The past two weeks we have had a beautiful early spring in January. This past week going out to pre-trip my school bus each morning, I only had need to wear an outer shell fleece vest, and had daybreak to light my way as I drove out of the driveway. It felt so good to know that spring is just around the corner, and we now have 12 hours of functional daylight each day. Until Saturday night we have not seen the 30° temperatures in about two weeks. No snow here, but a few miles to our east the snow level dropped to below the 2000’ last night, it didn’t freeze or frost here at the ranch.
Today we woke up with bright daylight coming through our bedroom window around 7:00 and the sun came over the mountains to the east at 8:13. We were up-and-at’em before sunrise with coffee in hand, feeding the herd, ourselves and thinking of horseback riding. With Saturday’s rain each of our rides took the 
opportunity to get down in the mud and roll, so the first order of business for this day’s ride was brush, brush, brush the mud out of their coats. Today, we had invited our downriver neighbor Robert to join us for a ride. While riding in our riverside arena Robert took it easy on Nugget...
while Kittee and Derby got into abit of rail jumping.
It has been awhile since Robert has done any horseback riding (he and wife Sherry put their old-aged horses down several years ago), but like riding a bicycle, Robert got the feel of being back in the saddle pretty quickly (his saddle belong to his Grandfather – WOW a mid-1930’s vintage Hamley’s saddle). Before we finished riding Robert wanted to do a bit of trotting around with Nugget, so we all made a lap around the arena trotting, then Misty and I went into a canter. Misty finished her canter sprint with an approach to the jumping rail only to slow down in time to step over the rail. I have had her jump with me before so I was half way ready for a leap through the air on my steed.
Most of Saturday, we had rain so I spent a portion of the day working on cleaning and oiling my saddle leather.
Saturday afternoon, Kittee and I relaxed next to the radio and listened to NPR – A Prairie Home Companion and this week’s news from Lake Wobegon, MN. After listening to NPR we had dinner of large bowls of chilie bean soup, with corn chips/ cornbread, and after dinner proceed to our theater room for a Saturday night movie – Ocean’s Twelve.
This past week around the ranch, we have had plenty of fresh air, warm sunshine and I got in a lot of horse petting time. Travis our horse trainer, was here late one afternoon when I came in from my bus route to work with a couple of horses. He was having kind of a hard time with catchup, so I went out walked up to each horse and walked it back to the paddock with my arm around its neck. I also spent too much time re-configuring our computer with email address that I lost in making the changeover from dial-up email service to broadband cable. That was a bit of a bummer, losing all my archived emails from family, friends and business… but 'tis the price of progress I guess.
Saturday was Summer’s seven month’s birthday, but with the rain and damp we did not celebrate it until today’s sunshine. She is still growing, maturing and is as hug-able as ever. A sweet baby she is.
Summer at one month old.
Before I leave this blog posting, I would like to share with you a video from Baxter Black, DVM. I found this on a Facebook posting/YouTube... it is so very "American", a rural life's passion spoken from the the heart. Kittee and I enjoy Baxter Black wit and thoughts. After you take about 2 minutes to listen to this video, you might want to watch Baxter talking about "Just a dog". Hope you will follow these links and enjoy... it says alot about where I am sitting today.Well that is about all the news from McKuster Ranch this week, where Kittee and Dale are getting a little older; the horses are getting prettier, and the cats are just laying around, getting fatter.
Hope you have a good week, where you are.
Dale
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