I had to do some horse arranging this morning. The boys never let Sophie near the water when they first come in off the grass. So I moved Zion over and put myself against his side, and invited Sophie to come and drink with him. And it worked. He was very good while I stood there, and she was able to get some relief. Of course, the moment Dustin moved his head, the other two were on alert.

I have discovered something cool – if you get a very narrow syringe, one that will fit into the gentian violet bottle, you just suck the stuff out, clean out the hoof grooves, and apply happily with the syringe. No mess, completely think enough to make a diff, and it travels very nicely down the groove without bathing you in blue.

When I left

Hot. Hot for June? Maybe. Not if you think it’s almost the 4th. I water the horses down to cool them off, but Geneva laughs at me over it. “Oh, precious….’ She croons, just to get my goat.

Everybody is limping on the driveway, so it’s hard for me to tell if Sophie is just ouch-footed, or if it’s something worse.

When Char and I went for the last time yesterday, about four in the afternoon, Tiger’s head came right up to watch us climb the gate. It had cooled down outside, only low eighties, but seemed less because there was a wind coming up, pushed along by a bank of gray clouds. Manes and tails were blowing like lazy banners.

The air was full of smoke. There’s a wild fire on the east face of the Ocre mountains – we had seen the plumes of smoke, hundreds of feet above them. A red and white fire plane skimmed low over Jim’s house next door – we chased it to the airport, mad because it was in the forbidden pattern, before we realized what it was.

But back to the gate – as I put my leg over the top, I looked up and saw Tiger start, all in array – tail way up like an Arab, springs in his fetlocks, head up and main flying, he jumped through the pasture gate onto the driveway – and there was no longer any stiffness in his movement.

“Hello,” charlotte said, laughing. “I’m an Arabian.”

But don’t tell the quarter pony association she said that.

Westin came at 8:00 this morning. I’d let their hooves go too long. I’d had to clip a flap off one of Sophie’s a couple of weeks before. We set up in the already warm sun. I’d just brought Dustin, Zion and Sophie in. I started with Zion, who is sometimes fractious. And went to get Tiger, who last time gave Westin fits.

I’ve been worried since first grass about Sophie, after last year’s brush with founder. She still has that pulse in her fetlock. It’s not like last year, as far as I can remember. It’s still round under my fingers, but doesn’t have that same hot, quick force to it. Westin would know if anything was going wrong, and I was anxious to have him come and take a look.

Last year, by the end of July, she was totally lame in the front. I’d been keeping her in the jail afternoon and night every other day – or maybe every day at first. We built the jail last year for her, so that Jetta wouldn’t be run to death when they were all in. I was feeding in the afternoon, from noon on. And I’d been working up to three or four hours on the grass. But I began to notice – I don’t know when. I’m guessing around this time last year, that Sophie was stiff shouldered and stumbling when she came out of the jail in the morning, and that she had stopped running down the driveway to the pasture gate, instead, walking a calm, stiff shouldered walk.

We ended up at the vet, and found that she did, in fact have laminitis. They put her on bute and some other things – which meant two weeks of inoculations. But she took it all like a trouper – which pleased me, as I had to give her shots in the butt, and wasn’t anxious to be kicked. We got her moving again, but I had to keep her to an hour on the grass, which led to her losing weight – so we had to feed her alfalfa. But I wasn’t sure that wouldn’t hurt her too. It was a tough time, and we finished treatment only a day before we had to leave for Wales.

I ran into a horse in England that was suffering a kind of on-again, off-again lameness. I felt the fetlocks and found that same driving pulse. “Chronic laminitis,” I told them – and suggested that the vet come look. Because I’d done so much reading, and it was so obvious. Still don’t know if I was right or not, but there you are.

Laminitis is a strange thing. Evidently, nobody really does understand it very well. The end of it is founder, with the dropping of the coffin bone, and the rotation of the legs and hooves – and death. It seems to have much to do with eating too much, or eating the wrong thing, or having feed changed – the theory being, I think, that the dying microbes (they starve if you change the feed too quickly and they don’t have time to adapt) give out toxins that get into the blood, and because the circulation is so terrible in a horse’s lower legs, the toxins pool in the feet.

