horses – Page 48 – The Hermits' Rest

An Equine Visitation

Yesterday marked another milestone in working with all the new horses around the Hermits’ Rest and Wild Type ranches. Sara and Aragorn paid a visit to us. After the challenge I had riding Apache over there a couple weeks ago, I was really hoping this visit went more smoothly.

Everybody’s happy (even Vlassic, who hung around for the whole visit)

The lesson I learned was the ole Scout motto of “be prepared.” I thought I was doing a good job by heading out to open all the gates to our pasture, but I had not thought hard enough about the fact that horses are very observant prey animals. I figured Kathleen’s horses wouldn’t even notice Sara and Aragorn approaching and riding toward our barn…until the sound of thundering hoofs told me otherwise. At least it was pretty watching them run, especially Mabel, with all those legs. On to Plan B.

So, I told Sara to go on the other side of our fence, and I’d let her in our back yard, since dogs aren’t scary to Aragorn. I hoofed it on to the other end of our area, managed to shut the dogs into the house (yet another minor miracle), and opened the gate. Now, poor Aragorn was far from home, surrounded by weird things, like the pond, and getting distracted. After a bit of circling, Sara got off and led him (she had thought to bring a lead rope, so she was prepared!).

Sara tells Aragorn to get our of her space. He listened.

We got over to the horse pens with no further incident. Hooray! Then we were able to have a nice visit, discuss our training progress, our career progress, our families, and normal friend stuff. Since I rarely see others during the day, other than to say hello or goodbye, that was a real treat!

When it came time to go, I got to watch Sara ride Aragorn for a while, which was fun, since he’s so pretty and strong. I was more prepared for them to leave, because I shut my horses up in their pens, and shut Sara’s up in the outer pen (they had conveniently all come up to see what was going on, which was mighty nice of them).

I was able to go ahead and open all the gates, and Sara had a very smooth ride back home! I think we can do it again sometime! And one day, when I’m allowed to do more than go in circles and figure 8, I can go again, too (at least we’re doing well with the circles and figure 8, and I am happy to take our time).

Other News?

At least here at the ranch, there’s not much other news. I needed this weekend to relax as much as possible in preparation for a hard work week, so that’s great. I do think a couple of the new hens have started laying, since I had four eggs this morning, and two were smaller. I hope the colored eggs start soon!

Trixie comes back to work on Drew again today, I’ll get the start date for the pool tomorrow, and I think the other shipping container will show up soon, to complete the pen arrangement. All those things are good distractions from hurricanes, COVID, and other illnesses.

Here are my other distractions from life’s challenges.
I talk to animals way more than I talk to people, at least in person!

It’s always something, because that’s life! I’ll just do my best to be prepared and keep sending out that lovingkindness to the world.

Some Help for Drew the Colt

As you may recall, I’ve been concerned that Drew, age 3 or so, seems really unbalanced and has trouble standing on three legs. I reported that in my Drew’s Clues post last week. Some of it may well be just growing pains. He’s definitely in growth mode right now. But, when Trixie last looked at him, she was pretty sure he had some issues that were causing him to hold one hip higher than the other, making balance difficult. So, today was the day to prod Drew in earnest to see if we could give him some help or relief.

This is my favorite picture of Drew and Trixie in relaxation mode. Yes, Drew has a hole in his mane. But it’s growing back in!

Some of the stretches and other manipulations she did could have been a bit painful to him, so we constructed a fake chute to put him in. It protected Trixie and kept him from squirming.

He looks skinny here, but he’s really fine. This is his “chute.”

Both Trixie and I were impressed with how well he took to all the handling and odd positions he got put in. She said he really has a good disposition and can be a forever horse for me if I keep doing the right things for him. That made me happy, because I get really good feelings about him, too, even when he’s being a bit of a teenager.

I took the above photo for his trainer, to show his muscle development and such right now. One thing I can tell is he’s gotten lighter in just the time I’ve had him, and his legs have more muscle. The biggest difference is his neck, which is filling out well, considering it was pretty skinny when we got him.

By the end of a lot of muscle movement and massage, a couple of miracles occurred, at least for Drew. He is able to stand on either back leg and even cross each leg way over to the other side of the one on the ground. I was shocked at the improvement.

