WordPlay

…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!"

…Friday
Sequel to The Horse in the Cold Wet Dark

We’ve had some…interesting…weather lately, that’s for sure. Enough to try the patience of DuncanHorse, who found himself closed in the paddock and denied his time under saddle.

There have been temper tantrums. Snortysnortysnorty.

So the other night, deep into the darkness while I worked on Secret Project, I heard the first round of snorty and thought, uh-huh.

But then there was the second round, snortysnorty, a sound of deep disgust. And the third. And…

I listened a little harder, because that’s what horse people do when something out of pattern happens in the darkness. Nothing.

All the same, I went out early to feed.

DuncanHorse: About time. Where have you been? Kiss my nose.

Me: Hmm, you look unusually humble.

DuncanHorse: Not at all.  I am mighty.  Now that you mention it.

*LED headlamp beam hits the barn door, illuminating the deep new scars in the wood*

Me: WTF?

DuncanHorse: Nothing to see here. Move along, move along. Feed me.

Me: Seriously, WTF? These aren’t kick marks, but…and why didn’t I hear this happening?

DuncanHorse: Feed me. Kiss my nose. You see nothing.

Me: This looks like you scraped up with your hooves–Oh, wait a minute. You got cast against the barn, didn’t you?

DuncanHorse: Maybe. Do you love me?

Me: *SMOOOCH the nose.*

And yet, knowing once more just how lucky we were. A horse is “cast” when it finds the perfect spot for a snooze and, in lying down, fails to make the minute calculations for the space necessary to get up. Or it rolls over into a wall, or slips down a hill (as it happens, there’s a significant slope in front of the barn).

*coff* Nature didn’t provide equus with a lot of walls during the whole natural selection process.

Anyway, a horse unable to get up is a horse in trouble. They aren’t made for anything but short naps in the sun; it’s why it’s such a serious thing when an ill or injured horse can’t stand. (The first time the head counselor at the Girl Scout camp where I taught riding saw some of our little herd lying down, she gasped, “They’re dead!”)

A cast horse trying to get up can damage itself severely. Bruises, flailing hooves cutting flesh, abscesses from the strike of hoof against hard surface, and sometimes a twisted gut.

A cast horse unable to get up…well. Duncan weighs a thousand pounds. This puny human can’t exactly tug him into a better position for another try.

So, yes, again we are very lucky, here in our totally weird spring weather (did I mention SNOW? And plenty of it? In May?). Duncan managed to get himself up. He had no cuts, no swellings, no broken bits. He was stiff, but a couple hours in the sunshine made a difference there. And I’m guessing that because he was swiping the barn instead of hammering it, we have a good chance of avoiding a hoof abscess.

The barn is kind of ugly. But the scrapes and dents will weather eventually…and whoever needs an excuse to kiss that horsie nose?

===========

I don’t have pictures of that wintery day. I do have pictures of the day before, when we drove up to Santa Fe, and the development of the storm moving in…if you look closely, you can see what rain looks like from a distance when it’s just beginning to head for the ground.

Yay! Pictures!

Monday…

Valerian Mist, Mountain Mare

Duncan has always had a weird presumption about the ground beneath his feet, which is that it won’t dare to vary without his consent. Let’s just say that unlike my cat-footed young gaited mare in the Appalachians–who occasionally saved my life with her sure-footedness in challenging ground–I don’t make any assumptions of Duncan.   And for the past many years, Duncan has been on fairly flat ground. Some slope, but evenly done. The occasional trail ride in a distant cinder cone foothill with narrow switchback trails he had no idea how to handle–

(NO, horse, you do not obsess about flinging one lone fly off your head when navigating a hairpin turn to a narrow down trail on a steep slope!)

He, he assures me, exists for loftier things than watching his feet.

Well, let’s just say he’s learning better.

This winter (mudmudmud), his riding ring was the mile loop of dirt road that climbs up out of the ridge-nestled bowl in which we live, flattens briefly as it curves around, and then strafes down to the cross-road that feeds in from the outer world. It’s not so steep that you instantly go, “Wow, that’s straight up!” But those of us who have biked it or driven it in slick snow have a very good idea of its slope.

So does Duncan, now. Just as he’s had a few forays into the gorgeous nearby trails that wind up and around the ridges here, with their ditches, mini-arroyos, scattered rocks and boulders, and a few places where all those things are combined on short but “gee, I hope my saddle doesn’t slide off his butt/off his neck” inclines.

(Note: yes, one day I WILL dig out those old pictures, Mona Rethia!)

