Bugs

So Monday night during drill team practice I succumbed to the flu as did Mike. Luckily Mom was willing to risk catching the flu to come and watch the Bear. Luckily it was just a stomach bug, I'm guessing the same one the Bear had last weekend. But it was a 24 hour bug that rendered me useless. Mom and Dad stepped up to take care of the horses while I was curled up in a ball wishing to feel better.

By Wednesday, Mike, the Bear, and I were in the clinic because the Bear was going downhill. He'd caught RSV (poor guy). After we got back from the clinic, Mike and I pushed in round bales. Because we hadn't done it during the weekend, and I had planned on pushing bales in Tuesday night, the horses were out come Wednesday. Luckily Dad had thrown hay for everyone. After we pushed in bales for everyone, Mike and I were exhausted.

Thursday found me down with the adult version of RSV, which is really just a bad cold. But now I know what the Bear has been going through. Luckily the weather had been nice all during the week so I wasn't too worried about the horses. But about 2pm on Thursday it started to rain. Yup, rain in January. I was worried about the horses getting chilled and then the cold front coming through. But the cold front waited until Saturday to blow in. But the rain melted a lot of the snow. Unfortunately rain at this point in the season does us absolutely no good and the runoff of the melting snow doesn't do us any good either.

When I went out to do chores Friday morning, the ground was a sheet of ice. Holy Sheet of Ice! Everything that was slushy has now turned into a sheet of very slick ice. Ive come close to falling a dozen times. It makes hauling water back to the mares very tricky. Even walking back and forth from the hospital ward to the barn is tricky. I'm not sure if we'll get warm weather again to try and thaw out that sheet of ice or not. If not, I'm going to have to figure out some way to melt the ice in the horses's pens for their safety.

The cold front blew in Saturday. We went from 39 degrees to 12 degrees for the high. I forget how much I hate the cold. I would much rather have snow than cold temps. Because of the cold temps and wind chills (and the fact I'm still fighting off this really bad cold), I only did chores and came back in. I would have loved to spend some time with the herd but I was getting exhausted.

So that leads us to Sunday. We are curled up under blankets watching TV, resting and trying to recuperate. It's going to take a bit for me to get back on my feet 100 percent. Seems like the Bear is doing better. We'll see how I do as the day progresses. It's going to be a fairly quiet week I hope. I need time to recover from all these different bugs. I'm sure the horses are enjoying me not pestering them all the time.