Sometimes I hate fall weather.

Should have posted about last weeks trail ride, but was lazy. Who knows, maybe I'll remember enough to post it anyway at some point... there were definitely memorable moments.

In the interim, yesterday.

Thank you Tico, for the not-so-gentle reminder that I'm not getting any younger: yesterday (a day filled with big, chilly wind and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), we were walking in the back field parallel to some swampy woods, when some kind of a bird took exception to our presence, about 30 feet away.

It took flight through leaves that already had been altogether much too suspiciously noisy and mobile to begin with (at least in Tico's estimation) and Tico executed a quarter of a second 180 degree turn.

I was at that point, shall we say less than centered on my horse? As a matter of fact, I'm not sure my head had caught up with the rest of my body for another second or so.

 Since I was adamantly saying with my reins "there's no way in hell you're going to run back to the barn", he started crow hopping.

 Miraculously enough, he stopped when I bellowed "CUT IT OUT!!!!!" so I shifted myself back to the middle of the saddle, and we worked on getting past that spot for the next 10 minutes or so.

 Yup, didn't fall off. Still, my knees, back, shoulders, elbows and and neck hurt today like I slammed into a wall.

A Beautiful February Day

We had a really nice day yesterday. Actually, as far as winter goes, we've been having a really nice winter: not too cold, not much snow (especially compared to last year) and a goodly number of sunny days. Of course we'll probably pay for this in the summer, when it will either rain everyday and be more like Ireland than Massachusetts, or be hot, muggy and not rain at all, creating drought conditions after the lack of snow over the winter.

Aren't I a ray of sunshine?


Anyway, yesterday... I hadn't seen Tico and Dusty since last weekend, when we'd had one of the few really cold days. I'd left them in their heavy winter blankets, so on Tuesday, it having started getting into the upper 30s and 40s again, I'd called to ask that they be switched back to their sheets. Unfortunately, that message only made it as far as Tico - poor Dusty was in his winter jammies still when I got there, so I pulled the blanket off him immediately and left him naked.

Both of them have pretty good coats - Dusty's being particularly unique: he'd been clipped in the early winter because it had simply grown too long and too early for his comfort. Now a considerable amount of it has grown back. Nearly white. He's a palomino, and the girl who clipped him for me had been practicing before doing her own horse. She gave him an eventer clip, which looked really precious on a 28 year old quarter horse. With the clipped hair grown out now, he looks particularly odd.



Though yesterday was pretty fine, Tico seemed a bit wired. He was giving me the horsie silly eyeballs while on the crossties as I did a quick sheath cleaning (what can I say - he's a pig and there was gross black junk stuck to the inside of his legs), brushed him, saddled him, and was preparing to put his bridle on. My friend Elaine was working at the barn yesterday, and she was doing the afternoon turn-out changing of the guard. She opened LC's stall door, and Tico decided that was the most frightening thing EVAH, pulled back hard nearly sitting on his butt, broke his halter, and ran out the back door.

I grabbed the broken halter (I have no idea why) and my lead line, and followed in time to see the tail-in-the-air horse equivalent of the one finger salute being waved jauntily my way. He started running down the track between the turnouts, finally stopping about half way down. I muttered under my breath "you better not roll in the mud with that saddle on, buster..." but he was more interested in trying to eat the dead grass, thank goodness. I wrapped the leadline around his neck, turned him around, and threw him in his stall where he got to enjoy the after-ride carrots I'd placed in his feed bucket, the twit.

I finished tacking him up in his stall and we headed into the indoor for a little bit, so I could get on (mounting blocks RULE) then out the door and down the track between the turnouts again. Lately I've been riding him in what Dover Saddlery calls a "Hackamore Noseband":



You attach it to a regular headstall, and when adjusted correctly it rests on the bone (not the cartilage) of the nose and applies pressure there. It isn't and shouldn't be necessary to strong-arm a horse with that, and Tico is pretty well-behaved in it. I like it in the winter particularly, because cold bits make for unhappy horses, and he seems to like it, too.

The wind was howling down in the back ring. For some reason, it's always much windier down there than up at the barn about 100 yards away. I don't know what the crows were up to, but the murder sounded like they were murdering each other in the field beside the ring.

To make things even more akin to Armageddon as far as the tiny brained equine was concerned, some people were walking dogs out in the field behind the ring, continuing on to the graveyard. We could glimpse them through the trees, but not really see full bodies.

I asked them, quite nicely, if they would please say something so my horse wouldn't think they were demons from hell come to eat the poor little booger. Nothing. I asked again, more loudly. Not a word - except they appeared to try to go further into the woods. Which didn't fool Tico, not one bit - he now knew they were planning an attack. Jerks.

