10 notable things happening here

I hate lists! But they're a necessary evil in my life. So here's a list of 10 notable things happening at Camp Kim (as the horses and clients call it)

10 - Samson is officially a gelding. He'll be sterile in another week or so, and then he can assume a normal horse life, complete with a gelding roommate and pasture turnout time.

9 - Owen's lasik surgery went great, his eyes have not permanently crusted over (anyone seen that Simpson's episode?), and he still tries to fumble for his glasses in the morning out of habit. Loving near perfect vision.

8 - show season has begun, we went to a RMSC show up the road last weekend. I rode english on a client horse and also took a 5 year old girl in her first leadline class. She was nervous and shy for the first time in her life, but was excited to have a blue ribbon at the end of the day!

7 - The dogs have discovered the now un-frozen pond. They spend a good portion of their day sitting at the edge hunting Muskrat Susie (or is it Muskrat Sam? We still don't know). On occasion they jump in to try to get her, but all they get for their trouble is that seductive swamp thing perfume. Tally did manage to get a crawdad out of the pond, but it bit her on the nose and then hopped back in the water.

6 - Gearing up for the rated horseshows for this year, Cecil is mentally ready to tackle the dressage 1st level qualifiers, I just need to find time to do some physical conditioning for him.

5 - the horse business is ridiculously busy. It's nice to be making money by riding other people's horses aka money pits, but I'm almost feeling neglectful of my own critters.

4 - Speaking of the busy horse business, I currently have 2 youngsters here in training to be put under saddle. One has no peripheral vision in her right eye, and so attempts to buck me off every time I put a leg on her, the other is considerably more calm, but also dumped me this week. I'm nearing the point in my life where I'm contemplating switching to coaching, teaching, and competing, rather than starting babies under saddle. My butt hurts.

3 - Owen is now one of two guys left in his group from Vancouver. The other guy is located in Boise. There is some talk of Owen becoming a permanent member of a Boise group, but continuing to work remotely so we can stay here. I'm hoping he gets a job with another company so he can be paid closer to what he's worth. But in the meantime he may get to go to Europe or China for a business install. I'm pretty jealous.

2 - Spring is here, we had a couple snowstorms this month that hit Denver a lot harder than us. Today it rained a bit. Every spring I worry that my pastures got overgrazed and we won't have any grass, but yet again the grass has returned. The ponies are all eager to get to work on it, but they have to wait until it's established before they start mowing.

1 - Most Recent Home Improvement Project: pulling up the floor in the office to access the crawl space (I use that term loosely, pretty much just rabbits and mice can crawl in that space) so that the washing machine can be re-routed to the septic system. "Where did it go before?" you ask? Excellent question. No one knows. But it's not going there anymore, every time we do a load of laundry the washer backs up and floods out the laundry room. Today a friend who is a plumber came and helped Owen with the plumbing planning. While the friend was down in the dirt I heard an exclamation of "something's looking at me!!". Didn't determine what it was, but it had beady little eyes. And that's why we call the blog "Country Livin'."