Wednesday 12th Dec

Guys, really sorry for the lack of blogging - we have had a few days of really bad weather and it seems to have affected the technology here - or the lack of it! I've not been able to get on for a few days - it's amazing how much you miss your links with the real world until you can't do it anymore!

So, where was I? Well, Cissi has now left the ranch. She flew out of here on Saturday and is spending a few days in LA before flying home to Sweden for the holidays. In mid-January she flies back to LA to begin her new life in the states.

In traditional fashion, Cissi got a farewell "bath" in one of the water troughs (see left). I really think she enjoyed it.

Since Cissi's departure, the weather has got really bad. A storm came in Friday night, lots of rain which has resulted in a lot of flooding out on the trails. We have a main corral where the horses are kept during the day and that whole area is now a huge bog of liquid horse poo. The stench is unbelieveable. It was bad on Friday. It got worse Saturday. Oh and then it rained Sunday too - and yesterday. And if you don't believe, me here's the proof:

I ought to point out at this stage that this particular photo was taken on Friday when the rain hadn't really set in.

In photo (L to R) Marie (volunteer), Carol (Head Wrangler aka The Boss), Jenny (wrangler), Jed (wrangler).

It really has been too wet to take out fast rides and yet I am surprised by how many guests want to do just that - some get quite upset when they are advised that we can only do slow rides. I'm also surprised by the number of people who want to ride in this weather at all. Don't get me wrong, I understand that guests have paid a lot of money to come here but I'm not sure how enjoyable it is to be out on a trail for a couple of hours in torrential rain. We had a scheduled All Day ride yesterday. Hopefully the clue is in the title as to what is involved in this ride. We had 4 cancel before the ride went out (very sensible). 7 go out and then 2 complain that they are getting cold and wet and want to come home. This is 1 hour into an 7 hour ride. I don't blame them for getting cold and wet. I just wish that they had made this decision before they went out - it's not like the bad weather came on all of a sudden. We had to send another wrangler out to bring the riders back.

You may be pleased to hear that I have been brushing up on my nursing skils again. Deringer has some kind of ulcer under his chin and so I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to clean it and pick the scab off and apply some cream on it. Better than that - Grey Cloud now needs doctoring as Buzz did - he too had cancer on his friend which has now been frozen off - which means he now has quite a painful-looking wound that needs to be cleaned daily. I tried to encourage Jimmy, one of the wranglers to help me with this task. His response: "Hell, I can't even look at that without my eyes watering, ain't no way I'm gonna be touching it". Oh, ok, I guess I will do it by myself then.