It made for a lively ride. There were a couple of nasty little spooks which seemed more crow-related than demons in the graveyard related, but other than that he behaved pretty nicely, and we had good lively trots and easy controlled canters. I was actually pleased with the little twit by the end of the ride.

Last night, just before falling to sleep, my mind pulled back the memory of one of the spooks, and my body jerked in a larger reaction than I'd had while it occurred. Isn't it odd the way the mind works?

Personality Plus

That describes Tico. If they cast a new Mr. Ed, he could do it in a heartbeat.

Yeah, he's gray... but how many people remember Mr. Ed was a palomino? Was it even in color? I wouldn't know, since we didn't have a color TV until well into the 70s, I think.

Tico can be really fresh with me, I think because he knows it makes me happy. Yes, I know that sounds really demented. He's never dangerous. It's more like play.

When we're trotting around in the indoor and he tosses a little happy buck in, transitioning into a canter, it makes me grin. When he expresses an opinion that he really doesn't think I should keep him from galloping back to the barn by getting slightly light in front and tossing and shaking his head (sometimes augmenting the opionion by whacking my head with his tail), I laugh at him and he ends up having to walk. Of course, it's his "turbo walk" - We'll be 20 feet ahead of everyone else in a heartbeat - but he's walking. It's a compromise, and we're both happy.

A few days later he'll be doing a lesson with a nine year old little girl, and be a perfect little gentleman, taking care of her and when she asks "correctly", doing what she asks. He doesn't do that many lessons - just enough to keep him from turning into a complete Great White Whale - but the lesson kids who ride him are in love. He charms them all. He loves people.

When I got to the barn Saturday, the girl who gives lessons, Jess, interrupted her current lesson to tell me what a star Tico had been on Wednesday.

You'd think I was his mother, I'm so proud of him sometimes. :)

Sometimes I think "bad feelings" should be more specific

I went to the barn yesterday - nothing new, I almost always can be found at the barn on the weekends.

It's hard to explain this: some days, I feel completely in tune with the world, balanced, perfect harmony. When I ride, I sit deep in the saddle, straight and tall, my body never hindering my horse's movement.

Those days are fairly rare. And yesterday was not one of them. And I knew it.

Some days might have moments, glimmers of greatness... but yesterday was not one of them. And I knew it.

Not that Tico was being particularly bad. I tacked him up in his stall, since he's started the "OMG there are scary things above me EVERYWHERE! Must get away, AIIIEEEEE!!!" breaking of the crossties behavior again this winter, after a long hiatus.

But things didn't feel "right".

I'd tacked him up western. I got on him, but I wasn't happy with the saddle placement, got off, shifted it around and got back on. He had a couple of yee-hah! moments, though nothing of import. These were only to be expected, since the horses hadn't gone out yesterday morning because of the gale force winds. All in all, he was being a pretty good boy.

Still, I cut my ride short - the feeling of unease was still there, and I just didn't want to chance anything. When I ignore these things, I usually regret it.

So I put him back in his stall with a bit of hay to keep him busy, and went out to get the yak, who'd been put outside once the wind had died down a bit.

Dusty, who is starting into full molt, was waiting for me. He doesn't move around much outside in the snow, only following the tracks left by other horses who'd been in the same turnout, and his back fetlocks stock up a lot in the winter. I try to get him moving a bit when I'm there, by taking him into the indoor ring. Sometimes I sit on him bareback, sometimes I just lead him around. Sometimes, I take him out on the lunge line and let him kick up his heels, which the 28 year old fart still does pretty enthusiastically on the lunge line.

First I took off a few layers of hair with the shedding blade, then walked him out into the indoor on a lead line.

There was no one else in the indoor when we went in. Walking towards the front of the ring, I started to think... I'll put him on a lunge line and let him run around a bit, he'll have fun, and it's the old man, it'll be fine!

There's a lungeline hanging on a hook at the front of the ring, tied neatly up in loops. I grabbed it, attached it to his halter as I removed the lead line, and started leading him into the middle of the ring as I unravelled the twists and loops.

Dusty took off. Still walking forward, I looked up to admire his version of the dressage balotade movement. I'm sure it was meant to be a buck, but when you're a 28 year old arthritic horse, the back legs don't stretch like they used to. And he's so fluffy, it's damned cute.

But I looked back down just in time to see, to my horror, one of the loops of the lunge line start passing up my right leg in as neat a little crochet stitch you'd ever want to execute.

