Mosquito PLAGUE

Clouds of tiny grey bodies rise up to completely engulf you as you step out the door. The constant hum in the air has me pinching my shoulder blades together in an automatic response. We're spraying the horses several times a day and have lit our first smudge in our 4 summers here. Every year we have a predominant insect set upon us.

My first year here, it was lady bugs. Mid-January they were still crawling up our walls in droves. Then we had the summer of crickets. We thought we would go crazy from their nightly serenades. Of course, we cannot forget last summer, the year of the house fly. I'd come home from a day at the hospital and THOUSANDS of them would have found their way into our home somehow and clustered at the ceiling/wall junction. I would vacuum them up only to have them replaced to the last little black body the next evening. Thankfully, we did finally install a storm door around our ill-fitting heavy door this past fall. I'm relieved to note that the mosquitoes are not able to breech our defenses.

Had another Ladies Ride today. I decided to take Max and Scotch, the paint gelding I'm trying to sell. I want to keep him fresh and somewhat fit for viewings.

It took me two seconds to determine that I needed to load Max first, even though it was only his 3rd load in the Sardine Can. Again, I had to hold him back while I secured the hardware. He climbed up and right on in. I LOVE having such an unphasable boy! Scotch, not to be outdone by the young punk (and thanks to some good training work this year) also hopped right in, though he still put his tail protector to good use, setting back as per usual - even on our 3 mile trip. I'm relieved that Max does not require this pesky little detail.

My work with Scotch entailed establishing a solid verbal cued walk/trot/canter on the lunge, with a LOT of transitions to really drive it home and make it all very boring. It was quite warm and he was relieved to take his turn at the wall. After playing with and riding Max, I tacked Scotch up and kept our riding work at a walk, working on bending, softening and reaching deeply with the hinds underneath himself. He required a hip adjustment about a month ago when he tried to turn himself around in a 5' wide standing stall. I fed him 6 days of MSM to tackle any inflamation issues and both treatments combined seemed to have done the trick! It feels good to have him going smoothly and pain-free again.

Max got the same session as last time and his whoa is MUCH better. He's a tad lighter to steer and I really worked on using the tap of my long reins after my leg/seat/bridle cues rather than getting into a tug-of-war with him. I don't want him getting used to heavy aides... I want to make him lighter. We also worked on the one-rein-stop. This is slower to come, I think. Again, he was extremely well behaved around the new horses and even more relaxed in this environment than last week. I find myself impatient for poor Max to lighten, especially after riding the "you think it, I'll do it" ultra-sensitive paint. I have to keep reminding myself that it will come and this lack of over-response to anything is the best foundation to build upon. It is nice to not have to be constantly bringing a horse back from the brink of implosion.

Both horses were relieved to hang out in the cool arena away from the bugs.