At Home...

For once, I did not sleep well in my own bed; I kept waking up and trying to figure out where I was.  I had Lovey on my tummy, and Nedi stretched out beside me all night long, but I kept waking up.  Maybe it's a good thing I'm back at home before going on vacation.   The kits are currently out sunning - it's 46degrees and sunny, with 50% humidity.  (It was 29 with 81% humidity at 5 this morning.)  I walked Rosie and Remy wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a heavy, hooded sweatshirt.  I had sweat running down my neck and the back of my head before we finished our walk.  Right now, the patio door and window are open, and I'm waering the jeans and T.  I must be getting acclimated.  (Am I going to have a heat stroke in Florida?)

OK.  Life At Ten, the mare in last year's Breeders Cup fiasco, has been retired to be a broodmare.  ....  America and Canada are the only two countries that currently allow same-day medication of horses competing in thoroughbred racing.  Salix is the most commonly used drug - it is a diuretic, and helps keep horses from bursting the capillaries and small veins in their lungs when they run.  (And it's what is being blamed for Life At Ten's poor performance last year.) The Breeders Cup is now instituting a multi-step plan to (finally) ban all same-day medications for runners, beginning next year, with the 2012 running of the Breeders Cup.  This will bring the US into alignment with other international racing countries - none of whom approve race-day meds.  -  I have always held that giving medication to stop bleeding was a way to continue to breed bleeders, which just weakens the breed.  Unfortunately, Americans have been medicating for bleeding since the 1920s, and it's now bred throughout our North American bloodlines.

Pine Brook Hills is a small neighborhood in northwest Boulder.  It lays among the Foothills, and backs onto open space, and National Forest lands.  It has a great deal of true wildlife.  Last Thursday evening, Gail Loveman heard an odd noise coming from her porch, very close to the door.  She poked her head into the room, grabbed her camera, and started photographing.  A young mountain lion was on her porch, almost nose to nose with Zeus, her Maine Coon cat.  Zeus and the mountain lion had a staring match, during which time Zeus's littermate, Bacchus, decided he'd stay out in the hallway.  Gail said the cats finally just sat, watching each other, and then the young mountain lion wandered into her yard, visiting the mountain lion statue.  Her photos are great!

Zeus is an 11-year-old Maine Coon cat; the mountain lion is thought to be approximately 7 to 8 months old.  These photos were taken by Gail Loveman at her house in Pine Brook Hills, Boulder, Colorado.