The next moments went by, like most disastrous moments, in slow motion. My right leg, now attached to an 1100 lb frisking geriatric, came out from under me, diagonally. My left leg, not so luckily still on the ground, got dragged sideways as I went down. I heard an awful ripping and tearing coming from my knee - it sounded like cloth tearing - and thought to myself, oddly detached, "that can't be good."

I lay flat on the ground. I got the lungeline off my right leg somehow - I don't even remember doing it. Maybe it got pulled off once I went horizontal, right down over my toes, since Dusty was now happily trotting circles around me, oblivious.

Flat on my back, arm with the lungeline up in the air so that it didn't wrap around me as he circled, I pondered things. One thing I did not want to do was try to move my left leg, which was turned knee in, calf and toes out to the side.

If my left knee had decided to detach itself and wander off, I would have been quite happy at that moment with our parting of the ways. I didn't know knees could hurt that badly.

I looked to my left, towards the windows looking into the ring from the front. No one was there.

Down towards my foot and to the right (I'm still horizontal), I could see into the new section of the barn, and Tadpole was on the crossties. Just then, Jackie, Tad's owner, saw me and came over.

Thank goodness for Jackie - she took Dusty away from me and got him stopped. I struggled to my feet - or foot, anyway. She asked "Are you ok?" And I told her that I felt like I was going to throw up.

I explained what happened, and she helped me put Dusty away and generally get my butt out of there, and go home to ice my knee.

Once home, the waves of pain were unbelievable. I was icing it and had taken some ibuprofen. It didn't look really swollen, but I was shivering with shock. Geoffrey called the doctor's office answering service, and they said they'd have a doctor call back.

By the time he called back, the shivering had subsided and the ibuprofen and ice had dulled the pain. After explaining to him what had happened, he said it was up to me what to do - continue with icing and ibuprofen, or come in to the ER and get it looked at.

I hate the ER. And I was relatively comfortable, so last night I decided to just continue with the icing and ibuprofen regimen and see what tomorrow brings.

Today is tomorrow. I'm going to the ER.

Who'd have thought my geezer would have been the one the "bad feelings" were warning me about?

Post Script: I went to the ER today. It's a medial collateral knee ligament sprain, and I'm supposed to take it easy for 4 to 6 weeks. Arrgh.

Google Maps is Amazing

You too can go on a trail ride with me!

Click on the pushpins on the left, you'll be taken to the location on the map. Cool!!

So Near, and Yet So Far

Although Dunstable is, compared to Lowell, "the country", there aren't a lot of places to trail ride near where I keep Dusty and Tico.

There are some small trails out behind the back fields, winding through the woods for about a half mile or so, but after a while it just seems a bit boring - even if occasionally, 1 or 2 or twenty wild turkeys show up wanting to share the path.

There is one trail though - out at the far end of the big field behind the Crystal Farm property, across a small street, along the power lines - that has been beckoning, just out of reach.

Over the years we've managed to get through and over the huge logs surrounding a 4 foot high 2 foot wide berm, across a tiny brook that Tico feels the need to leapfrog some - not all - of the time we cross it (he likes to keep things exciting), and onto a small street that people drive on as if they're practicing for the Monaco Grand Prix.

We've crossed the street, ridden down it for about 25 feet, cursing at drivers who won't slow down when they see a horse and followed a rutted, muddy path widened by ATVs,lined by scruffy shrubs and reeds, into an area that's really, most of the time, a nasty swamp.

And usually, we end up turning back because our horses hate getting their tootsies muddy.

Not that we let them get away with it - there would be discussion. Tico would, in his efforts to avoid the nasty black rutted wet goopy dirt on the path (which was at least partially packed down by the ATVs) dance sideways into the nasty black wet goopy dirt OFF the path, which he couldn't actually see was nasty black wet goopy dirt because it was covered with dead branches, roots, swamp grass, sad excuses for bushes, reeds, and other bog flora. It was however, in his mind at least, *safer*. Never mind that he'd sink in knee and hock deep - he'd rather thrash around in the underbrush than walk sanely across Oh My God MUD.

And to continue in the "keep things exciting" vein, he would occasionally walk up to one of the wetter mud patches, nose down and appearing to be mulling actually walking across it like a Big Boy, before gathering all four feet together and leapfrogging that as well.

So far, he has yet to deposit ME in the mud, but it's been close.

Why were we putting ourselves (and our dainty little flower equines) through this unpleasantness? Because, just past one last nasty wet deep pool of sludge and water, just beyond it, are real honest to goodness, DRY trails following the powerlines. Nirvana!

So...

