Posts Tagged ‘Cayenne’
Uncanny Perception
While I was cleaning up a monumental amount of manure in the area nearest the overhang of the barn yesterday, the temperature was so warm that I needed to shed my hat and every layer down to my base shirt, and then considered tossing that, too. It was really nice out. Our barn is positioned perfectly to receive maximum solar energy, and is located in a spot that is usually sheltered from wind. Whenever it is even moderately nice outside, it is always even nicer on the sunny side of that barn.
The horses were grouped downhill from me, inside the back pasture. They looked like they were in a precise formation, lined up facing west and standing still as statues while bathing in the bright sunshine. I think it was nap time.
Next time I looked up from what I was doing, my suspicion was confirmed. It was nap time, and two of them were now laying down. I rolled the wheelbarrow filled with heavy, wet manure and snow through the barn to get out of the paddock and over to the compost area. In that amount of time, a third horse had laid down, leaving Dezirea the lone mare standing.
They looked awesome. I wanted to capture a picture of the scene, but from where I was standing, there were branches and a fence in the way, so I headed back up and through the barn. I kept an eye on them as I stepped out from the overhang and prepared to dig out my camera.
As happens all too often, that’s when the opportunity was lost. Hunter and Legacy picked up their heads and put their front hooves on the ground in the classic prelim to the magnificent effort of getting back on their feet again. Cayenne was right behind them. I immediately noticed that all four of them had reversed focus and were now facing east.
I looked that direction and spotted movement in the trees across the road. A herd of deer was coming our way. I was impressed at having watched the horse’s uncanny perception in action. Long before I was aware, the horses sensed the activity and rose to their feet to see what was coming.
Five deer, followed by three more, crossed the road and bounced through our neighbor’s field, leaping high in artful succession to clear a high-tensile wire fence that I don’t know how they can see. There were some young ones in the group, and it looked like a lesson in ‘follow-me; do what I do.’ From my vantage point, it looked like they had jumped too early, but all eight made their way across without incident. The little ones were pretty cute.
I looked back in the direction they had come from to see if there were any more, or for a possible reason why they were moving in the middle of broad daylight. There was an eagle circling above those woods, but nothing else. The horses had followed the action and were now facing west again, looking toward where the deer had gone.
About the time I was thinking about getting the blankets off the horses, clouds moved in and blocked the sun. Almost immediately I wanted my shirt back on, and shortly thereafter, my hat. What a difference direct sunlight makes. I ended up leaving the blankets on for one more day.
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Sub-Zero Routine
As we stepped out of the barn last night, after our late bed-check of the horses, Cyndie commented about how much she likes that we have been sharing this night trip to the barn. I do, too. Every chore is better when you can split the load.
The past week has produced an uninterrupted string of below-zero temperatures overnight and the forecast indicates this will continue for some time. The cold gets compounded by some very windy periods which have created dangerous wind chills. To be safe, it has become routine to bring the horses inside the barn overnight.
We let them out during the day so they can soak up the sunshine and move around to their hearts content. This also gives me space and time to clean the stalls. At sunset, they come up for their dinner feeding, which is when I have been moving them back inside.
Somewhere around 9 p.m., Cyndie or I take Delilah out for her last walk of the night. Lately, we have both been going, because we also make a special stop at the barn. The horses stay warm by burning calories and need to have enough hay to keep their furnaces fueled, so during this extreme weather we have added a night-time status check.
It feels like such an intrusion to disrupt their quiet dark space at that hour, so I suggested we use our headlamps and leave the overhead lights off for this late-hour visit, to minimize the disturbance. The horses appear to accept this gesture and remain calm and quiet while we go about our business.
Making everything routine helps them to feel comfortable with our presence. With hushed tones we navigate topping off the hay reserves in each stall, each of us grabbing a couple of flakes off a bale and visiting two of the stalls.
Then we turn our attention to their water buckets, adding water as needed and straining out hay debris that they all spill in there. Cayenne is the worst, as she loves to dip her nose in her water when her mouth is full. Her bucket and hay bin become a frozen hay-cicle. Legacy is the neat-nick who barely drops a few stray strands of hay in his.
As quiet as possible, