Is there a Doctor on the Blog?

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water...er...blogosphere. Just when you've picked yourself up from the bathroom floor and pulled your head away from the porcelain throne and have brushed that horrible after taste out of your mouth, you find your knees suddenly weak and your head swimming with the thought of being tagged twice more!

What is with you people? Have I not played nicely with you in the sandbox? Did I throw sand in your eyes or something? Steal your shovel? Send the cat your way, telling her it was a litter box sent down from the heavens before your mother sent you out to play?

So here's the deal. MiKael has tagged me again. The riding gloves are coming off, now, woman! Did you not read my list from before, when Mudranch tagged me back? Fitzgerald's don't get even, we get ahead. And never fear, my dear, you're in for it now. Deep mudnure is coming your way...

Now, MiKael at least gave a twist to the seven things virus. I get to list seven things about my horses. So here it goes.

I'm a butterfly! I'm a butterfly! I'm a big, black butterfly!

1) Jet believes in her heart that her tail and mane are butterfly wings, and that if she flaps them hard enough she'll fly.

2) Jet is oral. Very, very oral. She stood at the fence and with the help of her long legs was able to reach over the top and grab Pokey, the ram, by the wool. Pokey thought he was being groomed and just stood there for a good thirty minutes. Either that or Jet just wasn't letting go. Could have been either.

3) Firecracker thinks if she doesn't look at you, it means you're not there. "I can't see you, therefore you do not exist" is her motto.

4) Firecracker is playful. She likes to pick the water heater up out of the water tub and then drop it back in and make it splash. Maybe I'll get her a sprinkler for summer.

"What size do you wear? Will you share?"

5) Quiet Storm wanted us to share our boots with her. She didn't care that we were still wearing them, trying constantly to slip her foot in alongside our foot as we'd lead her along.

6) Quiet Storm had so much mane that it parted down the middle and fell onto both sides of her neck, and it was still thicker on each side than any other horse I've owned.

7) Before leaving us, Sunny became an apple addict. In fact, two days before heading to her new home, she took an apple from my hand. It took ten months for her to decide something tasted good enough to risk putting her muzzle on someone's hand.

There. One virus down. And one more to go!

One Cowgirl has tagged me for a bucket list. Five things you want to do before you die, based on the movie The Bucket List.

1) Get a manicure. My fingernails are horrible. Filthy. Broken, torn, jagged... Can someone help me? Is it possible to own horses and have decent looking nails?

2) Hire a maid. Yes. I want someone to come in and clean up after me. I know City Boy is going to say he does that all the time, but I'm thinking maybe he wants a day off?

3) Learn how to make something other than reservations for dinner. I know, at 46 what's the point? You're right. Scratch that.

3) Travel around the country. There's so much to see here in the US, and I rarely get outside of Washington. Not that this isn't a stunningly beautiful state, but I'd like to know what the rest of you look at outside your front doors.

4) Wash my windows. It rains a lot in Washington, and if I could just get the cats to hold a little bit of newsprint full of Windex while they're pawing to get in...

5) Y'know, I think I really ought to cook at least one meal in my life. Something other than hot dog casserole... (oops! Did I just mention hot dog casserole? Oye...)

Now, who to tag? Well, obviously MiKael needs to do the bucket list. I'll also tag Paul, Rachel Whetzel, Andrea and Jean.

Baby Got Buck?

Oh, I hope to say so!

This girl has some serious athletic ability. Didn't take as long to get the halter on this afternoon as it did yesterday. Went relatively smooth, considering she'd rather I not touch her face. Biggest challenge, as always, is handling her near her poll. But we've gotten that figured out and are trying to lessen the stress of it all each day. Tying the knot on the side is another challenge since she can see my hands both there alongside her eye, but she's figured out that I'm not leaving until it's finished.

Because she let me get the halter on quickly, and because she did some light lateral flexation and picked up her front feet so readily (back ones, too, with the rope aid), I decided to bring out my handy little rake again. This is the first time I've had it out in over a week due to the snow and ice. It wasn't just the rake, however, as I decided to tie a plastic bag to it this time.

At first, it was nothing more than it'd ever been. Oh, sure, a bit frightening, but the rake bounced on her hip as she trotted a couple of almost frantic circles, then when she stopped it stopped too, and a moment later I began to scratch her with it. Normally the scratching is accepted, but this time the scratching wiggled that bag, so off we went again, only not so worried this time. We got to the point of it being okay to scratch the hip, down the dock of her tail, and back up to her lower back area. But once we reached the withers it was a few more laps.

Now, mind you, while working on her feet and flexing, I'd stood with my side pressed right up against her and my arm over her back scratching the opposite side of her body. This is something Sunny had the hardest time accepting. Firecracker, however, is a mirror of Sunny in terms of what is and isn't acceptable. Sunny liked having her ears and poll scratched, FC does not. Sunny didn't mind the rake with a flag all over her body. Firecracker, however, turned into a PRCA bareback contender once she realized that bit of white plastic had crossed the centerline.

Man, oh, man...that girl is quick! We've got a lot of work ahead of us if we're going to get that saddle on her back this spring...let alone me, lol!

Head Way! (Literally...)

Yesterday we made progress. The long rope was left aside and I spent about 30 minutes keeping Firecracker calm while I eased my way into her space, close enough to get the halter over her neck and onto her nose. Once it was there, I held it in place for a minute, then released her. Her eyes were wide and she let me know the mustang eating halter was not appreciated, but she survived the ordeal.

Today she wanted nothing to do with either the halter or me, so it was back to the long rope, working in circles and coming to the realization that the halter wasn't such a bad idea after all. Took longer than yesterday to convince her of this, but once she made up her mind that this was the easy way out, I was allowed to slip the halter over her nose and even tie it closed up near her eye without any objections.

Do you like the padding I added to it? It's a wool scarf that I'd had sitting around; I felted it over the top of the rope for added padding over the poll injury. And here's a spot of good news; there appears to be no scarring, the old hair if falling out in chunks and there's new hair growing in. That's right, she let me run my fingers up there just long enough to pull up the loose hair and see the soft new fuzz filling in what ought to have been bald and scarred. Hooray!

To celebrate the halter getting on, I didn't bother to do anything else. I brought some hay in for her to munch on; she shared it with Bessie, who's in the stall next to her. Firecracker is really sweet with the sheep. Jet gets bossy, but Firecracker backs down if they get pushy around food.

I left the halter on so she'd get accustomed to the feel of it moving around on her nose for a couple of hours. It's about to come off now that it's dinner time. I'm really happy with today's progress, even though it didn't go as smoothly as originally planned. I'd hoped after yesterday, today would be a snap. Nothing ever seems to work that way though, does it? But it's on and she let me touch the poll; I'm calling that a good day!