WordPlay

01/31/12

Here’s the latest, the greatest, the newsiest news!

The Fitzhenry & Whiteside Writer Beware generated by the  Dun Lady’s Jess reversion situation is quieter, but actively ongoing.  Some things take time…

Here in the office, TIGER BOUND, the fourth Nocturne Sentinels book, is in production–and so is the reprint of NOSE FOR TROUBLE, which means I’m working on the cover even now!  KODIAK CHAINED is in first draft and zooooming along quite nicely!  And the steamy new paranormal novella, Touched By Fire, is now available.

And…

• My out-of-print backlist is at Backlist eBooks — with more to come!
• Night of the Tiger was a December release (Nocturne Bite).
• The release schedule for the four outstanding Nocturnes is: Tiger Bound 08/12; Kodiak Chained  12/12; Demon Blade 2013; Dark Blade 2013.
• ConneryBeagle’s medical fundraiser goes on, and his updates are at the anthology pages!
• You can subscribe to WordPlay by Email

I’ve finally figured out the big secret to feeding Duncan.

It wasn’t any single discovery…it was sixteen years of observations coming together at year twenty.

The particulars:

1. Like most Lipizzans, Duncan is an air fern.
2. At random intervals, Duncan has the worst diarrhea ever.  White horse, beautiful long tail…a power scrubber would take days to undo the mess that results.
3. Times 5 if he has a blanket on; blanketing clearly contributed, though who knows how.
4. At other times, he’s far too dry.
5. Those other times have contributed (but not caused) both of his colics–the one he survived only by a miracle, 2 1/2 years ago, and the one a year ago that we caught early and was precipitated by a nasty virus that weakened him for months.
6. None of that happened when he was in Flagstaff on Bermuda hay, which is an unusual kind of high-protein grass that I can’t easily get here.

In the meantime, after the first colic, I started soaking his hay a few moments before he ate.  I didn’t soak it longer, because I had read that the hay loses nutrients in that case.

About six weeks ago, I read (in the online source The Horse), an report on a scientifically conducted hay-soaking study.  And it turns out that lengthy hay soaking doesn’t reduce the nutrients per se.  It reduces the sugar.

So, sez I upon reading this study–great!  I must try longer soaks, because I don’t care if my air fern gets less sugar and the grass will soak up more water.

Now, one of the things that changes pretty significantly between hay cuttings and even hay bales is the amount of sugar in the grass.  Environmental circumstances during grass growth, how long it lays after cutting…blah blah blah.  There’s no easy way to predict it, and you sure can’t tell by looking.  And if my air fern were off grazing as horses evolved to graze, he wouldn’t be facing these abrupt dietary changes.  He’s not a digestive hothouse flower so much as he is displeased with the changes man has wrought to his manner of eating.

Do you see this coming?  He hasn’t had a digestive upset since I started doing soaking the hay.

Not that they came so often that it was obvious at first.  But a siege of bad weather and blanketing drove the point home.  And not that it’s easy.  It means an elaborate set-up in the garage, hay strewn where we don’t want it, and–wuh–hauling nets of soaked hay down to the barn.  But we’ve gotten it down to a pretty good science at this point, and after all these weeks, I am still smug–SMUG, I tell you!–to have stumbled over the food management that overcomes issues old and new.

So we’ll continue to refine the soaking routine, and I’ll probably feel smug for a good long while, and meanwhile, just for fun, here are some Photos of AWWWness.

I was going to 'shop out Connery's evil glowing eye, but decided...nahhhh...

For those of you who wondered about Dart's outfit for the Weather on TD test day...

A sunset and crescent moon in the same pic. Can't see the moon? Clickie the piccie...

It’s 10am Christmas morning, which is a whole lot later than this day started.  Not because I have eager kids in the house, but because today was my chance to run a certification track with Dart Beagle.

In order to enter the TD (tracking) test, a dog must prove he’s ready.  That means passing on an informal TD track.  Ours was scheduled for Friday the 23rd–but we spent Friday snowbound, digging out from under the third storm in two weeks.

insert random beauty

Sunrise, right before the start of the storm...

Thirty-six hours later, as the sun is about to set...clearing skies with lenticular clouds sitting on the Sandia Mountains

So we rescheduled for Monday.  But then the certifying judge had to reschedule something of her own due to that same weather, and suddenly here we are on Christmas morning, squeezing in the track together.

It was 15F when we left the house; marginally warmer when I ran Dart’s little starter track (a wee morale builder).  Eventually the sun came up and that helped a bit–when we ran the certifying track a little after nine, it was all blue sky, bright sun, and eager Beagle.

