Today was a good day for getting stuff done. Pete was home, and somehow this helped me to regain yesterday’s lost momentum. He spent most of his day processing the 32 salmon that he caught dipnetting at Fish Creek. He decided that this was a one-person job, so I cheered him on. So did both dogs who will get the processed “other parts.” I guess that in the canning process, the bones dissolve. And I suppose if worse came to worse, we could eat the “other parts” and the dogs could continue to get dog food.

I put my nose to the grindstone and worked on If Wishes Were Horses. I was motivated by the encouraging comments of my friend Lisa McKeen, an Icelandic

Ryder and Shadow gripping

horse owner who lives in Bellingham, WA. Her observations motivated me to add more detail. For example, I said more about Ben Crawford, the first co-owner of Raudi, and focused on how he assisted in saving her life when she inadvertently got into bird seed and rabbit food, then developed toxic shock syndrome. I also included the poem he wrote about the incident. Reading it now, 17 years later, still brings tears to my eyes.

I sent If Wishes out to a handful of people who I hope will write blurbs for the back cover. Tomorrow I am going to hunt around on the internet for publishers and send them each a proposal. I have one on hand that I can modify.

My friend Sarah said that she wants to see our horse first aid kit – today, with Pete’s assistance I did one better and came up with detailed lists of our various sized kits. We went through the individual kits as Pete was processing fish. It’s a good thing that he can multi-task because I cannot. And so my focus was exclusively on determining what we had and didn’t have. Oh oh, we are low on vet wrap.

The writing and kit list took most of the day, leaving me with just enough time to get Raudi out.

After dinner I put together tomorrow’s riding lesson. My focus is going to be on horse vision, so I attempted to learn as much as I could about this topic. This makes sense because in essence we are the horses’ eyes when we ride.

We concluded the day by taking Tinni, Ryder, and Shadow for a walk around the loop. Now, every so often I get intimations as to what she’s going to be like. She’s going to be a calm, good natured dog who enjoys being with us.

Ryder is becoming increasingly more accepting of Shadow. Tonight they were both outside, racing around the yard. This is what we hoped would happen. It was a gamble in taking on Shadow – you just never know how two dogs in the same household are going to get along. Ryder could easily have turned on Shadow. I suspect that we’d then have forever been playing doggie musical chairs with one in and one out all the time.

And so, another day put to bed. Dark now, before midnight, and colder. Maybe this is just a blip and we will have another month or two of summer weather. Fingers are crossed.

Next: 207. 7/27/20: Sleep