Five Blessings

I need to get a video of this horse to someone, and my email isn't cooperating.  Maybe you guys will enjoy it, too.

The Lake and the Windsurfers

I was headed to the Great Meadow, but, first, I had to go to Country Max, a local chain of stores something like Tractor Supply.  As usual, I decided to go back using the road that runs along Lake Ontario.  I planned on cutting South to get to the Great Meadow from there.  However, as I passed the parking area for Webster Park, I saw people out on the lake, windsurfing.  I had never seen this before, so I made a quick turn into the parking lot and got out my camera.  What a beautiful sport!  It looks like it takes a lot of strength and skill (and courage) and I had so much fun watching them.

The wind was blowing quite hard and the windsurfers were traveling very fast.  This video will give you some idea

 

The wind was blowing so hard that these Mallards in the creek were having to paddle just to stay in the same spot.

I think that these could be yellow Winterberries, but I would welcome correction.

It was a wild day.  The wind was blowing, the waves were crashing and the sound was magnificent.  Here's a couple of pictures, and another video to give you some idea.

I never did make it to the Great Meadow.

Pass the Buck

I haven't seen any deer at my feeder for a while.  Then, for a few days, I had two young bucks, still with the velvet on their horns.  After that, nothing, until yesterday, when they showed up again.  Here is the one that came up to the feeder.  The other stayed near the woods, eating some bushes.  Both have lost the velvet on their horns.  So far, I have always seen them together.  Sadly, that will probably change, as the hormones ramp up and mating season is upon them.  I wonder if, after the season is over, they will become buddies again?

Out of My Rear Window 9/12/10

First of all, thanks to everyone for their kind comments yesterday.  I rarely get that drained, defeated feeling, and all of you really helped me pull myself out of the funk I was in.  Today, I'm ready to go again, having reminded myself that we lose some, but we help place a lot more. 

It is a very dark and dreary morning here.  At 10:30 AM, it's just reaching the point where I don't have to turn on the lights when I move from room to room. 

The birds are crowding the feeders, as they have done for the past few days.  It's as if they have realized that Winter is coming, and they had better start fattening up.

Well, you can't see them very well in that shot, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it!

My microwave died last night, so today is going to be devoted to finding a new one.  It was old, and didn't owe me a thing, so I'm not too upset.  In fact, ever since I set a bag of microwave popcorn smoldering a few years ago (and had to air out the house in the middle Winter), I've been waiting for it to die, because the smoke stained the inside badly and wouldn't come out.  Every time I opened the thing I got a little case of the icks, even though I knew it was perfectly clean.

Yesterday, I was Angry

So angry that I was literally shaking. Today, I'm just feeling washed out and defeated.

We made, we thought, real progress in getting one of the larger trainers at Finger Lakes to list his horses with us. This is a trainer who was a real pig last year over an old warrior of 10 or 11 who needed a safe landing. He gave us absolutely no cooperation, but, eventually, through the work of several people on an internet forum, this horse was purchased and delivered safely to the Old Friends facility near Saratoga, NY.

This year, his barn manager, a lovely young woman, has called us several times, asking us to list horses for sale. The horses were beautiful, well cared for and in good health. Word is that this trainer does care well for his horses, recognizing that a healthy, fit horse is more likely to win. She listed them at reasonable prices for OTTB's right off of the track, and they have sold well. We were so pleased that we now had a pipeline to get these horses into second careers.

Last week, we listed eight of them. All of them were, characteristically, well kept, well fed and, in general, well looked after. They included one nine year old gelding who was absolutely stunning, but would be a hard placement because of his age. I was working hard to get him placed, and having some success. Most of them were listed at $1,000, which is a reasonable price for horses of this quality. Especially since there was a little wiggle room, for negotiation.

Yesterday afternoon, I received an email from the barn manager. She was very upset, but had to tell me that the trainer had ordered her to raise the prices on all of these eight horses. Not by just a little, but by thousands of dollars. Some are now listed at $3,500, and the lowest prices are $2,000. That's the price for that old warrior. Now, these horses don't stand a chance of being sold. He will hold them for the remaining couple of months, paying for their keep all the while. I'm betting that some of them will end up, at the end of the season, being shipped to Puerto Rico, to race there. At the end of their careers there, there is a good possibility that they will be euthanized, and dumped into the ocean.

I was so angry that this trainer's greed had ruined any chance for these horses to find a home. I have changed the listings, but, I have done it in such a way that any interested buyers are aware of what the old price was. Hopefully, if people are interested in the horses, they will call and try to negotiate to the old price.

I spent the whole evening thinking of what I was say to this trainer when and if I saw him. How I would tell him what a poor excuse of a human being he was, and how despicable his greed was. I thought that, maybe, it would do more to mock him, rather than castigate him. Maybe, giving him the nickname of Peewee, for his small brain size would do more good than yelling at him.

But, this morning, I can't feel any emotion except despair. Confronting him in any way isn't going to change anything. He proved that last year, when people were begging him to give that old campaigner a safe landing. He's just a son of a bitch (I'm sorry for the bad language, but, he is), and nothing is ever going to change. I just hope I don't see him, because I don't know how I can bring myself to even speak to him.

My heart just aches for those eight horses.

The old warrior that we have listed this year.  What a beauty he is.

Noticing

I have been familiar with orange Jewelweed (touch me not) all of my life.  I have spent my time gleefully popping the seeds.  But I never knew until I read a couple of blogs a while ago, that there were yellow jewelweeds.  I found myself wishing that I could see some, but doubting that I would because, they don't seem to exist around here.

Today, I went with another volunteer to a farm very near the track, to photograph some lovely horses for the Trainer's Listings.  As we pulled into the driveway, we saw great stands of this:

Yup, yellow Jewelweed, the very flower I didn't think that I would ever see.  Isn't it funny that, so soon after I became aware that they existed, I found some?  I wonder why?  Just luck?  Or had I actually seen them before, and just not paid any attention to them, not even noticing that they were there?  I would guess that it is the latter.  I wonder how many things we don't see, every day when we pass them by?  I wonder what we are missing?

New Visitors to the Feeder

There's not much going on today, and I'm tied to the house, to the phone and the computer, trying to get some horses matched with new owners.  So, I thought you might like to see a couple of new visitors that have shown up at the bird feeder.

This little skunk came around a few nights ago, and has been showing up ever since.  I think it must be one of this year's crop.  He's a cute little bugger.  It's certainly not the big, beautiful, almost all white skunk that has been coming to the feeder for a couple of years.  That one always show up when it's too dark to get a picture.

And, the grackles are mobbing, another sign of approaching Fall.  They're beautiful birds, but, they sure can clean out the feeding area quickly.

I like this picture of them taking flight when something startled them.  It's blurry, but it always amazes me how in sync they are.

From now, until the first part of December, you may notice that my postings become more erratic, and that I'm not commenting on blogs as much.  This is the busy season at the track.  There are lots of trainers who need to place horses, and not enough homes for all of them.  So, I spend a lot of my time hustling.

If any of you want a nice TB, now is the time to consider it.  Shipping isn't a problem, and may not be as expensive as you think.  Just throwing that out there as a half serious, half joke thing. ;-D  John, you're exempt anyways, shipping to Great Britain is definitely out of the range of possibility.