I realize that I’m a prime candidate for a shower. I smell like I have been cleaning a goat pen that has not been thoroughly cleaned in several months. (I partially cleaned the goat pen that I’m speaking of two months ago.)

There is no way of avoiding the smell of goat, goat poop, and goat urine. It isn’t a bad smell. It is not (at least to me) aromatic as horse, horse poop, and horse urine. But it’s not a smell that makes me gag. Pig shit, now this makes me gag. I wonder if this is the same for others. Dog poop -- don’t like the smell of it either. And cat poop – there is one word for this. Ugh.

So I didn’t want to clean the pen, but I knew it had to be done, and given my tight schedule, I figured early on today that I’d do this tonight. The interesting thing is, there were many other things around here that needed doing, so I had to keep myself from being distracted by them.

Pete, who has a cold, helped me dump the umpteen buckets of soiled bedding on the hill that faces the road.

I worked some this morning, and then I got all three horses out. I first brushed and then took Raudi out, going to the Murphy Road turnoff, and then I took Hrimmi out, going around the loop and up Jim’s Road, and finally I took Tyra out, going to the Murphy Road turnoff.

The ride on Hrimmi was the most interesting in terms of human interaction. I went left on Oceanview, then stopped to talk to Chad, who owns Rafter T’s place. He said he’d been away seventeen years, and in this time there had been numerous people on the property.

Now he’s the one (I think) who had an affair with Heath Fifthian’s wife and ended up in jail in Nebraska. The strange thing is that he seemed like a really nice guy.

He did say no immediate plans to bring in horses – perhaps in the near future he will have one. I had previously heard that he and his buddies were going to bring in a trailer load of horses and start a trail riding venture.

He added that he is working on getting the cars off the property, but it’s difficult now because of all the mud.

I continued on down road and got on Hrimmi – I walked her past the ho ha – and then stopped to talk to Judy, another neighbor. The news there is that one of her grandchildren’s ski coach is renting the small cabin that Kirby built adjacent to the road.

I walked Judy up the road a bit and then mounted and continued on. I got on Jim’s Road adjacent to Sybarite and noticed that the sign that indicated that horses were on the road/trail was gone. Actually, Hrimmi noticed it was missing. She and Raudi both touch it and thus get a treat. I will tell the neighbors who put it up – I hope they put up another one.