And, his hips are even. Granted, he’s standing a little funny in the picture below (he looks “cow-hocked” but I am assured he isn’t normally), but he looks much more balanced. I hope that by getting him worked on a few times in the next month, he’ll be able to be balanced in training.

Nice healthy poop, too. His tail has grown at least an inch this month!

Many times we’ve noticed that the horses really get relaxed after being worked on. Well, Drew was really REALLY relaxed. I told Trixie I bet he laid down as soon as we took his halter off.

He looks about like I feel. As hard as I try, my mental health is not holding up. But, don’t worry, I also went to the doctor! I had my first telemedicine appointment today, which was an interesting experience. It worked great.

That leads me to my big message for today: if you need help ASK for it. And be glad you aren’t a horse, who has a hard time asking.

I Said I Wanted Fun, Once in a Blue Moon

In today’s family meeting I said I wanted to do fun stuff. I’ll be careful what I wish for.

The fun started yesterday when I went out and found Drew chomping away on the nice grass by the round pen. It turns out I may have left a gate open. The second time I found him out there, I began to wonder if he’d opened the gate himself. No way to know. I am a bit forgetful these days.

Today when I went out, I discovered Drew looking like this. Something had bit the heck out of him. Maybe Apache, but then I realized I hadn’t shut another gate, the one that puts a buffer between Grandma (who is on a liquid weight gain diet) and my guys. My guess is he went after her food this morning and she made it clear that wasn’t a good idea.

From the look of him, he didn’t listen very well. Tomorrow he gets a bath. Today was the other horses’ turn, so I’m waiting until evening tomorrow.

The round pen is a good place to dry off.

Later, I came back out to give the chickens some apple core. I was surprised to see not just Drew, but Apache and Fiona out grazing by the henhouse.

I’d let Drew out on purpose, because the little pasture is all dry and perfect for Apache right now, but not for a growing boy. But how did Apache get out? It turns out it was Kathleen’s turn to forget to shut a gate. We all laughed at ourselves. She told me that was the fun I’d wanted!

At least they will be easy to get back in their pasture if I dangle good at them.

The other “fun” we’ve been having is rearranging furniture, putting away books, and decluttering. Now, I’ll never be minimalist enough for Carol, our old real estate partner. But my office looks better. That’s the second rearrangement in two weeks.

I also cleaned off the desk Lee stopped using in the great room, though I still don’t know what to do with his giant yellow/and-black tote. it WILL be gone soon!

The fact that you can see the surface and there aren’t piles of neon printer paper there is evidence I did something.

I brought a couple plants from Austin to help make that house more spare. It makes the corner that used to have plants and a beautiful stained-glass lamp look a little better.

What happened to the lamp? Heck if we know. One day I looked over and the glass was separating from the metal top.

Wah. This was not a cheap plastic lamp either.

That was not fun. Stuff like that just happens once in a blue moon, and that’s today!

Drew’s Clues

I’ve talked before about my concerns about my 3-year-old colt, Drew, and his issues with balance. He can’t get his back feet cleaned, because he can’t stay upright on three feet long enough. And he’s fine with the front feet. And he stumbles on his back feet when he’s running. Something seems wrong.

Today ended up being farrier day, because we had a schedule mix-up, but it all ended up fine. I told Trixie about my concerns, wondering if he was just lazy, as had been suggested, or if there was another reason.

Trixie felt around and tried a few things. She agreed he has a problem. His pelvis is tilted, with one side higher than the other. That makes it hard for him to put weight on one side, and hard to bend the other side. I asked about how he clamps his tail down, and he said he was doing something to his sacrum with than (I forget what; forgot to take notes).

Perhaps this Vulcan mind meld will help.

Her theory is that he could have scar tissue or adhesions from being gelded in a popular way I’ll not describe here. That makes sense to me. So, she worked on him. He loved neck stretching but not foot work, which didn’t surprise me.

Not much helped his pelvic area, though his head and neck felt good, from his reactions. Trixie will have to come back Monday and do some other stuff.