But it’s been also been associated with trauma, with injury, with holding still too long – and with heat. People have loaded perfectly sound horses into trailers, driven over summer-seared highways, and found foundered horses at the end of the several hours’ journey.

I suspected last year – just a gut feeling – that the jail, flanked as it is by the bald metal wall of the barn in the hot late afternoon sun, gets hot enough, it might have hurt her. I have noticed that the pulse seems to surge and ebb with the air temperature. When we had a cold snap at the beginning of the month, I couldn’t feel it at all. Even when she kept her feet still long enough for me to get a fix on the veins.

Westin gave her a clean bill of health. And he told me that he’d just been to a hoof convention – a guy who has been doing heavy research into all of this, and who has cured founder with regular and judicious trimming. This guy says that the sugar content of grass changes from minute to minute during the day. This makes sense, since grass is just a tube of organic cells that pass moisture from one to the other, pulling nutrients out of the ground. Evidently, the sugar tends to be highest in the dark hours, when the grass is at rest, or at times when the pasture is wet. During the heat of the day, the grass uses the sugar in growth, so the levels in the leaves drop. But it can go up and down at any moment.

He found just a little redness in the laminae. The redness shows that inflammation is either present or has been, and it takes a long time for the hoof to recover enough to have shed that redness. He could tell that she was almost recovered from last year’s problem. But I am hoping that we’re not seeing the beginning of a problem.

Still, she’s fat and sleek and shiny and is moving freely. So we’re doing okay so far.

Dustin had thrush, after a long, wet spring. I don’t clean the hooves that often when we’re not riding, and I’ve kind of trusted the gravel to keep things cleaned out. You have to be careful of getting manure and gravel together packed up there inside. People usually use CopperTox for this, but the stuff really scares me – it’s very toxic. You don’t want it on your hands. You don’t want it on the horse’s legs or hair. So I thought – hey, when the kids had thrush, we used gentian violet. In their mouths. No fear there. So I’ve decided to treat the hooves with that.

NOTE: next day. Found it at Kmart, and it costs very little. But Whoa – does that stuff stain. The applicator doesn’t really work for hooves, so after several minutes of trying to paint it on, the last two hooves, I just poured it into the grooves. Which was great, except that, for a heavyish liquid, the stuff comes out very fast. I dyed both hands blue, got it on my jeans, and was afraid I’d ruined the setting for my diamond (very little, pleasant diamonds- my anniversary ring.)

Now I just have blue cuticles. It won’t come out of my knit work pants. And I don’t know if it will do the trick. But the experiment is on.

Jetta had a little of it, too. And the floor of her hoof was all riddled with holes, but we think that might just have been the wearing of manure-packed gravel over a period of time, working itself into her hooves, which tend to be soft. So I’m going to have to be more careful with those feet.

Westin always cuts them pretty close. Last year, Jetta got clipped, and I had to keep her on the grass for weeks. Everytime they get trimmed, the driveway becomes their enemy. I NEVER should have put road base on it. It’s like “Ow, Ew, OOOO, Oouch!” all of them – like a line of cats on a hot tin roof.

And Tiger blew it. Three hooves went fine. But that last, the rear right, he just cannot want to trust to anybody. Westin finally took him out onto the grass and put a scotch hobble on him. This consists of a thick rope tied first around the neck, then looped around the offending foot – the rope is pulled through the neck loop till the foot is hiked way up in the air, then tied off. Then you make the colt move. Tiger was hopping on three feet, and then kicking and tugging with the tied foot. He was not going to give up, either.

The point of this is to put him in a position where he is in control – the only thing he is fighting is himself. He hopped, and fell over and got up and hopped and kicked. It wore a place in is neck, because he wouldn’t give in. And then, finally, he was standing still, thinking about it. Wes took the hobble off and tried to do the foot, right there. But the fight started up again, and the hobble went on again. Three times, this happened.

In the end, Tiger allowed the foot to be trimmed. But he was sore and stiff for two days after – and what with the fact that his feet were tender, he walked more like an old man than a colt. But he was find today (Sunday). Just a little stiff. And very sensitive to a touch to the foot. Yesterday, I was trying to clean off the rope burn on the back of that foot, and at the slightest touch, up came that foot. Not that he’ll let you keep it up there . . .

