Yetis and BBQ

I was AWOL from the internet yesterday due to excessive BBQ consumption.

The only truly outstanding food from the Memphis area - the thing we do better than ANYBODY else, and if you wanna fight about it, bring it on - is barbeque. Memphis, like every other city its size, has a bunch of good restaurants and wonderful local twists on regional and international classics, but we're really most proud of our BBQ. I will be polite about anybody's well cooked 'cue - my momma raised me right. But my husband and I miss Memphis BBQ so much that we will have it Fedexed to us. His mom sent us two racks of ribs and two pounds of pulled pork from Central BBQ for Christmas! I get the ribs; he gets the pork. Two of each so we can dive in the day it arrives, and save the rest for the actual holiday. Yesterday was Cue Day, so I ate a whole rack of absolutely perfect ribs and then sat on the couch in a blissed-out daze all afternoon.

Pre-Fedex, I met the trimmer at S's and got Dixie's feet fixed up. He, like Aarene, has a horse that paddles on one foot and wears toe unevenly on that foot. And he saw the bruising, but agreed that if she's not lame not to worry too much about it. I volunteered to trim her in between his visits. I still want him to come balance her up perfectly every six weeks, but I'm going to work on the obvious stuff.

I did learn something cool - he said overgrown bars were making her back lateral quarters and heels flare out, and I could see what he was talking about when I looked at the sole.

Dixie is a pretty nicely put together TWH. I was noticing yesterday and today how she naturally tracks up perfectly - you can really see it in fresh snow. Just at a normal, uncollected, slow walk, her back feet land perfectly in the tracks left by her front feet. Usually, that means that at a faster gait, if she's "tucking her butt" correctly, her back feet will overstride where her front feet were by a couple of inches. Not that I would know - I don't have a very good view of her back feet from on top ;)

Today we made a bold expedition down to the end of the road and about a quarter mile in the snow. She kept a close watch for yetis. When we turned around for home, we had a fight about how fast she'd zoom home. Then I managed to quit fighting and relax and half-halt over and over again until she slowed down. And she actually did! Yay us! I was still in the "don't fight with her" mindset when we got back to the driveway, and I did not tense up and anticipate her falling down the slope on her forehand and breaking in to a trot. I stayed loose and asked her to go slowly, and she did.

One day we'll actually condition again. For now, we'll just do mental conditioning. It's all good.

The sun went down behind the western mountains today at 3:51 pm. It didn't get really dark for an hour after that, but still! I can't wait for the solstice.