I’m so glad I paid attention to the clues he’s been giving me, so I can get Drew in better shape before he goes in for training. Luckily there is good news! Drew let his front feet get trimmed pretty calmly for a first timer! I’m proud of my little boy.

Meanwhile, Apache slept through most of Drew’s stuff and his trim, even though we had a few little showers. He was a model citizen and even stood perfectly for his back feet!

The weather is so weird. It’s so pleasant outside that I can sit and enjoy Lee’s pond after spending some time with the horses. It’s August. It should be 105, not 77 right now. And the grass should be brown, dang it.

A Date with Nature and Livestock

Nature’s creatures have nothing to do with human organizations, judgmental humans, or unnecessary drama. Their drama is, at least, necessary. So I dumped social media and went outside on this nice day.

Half the day I added to my collection of observations for our Master Naturalist group’s summer bioblitz. I missed the spring one by being in North Carolina, so I wanted to make up for it. Here, enjoy some things I found:

The rest of the time, I hung out with my animal friends. I’m sure if I had grandchildren I would not take so many pictures of animals.

The chickens love to dust bathe in the sand.

Enjoy what really matters in life and let other stuff go. You’ll be healthier!

Things I Never Thought I Would Say: Poop Edition

Since moving here, I have found myself uttering phrases that the old Suna never would have come out with. Things like: Hey, I only sweated through two bras today!

With all these animals, of course the topic turns to what comes out of them. More than once I’ve had an in-depth discussion of what makes a healthy cow pie, and why it’s okay for them to have the runs at certain times of the year. So, yes, I’ve said, “Wow, that’s some fine looking cow dung!”

Today’s phrase I never would have thought I’d ever say is:

I really enjoy shoveling horse poop.

But, it’s true! I find myself looking forward to cleaning Apache’s pen while he and Drew eat their delicious food and supplements. It’s fun chasing all those stray horse apples, honestly. And it looks so great when you are done (which lasts approximately zero minutes to one hour, depending on horse digestion).

Hey, you just cleaned this, so I needed to make a new deposit. You’re welcome.

It sure makes it smell better, too. Of course, some poop shoveling is not fun. I put trying to clean the stock trailer in that category. It’s a really nice trailer with flooring that helps the animals stay steady on their feet. However, that flooring makes it very hard to remove poop, and let me tell you something, an animal placed in a trailer will poop, probably before you finish tying them up, or shut the door.

I went out this morning when it was “cooler” to finally tackle the trailer after Apache’s lesson a week ago. Wow, that was a frustrating job, but at least most is out. Obviously we need to pressure wash it, which will happen when we have a pressure washer that’s not stuck on one hose in the back yard.

And apparently, if you create an enclosure, equines will poop in it. I had left the “gate” to the round pen open so it could get mowed, and sure enough, Fiona ONLY pooped in there when she was out free ranging. That makes it fun for the human in the center working with the horse, or walking around with it.

Thank goodness, now that it’s mowed, the Fiona poop isn’t so obvious.

In good news, I went over to Sara’s and got the cones I forgot I owned (bought with the portable round pen and the other dressage accessories). I can now set up my circle much more accurately for our schooling practice.

They don’t have to be fancy cones to do the job. Here, they are up high so the grass can be cut.

Sounds like I have a fun weekend ahead of me, with poop shoveling as a feature, not a chore.

And feeding me, too. Don’t forget to feed me.

The Other Horse Gets a Turn

I’ve been concentrating a lot on Apache lately, but that doesn’t mean I have forgotten Drew! He won’t let me forget him, anyway, since every time he sees me, he comes up to see what’s going on. That’s really a good sign! He’s doing a good job learning not to crowd me, yet be close enough for affection. That’s got to be hard to learn (they call it staying out of my bubble).

We are in each other’s bubbles on purpose, here.

He continues to learn in the round pen, and I want to try some of the things I’m learning with Apache, but I am not going to step right in front of a cantering colt to get him to pay attention. I’ll figure something out, since I do have the long coach whip. He tends to ignore it, I guess because he hasn’t felt it. The other round pen issue is that he stumbles on his back feet occasionally. I am going to have him checked to see if it is just young horse awkwardness or something else. He does not appear to be ill.

