameras and went on a hike.


We wanted to share some of the pictures we took.


We did a little rock climbing...




There were lots of critters...





Lots of trees and water...










I've been coming to this spot since I was a child every summer for thirty-some years now. Each year we find more people, more vehicles, more trash, and more destruction. Here is an argument for why some people need to keep their kids on leashes...