Attack of the Deer Fly

Since I am presently without my trailer, my friends Mary-Jo and Leesa agreed to come over and ride with me today much to my delight. So, I was out to the barn a bit earlier than usual this morning. I fed everyone their grain and was going about my chores and Lily is nickering at me. I look at her and she is in her stall and would take a look into her grain dish (a rubber pan on the floor) and then look at me and nicker. She kept repeating this so I went over and looked into her dish and could see nothing wrong so I went with my chores. Lily continued to look into her dish and then nicker at me. Hummmmm, I swept off a section of her floor to bare mats and I put some new grain down on the floor and she gobbled that right up. When she had finished that, I took her dish and dumped it onto the same spot on the floor and THAT was when I saw there was a fresh guinea hen poop in her bowl that I had dumped her gain onto. No wonder she didn't want to eat it. She would not even eat the grain when I dumped it out of the dish, it was tainted poop grain. I cleaned it up and gave her a normal ration in a clean dish. Now, it that had been Marie, she would have eaten it poop and all. Princess Lily is above such things.

Leesa arrived first with Mary-Jo soon after. We tacked up and got ready to go. As usual, Lily was a bit excited to start and today she tested me a bit right at the beginning of the ride giving me a little bit of attitude. Nothing serious at all, just seeing if she could do things her way. We quickly worked that out. Leesa on her new Arab gelding Billy Bob quickly took the lead. He's a really cute horse. Mary-Jo on her Spanish Mustang gelding, Arthur and me on Lily took turns bringing up the rear. Arthur is doing so well this year out on the trail and it's nice to see Mary-Jo really enjoying being out with him. We hadn't been out too long when the deer fly swarmed us. Leesa had a fly whisk. I have one but it's in my trailer which is at the repair shop. So, I broke off a leafy branch to swat them. Lily quickly figured out what I was doing with the branch and was more than happy to let me swat her about the head with it. I did get in front for a few short spells as did Mary-Jo just to give Leesa and Billy Bob a break occasionally. But, Billy Bob was truly dealing with them better than either Arthur or Lily so he led the most and took the brunt of them. Lily slipped off a rock and pretty much sat down. For a moment I thought she was going to go all the way down but she got her legs back under her and I managed to stay on top. She scraped her hock but it wasn't serious. About the time we were thinking we'd had enough of it, we were nearly half way around the planned loop. We came to a trail that we could do a small loop but would end up going back on most of the same trails we rode out on. Or, we could go just a bit farther and do a nice loop with little repeat of any trails. We decided to go on and do the larger loop ride. We knew the deer fly were horrible the way we'd come and figured they couldn't be any worse if we just continued on. It was a good choice. When we got out on the Adams Rd. it was much better with very few deer fly. Once back in the woods, we did get them again but never as many as the trail we started out on. I had to hustle once I got back as I had to get ready for work. So, I was a rude host and left both my friends in the yard. Not that they needed me for anything but it still feels rude to rush off like that. We rode 8.57 miles and it was a good ride despite the deer fly