Add in his pasture–a flat north area, a flat south area littered with agility equipment, and the mild arroyo connecting them between–and oh yes. Duncan is learning to respect the ground.

Not without lessons to learn–he has a particular problem with deep, narrow ditches, in which he doesn’t seem to perceive the drop–but a little experience should help with that.  Er, I hope.

More than that, the hills are s taking an aging horse whose long-term stifle issues were getting the best of him, and turning him into a horse who knows how to balance himself going up or going down, in all three gaits, with or without rider. The work is building muscle and flexibility…and it’s taken years off his frame in the four months we’ve been here.

DuncanHorse: Nineteen years of Lipizzan, learning to be young again.

Did I say Yay!..?

Up out of the arroyo...

posted on Wednesday

I love my new barn.

I especially love my new barn on nights when I’m settling down to sleep and I suddenly think the dreaded thought:

Did I close the hay stall door?

And then I pad through the darkness to the office, flip on the back light, peer through the window, and say, “Why, yes, I did. Go, me!”

This is such and improvement on get dressed, put on shoes, gear up for weather, head out several layers of doors and the yard gate, and walk around to where I can see the front of the barn.

It really is.

It’s actually not a new barn so much as it is a nearly new barn, constructed just over a year ago upon the move from Arizona to New Mexico, and then recently relocated here. And boy, was it painstakingly positioned–exactly so I can look out that window for exactly that reason. Well…and to check on the horsie, too.

So, you ask…what’s this about manure landscaping?

“Run-off from the yard has to drain away from the barn,” I said as the site was under construction. Really. I said it many times. I’m pretty sure a note of desperation entered my voice. Why, I might even have gotten a little…testy. The response was always, “It’s not done yet, it’ll be fine when it’s done.”

Problem is, I guess, I never did stamp my foot. Because then one day it was done, and…well.

Water runs directly at the barn. Laser targeting. Distinct downhill.

El Nino winter? The hay stall floods. The horse stall is mud. The area in front of the stall door is…

One of these days someone is going to come looking for me and find nothing but a feebly waving hand sticking up from the mud.

The stall floor is now lined with double-layered stall mats, and that’s helped a lot. Just outside the stall entry? I’m stumped. And after the snow-rain of the past couple days, I’m desperate! The ground is half frozen, half mud, and I don’t want to disturb the wood shredding-covered ground where it’s still stable. So what do I have to work with?

Right.

Horse poo.

And so I’m trenching; I’m building high ground. I’m directing the water as I can, with the materials at hand.

Yes, it is I.

The Happy Poo Farmer.

*DELETE PICTURE OF INDELICATE POO FARM*

*INSERT PLEASANT PASTORAL VIEW FROM DRYISH DAY*

posted on Friday

Duncan had a good day today.  For the first time in years…okay, in ever…he and I are casually close to some rugged trails.

Today, thanks to a nearby horsie friend, I had an introduction to same–ditches and intense short steep slopes and rocks and trees and oh the fun!  He started off planting his feet like he owned the place and ended up thoughtful, tired, and very much pleased with himself.

Definitely a good day.

So it also seems like a good day to post his recent Photos of Might, in which he was impressing…okay, I haven’t figured out just who he’s trying to impress when he goes into paddock-rocket mode.  He sees/smells something to the north of us, that’s all I can say.

Also I can add the usual disclaimer, which is…one-handed camera work, longe whip in the other hand to make myself bigger, and yah, very much watching my exit routes with the back of my head.  Because, y’know, I was in the paddock with him…

Snorty Snorty Snorty

Strut Strut Strut
“Gosh,” you think.  “He looks awfully collected.”  Because…yeah, he’s going full blast, and see that post there?  That’s the CORNER.

The Mighty White Butt

Horse in Flight.  He must have made that corner…

“Here I AM!”

posted on Wednesday

Except that yes, the days are getting longer…and DuncanHorse knows it. So what’s he do, as the wet snow continues to roll in and, these past two nights, as the temps flirt with zero F?

Why, yes. He starts to shed. This past weekend, in fact.

His undercoat has taken on that soft quality that means it’s about to turn loose; his guard hairs litter the stall floor when I brush him, and hair pads the bristles of the stiff winter mud brush.

Ohh, he’s got a long way to go, but…I am fairly warned. It’s the warning every horseman heeds come spring, or pays the price:

NO MORE FRESH LIP BALM BEFORE BARN TIME

But here, just to show you that between storm clouds, the sun does come out…

posted on Monday

In recent days here at home…

Duncan Horse: My paddock is too small. It is too muddy. It is too icy. It is NOT RIGHT.