I had to go to a business thing this morning. Very aggravating. I think people ought to be paid for training their own horses, mowing their own lawns and cleaning their own houses. I got up at 5:30 am to let the horses out, but I had to have Murphy take them back in again. I got to the barn, opened the gate, crossed the arena to Sophie’s jail. She was NOT pawing, and I thought that was very odd. Just standing there, cool and patient. Very odd. I did not go into the barn. Murphy put the big ones in, the hours later, just before he went up to the university, put Jetta and Tiger in.

When I got out of the meeting (only bearable because Cammon was there), I went home and down to the barn to check on things. I opened the door, and noticed huge divots in the gravel that makes the floor. (Not really gravel – a sort of tumbled, smooth pea gravel that doesn’t cut or compact). Then I saw the hay. I had just opened that bail the day before, and here it was, shredded and a third smaller all along the long side of it. So I called Murphy. “So what happened?” I asked him.

But he had no idea what I was talking about. “This bail,” I said, not believing he couldn’t have understood. The barn had been shut when I got there, and the stall backs all firmly chained. As he told me what he’d done, the picture came clear: I had evidently forgotten to chain the jail stall back the day before, when I put Jetta in. Jetta is no escape artist. But I let Jetta out every evening and put Sophie in for the night. And that must have been when things had gotten interesting.

Murphy, when he came down to put the big horses in, had found the jail stall-back standing open, and had closed it. I hadn’t seen it that morning, because I didn’t go into the barn. So Sophie had evidently had the run of the barn all night – her own little time in the flat. No wonder she was so calm and patient next morning. She was one satiated girl.

I talked Murphy into coming with me again. We got into the tack room and stripped my saddle for leathers, then Murphy put them on the dead saddle while I played the Parelli games with Tiger. We used Zion’s thick pad, and put the saddle on the little guy.

He’s been saddled before. Geneva does it, early on. And we had saddled him before – I’d used my own saddle and climbed up there and had Guy lead me around on him once. His ears went back, but I think it was listening closely rather than being cross. But we didn’t take any chances. I’ve been sitting on his back off and on while he eats for the last year. And I’ve spent that time jumping around him, flapping my arms and making a general fool of myself, desensitizing him for that period of time. He has been very calm through all of this.

He had no problem with this new/ancient saddle. I let him smell it as long as he wanted to, then we put it up there and sent him off in a circle. First: walk, then change direction and walk. Then the trot. I felt like, if anything’s going to happen, it’s going to be when you kick up the speed and movement. But nothing happened.

He wasn’t particularly energetic about it, though. It was a very hot morning, and he was seeming a little off and dreary again—and the hot pad and saddle couldn’t have helped. So we offered him the trailer, and he climbed in. We let him decide to come out forward, but he had trouble with that, couldn’t figure out how to move the first foot down, and now I think about it, I’m guessing that odd weight on his back had thrown off his balance.

After all that, we took off the rig, closed up the back of the trailer and gave Tiger a nice little showering off.

This morning, all Murphy had to do was go up to school to turn in his animation project. So I wheedled until he agreed to come to the arena with me first, to work the trailer for a few moments. I cannot close the trailer myself. I tried again yesterday, and I just don’t weigh enough to counter the warp in the metal – so I needed Murphy.

We got to the pasture, collected the big horses, and put a halter on Tiger. He’s amazingly good about these things, even though he knows he should still have the grass under his feet. I took him to the arena while Murphy took care of the little water trough, and ran Tiger through the first games. Murphy opened the trailer (I’d had it tied as tightly shut as I could – throwing myself against it and tying knots with the rope in my teeth), and I circled Tiger to the back.

And he got in. Just like that. And I backed him out – pretty much, just like that. We did it a couple of times. Then Murphy got in, while Tiger was watching, and closed the farthest back stall divider. This changes the shape of the trailer – makes it shorter, and puts a foreign shape across it. I didn’t know how Tiger would feel about that.

But he got right in, and walked back to examine this new thing. And then I backed him out. He wasn’t quite as good at it as he had been the day before, slipping a bit off the very edge, and scaring himself a little. But still. He did it.

