Baked Leaves

It's the mid-July heat wave, hot enough to cook the leaves on my Japanese maple -- about 104.

The weather service says that it's unseasonably hot, but I can't remember a mid-July in 20 years when the temps didn't hit a hundred and some more.

I think what they meant was "unreasonably" hot. We got in the pool for a while, but the water has warmed quickly and was barely refreshing.

The AC is running, which is annoying to me, but the evening temps just have not been cooling. Somewhere around 5 am this morning, the outdoor temperatures made for good sleeping. I got up at 6 and came indoors to open up all the windows and let some cooler air in. Tonight we closed up the tent and have opted to sleep inside.

I Won't Regret It Tomorrow, No Matter What

I suspect that tomorrow I'm going to be dragging around like a semi-salted snail.

The horses were loaded in the trailer and off we went to Woodward Reservoir at 10am. We rode on the roads, we rode in the water, we rode back to the trailer, had lunch, and then set off again to ride in water and on the roads again. I dragged home at 6pm, sunburnt and smiling.

We saw tall white egrets and great blue herons; flocks of red-winged blackbirds and gaggles of geese; coots and mallards and buzzards ... the air was cool coming across the water, which reflected a cloudless blue sky.

Oh, I'll be sore, but I'll still smile.

Benefit from an Icky Task

Shoveling up dog crap is not my favorite activity of the day, but with two large dogs in residence, well, it just has to be done.

Sunday evening, some hours before we were to sleep in the tent, I scooped poop -- not wanting to wake up in the night and say, "Wish I'd taken care of that before nightfall."

While I was scooping, this amazing insect showed up, flitting about the north side of the house, landing on the irrigation-sprayers. I dropped shovel and ran for my camera. Braving the horrible plague of flies we're having this year, I stood with the lens focused on the sprinkler head and waited.

Bernie found the correct nomenclature, but to me it was just this astounding white-ass dragonfly, the likes of which I had never seen in my life. According to the internet article Bern read, this dragonfly shouldn't even be in this area. Maybe it migrated here, hearing that there was such a surfeit of flies this year.

The photos I took were well worth the three blistering fly bites I'm medicating as a result.

Extraordinary.

Tired Old Sore Ass

Today, Cathy the Mad Horsewoman asked me this question: "Why is it, that when the horses are carrying us, and they do the walking, that we are tired after our rides?"

I don't have an answer for her. We rode for nearly two hours today, and I was exhausted at the end, my "end" truly sore, my back weary, my legs and arms and shoulders begging for reprieve. Dink was tired -- lots of yawns when we were de-tacking -- but I was dead, and very glad that there were leftovers for Bernie's and my lunch. ( I was dead, and zombies do love leftovers.)

Leftover barbecued chicken and potato salad ... blissful.

Then a protracted session with Photoshop to repair and replace some graphics ... bleah. Now I'm really tired.

HE NEVER EVEN FLINCHED!!!

This cropduster has been working in our area for ... maybe twenty-five years, maybe more.

We've watched him make his graceful turns right over our house, the roar of the engine bringing the whole family running out of the house to watch. I saw the plane in the air as I drove out to the ranch for this morning's ride, and considered calling Cathy the Mad Horsewoman and saying, "Look, there's a cropduster working, let's ride another day," but I didn't do it; as it turned out, Cathy the Mad was already at the ranch.

I noted with relief that the sound of the plane had disappeared, assuming the fields were done. Cathy and I saddled our horses and rode out.

We headed towards the orchards past a cornfield when we heard the drone of the plane in the distance, coming right for us. I shifted my weight in my saddle, preparing for Dink to bolt, and moved my feet to make sure I had only the tips of my toes in the stirrups. (If you're unseated in a horse wreck, you DON'T want to risk getting a foot caught in the stirrup and get dragged!)

The plane approached, getting louder and louder until the sound was deafening, and the plane swooped over the field, releasing its chemical load -- only about fifty yards away!

