Lightning Dodged

From Sunday midday to Monday midday, we were hunkered down at the ranch waiting for lightning to hit, but it never came! There was a bit of rain over us, but no real storm, and then midday Monday, the warning was lifted, no dry lightning was scheduled to be in the area. So the SO and I went home and breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn't all bad though, we decided that we definitely wanted to get some kind of camper type thing eventually (they're expensive my god) for camping, so we talked about that a lot while we were staying in my parents' RV (it's a fifth wheel actually).

Dark red is fire, red is evacuation order, yellow is evacuation
warning, so that's cool, I live somewhere in the middle

TC has settled in at the ranch. He's still weird about the cross ties and walking in the front yard, but he's happy in his paddock and in the wash rack, so we've just been hanging out there.

It's been so fun having Rico and TC together. Rico is definitely a bit brighter when TC is there, I think they really like each other. Rico and Riot get along fine but Rico and Sunny have had some arguments, Sunny is a bit mean to him and Rico is getting older and probably not interested in having mean friends anymore. TC gets along with everyone and made fast friends with Rico.

Rico has also been way more interested in me. I managed to be part of both horses' lives when TC was a baby and only being ridden a few days a week and when he was on rehab. But once I started my current job with the insane commute and riding TC every day, I didn't have as much time for Rico. Don't think that Rico minded though, Rico has made it very clear that he's over being ridden. You'd take him out of his stall for anything but a trailer ride and he'd be immediately annoyed. That's just life with two jobs I guess. Rico sees me occasionally, and I always go in and give him a hug and a cookie at the very least, but it's my mom he looks forward to seeing now, she feeds him after all.

But now, I don't know if it's that he's envious of TC's attention or if it's just been enough time where he knows I'm not going to ride him (not that he hated being ridden, but remember that the last time he was ridden seriously, his life was hard, the Grand Prix did not come super easy to him, or any horse, really). Whatever it is, Rico has been really sweet and interactive with me, which has been so fun.

Ruby came to hang out with us in the RV, this is her couch

My barn put out an email saying that the evacuation order had been lifted, but I haven't seen that on Cal Fire just yet (maybe I'm not looking in the right place though). When it has been lifted, we are definitely heading back to our barn!

And from now on, any time I talk about having my own facility or having my horses in the back yard, just send me to the ranch to clean paddocks when it's 100 degrees and the air quality is 150+ because it was fun the first day he was there and now it's exhausting and I can't wait for someone else to take care of the feeding and cleaning.

Not that I'll be riding though. The air quality gets better and worse over the days depending on the wind, but it's been long enough where TC's lungs are for sure impacted. I'll write about my plans to deal with that soon. For now, he's just going to be walked and I've decided that if I can't obsess over his muscle development, I will probably be obsessing over his coat, which was a little rough due to the ulcers. He's been getting lots of currying these days, which he loves, so it's a win win!