Life as we know it ...: It's over ??

I swear, this weekend only lasted about a minute and a half!

Joey and I went to his first dog obedience class over at the dog park on Saturday, but I was much less than impressed. The woman who's holding the class spent the whole hour going over what sort of equipment you need, the absolute basics of obedience -- nothing I haven't heard dozens of times before, given that Joey is far from my first dog -- while we all stood there in the blazing sun in 95 degree heat. Poor Joey finally gave up and just stretched out on the grass and panted until I insisted on taking him over to the faucet to hose him down. Poor guy! Even his therapy is done in air conditioning! He is NOT used to being outside in the boiling sun. If the next class isn't better we probably won't be going back. One of the other people suggested she let them bring a tent like they use for tailgating. Since there are only five of us, that MIGHT work. But finding a shady spot somewhere else in the park would probably work better, actually. Or maybe I'll just take him to one of the classes at PetSmart to help get him used to being around other dogs and people -- at least those are held in an air conditioned store!

Went over to bring Duke in from the pasture Thursday evening and hose him off (unlike Bug, he has NO problem sweating!) I found he had a horrible sunburn on his bald face. He was bright red and the sides of his nose had quarter-inch-thick scabs where he'd been rubbing it against things. So I cleaned him up and put antibiotic ointment all over this face from his cheekbones down while he made that silly face horses make when they taste or smell something strange. (Wish I'd had my camera.) Then I put a long-nose fly mask on him that comes clear down over his entire face and put his breakaway halter on over that so he wouldn't be able to get it off - even with the help of the other horses! But when I came to get him on Friday night, he had been rubbing against things - I guess because that sunburn itched - and had made his face even MORE sore. Poor guy. So I cleaned him up again and left him inside in his stall with the fan on. It's really hot in that barn, but I need to keep him out of the sun until I can get that burn healed up so he won't rub that heavy mesh fly mask against his burn. It's looking a lot better today, so maybe I'll let him go out at night and just keep him inside or in one of the shaded cattle pens (if it doesn't rain) during the day for a few more days. Sure wish he had access to a shaded pasture.

I WANT THOSE HORSES HOME!!!

On Friday, the first fence guy gave us a pretty ridiculous estimate. The fencing materials part was fine - but we can order those directly from the supplier so he knew he couldn't make that too high. But the installation part . . . well, if we bought ALL the materials for him including the fencing materials, the posts, the concrete -- everything, then he would be willing to install it for a mere $11,000. Uh -- I don't think so! So I got a local guy to come out on Saturday. He will do the installation of the posts for under $1,000. Okay. That's more like it. So we'll definitely get on with it when Mark gets in again.

Jennifer LaBorde - no, it's Bridges now that she's married - Joey's physical therapist, posted a picture of him wearing her sunglasses on Facebook yesterday. Love it! "Joe Cool."

No wonder he loves going to therapy. He must have those people wrapped around his finger -- er, paw. It really is amazing -- when I leave for work on Tuesdays and Thursdays (the days he doesn't get to go) he gets really really upset. I keep buying him all kinds of chew toys - some the kind that hold treats inside - to distract him when I leave. But if it were up to him, he'd definitely go to therapy every single day. He LOVES it!

This afternoon I went over to Nancy's arena to watch Torri ride for the first time since her knee sugery. Phineas was such a sweetie. He behaved perfectly.

Wow, I sure wish we had the room (or the money!) for an arena like that. It looks to me like it's about 150 X 50 -- plenty of room for several horses to work at the same time.

And I love the gate latch she has on the entrance gate from the stable into the arena. We've been trying to find something to use on our gates that can be opened from horseback and this is perfect. So simple! It doesn't hold the gate exactly in place -- there's a bit of "give" to it but it doesn't move far enough to cause any problems. And if you needed to, you could put a chain or another kind of latch somewhere further down and just take that off when you plan to ride through it. The pin that runs through the upright would need to be welded onto that cross piece - which is probably why nothing like this is sold in stores as a gate latch. But for anyone who can weld anything at all it should be pretty simple to do.

It POURED down rain Saturday. Judging from the water in the horses' buckets, we must have gotten about 2-3" in just a couple hours. Here's the redone pond in the back. I think the outlet to the big canal needs to be widened and deepened just a bit since once the water got this high it began to back up into the swale that drains the pastures making it look like a river! But -- fortunately -- that's the backhoe parked there right next to the outlet. How convenient! (By the way, that's not smoke -- that's what happens to the camera lens when you go out of the air conditioning and try and take a picture outside in this humidity.)