I was prepared for a bolt, for a buck, for a darting escape into the trees of the orchard to our left ... but it was unnecessary. Neither Dink nor Peanut, Cathy's horse, so much as flicked an ear. They couldn't have cared less.

Now those are two amazing horses.

There are many reasons I like boarding Dink at Happy Talk Ranch, and this is a prime example of one of them: the horses are used to all kinds of heavy equipment being used around them -- backhoes, bulldozers, front-loaders, tractors, hay equipment, orchard machines ... and the sound and sight of cropdusting airplanes.

Then again, Dink and Peanut are exceptional mounts, so incredibly trustworthy. Cathy and I agreed today that we're unlikely to see such two great horses again in our lives.

Long in the Tooth

Horse's teeth don't get cavities ... unless, I guess, their owners feed them candy bars all their lives ... but they do get oddly-shaped as the horse ages.

Horse teeth never really stop growing but their constant grazing wears their teeth down unevenly. In the wild, an older horse's teeth become uneven, it begins to have trouble chewing and digesting its food, and subsequently weakens, feeding the carnivore next up the food chain.

In captivity, we have our horses' teeth "floated."

See Diagram One. When one side of the teeth/tooth doesn't grind down on its own, we have the vet come in and reduce the long side so that Horse's teeth meet efficiently again.

The picture is a rendition of not MY horse's tooth, but of a tooth I saw extracted from a mare whose teeth were "floated" the same day the vet came out to do Dink's teeth. The mare had a loose tooth, which the vet pulled out almost with his bare hands. It looked very much like my image -- a low inner side, and a high outer side.

Floating reduces the high side to match the other, as per the red line.

Interesting process: the vet injects the horse with an anesthetic. The horse, in a matter of seconds, begins to look sleepy, and then rearranges his limbs as though he is a sodden drunk. At that point, Horse couldn't give a shit what you want to do with his mouth, which is prime for the vet to bring out his power files and saw/file down those crags of tooth.

Horses have no nerves to their teeth, so the noise of the drill/rasp might annoy them, but they're in no pain.

Dink had no loose teeth, and his teeth were not in too bad a shape. But this was a necessary maintenance operation, and I must say that in subsequent days, I took pleasure in hearing his teeth grind properly as he snarfed his food. It's a sound that I should have missed months before, and just didn't. But I know it now, and won't overlook it again.

There is no post-operative trauma with this procedure, and the next morning, Dink was raring to go.

He yawns after we ride ... I wonder if he is as tired as I am?

The Much-Improved Horse

This morning, when I finally dragged my weary body to the ranch, Dink jerked his head up at my approach and walked quickly to me.

He shoved his head into the halter I held out, and walked briskly with me to the tack area. There he shifted from foot to foot until I sprayed him with fly spray, and then offered to give me a little bitey-witey when I was within reach.

Back to his old self.

His dapper demeanor dissipated most of my weariness, and in minutes we were headed out the gate. Today, he really took close notice of everything: a farmer inspecting his sprinklers in the orchards, a kid on a quad, a horde of crows congregating for mischief. His pace was back to his usual soldier march, and we even trotted for a while, with lots of enthusiasm in his step.

On the way home, my hat blew off onto the road. Dink didn't care, seeing it fly off behind him. And he was perfect as I bent down from the saddle and picked the hat up with the tip of my riding crop ... which I appreciated because getting up in the saddle is a major effort these days. What a good horse.

When we were done, I gave him a dose of SandClear and a few cups of sweet feed. He gobbled avidly, which is just what I wanted to see. Dink with no appetite is definitely ill.

I did note, however, that when he was eating the feed, bits of it were falling from his mouth. That probably means that his teeth need to be floated -- filed down so that he can chew evenly. Wonderful, a whopping vet bill. Still, it beats the hell out of having a vet come out because he's sick.

Thank God for his great improvement.