And for Christmas this year, the eager Beagle ran a picture-perfect track and found the glove. 

Now I am off to celebrate!

insert random holiday cheer

My view from the office at Horse Feeding Time

Duncan feeling a bit jaunty in his power red blankie

The dogs say "Happy Holidays!"

DuncanHorse is not going to appreciate this blog.

Duncan: Litterbox!  I heard that!

When I moved here, I had a mighty geology/climate lesson.  Because when I lived in Flagstaff at 7,ooo feet, I was on caliche ground and natural volcanic cinder.  We got a ton of snow (many feets of it!), but rarely did we see mud.  At that altitude, under that sun, the snow sublimated before it melted.  And when it did melt, it ran off the hard ground in sheets.  Only in a few select places did it create squishy spots.

So as I prepared to move to new high foothills, here on the windward side of the Sandias in New Mexico, I planned my horsekeeping accordingly.

Duncan:  Me.  It is all about me.  And that is as it should be.

Wow.  No caliche here.  No indeed.  What we have here is adobe mud.  And there’s a reason people made houses from this stuff.  It will suck the shoes off your feet, send you sliding away on the slightest slope, and swallow you up to your knees.  It will especially do this if new construction has disturbed the soil.

Duncan:  What an incredible mess you’ve discovered.

Right.  So says the horse who happily rolls in said mud and then makes faces at me when it dries to concrete in his mane.  (And who also seems to be a fan of the original Star Wars movie.  Imagine.)

We made this discovery shortly before we moved in.  In a panic, we bought several loads of coarse wood shreddings from the local transfer station and had them spread–in the back yard where the dogs would have otherwise disappeared until spring, and in the paddock directly in the immediate barn area. The shredding packed down, created a mud buffer, and also did a stupendous job of sponging up all but the most profound application of monsoon rain.  (Not that we’ve had much of that in the past year, it is grim to say.)

The side paddock remained naked, although in the time since, we’ve tossed some token shreddings along the fence to make better footing for the pacing zone.

Duncan: The pacing zone is important.  Speaking of which, feed me now.

But the shreddings take a beating over time--they drift away, and they’ve been under hard use in a year when Duncan had no pasture time due to the drought.

Duncan: I would much rather be on my PASTURE!

A couple of weeks ago, we got another load of shreddings.  And I commenced to haul and spread and haul and spread and owwwwww.  Ow.  Ow.  Give me ibuprofen!

This is about a third of the original pile, which spread out into the driveway.

So this past week, we hired a strong back to help, and he hauled and I spread, and…

Lo.  The entire paddock is full of thickly layered shreddings.

And when it was done, I stood in the middle and surveyed Duncan’s domain, and realized what I’d done.

Yes.  It’s a giant litterbox.

Duncan: It is NOT.  Feed me.

The giant litterbox, with winter-hairy horse and the Feed Me Foot in action

Yeeeeah…

It kinda is.

Duncan:  Kiss my nose anyway.

The Freakishly Cool things of the day:

I found Jim Croce on iTunes. I am replete.

DuncanHorse is strong enough after his illness, the ground firm enough, and the weather nice enough so we went arroyo-hopping this weekend.

The Backlist eBooks sale has been blogged by Smashwords, picked up by eBookNewser, and tickled interest from [BIG IMPRESSIVE BLACKOUT MARK]. With over 80 authors on board and hundreds of books between us…yeah.  We’re reaching a great momentum!

AND.

There’s THIS. Just something to sneak into the market for now while the dust settles from the above sale, but I absolutely can’t wait to share this boxed set graphic.  I mean, WUH!  This is Pat Ryan Graphics, and is she AMAZING or what?

It’s a good thing we tried for more photos the second night of Dart’s introduction to the new concept of “leave your dinner in order to get your dinner” training, because by the third night, he started to put the behavioral pieces together.

But we got them, atomic blur and all! And here they are for your viewing pleasure.  Along with, may I saw, a bonus picture of Duncan, still in significant recovery mode, but dignity intact.

You see that blur? I told you. He vibrates. At atomic speed. (But look at that shoulder action!)

He is a flexible dog. Uh-huh.

Dignity in Horsie Clothes and Fever

I had a whole post of Dart’s rally pictures and happy little plans to make happy little chatter about the rally fun match the previous weekend  and this past weekend, our first UKI trial starring Dart (Connery is on the bench due to his meds).

Then came last Friday morning, when Duncan Horse woke up sick and got sicker.  And sicker.  And, even as one of us set up trial gear an hour away, ultimately and obviously too sick for owner management.

