Pentecost Tuesday ride

Germany's so weird. They have 1st Christmas and 2nd Christmas (not counting C Eve), Easter Sunday and Monday, Good Friday is a day of mourning and no public celebrations are allowed, and Pentecost lasts 3 days. Today is "3rd Pentecost."

I felt trepidation++ for our ride today, because everyone is out enjoying the weather, including the biggest tractors you can imagine ("monster tractors" I named them today).

A neighbor stopped his car by me and Mag and said, "You're very brave to be out here." Hm! Not brave at all, just faking it!

Ani was super late today so I had over a half hour wait at the bench. I tied Mag up immediately to the huge beech tree and left him cuz I wanted to check something out. The field beyond the woods looked pure white to me, and I wanted to know why. By the time I got to it I realized I'd never left Mag at such a distance. The field was completely infested with daisies. Which is lovely but doesn't make for the best hay.

I climbed back up the hill and Mag was perfectly fine, thank God, he had an ear on me the whole time so he didn't get too stressed. He doesn't like it when I leave him alone, but at least in this location he's OK.

Then I sat on the bench and drank my ice water and was super annoyed when a loose dog ran right up to Mag. The dog didn't even see me, he just circled Mag predatorily and ignored his owner who was holding the leash of a black Great Dane. She shouted out, "Oh my! I thought this horse was all alone in the woods!" I said, "Well, sometimes I have to pee, so he has to know this." (Not my most sophisticated of moments.) She said, "Well, he's doing it really well!" I said, "Thanks, we'll keep working on it!" Then she let her Welsh B sized dog off leash, ugh.

There was another lady leading her Berber horse and two Aussie dogs on leashes, how she juggles all three is impressive. She was polite and took a side trail to avoid coming near us.

By the time Ani arrived I was really worried about how this ride was going to go.

But Mag was fine. I even continued to ride past a spot where I would normally get off, and he felt indignant about it but adjusted. The only thing he did "wrong" today was to chomp the bit a lot. Not in an agitated way, in an almost playful way, he does have that oral fixation, so I didn't worry about it.

The horseflies are here, but they are not actively hunting us in the woods, or on the streets yet. They're in their infant phase where they seem a little daft and are not sure how to hunt yet. That will change in the next week, I'm sure. One hunted my car today (they love big warm objects) and got inside, but thankfully I was not driving so I could shoo it out. A horsefly in the car while I'm driving is a very bad thing.

Speaking of bugs, I am a pin cushion lately. I have FOUR tick bites on me right now, that keep me awake at night with burning and itching. No meds seem to work, only time. But then, I'll find yet another tick on me and the process starts anew. I had a dream the other night that my tick bite turned my entire thigh black and it had to be amputated. I woke up and it was just red, thankfully.

Lyme is not a thing in our region, but ticks are a daily threat. It sucks when you wake up in the morning and find one on you that's been eating you all night. They are just so much nastier than fleas. I've never seen a flea in Germany. I'll take fleas, bitte.

I haven't seen a tick on Mag all year, WTH. Why me? The cat has Frontline, after we found 2 ticks on her every single day for a while. Wish I could Frontline myself. Can I?

The owner of #72 came over and handed me a key - the key to a little shed that will soon belong to us. I cannot wait! She said we will plan a work party day where we will help them clear out all their junk from the properties. Um, huh? Why on earth is that our problem? Right, OK, then.

She gave us city maps of each and every property piece we will buy from her.  Now we have an idea where they are. All 7? of them. As you know, we don't want all that, we just want 72. But there is no other option, it's all or nothing.

Not sure when this will happen but hoping by end of the year we'll both own them and will have cleared the many, many fallen trees so we can get to the important thing, you know, something horsey.

Anyway, by the end of the ride we'd enountered 5 loose dogs, though they seemed to be under voice control, most of them anyway. But nothing bad happened despite 3rd Pentecost so I'm happy. Mag got 5 carrots in total during that ride, and afterwards I gave him lots of little carrot stubs.

No pics from today, but I had my first up-close baby deer experience this week.

I saw this singular female roe deer in our field twice in a row at 10 AM, and the second time I noticed she was being followed by a cat. Huh?




     
(Photos from Internet). WTH why would a cat follow a deer? I mean, it's way too small to be a deer baby. But it was. She saw me and led the baby from our pasture to 72, through the window I made so I can see my horse from my house.


     
I couldn't help myself, I very carefully made my way to 72 and she was standing right there. She spooked when she saw me, and her baby dropped to the ground instantly. She sprang away, leaving him. I was amazed because this baby instinctively knew spooking mom means drop and hide. 

I couldn't see the baby at all. When I finally found it (right where I was looking) it had curled into this tiny ball, literally the size of my cat. My cat is less than 3 kg, half the size of a normal cat. This baby's head was smaller than my hand. It must have been only hours old.

I marvelled at its stillness and didn't come any closer. But I could see its eye, deep black, and its eye did not move at all as it "watched" me. Not sure if it could see me, or if it's just another facet of immobility. I left and when I came back later, she had taken him.

I think they're still here on 72, where with all the fallen trees and blackberries, it's the perfect place to raise a baby. I'll call him Br'er Deer, at home in our briar patch.