This summer has been very dry and hot. We hadn't ventured out that way for a while -the deer fly population doesn't seem to mind dry heat; as a matter of fact they seemed to thrive on it. Suffice to say, being chased home by swarms of deer flies as thick as your worst nightmare about killer bee swarms is not enjoyable.

But about a month ago one of the other boarders, Elaine, and I, thinking that what with the fact that the other short trails (which had had some muck and water here and there as well) were now bone dry, it might be fun to give the Path to Nirvana another try.

We crossed the log and berm area, across the (now dry) tiny stream, managed to survive the Speedway, and started along the uneven path.

As we came upon the first of the previously formidable horse-eating areas, we started to rejoice. It was dry! The next one, the same. We wove around some more scrappy brush, and again, and again; except that the "trouble spots" were dry dirt and not grassy, you'd have not realized there had ever been a reason for equine vapors here.

But then we came to the Big Kahuna of muck. Not as big as it had been, though big enough to be heartbreaking: brackish standing water, dark mud, and who knows what all *in* the water that could grab hooves and cause injuries.

It may as well have been the Grand Canyon, there was no way we were going to get them into that, and at least in this instance we agreed with them. It's never a good thing to ask a horse to step into water that is probably barely a foot deep but so nasty you can't see what's underneath. At least you can *see* and avoid roots and broken bottles on dry ground.

We turned back, saddened but not defeated: Elaine had a plan...

Getting Old Ain't for the Faint of Heart.

I went to see my dad yesterday, and we watched the “Saturday Matinee” together. They get a Netflix movie in every Saturday, and the old folks at the assisted living facility he lives in watch it in the Common Room.

So we’re all in watching “Night at the Museum”, with Ben Stiller (and a small part with his mom, Ann Meara playing a job counselor), and half the old folks are having a hard time following the plot. My dad is a bit confused by it too – I think when there’s a lot going on, they just can’t keep up. Then again, it may be that, like my dad they none of them really use their hearing aids correctly, so can’t actually hear it that well.

But one little old lady was really struggling: “Does anyone know what’s going on?” “Oh! That scared me, too!” "What just happened?"

She started to get more and more agitated.

The aides were both off doing other stuff – not all the residents go in to watch the movie, but those that do, they pretty much don’t have to worry about for a couple of hours. It's the ones who don't, who are scattered around the facility, that they need to check on individually, who are a bit more worrisome.

Most of the old folks watching the movie are sitting in these really comfy upholstered swivel/rocking chairs. Once they sit in them, they all pretty much are stuck until someone helps them out of them. Having had to drag my dad out of one a couple of weeks ago, I’d put him into a comfy chair that didn’t move around, and sat in another next to him.

I looked over at the old gal a few times – she seemed to be getting upset, and kept wiping her nose, almost as if she was crying, though she didn’t appear to be. She would exclaim about something, everyone would look over at her sympathetically, but she otherwise was fine so we all would turn back to the movie.

Suddenly, she decided she wanted to stand up. There were a couple of old guys sitting behind her. “Hold the back of my chair, I want to stand up!” she demanded. They held it, but she got really petulant – “Hold the back of my chair!” “We ARE!” they said. "Well, hold it STILL!" she demanded.

She stood up, slightly hunched over, almost teetering forward. Slowly, she started pulling on her skirt, bunching it up in her hands. Pulling, bunching… those of us who could see her, sat there, curious, watching. I initially thought perhaps it had gotten wrinkled and uncomfortable underneath her, and she was trying to pull it straight, slowly strugging with arthritic fingers to make it right.

But no: with each scrunching of her skirt it came up higher, up over her knees, up to her thighs. We all watched, transfixed, as she grabbed the hem and lifted it up, pulling it over her head.

She was wearing pantyhose (thank goodness). I don’t think she had any underpants on. Now that she had the skirt up over her head, she wiped her nose on it, then started arthritically picking at the band of the pantyhose.

There was a floor to ceiling support in between her and my dad – he couldn’t see anything. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Nothing dad – watch the movie.” I sat there, torn between keeping him company or going over to her and trying to settle this poor thing down, and help restore her dignity.

My own discomfort kept me anchored to my seat. I feel shame for that - I wish I could have acted compassionately and ended the spectacle sooner.

At that point, the daughter of one of the old guys behind her walked in to the room, saw what was going on, and went to find one of the aides. Nini, the aide, came in and persuaded the old gal to go back to her room.

I am sure that this sweet old lady would have been mortified had she realized what she was doing. I suppose there's some solace in the fact that she didn't know what she was doing, and certainly won't remember doing it.

But that doesn't make it any less sad.