The heat wave has broken -or- was that my back?

Since Friday July 3rd, many of our daytime high temperatures have been 100º and more. Day after day, after day. The sunshine has been beautiful and all-in-all it has been a most perfect Arabian desert summer for our horse herd and even for our Summer. The only thing about this kind of July-August weather is we have to move early in the mornings or wait until sunset to have any work/ play time outside.

Last evening the weather broke, and for the first time in over a month we had rain. We had cool, wet rain all night long. It feels great. Since the end of June we could have caught all our rain in a tea cup and it would not have washed the dust off a car windshield.
Last evening after the rain started all the mares gathered in a small group, with tails towards the wind and protecting Summer. The Dynamic Palomino Duo didn’t seem to care about the weather as they turned into mud-puppies, solid chocolate covered colored mud-puppies. Forget their palomino registration, they are just brown head-to-toe horses today☺
Today our mid-day high temperature reads about 71º and it feels great, even though I am sure we will be heading for the 100º mark again soon.

This past week working with Summer has been a joy, as she now comes across pasture when called. She is now blending in with all the mare herd except for Shaiela who continues to show herself as being the royal bitch mare. But we have to consider… Shaiela is pregnant, uses her pinned back ears and snake head moves when communicating with everyone but Rosey.

This past week Summer has really started to show the shed of her foal coat. She is going to be a liver chestnut in the body and probably flaxen mane and tail much like her sire – Rusty. Her lower hocks are remaining light, maybe lightening enough to make me wonder if she might have all around socks. It will be interesting to watch this coloration progress in the next couple of months and so on.

Yep, looks like two black eyes on Summer this week☺

Last Saturday Kittee and I started pretty early, cleaning up and tacking the palomino duo. We left the ranch heading up the Ole Cashe Hollow Road Trail around 8:00 a.m. to beat the heat. Weather forecast was calling for 100+ temperatures for the day. We had a great ride for 2½ miles out, when we stopped and let Derby and Nugget have a break and some fresh wheat head munchies. Kittee and I were sitting in our saddles enjoying the day and our ride up the hill, I was proud of Nugget as he did a great job of keeping up with Derby on the up hill trek. Anyway, there we were, everyone relaxing, horses eating, Kittee and I taking a few sips of water when Nugget raised his head, pointed his ears, turned to the right and bolted… 0 to 60 in 8 seconds. I don’t think I even had a rein in my hands when this happened. So as we raced along the hillside I decided to bale out of the saddle, as the hillside would diminish my fall’s distance to the ground at whatever speed we were then traveling.

This is not a good situation to find yourself in.

Anyway, after everything came to a stop, I realized that I was not gonna ride or walk back to the ranch from here. I told Kittee that I was hurt, I could smell blood, then I could taste blood. Soon thereafter I was spitting blood and Kittee trotted Derby and Nugget back to the ranch to get an ambulance for my ride to the ER. At St. Mary’s we found that I had broken two ribs, punctured a lung, and bruised my sternum rather badly, so for the past week I have been laying low and learning to get up and down, and breath lightly without allot of chest/back pain.
OUCH! that hurt, still hurts, but I feel an urge to be back in the saddle in time for our cool, clear autumn weather. Cowboy-Up. Since last Saturday's crash, I am much more mobile today and find breathing much easier... I feel I am healing very well, but have a bunch of wadded muscles in my back from head-to-tail in need of Dr.Vu's needle therapy. I will finish my pain drug intake tonight and plans are to be feeding, watering horses and driving to Pendleton on Monday and Tuesday mornings for annual driver's training. Kittee is going to be visiting with her dad/ stepmom this next week.

And that’s the way it is around the ranch --- Dale