12-24-08

The start to today was very wet. The horses seemed to not mind the rain. They enjoyed their bath. After a long summer of sweltering heat we assume it is a nice change for them.

It was truly a miserable day for outdoor chores. But when your interests include horses there is no way to get around the rain, mud, snow, ice and heat. In short, as the mailman has always said, “Nor wind nor rain, nor snow nor ice can keep us from delivering the mail!” Or something like that. In our case “nor wind nor rain nor snow nor ice can keep us from rescuing and caring for the horses!” Ron was happy to come into the office and soak up some heat off and on throughout the cold day.

Claire worked here feeding the horses, answering emails, as well as doing some fence fixing. Tawnee and Jason relaxed some and were able to get caught up with other things. We have gotten comments on our recent blogs. It appears that people have noticed that the blogs have gotten shorter with less information. This week, Christmas week, most of our staff are having a family week and are inside spending time with their families. Also due to the bad weather there are not many visitors willing to brave the wind and rain to visit the horses.

Caring for so many horses in the bad weather is never fun. The Gridley foster home needed some hay so Ron loaded up the trailer with some hay to head out. His face was a bit cheerier, thinking about being able to sit in the warm truck...

Unfortunately he didn't even make it off the property before tragedy struck. As you can tell from the photo below, it wasn't good...

As many of you know, especially those that have been to the rescue, there is a very steep hill coming down to the rescue. Tawnee had a load of horses in the trailer and slid down the hill the other day, and thankfully she managed to get it under control and no problems that time. Today Ron was heading up the hill with the hay in the trailer and the whole vehicle started sliding backwards out of control, through the fence, and whacked into the shed, knocking it down and killing our high speed Internet. So, there is some repairs to be done, and the Internet face of Norcal is on standby until Sunday, when we hope to have everything up (literally) and operating once again. If you want more information about the little computer shed's origin, click here.

But all is not gloom at the rescue, it is Christmass eve and we are so thankful that each and every day we are given many hundreds of reasons to be thankful, and every time we look into a rescued horses eyes, and see them saying "Thank you!" in each ones unique way, it makes the cold, wet days worth every second of it.

Here is a Christmas photo of Goliath sent to us by his adopters with his Christmas stocking already filled for Christmas!

There will be a special story for our Christmas readers, posted on Christmas sometime, and the next regular blog post will be on Sunday.

Thank you so much, and please be patient as we get the internet back to Norcal Equine Rescue! This blog was written at a volunteers home over the phone.

Merry Christmas!