Nnnngh I hate people sometimes

Today is one of those days where I'm so very tempted to talk about the crazy-ass drama that led to my friends basically getting out of the horse industry.

However, my friends do not deserve that bullshit falling on their heads.  I really, really shouldn't publicly name names.  At least one individual involved has set up Google alerts on her name and her daughter's (and probably the name of the registry).  About all I can do is note that baby boy is registered with the original registry, and that if you search for the S in that registry name, you can probably figure out what the new so-called registry is.

For now, I am going to content myself with this:

When you try to outright steal a registry, then create your own registry for the same breed when your piss-poor attempt fails... and then you spend more than a year systematically lying - and getting your clueless friends who believe your shit and your alts to spread those lies - in order to destroy the original registry and the people that caught you at your attempted theft and stopped it... you do not have a high horse to sit on.  In fact, when you add on to that probable industrial espionage and outright fraud, the high horse has left the fucking county.  So don't sit there and claim you "rescued" a horse that didn't need rescuing from the people whose life you tried to destroy.

Also, all of your breed registry shit looks like it was created by a talentless hack of a scrapbooker.  Especially your papers.

May every one of you get exactly what you deserve.

/rant

Busy week

Last Sunday, my parents wanted to finally meet the ponies, so we headed up to the barn. Verdict?  Nobody died, nobody got stepped on, I didn't get squished because Cessa's pasture-mates have more manners than she does, and Justice is "at least as big as some of the horses you used to ride."  *snort*  Not horse people, my folks...

Saturday was a wedding, so barn day was Sunday instead.  And it was actually almost cool instead of... you know... Texas weather!

Ever get the feeling you're being followed? lol

And yes, he ran into me.  Oops.  We're gonna work on a verbal whoa cue there, I think, so maybe I can stop him running into stuff with his forehead (at least while I'm watching)...

His random ear spot has reappeared, too!

Best baby.

Apex selfie game.  It's all downhill from here, folks.

As for Cessa...  Well, someone was being a bitch because there was a new hay bale in the pasture.

This is the look I got when I told her so.

The hilarious part is that she let me catch her twice last weekend without a fuss, but this weekend?  Nope.  Not having it.  I wasn't even carrying a halter!  Mares!

At least the donkey wanted to see me.

Comparison shot: Justice's dam Love on the left, Cessa on the right.

A dry day!

So Harvey ended up fizzling for my area; what was thinking about a couple of inches of rain (like, less than five) ended up being a couple of showers and that was it.  Everything went off east.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  It's totally okay that we missed the rain, considering August was the 6th wettest on record without Harvey coming to visit!

So, this afternoon I bathed Cessa, who was nasty as hell the last time I saw her.  Of course, it's rained since then, so she was fine... but she got a bath anyway.

Clearly, she was impressed. But dammit, she was shiny!

The heat kind of kicked my butt, so although I had good intentions... not much more got done.  Well, I did empty out a treat bucket, but that's it.

More treats, Mom!  I'm cute!

 Justice's vision remains a question mark.  He clearly isn't seeing things in front of him well, even by equine standards, but he seems to be functioning a little better.  Is it vision?  Or is it just getting used to the pen he lives in?  No idea.  We're tossing around the idea of a specialist visit sometime later in the year, because we honestly have no clue what this is, but that's for a later day.  (Also, thank you so much, brain, for turning sadness about the dog we lost last fall into a full-blown nightmare about Justice dying during his gelding because of this eye thing....)

It does look like the fall shed is starting, which feels early... but I guess it's September!  Cessa is itchy in her throatlatch and on her chest, where she tends to lose the hair first.

So itchy, in fact, that we have a special curry just for that. Mortal fingernails are no match for the level of itchy this mare possesses.

And it looks like we're about to start up another round of color changing, because I swear someone's mane wasn't this light the last time I visited him...

That's not sun reflection - that's white hair!

So call me crazy...

But I'm thinking this whole "weather" thing might impact my barn time this weekend.

Cropped from a photo that BO #2 sent me.  That is not dirt.  That is water.

Justice standing right at that fence corner in January.

I'm told the pasture is "horrible" there.  The main pasture at BO #1's place has a lot more high and dry ground, but has been known to sprout rivers during heavy rainfall.

This is, I should point out, before we know how far inland the hurricane is coming.  The area where the barns are got somewhere between 5 and 10 inches of rain in the last week; I'm in a drier area (this time) and we still got 3-5 inches.  This is just the extraordinary rainfall that's been happening this year; we were under flood warnings today, and I swear the same storm sat over my town for 5+ hours this morning.

We're 300+ miles from the coast, so I expect we'll get some wind and some rain, as usual; how much depends on exactly what Harvey decides to do.

Babies!

This:

This is the squinty face of a human thinking the following things:

It's a million degrees, with a million percent humidity.  On today, of all days - WHY have you decided that you no longer know how to walk on a lead?

Because yeah, that was a thing.  "What?  I can't walk.  Walking is hard.  I can stand here, right, Mom?"  *facepalm* 

He's a baby; it's a baby thing.  I get it.  This did not make me consider murder any less, but at least I knew why what was supposed to be a casual stroll up to the grass turned into a very, very slow recreation of the Bataan Death March?

The good news is, today he was back to his calm, normal self.  He hesitated a couple of times when his half-sisters made noise, and he definitely shouted back and wanted to hurry when we went back to the paddock, but there was none of the spinning-and-screaming buddy-bound behavior.  I seriously suspect some of his issues were the darkness of the barn; that's the kind of behavior I would have expected if he was night-blind.

This is not to say he can see much.  I watched him gently walk into the feeder face-first, stop, and then go wide around it.  (This would have been hilarious if not for the whole my-horse-is-blind...)  He definitely seems to see something in the sunlight; he seemed to have a decent idea of where the gate was when we left the paddock and went back into it, and he seemed to react to things to his side better than things in front of him.  So it's not great vision, but there's... something... there.

Ugh

Well, now I'm less calm about the eye thing.

Today was farrier day, and Justice was losing his shit because he's become completely dependent on his half-sister - who also can't see well - and wholly buddy-bound.  They ended up having to drug him to get his feet rasped.

We've also had what was either a relapse (possible) or a re-infection (equally possible) that's hit Justice again and now has hit the other half-sister.  The cataract in the left eye is smaller, but still pretty big, and the cloudy is back in the right eye.  They've been pulled up to the barn for now and are back on drugs after finishing their course of stuff last week.

How much he can see remains an open question.  He can clearly sometimes see something - but other times, it's like he can't see at all.  When he was freaking out because his buddy wasn't in the stall anymore, he was running into shit like crazy and really kind of freaking me out - even while I had him haltered and was talking to him.  Now, this was in the barn, which is dark, so maybe that was part of it?  And some of it may just be buddy sourness stealing his brain.  I don't know.  And I'm torn if the worst part is not knowing or not being able to explain that it's ok.

Sooo... yeah.  The calm was nice while it lasted.

Oh, and just to make my week better, I tried to murder my ankle and the temperature today looked like this:

Ah yes, it's summer

Oh, Texas.  I see you've remembered the time of year.

This was Sunday afternoon...

Yeah, uh, I love having horses and want to go spend time with them and all, but I'm also not insane.  Maybe if there was a little less heat index, I would have gone - but 113?  Christ on a cracker, that's a NO THANK YOU.