Then Murphy closed the next partition. Shorter still.

No problem. In Tiger went. And out he backed.

Then we closed the last one. When Tiger got in that time, I was astounded – very little space is left after that last partition is closed. Zion is the one who usually rides back there, because he is so compact. When Tiger stepped up and in, his nose nearly ran into the partition. But it didn’t phase him. Backing got a little weird because the slant left no room for him to go straight out. But he did fine.

We kissed him and took him back onto the grass, feeling great.

That afternoon, I went out to Western Trade and picked up the dead saddle. I’d been looking for one we could put on Tiger and leave for several hours, no worries about rolling on it. Finally found one with a broken tree – a well used thing, let me tell you. The guy had reinforced a loose D ring for me, and slit the apron in the back for a rear rigging. All I had to do was supply the latigo, off-billet, cinch and back cinch.

I have been meaning to work with the baby on the trailer. I parked the trailer in the arena, a little off to the side, so that I could give Tiger a clear shot at it without scary neighbors or harrows or barbed wire fences to complicate things. But weeks went by, and everything was too chaotic—adding on to the studio, terror about money, birthdays and English classes and comings and goings and doing the website. It seemed like every time I went out to the barn, I just had to hurry back again.

But not today. Today, I put everybody out at about seven in the morning. After a couple of hours, I put the big guys in, and then I brought Tiger in, leaving Jetta out of the grass by herself. I put the Parelli halter on him, even though it’s still really too big, and began to go through the games with him. My purpose was to get him circling, keeping in mind Clinton Anderson’s technique – keep a horse circling and changing directions and working, then offer him the peace and sanctuary of the trailer.

I opened the back of the trailer – it’s a little bit loud, since the accident Guy had with it, a little warped and creaky. And the second it was open, here came the equine masses, as if they had never seen the inside of the thing before, each one taking a turn standing warily by the opening and extending a delicate neck and nose for a sample of the inner atmosphere.

Tiger and I went through the games easily, as we almost always do – except for porcupine on the nose. And then I set him to going around – one way at a walk, then the other way at a walk. Crank it up to a trot one way, then the other. And then the walk again, this time working counter-clockwise around me as I moved slowly, inexorably toward the open trailer. Every time he went past the trailer, Tiger had his eye fixed on it. He was suspicious. And with good enough reason.

Finally, I tried to take the arc right to the back. But of course, he stopped way short. Head up, but not snorting or fretting, he planted his feet and tried to look immoveable. But my will was too strong. Or he can’t really say no. I pulled the lead a little and encouraged him to walk up. I held the rope up in the direction of the trailer, and swung the popper gently, calling him on.

And he came up – carefully, nose down. He smelled the floor and took a little look before hanging back. So I walked him away and started him circling again.

The second time we came up on it was much the same. But this time, when I encouraged him forward, he stepped right up onto the trailer floor – one foot. Another foot. But there he stopped. A trailer is a great, booming, hollow thing – intimidating, narrow, low ceilinged. He stepped back down. And I was fine with that.

We circled some more.

This time, when we came up to the trailer, he climbed right in. I couldn’t make up my mind whether I should just drop the long lead, or climb up behind him, holding it. I didn’t want him to step on the rope and panic in there. But I didn’t want him to panic for ANY reason with me in there beside him. I opted for dropping the rope, but that turned out to be a mistake: we had just hauled a bunch of condemned Alberta spruces and a large bucket of brown, sticky cheat grass to the leaf dump, and there were needles and pins still all over the floor of the trailer from that trip. Which means that the rope was suddenly bristling with needles and cheat grass darts, which made it really fun for me to slide the length of it through my hands.

He did step on the rope, but true to his sweet nature, he did NOT panic, but stood patiently till I climbed up inside to help him. He was very interested in the inside of the thing. Not that he hadn’t been in it before – but only at scary, in-a-hurry times. Now, it was not going anywhere, and nobody around him was exuding panic. So he smelled and touched and walked to the back. I came up inside with him and walked around to his head. “Look out this funny window,” I said to him, meaning the window we’d had cut in the man door there at the front, so Jetta wouldn’t die of claustrophobia when she had to ride in that slot.