He has put on some weight and is all muscled. It’s fun to watch him run.

But otherwise, we have great fun going for walks and not eating grass, so maybe he won’t form that habit. The idea is if his halter is on, he doesn’t eat, which is a thing I’d been inconsistent with on Apache. I know Kathleen will keep me honest with that. We can all learn new tricks!

I really enjoy his spirit and ease being around me, the dogs, the chickens, and Fiona. He is just a fun little guy.

His eye is still goopy, but better. Other animals here also have it, and we humans, too, so we are chalking it up to allergies from the very wet year we’ve had. Speaking of the other animals, the other four horses here have had a nice week or so of pasture rest. They spent a lot of it licking a cow mineral block with molasses in it, and had very brown faces. But, they finished it and look more normal now.

Granny’s muzzle is back to normal. She is the friendliest of the bunch, and always comes to see me to get her daily does of scritches and pets. She remains thin, but she’s old.

All the others are looking quite healthy. Mabel especially seems much better since her injuries were addressed. She is filling out and looks like a race horse or something. Her legs are amazing!

Suna just says nice things, because she wants to ride me someday.

The two buckskins stay together all the time. It’s very sweet to watch them out grazing. All in all, they seem to be a happy herd that will be ready to do more work soon. I enjoy watching them!

We are holding a memorial service for the empty cow mineral bucket.

Fiona is a very happy donkey. She gets to wander around the property during the day, eating whatever she wants, wherever she wants to. She actually doesn’t go very far, but it’s nice to just walk up and love on her while I’m dealing with the chickens and such. Things are settling in nicely!

Feeding time for my guys. Everyone gets their own spot. I clean poop while they eat, just as I learned from Kathleen!

Oh, and one more thing! Now that I finished my Friends of La Leche League newsletter I have time to do things I should have done a long time ago, and I finally blocked the shawl I made for Kathleen. It should be dry and looking much more like a shawl by tomorrow! See, I don’t spend all day every day with horses.

This clash of colors is a bit nauseating, but I think the shawl will look cool with its little scallops on the edges.

When You’re Irritated, Go Outside

No matter how many times I try to convince myself not to care to much about my work, I keep doing it, and the way things are set up now, I really need to just roll with the changes. But, I’ll try to do that again, next time.

Goldie is rolling with the changes. Keep on rolling, keep on rolling, as REO Speedwagon advised.

So, today I made a point of going outside and enjoying a relatively cool August day with the animals. I did some excellent breathing, then went out to see how the horses were doing.

What, I’m supposed to be rolling? Usually you make me stop!

I got Drew out and tried to groom him. Oh my gosh, he, too, had been rolling. In the sand. While sweating. He was now an orange horse. He had clay-like clods in his mane that would not brush out. I got my exercise in!

I don’t know what she’s talking about. I look just fine…from a distance, backlit.

We went for a walk, which was fine until Harvey took off after him and he bolted away. Drew is very pretty when running. And he waited for me. I took a deep breath and we finished our walk. Then we went in the round pen, and Drew totally made up for running off. He has improved so much! At least I feel like I’ve taught him something. He slows down, stops, turns, and comes to me when asked.

I’m not so bad. Also, Fiona’s empty dish tastes better than mine.

Then I fetched Apache, who was much less filthy but more bothered by flies. I see why Drew was rolling in the sand. Both got fly spray, so they will be better for a few days. I put Apache in the round pen to see if he’d move better after some pain killer the night before.

He acted like normal Apache. He trotted around and around until I asked him to stop. He turned around when asked. He just kept going. I think maybe it’s just he abscess growing out.

We had a good walk, and when he started wanting to eat every time I stopped, I practiced starting and stopping after different numbers of steps. That made him think, and his head stayed up.

Sara has me reading a depressing article on sugar in grass. It makes me feel doomed at slimming him down again until winter. I can’t let him out only between 9 pm and 3 am. Sigh.

I can’t help it. I was born this way. Or mismanagement. Or something. This is my bad angle!

By the time I did all this, I felt better. Keeping myself centered to work with the horses helped a lot! Animal therapy. I’d say it’s free, but horses are not cheap.

