Coffee Shop Conversations

After having my hair cut last week, I went next door for a sandwich at Canoe Creek Coffee. It's a small, family-run place and something Ashville has needed for a while. Judging by the number of cars parked there most of the time, I’d say business is good.

I intended to work on some blogs while there. I’m planning one about another road trip by Lucy and Ethel, one about the perfectionism of my handyman, and a third about some people whose Christian mission work is helping local folks with chores and trips to the doctor. Those will have to wait, though, while I extol the virtues of our new coffee shop.

The owners, Mike and Alison Bailey, wanted a place where friends could meet in a casual atmosphere for coffee and a chat. They have achieved that and more. I ran into three different people I know in the first half hour of munching on my turkey-and- cheddar panini. One man I had written a Discover magazine article about brought his three little girls in for hot chocolate. 

A woman with whom I had been on a mission trip was having coffee and a Danish with her daughter. A friend of hers came in, and it turns out she’s the wife of another guy I’ve written an article on. Meanwhile, a woman who goes to my church came in for eggnog and a box of assorted sweets for a party, took one look at the new lunch menu and decided to have a sandwich. 

Canoe Creek’s paninis are to die for, especially those spread with apple butter. They also serve frappes, smoothies and hot tea. Their pastry menu varies from day to day. Alison might make Cheddar Bacon Scones one day, chocolate muffins the next and cookies the next. On this day, they had put out samples of her Luscious Layer Bars. I know they were trying to sell them, but a couple of the bite-size samples seemed plenty for me. Then I felt guilty about having only samples for dessert, so I just had to get a cup of coffee to assuage my guilt. Okay, I admit it, I also bought a layer bar to go with it.

Listening to the women at the next table, I couldn't help but joining into the conversation. That’s what you do in a small town. I learned about one woman's problems finding a doctor in her insurance provider network, about another who wants to go back to work too soon after surgery, and the travails of a teenager who needs a higher grade on her SAT test to get a college scholarship. Fortunately, none of the conversations were what you'd call, "intimate."

I like doing business with local merchants, and I'd really like to see this place succeed. I’m doing my part, at least.

Wind Creek Weekend

Best view of fall foliage is between ears of a horse.

Normally, I keep my grands over the Thanksgiving holidays. But I wanted to go on a weekend trail ride with Outback Saddle Club at Wind Creek State Park. So I kept my grands the weekend before, packed some Thanksgiving leftovers and my riding gear, loaded Mallory and headed for Alexander City Friday morning.

I had called 10 days before to make reservations, but was told Wind Creek doesn't accept reservations. I'm not sure whether that's true throughout the camp or just the horse area, but it only has 16 spots. "They're nearly empty every weekend," the clerk assured me. "And we have an overflow area, too."

My experience with that "overflow" area hadn't been good. There is no "legal" trail between it and the horse camp, so when I was there in February 2015, someone had to trailer my horses to meet our group at the trail head.

I had a bad feeling about the trip while packing. An email to the club newsletter editor about who was going to be there brought up one couple. Perhaps I would be the only one there. I don't know the trails well enough to ride alone, and besides, it's dangerous to ride without a buddy. But I had put so much effort into getting ready, and I was so psyched up to ride, that I ignored my gut and went anyway.

The two-hour drive was uneventful, but when I went to the Wind Creek Welcome Center to register, I almost came unglued. The equine camp was full! "You can camp in the overflow area," the clerk informed me. "There are two horse people there now." I was furious, argued about why they don't take reservations ("That wouldn't be fair," a ranger said. Huh??), stomped and fumed about getting from one camp to the other via horseback, and started to turn around and go home. The clerk told me to drive through the equine camp and see whether I knew someone I could buddy up with. 

The camp was packed, but the trailer doors were open and empty. Almost everyone was out riding. I found one woman named Lauren Ruark from Georgia who listened to me rant and rave while encouraging me not to leave. Then I found someone who was breaking camp, and claimed her site. Whew!

I’m so grateful to Lauren for talking me out of leaving. It turned into a lovely weekend. I saw only two other campers from Outback, and I didn't really know them. I prevailed upon one guy to "help" put up my picket line, which means he did it for me. Lauren waited until I had set up camp and saddled my horse, then we started a two-hour ride. Half an hour into the ride, we ran across some folks she knew, and joined up. However, the few she knew turned into a group of about 45, which is way too many for my tastes. Saturday, I linked up with a horsewoman I knew and three of her friends, and rode four hours. Sunday, I got in another hour. I was a happy camper.

The weather was perfect, the leaves were gorgeous, and we saw several deer, including a buck with at least six points. The drought had dropped the water line so low on Lake Martin that we were able to ride the "beach" for a while, although I'm not sure whether the park officials would have approved. I snapped a photo of a picnic table that used to be high up the bank. It appeared as if the gnarly roots of an old pine tree were the only thing keeping it from sliding down the bank.

What could have been a misadventure turned out great, thanks to some horsey friends old and new.