I said, “Come look,” as I would to anybody, and tugged the rope a little, and pointed at it. And danged if he didn’t just come up like anybody would, lean across me and look out at that window.

After a while, I was outside again, and he turned himself around, meaning to come out face first after me. Geneva doesn’t ever allow her horses to come out head first – there’s a real danger of a horse rushing out and running over people. But Stan, next door, always brings his Arabian show horses out head first – when they back out, he says, they can panic, and he’s seen horses step out backward, only to slide forward on the ground so that their legs are under the back of the trailer – cuts, bruises, even more panic.

So I let him come out forward. He was running this show. And I wanted him to understand the distance between the trailer and the ground. He spread his feet like a foal, looking very worried, nose down. But took a little plunge, front feet coming down, body following, but not in panic. He did very well. Was very civilized.

We did this several times – maybe eight or ten times. And he was no longer hesitating at the back. But I only got him to back out once. And he was terrified to do it. I stood facing him, to the right of his head – not wanting to stand in front in case he should surge forward. I spoke happily, shaking the rope, and giving him the “shoo” cues, trying to get him to step back. This is what I got instead: he was repeatedly yielding. At first, I thought he was just trying to look back at the edge. But then I realized – we’d been working him to yield his head around to the side – I do that by standing at his flank, pulling the lead rope up over his back to the other side so that his nose will come around toward me.

What you want to do is hold the rope so that he can’t swing his head away, but not tug, not insist. You just bring that nose around and wait till the horse finally stops leaning away from you, against the halter, and yields, moving his nose toward you and his side voluntarily. When Tiger does this, and when Zion does it, they both make a little nip at their own side. Both of them are great at this now.

And that was what he was doing instead of backing up. After-all, I was standing beside him, not in front as I usually do when I back him. And there was also this pitiful hopefulness in that repeated nipping at his side – “See? I’m doing a good thing. Could we stop now?”

At that point, it occurred to me that the problem was that I had not given him enough work, backing up in practical situations. Zion does it so easily, and so well, I forget that not all horses do it naturally. I used to back all of the horses through all of the gates, back when I was leasing the whole property. But I haven’t backed anybody through a gate for a long time. I had to do better for my little horse.

It has also been a long time since I put my mind to the problem of teaching. I used to school the kids – taught every one of them to read, to understand the concept and functionality of numbers. The reading, especially, I taught them on the fly, developing my own technique as I stumbled along, learning from them what I needed to teach.

Now, I was thinking that way again – that wonderful creative/logical/inventive way. First, I took him out to the closest pasture gate. He was thrilled; those gates usually mean that work is over and eating is imminent. He was disappointed. We walked through that gate head first a couple of times. Then we started backing though it – back up, clear the gate, turn, back through again. And I was using the vocabulary we had developed between us with the Parelli games to explain the rules.

Each time he went through the gate, I closed it a bit, making it a little more strange and difficult. And it took a minute for him to get the idea. He kept wanting to turn around and look. But at last, he caught the vision, and began his backward career.

After the gate, we moved on to the barrels. We have three huge blue pickle barrels out there on the driveway, often used as things to ride around. I brought the three of them over to the hitching rail and lined them up, leaving a little hallway between the two sets of obstacles. Through this, I lead my little horse. He has had only a little trouble worrying about being squeezed, but is more likely to stop and hold still when door he’s gone through catches on his hips than he is to panic.

We went back and forth between the blue barrels and the rail several times, head first. Then I moved the barrels back a bit and we started backing through them. At first, he was puzzled. But he got the idea quickly enough. And never had a problem. Each time he backed through, I made the hall narrower, and still, he did fine. I just stood at his head, and stayed where I was, using the “yo-yo” game signal to back him through all by himself. And that was when I started feeling really wonderful.

Well, I’d felt really wonderful when he’d just stepped up into that trailer, too. But what was happening here was that we were starting to work together – almost, to play together.

Next, I put the barrels down on their sides, leaving just a little space between the two of them. I sent him in a circle – just pointed, jiggled the lead and gave the popper a tiny swing, and around he went, ending up at that little space between the barrels. He only hesitated for a moment, then he walked right through.

