One a day, plus iron

Spring is happening. My onion sets are in the ground and I have color showing on some of my daffs though my dutchman's breeches are Not Quite Blooming yet. They did come up, though, and I have been checking on them to see how things are going. Pics will happen when they do bloom which I expect this week or next depending on weather.

There's been a bit of barberry going on and I'm putting ear pics of outings on my horse on Instagram.

Also in spring news, I had Trys take Birb up for a coggins at Spring's (Spring is a person.) clinic. Trys pulled up in time to hear the vet loudly announce that he was not, definitely not, not under any circumstances crawling into anyone's horse trailer to draw blood from anyone's horse for any reason and that all horses had to be unloaded and held for blood draws, just like their IQs were normal. And then he looked directly at Trysta, pointed at her, and went... Except you. Yours stays on the trailer.

Bird is well-known to the vet. If he were a cat, he'd have a bright red folder with a GLOVES!!! label on it. For his part, Bird can recognize the vet at fifty paces and does not let the vet get anywhere near him if he's in the open. His fleeing efforts are pretty vigorous and you literally cannot hold him, even in a fairly sharp rope halter. Like, he's just not having it. He goes backward and/or sideways at speed and you're basically flying a 900 lb kite at that point. But if he's in a horse trailer, there isn't anywhere he can go. It's a nice slant load trailer and he's in the front slot with the door closed. The vet cracks the jump door and does the draw and it's not like Birb can go anywhere or "get" the vet or anything. It's safer for the vet and safer for the horse and so that's what we do.

The vet, who is a reasonable guy, is aware that the horses who are horrible draws (typically Arabians) do not get "better" or "used to" or "tolerant of" blood draws. They just... don't do them and they never get better at it.

Back in the day, Spring showed a lovely little buckskin mare named Maybee (as in "Maybe she will, maybe she won't.") Maybee, who stood a whopping 13.something hh, could clear four foot fences with a small-adult rider. She was adorable and massively talented and violently opposed to blood draws. They'd pack five ponies (she was the middle one) tight in the stock trailer, and the vet would duck under one pony and keep a "buffer" pony between her and Maybee and stick her that way. It was... a thing, every year.

Some horses put up with stuff better than others. Most horses can also do the tooth guy without drugs. Bird gets drugs (not *as bad* as blood draws because the needle is smaller and it's faster) for the tooth guy because he's... not going to do the tooth guy without drugs. And, because he's parrot-mouthed, he has to do the tooth guy.

But yeah, happy April, everybody!

This is one of my favorite times of year. I really like spring. I like the greening up after a winter of dark and grey and brown. I like all the different colors of spring, the greeny-bronzes and the yellow-greens and it's like a small fall. One of these days I will be able to get a fantastic picture of it, but that day is not today. (We must go to work, so much to do, yadda yadda yadda.)

But anyway, at this particular time of year, in this particular location (the ridge-n-valley province of the Appalachian mountains in Pennsylvania), you can see spring climbing the mountains. It is beautiful. Here is a shitty cellphone picture.