SHARK!

The shark dive today was incredible. I have just started to work on pics and these kind of suck, but I am too tired to do more. Suffice it to say it was one of the coolest things ever--15 or so full grown female, mostly pregnant, black tip sharks. We got to swim with them, then watch them feed
We were right in the midst of them--in fact, I got a scrape from one on my leg.

It was amazing. I think Amy's pics are probably more clear than mine, which irritates me to no end, but hopefully, I can salvage some to post when I get more energy.

Day 2- Roatan

Long hard day of diving, and puking. Mostly puking, to be honest. The morning dive was rough rough rough and as I normally do on the first day of a dive trip, I puked my guts out. This time, I dialed it up a notch and puked IN the water repeatedly, then again and again and again back on the boat. The only saving grace was we had a boat malfunction during our surface interval which we had thankfully taken in a quiet harbor, so I had a little time between pukings.

So I slept it off a good part of the day, and only went on two dives today. I tried out my new camera and learned I am too stupid to use it. Amy and I took a starter class with a fancy underwater photog this evening, and I have a private lesson with him at 6:30 am tomorrow. Can you imagine? Me willingly getting up at 6 in the morning?

If I live through that, we have a shark dive scheduled one day, and diving with the dolphins another day--and still have lots of other stuff to fit in.

Our beach house is gorgeous, and I will post pics soon. This is a great place--people are fun, staff is incredible, and every time you open the fridge there is more beer and diet Coke and Twizzlers in it.

Alex is a B%&$#

Sure enough, I am NOT where I am supposed to be. I was SUPPOSED to be laying in a hammock at the beach house we rented in the Bay Islands, in Honduras.

But there is a tropical storm in the region--it just got named Alex-- so when we got to Atlanta for our connecting flight today, they cancelled it. Then they told us that the next flight was next Saturday. We were advised to call this Delta number to see what they could do.

I got a horrid woman who told me she was not that concerned about my problems, and I could wait til next Saturday to go.

REALLY? REALLY? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

It was unpleasant. She said they may add a flight tomorrow if the weather clears, but she cannot know when or if they will, and really was not concerned. I was free to buy a ticket on Continental and get myself to Houston for a Sunday flight, but it was not her problem

You can imagine what this did for my personality. There was much boo hooing in the airport terminal by other passengers. A man across from us managed to do better, and his Delta rep put him on a plane to Houston and an early morning flight to Roatan on Continental, and did not charge him a thing. He told me what happened, so I called back. Then I was hung up on.

I sent BS to stand in line with the other people at the desk, because the rumor was that new flights were being added for Sunday, and I called the Delta line a third time. This time I got a non-English speaker who was very nice but could not understand that Houston was not my goal destination.

It was outrageous. My cell phone would not let me call the resort, until I set up some special calling add on, but you know how long that takes when you have to wade through the computer list of things on the line. Exhausting.

Plus, we could not get in touch with Amy, who was flying through Houston, from LA. Usually we meet in the connecting airport, but this time it did not work out that way. We assumed she would be stuck too, but Houston is a good place for her since her boyfriend lives there.

After much drama, we were told two new flights would be added for Sunday and we would be on one--check back later to find out which one. We got a hotel with a pool and a nice shuttle man brought us here. We tried to check in, only to be told we had to wait three hours.

Of course we did. They did let us use the pool though, and thank goodness for our foresight to always pack a swimmer in our carry-ons, so we each had a suit. We spent the next three hours reading in the pool, getting sunburned, and amazingly staying awake, considering we had been up since 4 am after only about three hours of sleep.

While we were out there, Amy checked in just as my phone battery died to say she was in Houston, and there was no problem with her flight--she was even trying to change it til tomorrow. I urged her to go ahead and get settled --and she did. Her flight was never even delayed! Odd....we were going the same place!

We checked in our hotel room to take naps---and the A/C was not a good worker. We asked for maintenance, who sent us Bubba Gump, or Gumpette, as the case may be--we are still not sure on that one. Finally, they changed our room, despite the hotel being full of what the Gump-it called a family reunion "in da house" as well as a Klan meeting "in da house". I sure hope they keep those two groups away from each other--but I have to admit, I have yet to see anyone that would qualify for the Klan meeting. That is probably a good thing.