After the barrels, I decided it would be good to put down a rail for him to walk over. I really love riding over trot poles – Zion just seems to fly over them. But I’d never asked Tiger to walk over anything. I pulled out a wooden pole, set it across the driveway, and began to circle him again.

It’s funny, it took me so long to understand how to do the circling thing, Year, really. I had never lounged anybody. Then Stan showed me how to lounge Zion – which was a little wild. I suspect somebody used to hit him hard if he didn’t do it well enough for them; he keeps a very worried eye on you and runs out to the very end of the rope, going as fast as he can trot. He and I have been working on the Parelli brand of it – a nice, slow trot with slack in the rope. And his eye is not so worried now.

I started Tiger circling at a walk so that he would have to cross the rail on the ground. And at that point, I had another burst of understanding: THIS is what the games are for. Because I was talking to him with my hands and my rope and my rope end – not touching him with any of it, only giving instructions, and he was understanding, and he was moving exactly as I asked him to move. We were putting together all of the things we’d done in the games, but like people fitting words together into new sentences. It was breath taking, and I could feel the joy of the conversation.

He was not troubled by the pole, but he wasn’t careful of it, either. So we went around one way, then the other, till he learned something about stepping over that rail.

After that, I backed him over it. He didn’t pay much attention to where the rail was. Just moved his feet back, stepping on it, into it without panic or concern, but also, without respect for it. We worked for a while, and I started saying “Step” when his foot needed to lift over the rail. Pretty soon, he was picking up his feet as he backed up.

At this point, I felt I had to address the actual step down from the trailer. Backing up is one thing, but stepping down while you are doing it is another. So how do you do that, when you have no actual step anywhere? Clinton Anderson had suggested using a pallet with plywood on top of it. Yes. A pallet. The only experience I’d had with horses and pallets had to do with horses stepping ON pallets to get to hay they aren’t supposed to be in the same room with.

I found one that hadn’t been entirely destroyed in that way. I dragged that over where I wanted it, lined up square with the outside stall panels of the long side of the barn, and squared off with the jail stall-back. But I had no plywood. Then I saw my rubber mats. This was a good idea, except that the rubber mats weight 450 pounds and are floppy and slimy on the bottom. It took me about fifteen minutes pulling first one corner forward about four inches, then the other – sweat running down my face, shoulders aching – to move that dang thing the fourteen feet to the pallet, and then up and over the pallet..

I’d chosen a place right in front of the stall back to Sophie’s jail. There’s a heavy metal grid under the gravel there, higher than the actual jail panels, so there was already a step of a couple of inches. I built on that, lining the end of the pallet with the end of the grid, and bought myself eight to ten inches of step down. The mat made a squishy ramp on one said, but was lined up with pallet and grid on the other. I topped the whole thing with a piece of flat rabbit caging, just to lend a little more stiffness, plus a little metallic rattle.

I led Tiger into the barn, denied him any and all bits of floor hay, and showed him the bridge/step. The first time I asked him to cross it, he came off half way, veering off on the right (this might be because Dustin, very interested in the whole proceeding, had his head over the outside panels. No one who lives in that barn likes to get that close to Dustin’s teeth.

I shooed Dustin off, then we tried it again. I walked him back and forth, head first over that thing several times. Then I turned him around and asked him to back over it. He only hesitated a little. And as he stepped down off the back of it, I said, “Step down.” Didn’t rattle him at all. So we did that again, several times.

Then it was finally time to go back to the trailer. I lead him up to it, and he got right in. Dustin came up and was peering at Tiger through the windows. I took a breath and got in, pushing Tiger gently over to the left. Then put myself in front of him and started giving him the same backing signals I’d been using for the last hour and a half. He was still worried. But I got him to back, one hesitant step at a time. He stopped about two feet shy of the back and dropped a nervous load. But I kept stroking him and telling him how great he was, then started in on the signals again.

Then is was funny – like he finally thought, “She’s not going to leave me alone about this. Oh, what the heck?” And he took three firm steps back. Then I said, “STEP DOWN.” And he did, and came out of that trailer sweet as anything.