Mind you, it’s a paddock of quite a decent size, plenty of room to move. But it is indeed too muddy, too icy, and is missing a big chunk the middle between the tree cluster and the fenced-off sinkhole area.

Duncan Horse: I need to move my Lippie legs! Right NOW.

And I said to him, “Talk to Mother Nature.”

And Mother Nature said, “Ooh la la! I feel like more SNOW!”

Truly, Duncan hasn’t gone that long between any given rides. The pasture ground is in “no way” mode, but I’ve been taking him out on the road and stretching his legs and back out on the hills we’ve got here. Decent rides–long enough to loosen him up, put him in a correct frame, and enlarge his world with the idea of uphill and downhill lateral work…not to mention the sight-seeing.

(Duncan Horse interjects: That uphill/downhill lateral work  is HARD.)

But on this day, he’d had enough of the weather. It was just warm enough to turn the ice and snow to deep adobe mud, and just briskly breezy enough to go right up a horse’s…er, tail. And out I came to the barn with the bridle and my riding helmet in hand, dumping them in the hay stall to reach for the halter.

Duncan Horse: Let’s go! Let’s go! Now, now, NOW! I rattle the gate! I dance! Rattlerattle dance DEMAND!

Me: Oh, have some manners. *taps the side of the barn with the dressage whip*

Duncan Horse: NO DAMMIT NO MANNERS &&^%$#@! I RUN BUCK SNORT FIERCE NOBLE CHARGE LEAP FLY WHIRL FLING SNORTIE SNORT MAD MAD MAD!

Me: Ohhh-kay then. Maybe you should just get that out of your system. I’ll watch. Try not to injure yourself in this mud.

Duncan Horse: FLING CHARGE &^%$#@! FENCE NOBLE NOBLE STRUT FLY!

Me: *buffs nails*

Duncan Horse: FLING CHARGE STRUT NOBLE NOBLE NOBLE…wuf wuf wuf…hooves….mud…weigh one hundred pounds each…I…ummm… by any chance do you have a carrot? Would you like to kiss my nose now?

Me: Why, yes. *SMACKEROO* Shall we ride now?

Duncan Horse: Yes please. Can we…just…*wuf*…walk?

==================

(No fling-buck piccies–alas, no camera that day. Just a dirty Lippie boy doing a bit of freestyle along the south paddock line–a nice bold trot with engine engaged and a nice little floaty trot.)

The Monday Post

And the rain turned to heavy snow…

What was I saying about horses in the wet cold dark? About the stupid?

Well, there’s the flip side of the coin. When the horse has to deal with Human Stoopids in the wet cold dark.

There’s a truth with horses–surround them with bubble wrap, and they’ll still find a way to hurt themselves. Just imagine what goes on when there’s a real excuse for it…

This weather has been hard on my getting-older boy–his flank is still tender from the fall he took on ice earlier in the week, and he felt that night of getting wet down to his bones. But the next bit wasn’t his fault, not at all.

His paddock is on an area that’s newly graded, you see–or half of it, anyway. A bit of construction overlap. “But safe for a horse, right?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. No problem.”

As muddy as it gets, it turns out–not what I was expecting, after my time in Flagstaff’s high desert. Though the guys were expecting it, and wood shavings have taken care of much of the mud immediately in front of the barn.

Turns out the mud wasn’t the problem. But that human factor…

All that grading. All that rain. All that ground settling beneath a frozen crust of mud.

Oh yes.  Problem.

And yes, we’re talking a sinkhole.

A sinkhole which one stout Lippie hind leg plunged through to the hock while the other–that’s the one with the totally funky, reconstructed stifle–scrambled to keep the first leg from breaking, front hooves slamming down on the frozen mud and halfway through the extended air pocket stretching out before him. All that struggle, written in the mud to freeze and read, and painted all over his white coat.

Well, he didn’t break his leg. I’m not sure how. But the horse who greeted me in front of the stall the next morning was one hurtin’ boy. He gave me that look. You know. “Please fix this.”

Of course I found the sink hole. And I found the air pocket extending radically beyond what he’d gone through, so I left him in his stall eating breakfast to hunt down the bute (horsie anti-inflammatories) and to call the construction guys to bellow for help. Bless them, they hustled out there fast.

In this mud, the best we could do is put up a little square of corral panels to block it off–it’ll be a while before it’s fixed. Especially given the weather we’ve had since then and are slated to have this coming week–snow ‘n’ blow.