Meanwhile, all hell broke loose at home and my phone went to blowing up. Mom went to doctor Riot and she was missing from her stall---a blind escapee! Great. She found her, we figured out what had happened, and they tried to deliver a new water trough to the back pasture for backup. Of course, mom could not get the Gator started, so they drove Dad's truck--which is a little bitty thing not made for driving in tractor ruts. You guessed it--he beached it---wheels in the air, hinged on its belly. That required a tow truck

About that time, Rita and Ed showed up to do their evening treatment of Riot--and joined the circus.

I just got an email from Amy saying that she was settled in the beach house, the A/C worked good (bragging I guess) and she was cooling some beer for our arrival--and did we have any idea when that might be? She did not even mention weather, and has not responded to my questions about it--I suspect she just hopped on the office computer since I know she did not take her laptop--but that makes me think things are just fine in Roatan.

Mother of God, do I need to get out of this country---hurricane be damned. I might not even notice the world actually blowing apart weather-wise, because there is always so much turmoil in my world anyway.

Oh well--whatcha gonna do? BS is watching a Jackie Chan movie, we are waiting on pizza and supposedly will be out of her by 9:45 a.m. tomorrow. Cross your fingers we get SOMEWHERE

Time out

Its coming. It is almost 2:30 am on Thursday morning---in 53 hours I will be on the plane on the way to vacation, and then all those time changes get all jacked up and even though I have charts and shit, I only know I will be there by 12:30 some damn time on Saturday afternoon

and since it is me--things are going wrong. In six hours, the vet will be here to tell me why Riot is having vision issues. And final checks for heart beats on Aries, a fun check to make sure we are not tools on HG, maybe a 90 day check on Diablo if she offers, an embryo check on Squeak along with a progesterone check......

Of course, I am scared witless on Riot. I do not want to talk about that.

Barry has been working 80-100 hours per week and is getting squirrelier by the minute from exhaustion. He might really sleep this whole vacation away. I am not kidding about that because the one thing I know about the house we rented is that it has hammocks on the porch, and he is a hoo-er for a hammock. Simba, my old lady Dane, is having hip issues flare, which is no wonder--and I hate to put the burden of observing her on Rita--but what am I supposed to do? Someone has to love her enough to pay attention, and handle it if it gets ugly, and I know she will--I just feel awful that I need her to

Dad is having surgery on Monday--more heart surgery.

So off I go to a third world country. You would think I would be thrilled. I am , I totally am, especially since I am so psyched to handle this new underwater camera BS got me, I could pee. But I have a hard time letting go-- I worry about what happens while I am gone for the first 24 hours. The last 24 are the worst because I dread finding what went wrong while I was gone.

But damn it--I need it. I love my life--cannot imagine what I would do without it. I love my animals, my job, my air conditioner, my big TV....our whole world. But even I need a break from taking care of animals, murderers, perverts and other people that make me think really hard and count on me. Even though I do not talk about it on here, it is a huge amount of pressure, and to take a week off from that......wow......now lets hope I can really put work out of my mind.

Pray the ponies are okay, my dogs are okay, my peeg and his kitty are okay----and that I can chill out enough to get out of this vacation that I am supposed to.

I feel like I am humming some sort of mind numbing bizness------hey, whatever works.

Maybe I should get some Xanax to get through this

Crash

So turns out that wasp sting was a bigger deal than was necessary. By Monday morning, my hand was swelled p so much that I could not use it. There happened to be an EMT at my office who told me I needed to go to the ER straight away, as I was having a major reaction, and with my circlation problems and pending vacation, that was not okay.

Well that is ridiculous. I go to the ER when a bone is broken. Usually, not even then.

I compromised and called the doc. Mine is still out of the country, but his partner called in a steroid pack and some abx for me and told me to stay on the benadryl. Fine.

At the lunch table with Rita, my sister and Gabi though, we noticed my hand had turned blue.

Blue, I say. That is not a good color if you are not a smurf. Since it is my right arm, it is scarred anyway so to see a change like that is pretty dramatic. Rita could not stand to look at me so she haled me off to Care First and turned me in.

Some funny things happened in there, but the main one was I got the steroid shot I needed, and then picked up my scrips and Rita took me home and put me to bed. Those steroid shots kick my ass. I did not even stop to get my car--she brought it to me later. She is a good person, she takes care of me. I slept til last nite, and got up find a good part of the swelling was gone. No more blue hand! It was hard to tell but the red streaks seemed to be receding too, but that might have been wishful thinking. Last nite, all I did was feed and water and the only other thing that went wrong is that while I was doing it, Slater started unpacking my suitcase that already has my dive stuff and snacks in it. Typical.

