cough

Elena has a cough that just won't go away. We've tried a couple of things including an antihistamine and now are adding penicillin. The penicillin is for the green snot coming out of her nose. It's easier to understand if I describe it fully. While at Dr. Dave's I saw a chart listing what horses like. Besides the old standby molasses they listed caramel. So we got some. She loves it. She went from a finicky eater to licking the bowl. When she's done her nose is all sticky. She doesn't care. A side benefit: She's always played games that made her hard to catch. Not anymore. She is a slave to the magic caramel.

no sale

There won't be any more sales for a few weeks. So Monday Tami came out to pick up hay. Things don't move fast with her. First she put Leilani's shoe back on. Leilani has lost it so many times it's hard to put on. Then we went out to take pictures of her roan yearling. The horses only sort of cooperate. They're either in your face or they look away. Then we loaded both of our livestock trailers. We had to stop on the way to move a turtle off the road. Tami hates running over turtles. We got Paula and headed to Tami's house. On the way we stopped at Dairy Queen so everyone could get a blizzard. We got there about 9. We unloaded my trailer and I was going to leave but since I was already totally soaked with sweat I said we might as well unload hers. So we did. I made Claire and Lucy go with us. That's part of my new sterner approach to dogs. Tami said they have an easy life so I made them go even though I knew we'd get back after dark. We got home about 11. For me that's like the middle of night. Good thing we stopped at Dairy Queen.

hay

Tami wanted some hay and she wanted small bales. I said I'd get our baler out if she'd help. She said yes immediately but I don't think she knew why I thought I needed help. We went out Tuesday evening. The baler had set in the shed 4 or 5 years, or 15 or 20. Immediately it started missing ties and shearing bolts. We drove back home and started taking it apart. Tami tried reading the manual and said it wasn't much help. I already knew that. I told her that for all my baling all I knew was to get grandpa when something went wrong. After awhile we figured it out and it did a good job. Tami said the bales were perfect. When you buy small bales they weigh about 100 pounds. These were about half that. At Mondays sale Zack got head butted by a cow. He is now excited and anxious to go back.

on the road

Friday night Tami came out to go riding. We looked at her horses first do we didn't get started until after 6:30. Once we got started we really went. We went east past Hoffman's. Brian had a dry field so we went into that. Tami told me to lope on Leilani and of course I had all kinds of excuses why I couldn't. Since she never listens Leilani and I took off. It took quite a bit to get her to lope. Tami said she had to learn. Of course she'd run before but not with somebody on her. I did finally get her loping. We were talking about Elena so when we got back we went the other way. Elena just steppe right along, the blacktop was no problem, the ditch was no problem. We were there for awhile. By the time we got back it was almost dark. For me that was 2 nights in a row that I was out until 10.The night before I took Leilani to Laramie to have her feet done.

kids

Angie brought 3 of her kids to the sale. Shea, 11, Cole, 8 and Zack 5. She's in for a long summer. They were all riding and all over the place. Shea accidentally let a cow out on top of her mother. There was another cow coming and Shea asked me if she should let it go too. I said sure, at this point Angie wasn't going to get any madder. Shea said that's what dad always says and let the cow out. Angie came screaming up that someone had to be in charge. Possibly she was talking to me but I couldn't get to the gate. Later Shea and Cole told me if you don't like someone to bite your tongue and say apple at the same time. They wanted me to do it. I bit my tongue and said tomato. They explained in some detail that it couldn't be any fruit or vegetable, it had to be apple. When we got to the calves Angie asked Zack if he wanted to go with her. Of course he did. I asked him if he was going to chase some cows. He looked at me like I was a total idiot and said no he was going to push calves.