So at the moment it looks like he got a virus, which snuck quietly up and then bloomed overnight into dehydration, which caused (not too bad) impaction colic, during which the fever spiked up and complicated the colic recovery.  All of which caused much back and forth to the barn–checking the horse, walking the horse, petting the horse, kissing the horse’s nose, medicating the horse, introducing tiny tiny handfuls of food to the horse, blanketing and coddling and…

Okay, so.  I didn’t write a blog for today. It would have had cute pictures and happy little chatter, though.

But here is a picture that exemplifies Dart’s frame of mind when we ran down to the trial site on Sunday to grab the gear, and grabbed a few quick runs while we were at it (while Duncan had a baby-sitter).  That, of course, is the innards of the toy he stretched his evile prehensile toes out of the crate to acquire and smite.  The rest of the stuffing is in the background.

INSERT  EVILE CUTE DOG HERE

Yeah. Because that little beard of stuffing belongs there.

Well, INCHES matter.

One inch, said the weather critters of the impending snow. Three if over 7500′ altitude (we’re just below 7000′).

Fifteen inches later…

Snow means a waterpack on the mountains, and good slow water soaking into the sucked-bone dry ground.

But so much snow all at once? On our gravel driveway and hilly dirt road, that equals “snowbound.”

I dug out the barn. I worked on the driveway.  I took ibuprofen!  I dug some more and helped a kid who got stuck at the corner in the family van.

I stared at the remaining snow blocking my car and said, “No.”

But!  I still got the mail from the rural community box.  I might not have 4WD, but the mailman does.  And I have four HOOF drive.

Duncan was somewhat excessively proud of himself and his patience while I leaned, jostled, and made aurgh noises, trying to manage the awkward angle of that flat, tray-type mail niche.

DuncanHorse: ONE of us is dignified.

But hey–we trundled right on past those those stuck cars we passed along the way.

Dart Beagle hasn’t seen snow–just the massive hailstorm from October (still undergoing repairs…).  So this All at Once deluge was of some surprise to him.

I took lots more pictures, but the camera ate everything but this. Boo!

Dart Beagle: I MUST EAT ALL THE SNOW!

Dart Beagle: I MUST PEE ON ALL THE SNOW!

Which is a pretty convenient sequence when you think about it.

Connery Beagle: I love my dogloo.  You fool.  BAWH!

[Connery's just being dramatic.  He spent most of the time inside.]

The camera ate the pics before the entrances were tromped open. Boo!

So it’s a good thing I went out and took piccies of the wild Christmas trees two days before all this snow fell.

What, you don’t have wild Christmas trees? Around here we apparently grow them on the National Forest land.

Yes, the sky was that blue.

PS And Sunday, because of the immediate warming trend and the strength of the mountain sun, we had…wait for it…THE MELT.  *splooge*  Like butter in a microwave.  Turns out there’s an awful lot of water in all that snow…

Probably there are a whole lot of things you’re happy not to know about flies and their little fly babies.

Oh, I wish was you.

It hasn’t been bad here this year, really–not compared to the valley last year when we lived not only next to a herd of sheep, but the aquecia. In fact, with that historical watering system all around us and flies being so keen on incubating in damp, warm places, I suspect that place was just plain Fly Heaven.

It was not Horse Heaven. Not come July. No talking in the paddock unless you wanted flies in your mouth. Flies bounced off our bodies and worse, into and out of our ears. I went through hundreds of dollars of fly bait, fly spray, and fly masks.

The Height of Horse Fashion. If you read horse nose language you see he is Not Pleased. This is because he believes he should be eating.

I had already done every possible thing with my own yard, but here’s a fun fact about flies–they have a quarter-mile range. Jammed into the valley with its unique urban-rural agriculture, we didn’t have a chance. Not even with my trusty fly predators scattered around on a monthly basis.

*insert fly predator love*

Baby Fly Predators, still sleeping in their shipping package

This year, we’re out in the foothills. No sheep, no aquecias (the arroyos manage our water, and otherwise we xeriscape), and lightly scattered horses. The fly predators had a fighting chance…at least, until a month or so ago.

I ran into trouble because–and here is a little tip about flies–the fly traps have to be placed just right. The right amount of sun, the right amount of heat, and the correct proximity to their favorite hang-outs.

What the human wants is to put the trap–one gallon of stinky fly bait in water–in a place that won’t affect the neighbors or the house, or stand vulnerable to horse investigation.

And they have to be placed that way ahead of the seasonal surge, which around here is triggered by the monsoon.

But here in my new location/climate…I didn’t know what the flies would want. My instinct was that the flies would want to be HERE. And HERE had no protection from Horsie Incursion.

After repeated failures, I gave up and put the trap HERE, surrounded by a little bulwark of juniper logs.

DuncanHorse still gets to it. But not very often.