Going Cuckoo over Gloomy Beauty

It’s time for another post with mostly photos. The rainy day brought a lot of sights, from a bird and insects I’d never seen before to animals dealing with water. That’s right, the title of this post isn’t an insensitive ableist phrase, I actually saw a cuckoo!

In the center is a yellow-billed cuckoo!

I knew we had them here, but I’d never seen a cuckoo before. It must have been recovering from the most recent downpour. I read that these birds are called storm birds, because they tend to sing after a storm. This one wasn’t singing.

The other fun part of today was enjoying the wet animals. Poor Fiona thought she was trapped in one of the pens until Apache walked over and showed her it wasn’t a lake.

Here are some other images from around the pens.

Here are my insect finds. most are new to me, but not the fire ants. They messed up my foot night before last.

I’ll close with more moody weather photos. It was a pretty interesting day after all.

Progress, Despite Heat

It’s the time of year that we can’t get much done outdoors, but Lee and I are getting a few things accomplished (mostly Lee). His pond project has made it to the “proof of concept” phase, in which he connected all the parts, added water, plugged in a pump, and saw it work. It makes a nice sound, and you can even hear it over the sound of the giant fan we need to make sitting on the porch possible.

The dogs like it, and it’s getting prettier and prettier as he adds rocks and such. Plans include adding river rock and some larger rocks around it, and then adding more water features, like a stream bed and another pond. I’ll wait and see how that comes out before trying to describe it.

When he first got it running. The top fountain part is a concrete planter.

Lee also did a lot of work on the small pond, mainly smoothing out an edge, for easier dog and frog access.

He also added more rock to the front walkway, which I think makes the front of the house look better. It no longer looks like the house was just plopped down in the middle of a pasture (which it was, of course; in fact the concrete was poured seven years ago, yesterday).

Finally, some landscaping is in progress!

What Was I Up To?

Meanwhile, I had to stay inside much of the day, due to not feeling up to par (I am sleepy so much, and can’t figure out why!). I spent a long time on yesterday’s blog post (thanks for the nice comments!). Then I decided to start another knitting project with some interesting yarn I bought years ago. It’s called Haze, from Queensland, and has corn fiber in it, along with cotton.

I had been looking for a pattern, and didn’t think I’d found exactly what I wanted on Ravelry, but then my knitting friend Terri posted a photo of what she had started. That looked like what I wanted. It turned out to be one of the projects I’d already been considering, so I knew it was right. It’s a popular pattern from back when the Bones television show was on, named after Dr. Saroyan. It will be fun to knit. The leaf pattern edging is weird, but it ends up looking nice.

Eventually, I knew I had to go out and mess with the horses. Sara came over and we sat in the shade, which wasn’t too bad, thanks to a slight breeze. I practiced making Drew stay out of my space, but also enjoyed him and Goldie (and precious Fiona).

Eventually, we got up the gumption to do some work. I got Apache in the round pen, to see if Sara thought he had lameness or what. We are still not sure. Next, we got his food and put it in the trailer, because I want him to be comfortable getting in and out for lessons in Milano. Feeding him in there is how Sara had gotten him used to her trailer many years ago.

I’m in and eating! Of course, the first thing I did was poop. Sara got a picture of that, but you don’t need to see it.

I didn’t have much trouble at all getting him in. The trailer makes some weird noises and has a floor surface that was new to him, but he handled it fine. The main problem was that Goldie kept trying to “help” and when we were busy with Apache, she snuck in and ate his food. I do not want my fancy supplements going into the dog, sheesh.

I do plan to clean out the poop before the trailer is used to haul more of Anita’s stuff. But, we successfully got Apache in and out twice, despite the dog’s “help,” so I’ll practice a few more times before next Saturday, when he’ll actually go somewhere for the first time in a long time!

Here are some pictures from this morning of all the animals I saw.

Otherwise, it’s a burning hot weekend, so I’m mostly going to relax. I’ve been out petting and saying hi to the other horses a bit, but they’re just happy in their pasture. Everyone needs a day of rest; I guess that’s why so many religions mandate them!