We did that again several times. He was never completely comfortable doing it, but he did so well. I jumped on his neck and hugged him and kissed him, then gave him what he wanted – took the halter off and walked side by side back to the barn for a couple of excellent treats.

I have not felt that satisfied in my life for a very long time.

It hit one hundred today. I slept in, so the horses were out a little later. Murphy and I went to IFA to stock up on barley and oats and Acco feed and Manna. Also bought a mineral block, what with the sun coming in hot these days. We fed Jetta and Tiger the Acco and the Manna with a little grain. When I came to put Jetta and the baby away, they followed me to the barn just fine. But when I came a little later, just before we went to see Ratatooe (sp???), something was wrong with my baby.

At first I thought it was colic. He was breathing too quickly, the movement shallow and evident, back by his loin. And he was dull. I wonder if I have now been among them long enough to have a sense of their state.

I realized that he was having a problem with the heat. Jetta had that run-in with heat-stroke years ago and had that same dull look, quick breathing. So I got out the hose and soaked him. A little while later, he was himself again.

Weather nothing to write home about: cool getting warmer to hot.

Sophie’s feet quiet early in the week, but Wed showing pulse in both front. That day, I washed her lower legs, both to see if cooling them would help and to get her used to water from the hose again.

Tuesday, realized that the fungus seemed to have come back on Jetta’s lower back legs. So I tied her up at the rail, gave her a feeder full of hay and washed her down with two different microbials. I’ll have to do that again tomorrow (Friday).

Worked with Dustin, something I felt I needed to do after that little kick-your-heel incident in the rain last week. I took him through the games, and he was heavy, but willing. Then I did Zion, who acted like he’d never lounged in his life. It’s because I’m trying to get him to change directions for me, without laying the groundwork in a round pen, which I do not have. So he’d go, then stop and look at me, trying to guess what I wanted next. Geneva says that’s the way he is – always trying to outguess you. Then I did baby, who went around like a perfect angel – both ways at a walk and at a trot. I was so happy about that.

On Wednesday, I worked Zion again, and did very well until I started asking him to change direction. Honestly, I am the worst teacher ever. It’s like trying to teach English by throwing erasures at people. But I got him to do pretty much what I asked, and I didn’t feel like a total idiot when I left.

Today, when I got to the pasture for the third time – to put Jetta and Tiger away, Jetta was already at the barn. I said, “Time to go in,” and Tiger came right to me. It was very satisfying and charming. I’ve started feeding each of them a can of grain out in the pasture, trying to get rid of those rib shadows. This year, I am determined that Jetta will not look like a bone-rack by the end of August.
I sort of leapt onto Dustin’s back on Wednesday. He was standing at the gate, so I climbed up on it, right next to his head, then slid my foot along his back and just jumped. It is a testament of his good nature that he didn’t bolt/shift/or otherwise dump me on my head. I stayed on his back until, seeing his ears back and his nose pointed at Sophie, I leg guided him into the barn and slid off.

They are still in the first pasture. It is huge, high grass, going to seed, and I’m trying to get it eaten down better. Today will be the ninth day on it. I have to get them back away from the road before the week of the 4th. I don’t like them in harm’s way, and a collection of idiots regularly travels down that road.

Found a dead saddle so that we can work with the baby. The guy at western trade is kind of rough, but very nice.

My mother’s birthday.

As usual on Sunday, Guy goes after his early meetings and gives them hay. Then after the block of church meetings, we let them out. The family came over as they always do at the first of the month – and to celebrate Gin and Kris being here. When I went to put Jetta and Tiger away after everybody had gone, Tiger came straight to me without a single word on my part, and Jetta, who had her tail to me, two thirds of the way across the pasture, heard me call, whipped her ears around, turned her head to look at me, then turned around and came right out. Communication. It was so nice.

The odd water was still running today. Stan and Fordhams were flooded. I had water in the first twelve feet of the first pasture. I am falling asleep as I write, and I didn’t even have any of the dessert.

Murphy is at the stake president’s having his elder’s interview.

Sophie’s black foot still has a pulse in it – but it seems to come and go with the temperature of the day. When the air is cool, she’s fine. When it warms up, there it is. Strange, I think. I have to call Westin and have him look closely when he trims them.