Tuesday, December 31

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Really nice weather today, for this time of year.

Some texting back and forth with a friend from Wyoming, where we lived 12 years ago.

Getting the goats' hooves trimmed. It definitely requires two people to do this, and my sweetie usually does help me.

A good ride on River. He was super loose and relaxed while working on the loose rein today. Really big, loose walk, and just great movement. Got that good collected trot, too.

That we decided to check the automatic waterer in River's pen. My husband thought it was odd that River had just been standing beside it. Turns out it was frozen up, thus not providing water for the horses. So, we called the guy who often does handy man stuff for the owner of the barn (who is away on holiday, and the person who is looking after the place was away for the evening because it's New Year's Eve). He was luckily home, and was able to drop everything and come look at the waterer, and found the problem and fixed it. While we were waiting for him to show up, we hauled pail after pail of water out to the horses, because you CANNOT have horses eating dry hay without access to lots of water. Some of them seemed quite frantic to drink.

It was a strange thing, we might have been the only people to go to the barn on a New Year's Eve, and we normally wouldn't even check the water (sometimes, but it's not even normally our responsibility, right?), and yet, we caught it. If we hadn't been out there, the girl who's looking after the place might not have gone outside until after noon the next day, if she even looked that closely at the water, because she's out partying tonight.

I know the barn owner gets pissed off at me for double checking things all the time. Things that are the responsibility of the barn. She hates that I am aware of any lapses in the feed schedule, or in things that need repair, condition of the horses. She thinks I "don't trust her to do her job". Well, guess what? This is something like the third or fourth time now that my husband and I have found the water frozen, have stayed to haul water to the horses until it could be fixed, and once my husband stayed for hours, helping the other guy with a busted water pipe. Generally, we've spotted it at the end of the day, when the barn owner is likely not going out to check it again, and prevented the horses from going a whole night or more without water; a potentially fatal lapse.

It would be nice if she could appreciate my vigilance, instead of resenting it. I am grateful that we were at the barn tonight, and that we saw it, and got it fixed. For the sake of the horses.

We had a nice evening at home together. We watched "So I Married an Ax Murderer", one of our all-time favorites. It's kind of astounding how incredibly "90's" that movie is.