So now it’s a working system, if too late to prevent the population surge–and complete with that pungent but odd fly bait. Not immediately nasty, just sort of, “Gosh, I wish I hadn’t smelled that.” And then, as you realize how the slightest molecule instantly adheres to your skin and doesn’t let go, “Gee, I REALLY wish I hadn’t smelled that.”

Solution: scrub until the affected skin is gone. Works a charm.

But then there’s later. After a few days…as the flies begin to collect. As they DIEEEEE. Then it’s not just fly bait, it’s rotting flies and fly bait. A gallon jar with four solid inches of dead flies over the world’s nastiest liquid (we can’t call it water any longer). Oh yeah.

But hey! The flies think this is even MORE exciting, so the trap works even better!

Yay!

And then comes the day. The fly trap must be emptied, rinsed, and rebaited.

Han Solo: What an incredible SMELL you’ve discovered!

This is that smell.

And this is when you learn what you really, really, wish you didn’t know about flies:

They’re explosive.

You heard me.

BOOM!

Yes indeed. You gotta dispose of the accumulated mass of flydom JUST SO.

OR ELSE.

While frantically trying to not actually touch it.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

And here, I had intended to insert a photo showing amazing masses of potentially explosive flies.  However, this afternoon I had an uncharacteristic fit of mercy and good taste, so instead….

Look! Pretties! My first-year gaillardia! California poppies! Sunflowers! (Can’t take credit for those…they plant themselves.)

These annual sunflower plants are about twice as tall as I am...

These gaillardia ought to spread nicely next year, and be good and thick!

Poppies! Poppies! Poppies! I hope these pretty little things come back next year...

…Monday

Or, in Duncan’s case, the call of the modest fenced pasture.

He. Wants. It.

Duncan loves his pasture. Doesn’t matter how scarce those grass blades or how studded with prickly pear. He has a south flat shared with agility equipment and junipers and one gorgeous piñon, a north flat of yucca and prickly pear in which we sometimes ride, and a rugged, offset connection corridor curving around behind the house–the little arroyo, full of piñon, juniper, snags, and cactus.

Beyond that fence line, he can only gaze upon the plunging deep true arroyo, which is really just as well.

The paddock itself is plenty generous–different shade choices, flats and slopes and the barn. Zones for winter hang-out, zones for summer hang-out. Room to cut loose now and then.

Say, when he has a serious case of Pasture Wannit.

Because it doesn’t matter how dry, it doesn’t matter how sparse. He loves his pasture.

Unfortunately for him, although this land is meant to be grazed–by antelope, deer, elk, and bunnies–it isn’t meant for heavy use. It’s meant for animals who wander through, nibbling along the way. So that means while he’s good for this land, he’s also bad for it. (If he wasn’t a barefoot horse, he’d be even worse for it.) And in this dry, pre-monsoon season, that means he has only a few hours out, every other day or so.

This is, he says, not nearly enough. So he has a procedure through which to satisfy his Wannit.

First up: The determined and steely stare over the gate.

DuncanHorse: You. Will. OPEN.

When this fails, a quick circle around to glare with stare part 2:

DuncanHorse: Feel my wrath building! SNORT!

I have to say the gate is seldom impressed. Even the universe seems to have other things to do.

Next? Pawing at the gate. He doesn’t do this for any other reason, and he’s not pawing the ground. He lifts his front leg remarkably high and scrapes his hoove along the metal.

DuncanHorse: Must. Develop. Opposable. Digits.

Sadly, he does not.

And so the fun begins.

DuncanHorse: Wrath! SNORT! FLING MY HEELS! SPURT AWAY WITH AMAZING POWER! STOMP! STAMPEDE! LEVITAAAAATE!

Somewhere in that process, I often amble out to enjoy the show. Somewhere in this process, he becomes bored with himself, but doesn’t want to admit it. There follows a great spate of snort! Snorty snort!

And then suddenly, it’s…

Flirt. Flirt flirt flirt.

DuncanHorse: Am I handsome?

DuncanHorse: See my eyelashes?

DuncanHorse: See my curvy neck?

DuncanHorse: The gate is right there beside you…

Nice try, Duncan. Here’s a hug, a pat, and a cookie.

DuncanHorse: Kiss my nose?

Always!

The Power Snit: That there is the Lippie Engine at work. Also, that is what we call "the Neck of Annoyance."

The Power Snit Sprint upon take-off. Not a great angle, but that is one hard-workin' butt

Proof of the butt: Suddenly--full gallop! In rather tight quarters, you may notice.

"See? See my flirty neck?"

"My super flirty neck! Here I come! Time to kiss my nose!"