first day of new year–yesterday

Wendy got in at 1am, after driving all day from Iowa. so from 10am to 1… about 19 hours. the horse trailer lights went out shortly after it got dark, She ran into snow several times. and we think it was the ice on the electric wires under the trailer that shorted the lights out. anyhow she had a melt down in middle of Nebraska. trying to fix it freezing cold. the horse trailer travel insurance person she called, (got this insurance specifically for the trip, 150 dollars) told her to go they would haul the trailer to nearest over night horse place but she would have to pay the board, and her own hotel, and for getting trailer fixed. which is basically no benefit from having insurance. for what? as that was not an option they told her to go into the truck stop and ask someone to help her… my god! did the person saying that have ANY idea the types of people in truck stops… like asking to be raped. (not that there are not many perfectly good folks there… just they are all strangers, and who knows what they are…) After struggling with crawling under the trailer and trying out find the fuse boxes, etc. and not…she finally melted down and in tears, the waitress had her boyfriend help her. got on road again, only to have same thing happen. as she now had spare fuses and knew where to find them, she fixed it herself 3 times. on edge of Colorado boarder they went out again, and as no one was on road– new years eve at 10pm (about) she just drove on. only one car passed her and it was going over 100 miles an hour. so made it home. at 6 am she bounces out of bed, worried that the mare won’t find the automatic water thing. (as the hay feeder was in the way, she said) so we drove out to the barn — about 10 miles from the house. horse is find. drove home. she got another 2 hours sleep and is up again. now I didn’t sleep so great the night before–calling her every couple of hours to make sure she was ok. but we went back to barn at around 2, moved the mare from the stall to pasture. (we had 2 horses in 2 horse stall, but moved them to pasture before she left, so the mare could have a place to rest up without being bothered by other horses, when she unload after 20 hours in trailer.) well the pasture idea didn’t work. if you know horses you know there is a pecking order. and the new guy always gets rejected, and driven away from the "herd". she raced from one end of fence to other several times, kicked back at her attackers. and was dripping wet. the other horses settled down and ignored her eventually. but she was wanting OUT. it was when she reared up and folder her front legs up so she could use them plus her body weight =to push against the gate, that we realized she was going to knock the gate down to get out. (most horses would not have done that, fold the legs up to use as leverage. they might have tried to jump the gate, or push with their chest. what she did was really smart, and effective) we took her out, and moved horses around again. so she is in with Sugar, the quarter horse gelding. and my mare is (with her blanket on) in pasture. Which might work better, as my mare is the Lead mare (top of the pecking order, ie the boss) and she has free range of feed out there. so she doesn’t worry about when her next meal is coming and start cribbing (chewing on wood). phew. next event. my grandson and his girl friend come to see horses. and then we go to dinner with them. great until my credit card doesn’t work. grandson pays, and I write him a check to repay him. but that was really embarrassing. finally back home. end of day. finally.

there are some folks that say the first day of year is indication of how the year goes… hmmm. not a great start. and broke. wonderful. hoping this folk tail is not true…