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Apr. 9th, 2005 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSorry I missed yesterday. I started rereading the A Song of Ice and Fire books and they're engrossing, more so than posting about my inability to locate keys in the basements of our buildings.
Today I went and got a Coggins test for the insane red horse, Nick. (Newer readers: Nick is a girl horse. Her real name is G F Nile Kaia, which doesn't impress me much. Nick is a good name for a horse. I like it. Meatly's real name is Four Oaks Teepee, a name dorkier than G F Nile Kaia. I am under no obligation to call them by their real names and there's a strong case to be made that a creature's real name is what it answers to... if you like that line of reasoning, their names are definitely Nick and Meatly.) Anyway, a Coggins test is for Equine Infectious Anemia, more or less the AIDS of the horse world. There is no vaccine for EIA, it's untreatable, it's spread from horse to horse by flies, and it's nearly always fatal. If your horse has EIA, you pretty much have to put it down. Coggins tests are required if you want to cross state lines with your horse, attend most shows, or go on competitive trail rides. Also, requiring a Coggins test (apparently invented by someone named Coggins) helps catch the few asymptomatic EIA carriers... the ones who don't get deathly ill when they have EIA, the ones that hang around after infection and spread it to other horses.
Following the Coggins testing (The vet draws a test tube of blood from the horse's jugular vein. Most horses take this reasonably well, but Meatly (my insane black horse) is violently opposed to needle-related events so I don't inflict them upon her without good cause. I don't show her or compete her and I don't drag her across state lines, so I don't Coggins her needlessly. Nick is pretty okay with it all, though, so I don't feel bad about doing her. I don't get the impression that I'm inflicting trauma upon her.), we went on two hours of trail ride. I rode the insane red horse AND THERE WERE CARS. Okay, only three cars, but still. It was good. We stayed off the road (about eight feet) and we turned our little circles and all was well. She did quite well, considering. I was most proud of her. The rest of the ride was in the woods, up Betsy Road and back down again the way we came. There were no problems. She was a trooper, a delight to ride.
I posted about this neck of the woods last fall, and you can read that post (with a picture of the relevant terrain) here. Betsy Road is the upper blue road and we went from approximately where it says "Crystal Spring" to the top of the mountain (shown in pink) and back down again. None of that was mind-blowingly steep. It was all okay and Nick did a great job. This is us at the top of the hill, halfway through the ride. Note that there are no leaves on the trees yet.
You know, I'm not as fat as I look in this picture. It's the shirt. Really.
After the ride, we hauled the horses home and went to go pick up some round bales. Round bales are very heavy. Three determined, reasonably sturdy people can roll a round bale onto the horse trailer if they have boards to make a ramp. Someone forgot to pack the boards. *ahem* That someone was not me. Liss, Trys, and I did the first two round bales with a less-than-optimal ramp situation. When we got them home, we rolled both of them out of the trailer and into the creek. This was not on purpose, but once a round bale gets to rolling, there isn't much that normal humans can do to stop it. The field is topographically interesting. It looks like it's got more than one place to roll a round bale, but this is not the case. If you roll a round bale anywhere in the field, it will wind up in the creek, occasionally making a ninety-degree turn at speed in order to do so. It does not matter what direction the round bale is pointing or how much you yell "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" as it rolls in the wrong direction. You might as well just aim for the fucking creek and be done with it.
The second set of bales was with me and Liss and Lance, Trys's ex. Lance was reasonably drunk, cheerful, and entertaining. He's not a bad kid, really. A little rednecky, a little white-trashy, but not a bad kid. Unfortunately, heroin's got him, which is at least half of why Trys doesn't, anymore. Damn. He doesn't really deserve that. (I don't know that anyone does. It's a hell of a thing.) I also don't know that he's got the tools to get himself out of it. It's a very round-bale-and-creek situation. That was pretty much the only sour note to an otherwise delightful day, though.
Today I went and got a Coggins test for the insane red horse, Nick. (Newer readers: Nick is a girl horse. Her real name is G F Nile Kaia, which doesn't impress me much. Nick is a good name for a horse. I like it. Meatly's real name is Four Oaks Teepee, a name dorkier than G F Nile Kaia. I am under no obligation to call them by their real names and there's a strong case to be made that a creature's real name is what it answers to... if you like that line of reasoning, their names are definitely Nick and Meatly.) Anyway, a Coggins test is for Equine Infectious Anemia, more or less the AIDS of the horse world. There is no vaccine for EIA, it's untreatable, it's spread from horse to horse by flies, and it's nearly always fatal. If your horse has EIA, you pretty much have to put it down. Coggins tests are required if you want to cross state lines with your horse, attend most shows, or go on competitive trail rides. Also, requiring a Coggins test (apparently invented by someone named Coggins) helps catch the few asymptomatic EIA carriers... the ones who don't get deathly ill when they have EIA, the ones that hang around after infection and spread it to other horses.
Following the Coggins testing (The vet draws a test tube of blood from the horse's jugular vein. Most horses take this reasonably well, but Meatly (my insane black horse) is violently opposed to needle-related events so I don't inflict them upon her without good cause. I don't show her or compete her and I don't drag her across state lines, so I don't Coggins her needlessly. Nick is pretty okay with it all, though, so I don't feel bad about doing her. I don't get the impression that I'm inflicting trauma upon her.), we went on two hours of trail ride. I rode the insane red horse AND THERE WERE CARS. Okay, only three cars, but still. It was good. We stayed off the road (about eight feet) and we turned our little circles and all was well. She did quite well, considering. I was most proud of her. The rest of the ride was in the woods, up Betsy Road and back down again the way we came. There were no problems. She was a trooper, a delight to ride.
I posted about this neck of the woods last fall, and you can read that post (with a picture of the relevant terrain) here. Betsy Road is the upper blue road and we went from approximately where it says "Crystal Spring" to the top of the mountain (shown in pink) and back down again. None of that was mind-blowingly steep. It was all okay and Nick did a great job. This is us at the top of the hill, halfway through the ride. Note that there are no leaves on the trees yet.
You know, I'm not as fat as I look in this picture. It's the shirt. Really.
After the ride, we hauled the horses home and went to go pick up some round bales. Round bales are very heavy. Three determined, reasonably sturdy people can roll a round bale onto the horse trailer if they have boards to make a ramp. Someone forgot to pack the boards. *ahem* That someone was not me. Liss, Trys, and I did the first two round bales with a less-than-optimal ramp situation. When we got them home, we rolled both of them out of the trailer and into the creek. This was not on purpose, but once a round bale gets to rolling, there isn't much that normal humans can do to stop it. The field is topographically interesting. It looks like it's got more than one place to roll a round bale, but this is not the case. If you roll a round bale anywhere in the field, it will wind up in the creek, occasionally making a ninety-degree turn at speed in order to do so. It does not matter what direction the round bale is pointing or how much you yell "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" as it rolls in the wrong direction. You might as well just aim for the fucking creek and be done with it.
The second set of bales was with me and Liss and Lance, Trys's ex. Lance was reasonably drunk, cheerful, and entertaining. He's not a bad kid, really. A little rednecky, a little white-trashy, but not a bad kid. Unfortunately, heroin's got him, which is at least half of why Trys doesn't, anymore. Damn. He doesn't really deserve that. (I don't know that anyone does. It's a hell of a thing.) I also don't know that he's got the tools to get himself out of it. It's a very round-bale-and-creek situation. That was pretty much the only sour note to an otherwise delightful day, though.