Pithy Proverbs for Modern Living

A friend sent the following modern-day proverbs to me via email, and I thought they were worth sharing. This seems like the perfect place for the above sign that I photographed outside the Silent Brigade Distillery in downtown Paducah, KY, during my trip recent road trip to Chicago. (More on that later.) Perhaps you have a few more words of wisdom you can add. If so, please feel free to share them with me in the comments section.

1.  Accept the fact that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue!

2.  Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

3.  Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

4.  Drive carefully; It's not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker.

5. If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

6. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

7.  It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

8. Never buy a car you can't push.

9. Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.

10. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

11. Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

12. The second mouse gets the cheese.

13. When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

14. Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

15. Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

16. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

17.  A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY...

...18. Save the Earth..... It's the only planet with chocolate!

12 Signs That You're Getting Old

1. Your new pastor is the same age as your oldest child.

2. Your physician is younger than your oldest child.

3. You discover that you went to high school with your veterinarian’s parents.

4. It takes you all night to do what you used to do all night.

5. "Having a hard time getting it up” describes the difficulty of raising your body off the floor from a criss-cross double-cross position (or any other position, for that matter).

6. Your childhood heroes that aren’t already six feet under have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

7. You can’t remember whether you had a bath or not yesterday.

8. You take so many pills, you can’t remember what maladies they’re for.

9. You call a friend, sibling or cousin and talk for an hour about each other’s ailments and doctors’ visits.

10. You still refer to song compilations as “records” or “LPs.”

11. You’re sure there’s a conspiracy among manufacturers to make it  impossible to open CD  wrappers, the foil covering a wine cork and any package that says, “Tear here.”

12.  I know I said 12 signs, but can’t for the life of me remember what No. 12 was!

Grief: The Price of Caring

I had to put Jazzy down yesterday. She rests in peace next to the other two horses I’ve buried over the past six or eight years. 

Euthanizing her was a difficult decision. Other than her front feet, she seemed so healthy. I could see the strain beginning to show in her eyes, but she hobbled along valiantly until the end.

Jazzy's last meal

She appeared to be doing better the last week of August, so much so that I was letting her graze a few minutes each morning while I cleaned the stalls and enclosure. But she took a turn for the worse while I was out of town the first week of September. She developed an abscess at the hairline of her right foot. It may have been a result of putting so much pressure on that hoof while favoring her left one. My vet  gave her a shot of antibiotics, and instructed me to soak the abscessed hoof in a mixture of Epsom salt and iodine twice a day, and to continue the twice-daily doses of bute. He showed me the outline of the coffin bone, which was pressing on the bottom of the right hoof. He said if there was no improvement in the next few days, we would have some hard decisions to make. 

Four days later, she seemed a wee bit better, so I gave her the second shot of antibiotics. I guess I was just seeing what I wanted to see, because the abscess refused to heal. On Monday (September 26), my farrier showed me the thin bit of tissue remaining between the coffin bones and the bottom of each front hoof. I knew the end was near. I wept bitter tears that tasted of sadness, physical and emotional pain and self-blame. But I knew what had to be done.

I had three appointments on Wednesday, and would be tied up Thursday and Friday, too. So I lined up Dr. Coe and a track hoe for Monday morning, October 3. When one of my Wednesday afternoon appointments was cancelled, I decided that was the day. I knew I’d be a basket case if I waited until Monday. She would have been a mess, too, as it turned out.

With the sound of the track hoe digging in my woods, I fed Jazzy some carrots and hay and gave her two grams of bute to lessen the pain of walking on the hard ground between my barn and what has become my equine cemetery. I let her graze a few minutes on the brown stubble of grass in my pasture. It felt like a Death Row inmate’s last meal.

“I don’t have to ask how you’re doing,” Dr. Jason Coe remarked when he arrived. He took one look at Jazzy’s abscess, which was weeping almost as much as I was, and shook his head. When he picked up her right hoof, he saw blood. “The coffin bone has pushed through,” he said. Ditto on the other foot. It was the sign I had prayed for, the one that told me I was doing the right thing.

We led her to the grave, and Coe gave her the lethal injection. In less than two minutes, she went down. It was that quick. I stroked her, clipped some of her mane and tail, and went back to the house. I had wanted to be with her until the end, but couldn’t watch the burial.

Angie Osborne, one of my horsey friends, came over to my house that night with a bottle of wine. We drank a glass, ate leftovers, and talked about death and grief over a new cocktail I invented. As I told her, death came so swiftly it was eerie, a harsh reminder of how fragile life is. One minute you’re grazing happily, the next minute you’re 10-feet under (the depth for horses). 

This is my second animal loss in two months. I’m so tired of grieving, but it’s the price we pay for caring so much.

Sympathy Pains?

The good news is, Jazzy's feet are  improving.

The bad news is, my right foot is killing me.

I'm convinced there is a connection.

About two weeks ago, as I was praying myself to sleep, I asked God to take some of the pain from Jazzy's feet and put it in mine. It was a sincere prayer. I was deeply concerned about her condition. (See recent blog for details.) I was anxious. "Please God, " I begged. "Let me have some of her pain. I can take it. I can pop an Advll or Tylenol. I can prop my feet up. She doesn't understand what's happening to her or why she's in such pain."