I got up this morning and the swelling was 80% gone. Very little itching too--even my ring would twist around and I had been afraid it would have to be cut off which would have really pissed me off.

Off I went to work, where I am sure someone had puked near my office. It reeked, but no one would own up to it. I worked a long hard day, using my lunch hour at dinner time to come home and try to clean the pool. Good Lord was it hot in there, it is unbearable.

And guess what happened while I was here?

I got stung by a wasp.

Stampede!!

Last week, right when it started to rain, the front hay field horses started playing in it. They were so wound up that they chased for long enough for me to get the camera out--not long enough to get a good setting so they would not be blurry, but beggars cannot be choosers.

The darker red one is Spike, the yearling by Meradas Blue Sue. He is a nice horse. The one next to him is Squiggy, a three year old Slybaby who needs a new home. Behind her is Echo, the one recovering from an abcess. In one pic, you can see Playmate--the old lady who is teaching Spike how a young stud should behave.

I love watching them play like that.

Too hot to do anything

It is viciously hot here lately. So hot, that the Bacon is afraid to venture out of his fort for fear he will fry right up. Fortunately, a tree landed on our roof and made him another fort out of its branches, so he could rest close to the house. That way he would not miss it if anything happened. It does not do much for the landscaping--but he is happy so who cares.

The dogs of course are sure they might die. So they do nothing. That is not all that different from when it is not hot, but they at least laid in the floor instead of on the furniture. Slater loves his sister Simba--but I do not think she cares one way or the other. I love this picture though.

It has been a busy busy busy few days. Not only did the tree fall on the porch roof, I finally got the yard mowed at the house--and had just a couple sweeps left to make when I sheared off a piece of the mower deck. So I guess the farm will not get mowed any time soon. BS and I actually high-fived when he determined I had broken the mower for real, because it was one less thing we had to do this weekend. It is embarrassing how awful the farm looks though--I might have to have dad come take care of it so the neighbors do not revolt.

I also got the pasture here at the house bushhogged--it looked like a jungle. It still is not pretty but it looks way better than it did. There sure are a lot of trees down though from the recent storms. Its a wonder I did not break the bushhog too, but as far as I know, I did not.

All this work I did guilted BS into weedeating. He says he does it once a year whether it needs it or not, but this year he has done it twice. All the fence row did not get done, and the back yard did not, but I am grateful for what it did. It was dangerously hot out there, so I am glad he got that done, and cut up some trees that have needed to be done. If I do not die from this wasp sting I have on my hand, I am going to round up while the weeds are down and try to finally get a jump on them. Yeah right.

About this wasp sting. What the hell is the deal with this? I got bit about 1:00 Saturday while I was trying to clean the pool--which is a whole other deal as the pump keeps quitting on me, and all kinds of weird things were happening. It stung really bad, and it kept getting worse and worse and worse--I am not kidding about how bad this thing hurt. By last nite, it had swollen up so big I could not hold a fork. I have iced it, put baking soda on it, eaten benadryl by the handful--you name it, I have done it. It is ridiculous. My hand is at least twice the size of the other one, my ring is choking my finger and no way can I get it off--there are red streaks starting on my hand and wrist. Its disgusting. It better end soon, because all the benadryl knocked me out for a five hour nap today--I do not have time for that.

A whole lot of other things have happened that are kind of interesting, but my benadryl has kicked in, so I guess it will have to wait until I am not so addled.

Squeak's Surprise

Squeak had a great surprise for us today! Our ultrasounds got moved up from Friday until today, and we got the shock we have been hoping for. She is pregnant! Fifteen days along, and the look on the doc's face when he inserted the ultrasound wand was priceless. She was the second one we ultrasounded, and frankly we did not have any expectation that she was in foal. In my brain, I had made a prediction that HG would be in foal, but Squeak would not.

I got it completely backwards. And that is cool with me. I think Squeak is a prime example of what should be bred--all the regular things are there, like conformation and pedigree, but she also has that elusive intangible thing that is so hard for a broodmare to keep as she ages. She is just nice. She does not fight with others, she is easy to handle, trusts me 100% to take care of her so that even her blindness does not cause her any issues now that she has adjusted--and she has a lot of heart. I just love her. That is what I want to reproduce. I think she will be a good cross with Snorty

Also Squeak is much older than HG, so her breeding years are limited, and HG is young. She has many years ahead of her---and to be tacky, the chute fee to re-breed her next year are less than half the price on Squeak's. So it all worked out for the best. We will draw blood for her progesterone check next week, and hope she will not need to stay on Regumate--its such a pain in the butt. Thank goodness for it though, as the only change this time was three days of oxytocin post-breeding, and Regumate starting at day 5

We also did a heaert beat check on Gypsy and all is well there too.

