Hazen and I went to the Hogtowne Mideval Faire for the 5th year. Time has been flying living in North Florida. It’s become a tradition to dress up and head down to the faire for an afternoon back in time. This year the lady who does the falconry display lost one of her Harris Hawks as it climbed to the top of a power transformer and fried itself. It was very sad. Thankfully, I did not go on that day, I would have hated to have seen that. She had another Harris Hawk that she was obviously training at the presentation I saw that probably was a replacement of the bird she lost. That’s one of the hazards of flying in urban areas.
For the past week I have been suffering from the results of a tooth extraction and a bone graft to fill the socket. I spent four days just eating, sleeping, and taking my pain medications, that was kind of nice actually. But after the “honeymoon” period, I had to go to work and deal with the realities of daily mouth pain… eesh! I had a dull ache for so long with the bad tooth that I thought I could handle this other kind of pain, but I’m pretty tired of it. It’s hard to eat and I bet I’ve lost at least 5 lbs in the last week. Things are definitely improving this morning though, so I’m happy to say that I’m finally on the mend. In 4-6 months, I go back to the dentist and have them put my dental implant in. Then 4-6 months after that has had time to heal, they put the crown on my tooth. It’s a difficult and expensive process, but I think it will be worth all the pain and money in the end.
Hazen watched Musket for me while I was out for the count. She took to him pretty well.
In other news, my horse sold this weekend. She went to a nice home where she will be a lesson horse and serve as a low level dressage mount for her new owner. I’m happy for Zaby Baby, she’ll have a nice life with this lady and hopefully a good retirement. I had a surprising message to one of my ads from the woman who owned Zabra for a big part of her life. She sent me an e-mail out of the blue asking if my horse was the Iberian warmblood registered as Zabra Star Groove. Well after talking to the woman I bought Zabra from, it turns out that yes, this was the same horse. This woman had purchased Zabra in California back in the early 90s and had moved her over to Jacksonville in 1997. She told me that Zabra had at least one foal that she knows of and that she was born in the spring of 1992. That made her 16 years old this year turning 17 in the spring. Fully 3 years older than I thought she was. Well, it was a fun conversation with this lady and I made a new friend out of it. I am hoping to go watch her and her Friesian stallion show in Clay County next weekend. Small world. Oh, and the woman who bought Zabra brought my old horse Cisco to the barn for someone else to try out. She took Zabra home with her and Cisco stayed at the barn with his new owners. Weird how things work out sometimes.
We spent a wonderful weekend with Warren, Jenny, and little baby Lincoln. They did a low pressure “practice” trip down to visit us over their long weekend. Unfortunately, the weather changed for the worse and rained for the first time in two weeks. This Monday though, is just stunning, now that they have headed back… oh well. We spent Saturday at the Waldo flea market and had some boiled peanuts and popcorn and ate a fabulous lunch in Gainesville. Warren brought some snow goose from his January kill that we ate grilled and wrapped in bacon. It was wonderful!
Sunday we went out to the barn and hunted Musket. We had her chasing a squirrel for about 45 minutes, but she was pretty lack-luster about it. At one point though, she finally saw him and went for it, but missed. I was sure she had it this time. The squirrel bailed and ran for another tree. Musket followed in hot pursuit, but in the end, the squirrel managed to get himself in a good spot and got away. We ended the hunt by throwing out a bagged rabbit, that Musket had no trouble catching. I did the final killing of the rabbit, it was my first time breaking the rabbits neck. I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it, but I did! Musket traded nicely to a chicken leg and I let her eat the whole thing. Now, I bring her weight down and try again next week.
