The Return of The Sophie (And The Construction Work)

When I last let off, I think property progress was going pretty smoothly, except the machine leveling the back of the property for a new fence and ring had broken. Plus it seemed I had a new pet bear. Things were interesting, to say the least.

So we waited for a week for new parts. Then the machine operator broke his hand, and it turns out he's irreplaceable...construction is booming and there are no other neighbors who just happen to be semi retired machine operators willing to work small jobs.

I was left with open ditching and piles of sand and gravel, plus no fence to keep bears out and horses in. While disappointing, is just how it is, I can't be mad that the poor guy squished his hand! Having my horse trailer left on the wrong side of all those obstacles made me a little twitchy, though.. The thought of needing to move Sophie home when the property was actually more of a disaster than in the beginning of Sept didn't give me the warm fuzzies either.

Yay, drainage...but no bueno for getting a horse trailer through.

So, imagine my surprise when I pulled in one morning this weekend and there was my favorite neighbor running the machine like the past two weeks weren't a thing. Turns out even with a broken hand, the guy is bored and liked looking at all those open ditches even less than I did, so there he was, testing to see if he could run the controls with his newly casted hand. He built me a 'bridge' to get the trailer out and I was beyond excited for that - I had resigned myself to spending the day doing that by hand.

With the trailer accessible, off I went to pick up Sophie. She actually seemed super excited to see us and hop on the trailer which was pretty cute. She had regrets when we got home though, because Bridget was about 0% impressed to have her as a friend again. She's not aggressive or mean about it, just extra clingy to me and she ignores Sophie's existence completely. Which...I'm not sure is a viable plan because Sophie is the life of any party. She's not easy to ignore. Since construction around the place got so delayed they do have to share a space I had intended for one of them, but it seems to be working that Sophie stays in the barn at night and out in one of the paddocks in the day, while Bridget gets the paddock and covered area off the front of the barn. B will thaw eventually and I suspect she'll be resigned to sharing 'her' space sooner rather than later.

Wants her stall back, please and thank you.

"Don't mind me, not back here following you out the gate or anything"

Spent her first afternoon at home lonely and whinnying to other horse friends in the neighborhood. Bridget showed no mercy.

To start October on a high note, the neighbor has been coming back for a couple of hours a day and as of today, we have the remainder of the drainage installed, a driveway in, and are ready to get the ring base delivered and start auguring in the back fence posts. Sophie seems fine with all the construction, so I was worried about that for no reason - she's much more concerned with her missing friends at the moment.

As is my luck, the last ditch we dug..about 3' down there was nothing but glass. There were two buried barrels of glass bottles/broken glass mostly from the 1940's. Apparently that was a thing back in the days before recycling so unlucky in the fact we disturbed so much broken glass/the old dump site, but interesting because I salvaged a few of the old bottles that were dug up and they're kind of cool...one says Absorbine Jr so I guess it was a thing even back then!

All the machine work and landscaped dirt has made it obvious I still have a Yogi problem because his little tracks are everywhere. Once the back fence is done I'll go around the top of the perimeter fence with some electric wire and that will hopefully be enough to deter them when they come back in the spring. 

.