Yay for all that--this breeding season has dragged out long enough for me.

Women

You are an interesting bunch of folk.

I think it is amazing how we snipe at each other and drag each other down---but on the other hand, there are other women who constantly surprise me with how they support each other.

There is nothing nastier than a woman with an agenda that includes attacking people. Fortunately, I seem to be shed of my most difficult one of that category. And right on to that.

It is always interesting to me how another one steps in and redeems the whole batch of you--like right when you need to hear a friend's voice, the phone rings. Or someone you have not heard from emails you.

I am a lucky girl. I have some of the best friends in the world--even the ones that I do not talk to often, mean the world to me. Heck, sometimes, those are the ones that I need the most, and appreciate the most to know they are there when I need them.

I should tell more of you how much you mean to me--I know that--but how nice to know that even not telling you all the time does not make you wonder how much you matter. You know who you are.

The Taz Man

With all the attention baby Wonkers has required, my other two kids have been totally neglected. And that is a shame, because this little feller is so cute. I call him Taz, after his daddy, but that seems kind of like I am short changing the dude. I need some better ideas, not to mention some registered name ideas. Pepto Taz x High Brow Gypsy.


He is such a handsome dude--I particularly like his pretty neck and all that flash
And there is nothing wrong with his butt either.


I have to do a better job about taking pics of these babies. They grow up so fast.

These pics were taken a few days ag0---you can tell because he is not standing in water. We have had two days of hellacious storms. They do not last long, but they have been serious business. Tonight when I got home from work, there was a tree branch of some size lying on the front porch roof. Still attached to the tree unfortuntately, so I had to call the insurance company. If the wind starts up again, the big branch will come right through the kitchen window. That cannot be good.

One bright spot today

One good thing happened today--Aries checked in foal to Dualin Boon! Yay Aries! So that makes four mares confirmed in foal for next year--and each of those took on the first breeding. The other two, Haida Girl and Squeak, are jacking with my average. I check them on Friday, and if they are not in foal, I am probably scrapping them for this year. I think. Who knows really what I will do.

The rest of the day was BERSERK. Barry's alarm started going off at 5:30 in the freaking morning, and he just kept hitting snooze. For an hour or so. That is no way to start the week, it makes me a nervous wreck. I had to get up at 6:30 to take Aries to the vet, I was even early! I did not take her baby with us, as she is not a good little self-loader like the other babies are. Unfortunately, we had another one of our Monday morning miscommunications, and by 8:30, I learned that the vet was an hour away doing a full day of ultrasounds. Ugh. Since it was already 85 degrees and the baby was at home probably wanting to nurse, I had to turn around and come home. Then I met the doc after work, up here at my house. unload

So I get to work start to settle in, and the hay man calls. He needs me to take delivery of hay before the predicted storm came. Of course he did. Not only did I have to go do that, I had to start plotting where to come up with the funds for 30 tons of really good hay. Good thing I had a lot of extra hours to burn before the end of the pay period tomorrow, since I kept having to leave to unload hay. Even the first load, the heat index was over 103 degrees. You can imagine how bad it was after the last trailer load arrived.

I do not handle heat well, so it made me sick. Dizzy, pukey and just generally too damn hot--I do not know if it got all the way to heat exhaustion, but if not, it was right on the verge of it. I would go back to work in between times, and do work stuff and there I would break out in a cold sweat. That is infinitely better than the other sweat I had going on. Even water made me throw up. So not a good day.

I left the last 8 round bales out to put in the barn after work, but before I could get home, the storm arrived. It rained so hard, I thought the car would blow off the road. No moving hay in that mess---the rain was so hard it hurt. Great.

Since I could not do anything else, I came home. I keep my house COLD--like 68 at the warmest. The minute I walked in, I started shivering, so I had to turn it to 72 or so. I got in bed and immediately fell asleep, which was great because it made my headache go away and my stomach stop going berserk. That lasted for a couple of hours, until I sweated so much in my sleep that I woke up. I gave up and went back to the farm to feed and medicate, and as soon as I got outside, I started shivering.