Meanwhile, Duncan has had his bute and is feeling much better overall.  Although, as it happens, the spate of weather has finally driven him indoors. He’s been wearing his waterproof/wind proof sheet most of this time, but he’s finally hanging out in his stall.

In fact, in that photo up top? Yup, he’s in there. In the horse cave. Waiting for hay, carrots, and nose-kisses…

And forgiving the human stoopids.

Aren’t animals just like that?

The Wednesday Post

Duncan wouldn’t want me to give away his little secret, but it’s true.

Take an ordinarily clever–nay (if  I may pun)–stupendously intelligent horse, and give him a nice dry barn.   Even a modest little shedrow barn.   (I still haven’t found my camera.  Instead of the barn, here’s a piccie of summer Duncan sticking his tongue out at my entire subject matter.)

So far so good, right?

Okay, now add a brisk winter breeze.  Then add the coldest slushy rain you can imagine.  Let that start coming down around dark.

Remember.  Smart horse.  Dry barn.

But NO.

When the human comes outside at midnight for the last check and feeding, there’s the horse.

Always, there’s the horse.

By the fence.

Wet.

Cold.

Miserable.

VERY SORRY FOR SELF.

In this case, wet right through the thick winter coat that can slough off just about anything.  Annoyed enough to have thrown some MAD around the paddock and slipped in the process–one learns to read the signs of such things–and now sporting a bloody patch on one hip.  Mystery blood.  There’s no tracking it down at midnight in the wet cold dark.

So then you have the human, tromping back up to the house to find the waterproof, windproof horsie sheet.  Getting out some extra hay pellets as a treat.  Tromping to and fro in the wet slushy snow to tend the horsie who stood out in the rain.

By the fence.

Wet.

Cold.

Sore.

NOT SMART AT ALL.

It’s not without its rewards.  This particular horse is from a significantly self-aware breed–Lipizzans are like that–and he had a palpable sense of awareness of his miserable state.  Cold and tense and unhappy.  But he saw me bring out the blanket and he knew.  “You are going to make it better.”  His entire demeanor changed; his tension flowed away.  He put his head out for the blanket (I’m lazy, I put it over his head); he went to his stall and commenced to grinding away at the soaking Lakin hay pellets.  He stood like a rock while I fumbled around with blanket fastenings and belly band in the wet cold dark.  “I am content,” he said, presenting his Lakin-green lips and muzzle to me along with his soaking muddied-up face.  “Kiss my nose.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I told him, and gave him a pat.

Because, really, don’t you think wet cold dark GREEN would be going one step too far?

ConneryBeagle Crate Countdown: ONE DAY!

It just came time to move the feed barrels out of the barn, yes it did.

Due to certain logistics of the property, the barn set-up has always been untenable. Every possible factor added up to the certainty that the hay stall would, at some point, be left open. “Come inside, Duncan Horse, and eat up all the goodies you can find!”

Duncan eats hay, hay pellets, and beet pulp pellets–there’s no rich grain hanging around.  Plus he’s not one of those horses who gorges; even free-fed, he eats modestly and then stands there humming.  So the risk factor has always been pretty low, even if the door just plain got left open permanently.

Except.

This past summer, Duncan colicked badly in the unusual heat; the first vet who saw him labeled him Dead Horse Walking.  I’m so glad that vet was wrong!  But it means Duncan is now forever a horse of Colic Potential.  The benign pellets are now, in their way, a threat.

That meant all my existing barn security routines ramped up to DefCon Colic levels, including a lot of stress–because the barn is completely obscured from view until one is upon it, and facing directly away from the house at that; there’s no way to casually check its status.  Nonetheless, DefCon Colic measures all worked, so far as everything stayed routine.

But now the barn area is slowly being disassembled for moving, and routines are blown away.  And yesterday…

Well, he wasn’t in there very long.

So today I faced off against the two big garbage barrels full of pellets (150 pounds when full…these weren’t quite).  Twenty yards of hauling made it pretty clear I wasn’t going to make it to the house with them.  But desperation is indeed the mother of invention, so you may now amuse yourself with the mental image of me grabbing up the old rope that the property’s previous occupants had left buried in the ground (some of it is still there, too deep to get out) and hitching myself up like a sled dog.

Mush!

Hey, the pellets are safe.  My horsie is safe.  And for the first time in a year, I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night and wonder, “Did I close that hay stall door–?” without having any way to check besides suiting up and going out into the cold.

Now, someone please tell me I’m not the only one to beat myself against the “Did I remember to [insert crucial task]” meme this way!