It has been hot, 106F yesterday, with the wind out of the south-east which always sets off my worst allergies.  Around here they call them the Diablo Winds.  It looks like there is now a cooling trend that will take us back into the low 90's again.  Although the last few days have been hot, in reality this has been the coolest summer we have had for many years. 
With the warm weather the garden is cranking out loads of produce.  I really should make pickles tonight. There is enough okra for a couple of jars of pickles, and there are lots and lots of cucumbers, though not very many pickling cucumbers.   The shade cloth seems to be doing its job of keeping things from burning. 
Chena's class yesterday went well.  We learned Send and Return.  Each of us had a cone set in front of us, and were to send the dog out and around the cone. Chena was happy to do it, though I'm not sure she quite got the concept.  We practiced having our dogs Stay in the down position while the instructor strolled around playing a loop of ducks quacking on her phone. Chena did break position on that one, but not the next one, which was a squeeky toy and a plastic bag being rustled around. During the  Backup was another new command for the class.  I've been practicing that for some time with Chena and she has it down.  No we are working on going straight back. We practiced Touch, where the dog touches a hand or item with their nose.  The instructor suggested we might want to put a buzzer next to the door so the dog could ask to go out. NO, NO, NO!!  Chena would be much worse than any cat about wanting to go in and out through the door!
While at dog class I handed the instructor, Nancy, a completely revised Core 2 handout.  The one she had given us was terrible.  Last week Kim got very confused about what we had been taught, so I wrote up notes for her. While doing that I referenced the handout which was a hodge-podge of disorganized bad writing.  Since I was already writing up notes, I went to work on it.  Nancy was surprised and a bit taken aback, but after glancing at my work and thinking for a moment she admitted that she knew the Core 2 handout needed work and that it had been hastily pulled together from multiple sources, which was blindingly obvious.  I don't know that I got it all correct, but at least each command is formatted the same, the commands are listed in alphabetical order so you can find them, and instructions don't stop mid-sentence.
Back at the Ranch, I've been spraying Firefly down with water.  She loves it. Then she goes and rolls in the dust. Sigh. Thank goodness there is a silicone based product in her mane and tail so they don't tangle too readily.  The dirt tends to fall right off. 
I saw a very large rat out at the hay pile last night. I have no idea where rats like that are coming from, these are rats that normally live near human dwellings and don't do well in our arid landscape.  I suppose now I'll need to bury my compost for a while.  Hopefully the screech owl I hear at night will fly by and take care of the problem. Or Chena will catch it, she tried last night.

River is the name of the horse we suspected of having pigeon fever.  The vet came yesterday and carefully took some fluid from the swelling on her chest. To everyone's surprise the fluid she removed was not puss but fluid indicating hematoma. The vet thinks she got a really hard kick exactly where pigeon fever abscesses usually occur.  There has been much relief at the news.

A stroll in the garden.
( Pics )

We think that one of the horses at the Iris Barn has Pigeon Fever.  This is a bacterial infection that causes abscesses.  The abscess can be external, internal or in the throat. This looks like it is only an external one, which is the easiest to deal with. The disease is highly contagious, spread by flies and really messy when the abscess drains.  It remains in the soil for months. It looks to me as if temperatures above 108F will kill it, even in the soil.  This may explain why we have had little issue with the disease in the past, our summers tend to be really hot.  This year we have only had a day or two that got to a high of 101 or 102F.   In any case, fly control is essential, as is isolating the infected horse.  The vet recommended moving the herd away from the  pasture it was in since the soil may be infected.  She recommended it be done ASAP. 
At 7am Marika showed up.  She and I moved a water trough out to Clover Flats (the new/old pasture that was part of Big Tank Pasture).  Clover Flats is named for an open place that used to have good clover on it. In recent years the clover has diminished, but it is still a good name.  With proper grazing it may reestablish   The old fence that was around this pasture had lots of problems and was abandoned and removed years ago.    This winter Mark O. and I built a new fence  that runs up the hill to the top of Tank Hill.  This makes a nice sized pasture with lots of shade in it.  It reduces the size of Big Tank Pasture which was way too big to graze properly.  The big issue with Clover Flats is that its entrance is far, far away from the barn. During the summer this is slightly annoying, but in the winter with short days, it isn't practical to use it.  It is no fun to try and get horses out of and back into a pasture in the dark!