This has been a hard day. I think I will go back to bed and hope tomorrow is better. At least by then, I should have my temperature regulated--I can only take so many cold showers. I kind of hope it storms again to keep me from working outside, and making this worse.

Freedom for Wonkers

Really, what is all this about?
It has been three weeks since Wonkers' surgery, and today Dr Ellis gave him the go-ahead for some limited turnout. Look how much improved his leg is! I think there is a bit of a deception since the leg is still bald from being shaved, but no doubt there is huge improvement.
His face is shedding off and he looks a little nuts. He outgrew his baby halter--which was a mini-baby halter by the way.
This was about the only action I got out of him when I turned him out, and this only happened because I chased him.
Considering he has been on house arrest since he was born about ten weeks ago--I am amazed at how big he is. He is solid muscle. I cannot wait to see what he will look like with some exercise.
This is what the incision looks like now--almost completely healed. The part on the back is where his accessory bone was rubbed raw because I did a crappy job of cutting an opening in his wrapping. It is almost healed too.
He is kinda cute huh?
I just could not get much action out of him tonight. Maybe tomorrow he will be a little perkier. I really expected some action from Haida Girl, who has not been allowed to run more than once or twice since he was born, but they were only interested in hay. You would think I was starving them, which I am obviously not if the size of their asses is any indication.

Mixed results at the vet

Hot damn, we finally got a breeding break! Gypsy checked in foal to Playboy Boonsmal this morning--yay Gypsy. She is 18 days in foal. She was a very good girl, and even left her little Tazmanian Devil at home for her few hours away at the vet.

We have had a rough breeding year this year, so this was some very welcome news.

In other vet doings, I got to eyeball all of the xrays from last week. I had already talked to the vet about what he saw, but it is always good to see them myself. Echo has nothing serious going on in there--thank goodness! I could easily see where the abcess (a monster one at that) is growing out. He gave me a mixture of stuff to put on her feet a couple of times a week that will kill off any further issues there, and I put it on tonight--boy howdy, was she wishing I had not done that. She was a good girl about being caught in the hay field, stood like a lady and was very patient...but when she walked off, it obviously hurt. Poor kid--the stuff must sting. I can tell that being outside in the hay field with her friends is already helping her--she looks more comfy and is gaining some weight. Probably it is just the muscle atrophy stopping, but whatever--she has stripes coming off her dorsal stripe, down her ribs, so unless she is super fat, she looks like you can see her ribs. I was happy to lay hands on her and see that is not really the case.

The bad news at the vet was Hawk's xrays. Last week, the doc said he was shocked at how little rotation there was considering how crazy dished his feet were. Today we measured the rotation, and found it to be close to 5 degrees. I cannot believe the silly boy was walking around normal and had all along. Fortunately, he has a lot of sole under his coffin bone, so that is a good thing.

The next step on him is to keep bringing his toe back, take a little heel away and feed him this supplement that the doc swears is the only thing that helps grow better hoof. His feet are in rough shape and not just from this episode, so that will be a good thing. Thank goodness that Hawk is such a people pleaser that he is easy to fetch from the pasture to feed separately--that makes a world of difference when you are in a hurry like I always am.

So there we are.....mostly good, a little bad, but even that is workable.

In other news, I am getting fatter by the minute. I have no idea what is going on with me. It is out of control again.

A pretty good run

This has been a crazy few days, since I left for Chicago to go to a juvenile justice thing. I had dinner with Jenny on Thursday nite, and met a pack of girls on Friday nite for dinner and drinks and the watching of the Blackhawks game (about which I do not care, but they did so there you go) and I stayed the nite at Lorna's.

Saturday I drove fast fast fast to get to Carlinville for Barry's class reunion, that was supposed to start that nite, but a pre-party had kicked off at 11 am or so. I missed that part obviously. Last nite was a lot of fun, seeing all of his old friends, and hanging out with some of the wives.

We got home today, and have mostly been sleeping it off ever since. In fact, I am not done with that. I have not done a single useful thing ALL DAY. It has been swell.

I am even excited about going to work tomorrow, but I will save all those developments for when I have time to deal with it all. I am still too tired to even think about organizing all these thoughts!

The Hijinks Continue

Ugh, what a day. Nothing went right today. Nothing went horribly wrong, but it did not go smoothly either. I think I am still just pissed off about yesterday's vet results.

