mud – The Hermits' Rest

You don’t have to go out of town to have adventures, as the Hermits’ Rest’s biggest canine, Goldie, discovered today. We made it home from Bandera and getting new job paperwork done in plenty of time for daily chores and a bit of fun.

The deer stand on the property had gotten blown over by the wind, so I went along to watch the tractor right it. Goldie ran alongside us.

Once the stand was righted, we just had to enjoy the beauty of the back part of the ranch. I love it there, where all you see is grass and trees. It’s really fun on a horse, but pretty darned good on foot.

We wandered around a bit finding big rocks for Lee’s pond. Then we went to check one of the small tanks/ponds that hides back there. I got all distracted by this walking stick on a Christmas cholla cactus.

Goldie decided she was thirsty. After all, it got over 100 degrees today, and she ran all this way. She did her best to get to the water in the muddle of the pond, but nope. The mud was up past her knees.

The sound of Goldie pulling her feet out of the mud was the definition of “suck.” It was pretty funny, but I was glad she didn’t get stuck. She was too.

She was sooo dirty.

This evening, though, we looked down and saw Carlton patiently cleaning Goldie’s legs. They made a lot of progress before all the dogs erupted in play. Yeah, we miss our dogs when we leave.

Trixie the farrier came last evening to check on Apache and Spice’s feet. She’s coming more often while the issues get better.

Lucky Fiona didn’t get trimmed and just got to eat as the sun set.

When she was working on Apache, she said she’d never seen laminitis growing out like he is, but it seems to be working. Then she tried to scrape his hoof and it was so hard she couldn’t.

So, she suggested he go stand in water while she worked on Spice, to soften him up. It hadn’t rained yet this month, so all their hooves are hard!

We over-filled the water bucket, which made Big Red happy. A big muddy area ensued. It was a horse spa!

Sadly, Apache wasn’t as happy with the spa treatment as we’d hoped, so I tied him up to where he couldn’t escape it. Much stomping ensued.

I’m gonna cling to this little dry area.

Sara pointed out this morning that perhaps he wasn’t happy, because he knew the mud was mostly a mixture of his, Fiona’s, and random cows’ poop.

Trixie coped with the stinky mud fine, once we let him out. he hadn’t softened up much though. If it doesn’t rain a bunch before her next visit, we will soak all the horses for a few days. Somehow. Maybe it will rain.

My conclusion is that Apache would be more interested in massage, grooming, and food for his next spa day.

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