Relative Something

For the record, my legs are feeling stiff from Wednesday’s up and down, crouching, kneeling, walking, and bending effort to clear the weeds. Just in time for a planned bicycling outing this Sunday. How soon do I get to say I’m too old for this?

I took a picture of Mix receiving a syringe of medicine in the side of her mouth from Cyndie. Mix makes ridiculous faces after Cyndie squirts the dose into her mouth, vividly demonstrating her disgust at the insult. Cyndie has taken to adding an equal amount of applesauce in hopes of masking the flavor that bothers Mix.

The reaction was less extreme with the flavor enhancer.

Maddy, from This Old Horse, was over yesterday, and she thought Mix looked like she was moving with less pain, so the icky medicine is probably helping to some degree.

The reason Maddy was here was for an appointment with a new (to us) farrier. He seemed like a young guy to me, especially considering his name was Ralph, which aligns more with my dad’s generation. Ralph came across as a man of few words, but he let his work do most of the talking. He was efficient and handled the horses’ occasional resistance with gentle patience. That is a welcome change from the previous person who was doing the job.

We were graced with a day of much-improved weather yesterday. All it takes is a clear blue sky and wind speeds of zero for the sunshine to soften the blow after a night cold enough to produce a block of ice in our rain gauge.

The low sun brought a golden glow to the dry corn stalks in the fields and cast a long shadow in the late afternoon hour.

We removed the rain sheets from the horses for a few days because of the nicer weather. As much as possible, we want to encourage the growth of the horses’ natural winter coats, and providing the artificial warmth of blankets can send their bodies the wrong signal, reducing the need for more insulation.

I don’t know if science supports that idea, but it satisfies our intuitive perceptions, so we go with it. If the horses shiver, they get blankets. In the meantime, they gotta grow more hair.

That’s some horse happenings as we reach the last week of October, 2025.

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