First I convinced Barry that it was his husbandly duty to pick up the Snorty semen at the airport and meet me part way with it. I am about 110 miles from the airport. He works next door to it. I have a project at work I have been struggling with and it finally started coming together yesterday, and I wanted my roll to continue, so I did not want to be out of the office much. That was a good thing. After that, things got a little weird.

Not only was he 30 minutes late picking up the semen, which made me crazy because I had long since left work to meet him--but the airline staff must have been on Quaaludes or something, because it took an hour for the box to get out of the plane and into the office. Normally it takes about fifteen minutes. That required me to call the vet and put him on hold for meeting me--I always feel bad doing that because he is so dang busy, and if I hate jacking up a schedule, he must.

What's a girl to do while she waits? Go to Macy's. Nothing good comes of that.

Finally, I find Barry, haul back here and wait for the vet. That led to down time, so I mowed the front pasture. I worried the whole time I was going to run out of gas, and then I would have to hear from Barry about it. Looks pretty though huh? No more yellow weed flowers

While I was out there, though, I thought long and hard about how good Foxy looks. She has come a long way from the skinny sickly looking thing she was earlier this year. In fact, she looks SO good that I am gonna start riding her again. I need more steady eddies in my lineup, and there is no reason for her not to be one of them. She and Barry don't get along, but I like riding her, even if her lope feels like she is bucking every step. She's not. For sure you know when she is though!

So we bred Squeak--who thank the good Lord, did not ovulate before we got to her. She had a 60 something follicle getting ready to blow. We are going to oxytocin her, start Regumating at day 5--you name it, we are pulling out all the stops to get this one to stick. I love that mare so much, she is such a class act. My poor mother though will have to do 3 of the 4 oxy shots since I am going to a meeting in Chicago, and all my help is sick. Plus, I would not let just anyone give the shots, and I know mom can do it and I won't have to worry about it getting messed up.

We also xrayed Echo to see what's shaking in her abcessed foot. Hoof testers found no tenderness, but she is not right. We won't know til tomorrow about that. We also xrayed for rotation on Hawk, who had to have been laminitic for a while and never bothered to mention it. He is a tough one though--pray there is no rotation for him.

Tomorrow is Haida Girl's day to be bred--hope she acts right too. I went back to work and got a phone call that the vet bet money I forgot to Regumate her to hold her til the semen arrives--and he was right. Between the two of us, we are like the Alzheimer's wing in a nursing home. I worked a while, caught up on some stuff and went back to do that.

I moved a pile of horses around, trying to prepare for leaving town. One great thing happened-Diablo's progesterone is high enough that she can come off the Regumate. Hallelujah. Not only is it expensive, it is time consuming, labor intensive and requires her tying up a pen where she can live by herself. I am GLAD that is over!

Finally, I got home as it got dark and gave peeg a watermelon. It made him very happy. That makes me very happy. And its funny.

So maybe today did not suck as bad as I thought.

Follicle Factory Foul-up

Actually, it is not the follicles. It is the failure of the sperm and the egg to make productive acquaintance that is jacking up my day.

Both HG and Squeak came up empty at their preg checks today, damn them. No reason, they just did. We are starting to wonder if HG will not breed with a baby at side. By the way, that baby is looking like he is making progress on the leg straightening. Squeak quite often does not conceive the first round.

This year, she has figured out a way to spend my money fast--by requiring her semen to get here RIGHT NOW. So it is being flown in, as Fed Ex is too slow for this round--she has a 50mm follicle. Oy vey. HG has a 40 on one side, and a 38 on the other, so her semen will arrive via conventional methods(ha, is any of this conventional?) Thursday morning. I have not broken it to the vet that he will have to come back up here since I have to go to Chicago.

Also, Hawk and Echo are being xrayed tomorrow--Echos abcess may be something more, or the worlds most stubborn abcess. Either way, tomorrow we will eyeball it. Hawk has clearly had a pre-laminitic episode, and lets hope that is it--we never saw him being off at all, but his hooves suggest it. We will look for rotation via xray tomorrow.

Other than the vet visit sucking hard, I had a sensible day at work. My new brainy intern is totally on the ball, even if she does not know it, and I made sense of some other piece of work that up to this point has done nothing but blur my vision. After work, I bushhogged the middle pasture, which always makes me happy, moved hay and mowed the yard here at my house. Not until that last one did I hurt myself--wild rose bush to the face.

I do not recommend that.