Tuesday Twitterdeedum

Occasionally mornings like these come along. What in the world would I have to say that anyone else would care to read?

Go down the list. There must be something.

The weather? No. It would be redundant to say that we have a gorgillious day ahead. Okay, so I've not used gorgillious before, nor has anyone else, for that matter. But that's pretty much the best way to describe the third or fourth straight day of welcome sunshine.

Politics? I don't even go there anymore. It's all become so redundant, nasty and uninspiring. What's new there?

My animals? Hmmm. What can I say about Lily, Lefty, Heather, Kiwi, Kea, Lonesome, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Licker and Festus that's funny, sad, disgusting, fascinating????

Well, come to think of it, there is a little story I can share.

Yes, I can tell you about Lefty. It cuts quite a scene when a young horse gets a big leather rein stuck under his tail head. That's exactly what happened yesterday when I took the little guy (who never seems to grow except to get fatter) out for his first ground-driving experience of the spring.

The first clue that the workout might not go perfectly came when I kept trying to get him to turn left and all he did was continue further to the right. We were halfway across the lawn, where I did not want him to go, before I noticed that the left rein was not attached to the bit.

Guess I had a Toyota for a driving horse for a while.

Once I discovered that the rein was just hanging off the circingle and attached it to the bit, Lefty's steering and brake system performed a lot better.

So, we proceeded around the yard, weaving in between trees and satellite dishes. All the while his buddy Heather was screaming and running the fenceline, doing the best she could to distract Lefty. He got a little bouncy but generally listened to me instead of his barnyard mate.

We were doing just fine until we got to the end of the driveway. Unlike those Toyotas, Lefty does "whoa" when you want him to stop. That's an especially good trait when a rattly big truck with a piece of heavy equipment on behind is coming down the road.

I decided it would be best to turn Lefty around and head back away from the road while the rig passed. Lefty got in a hurry and whirled around. That's when the rein got stuck under his tailhead.

To help you imagine something rivaling his discomfort, all I can think of is the summer day long ago out on Lake Pend Oreille when the Gehring family gave me every possible opportunity to get up on water skis.

My low center of gravity will not permit it, but on that day we all held out a little hope. Try after try after try merited no success. I finally decided to give up the effort on the last attempt after hitting the water with such force that my bathing suit threatened to filet my body into two perfect halves from the crotch upward.

So, yesterday I could empathize with Lefty. So focused on his derriere discomfort, Lefty failed to hear my first three "whoa's" and kept going in a circle at the end of the driveway. Finally, I told him "whoa and calm down." Somehow that guidance made sense to Lefty, who was by now fully wrapped from top to bottom with what was left of reins not stuck between his butt and his tail.

He stood perfectly still as I carefully unwrapped the reins and even more carefully removed the offending piece of leather from his sensitive area. I accomplished this all in time to have him looking fairly normal by the time the big rig and its load rumbled past.

The rest of our experience with the first driving adventure of the spring went well. Heather never shut up, but Lefty tuned her out as we went down the lane and did a few turns around the hayfield.

If all goes well today, I may hook up the two long pieces of PVC piping behind him and see how he handles the sensation of pulling something that moves and makes noise behind him.

I don't even want to imagine the picture if Lefty gets one of those stuck under his tail.

And, while I'm on my animals, I do have something to report about Annie Dog. I think she's getting dimentia. She's 13 or 14 this year and actually doing pretty well physically for an old dog.

But she is an old dog, and she does as she damn well pleases.

One of her rather annoying new tricks of canine senility is that bark. It's high-pitched, short, sharp and continuous. Never yet have I found a reason or a rhyme.

Annie launches into it at any given time and for no particular reason----when she's resting on her couch and not a soul is around, when she's standing in the driveway and no cars, people, dogs, cows, moose, deer, horses or big rigs are going by.

She just stands there and "ARF--ARF--ARF--ARF--ARF's" forever, it seems, or until I finally stop what I'm doing, go outside and yell, "Shut up!" Because of her selective hearing, Annie can't usually hear my other commands, but for some reason she responds at her "ARF" times.

We may go a couple of hours before she feels the inspiration again. As long as she still remembers what "Shut Up" means, I guess we can handle her new habit.

Gosh, I was going to name a few more subjects that get too redundant to talk about, but I got off track, didn't I?

I wonder if dimentia is setting in. ARF --- ARF---ARF!