First Saturday in November, St. Hubert’s Day, opening of the formal hunting season with the traditional Blessing of the Hounds. The weather is perfect, a crisp sunny fall day with temperatures in the 40’s. And I’m missing it, for the first time in I can’t remember how many years, because Arthur’s booboo from an encounter with a T-post 3 weeks ago is still healing. I guess I just have to hope last year’s St. Hubert’s medal has enough mojo left in it to get me through another season. Maybe if I’d been carrying it 3 weeks ago, I could be riding today. Actually, Arthur’s injury was fortunately just superficial, much less severe than it could have been in that situation. I had it sutured the day it happened, and it looked like it would heal neatly and quickly. But after a couple of weeks, the stitches and flap of skin sloughed off, leaving him with a raw patch that needs to heal instead of a little seam. It really doesn’t seem to be causing him any discomfort; it certainly doesn’t keep him from ripping around the pasture like a maniac. He probably wouldn’t mind being ridden, but it still looks a little gory and it just doesn’t seem appropriate to hunt him with an eyesore like that, especially on a high holy day. Also, if we bumped it on anything, it would probably kock off some of the scab and set the healing back more. I took a picture of it this morning, and decided it would be better to link to it instead of embedding it here and making people look at it every time they loaded this page.