The next evening, when I took off my boots after feeding and watering both horses, the bottoms of my feet hurt. It wasn't much, just the feeling that I'd walked on rocks with thin-soled boots. And that's exactly what I had done. Next morning, that pain was gone. 

Two days after my heart-felt prayer, I rolled out of bed and put my feet on the floor. Ouch! A pain shot through the top of my right foot. With every step I took, it hurt.

That morning, when I went out to feed, water and clean the stalls, Jazzy seemed slightly better. Remember, the vet said progress would come in small increments. This was a small one, but a positive step in the right direction. I called him that evening with the news..

My foot keeps getting worse, and Jazzy continues to improve. She's able to graze for half an hour or more in the mornings. I went to the doctor to get mine x-rayed. Normally, I'd just ride this out, but I have a trip to Wichita coming up and didn't want to be hobbling around unnecessarily. The x-rays showed no stress fracture, so the doctor took some blood and is testing me for gout. Really?

I'm reading a book about the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Most of them suffered from gout, and some died from it. Gout is caused by a build-up of uric acid in your system, and it goes to your joints, like arthritis. It often settles in your feet. It's associated with eating too much rich food: red meat, organ meats, beer and and high-fat dairy products, according to one web site. I don't eat much red meat, no organ meats, don't drink beer, but I do eat lots of cheese. Gout is treated with medication to eliminate the excess urine.

I probably won't hear back about the lab results until I'm in Wichita. I'm not sure how I would get a prescription filled there, unless my doctor can call one in to a chain pharmacy across state lines. Someone told me cherry juice helps, so I could always buy a bottle of that. But that web site I consulted said certain fruits and vegetables can contribute to gout, including cherries!

Many readers will call my sore foot sympathy pains. But I know better. 

Be careful what you pray for.

Three Strikes Should Be Enough!

If misfortunes come in threes, I’m done for this year.

First, my Walking Horse got caught on my fence, and suffered some scratches that required oral antibiotics, pain shots and daily water therapy for a week. Then my dog died. The third misfortune is the foundering of my paint pony, Jazzy.

Foundering is a very serious problem for horses. It results from a chemical and/or metabolic imbalance in the horse’s body that restricts blood flow to the feet. This can cause the lamina (the white line that attaches the outer hoof wall to the inner hoof capsule) to detach itself from the hoof wall. In severe cases, the coffin bone rotates and starts pushing through the foot.

My vet, Dr. Jason Coe of the Animal Clinic in Oneonta, told me last summer I needed to get some weight off her. How do you put a horse on a diet? I wasn’t feeding much grain, but my horses stay outside day and night, with access to their stalls in case of inclement weather. On his annual farm call in July, he was more specific. He told me to stall her at night, because that’s when the grass has the highest sugar content.

I tried that for a couple of days, then noticed she was walking stiff-legged. Dr. Coe said she was about to founder due to her weight, and instructed me to keep her stalled 24/7 for a week, give her a gram of bute (Phenylbutazone, for pain and inflammation) twice a day, and feed her a small amount of hay. My two horse stalls have no doors, and open into a 22x20-foot covered area that’s enclosed on two sides and has a gate at one end. So it wasn’t as if she were cooped up in a stall.

After a week, I opened the gate to her enclosure and she bolted out. Next morning,  she was in her rubber-matted stall waiting for me. That’s not unusual at feeding time. She was there that night when I went to put her up, though, and I noticed she seemed stiff again. This really worried me. “I can’t lose another animal,” I wailed to my other barn and pasture critters, who looked at me blankly. Coe said to put her up for two more weeks and continue the bute.

She lost about 75 pounds, but she got so bored, she started cribbing (chewing on any wood within reach). Within a couple of days, she had almost chewed her way out of her compound. The farrier took off her shoes and trimmed her hooves. With Coe’s permission, I turned her out in my arena that day to relieve her boredom. It has only a small amount of grass. When I walked her back to her enclosure four hours later, she could barely walk.

That’s normal after a hoof trimming, Coe said. He assured me it would get better. That night, I got a bad scare. I texted Coe at 7:09: “She’s down. Can you come or send someone NOW????”  My phone rang before I could pocket it. “I’ll come if you want me to,” he said, “but there isn’t much I can do.” He told me to double the bute dose that night and the next day, make some Styrofoam “shoes” to cushion her feet, and keep him posted. He also recommended putting coarse masonry sand five inches deep in the covered area outside her stall. 

Dr. Coe called the next morning to check on her. I called him about a week later to come out and x-ray her front feet.  Her coffin bones have rotated about 16 degrees. That’s bad. She has a 50-50 chance of pulling through this. If she doesn’t, she’ll have to be euthanized.

I added the sand, and she seems more comfortable. She stands up a little more. Dr. Coe said that’s good news. Any improvements will come in small increments. It’s going to be a long haul, and even if she recovers, she’ll never be a trail horse again. 

I can live with that. But it’s killing me to see her in pain.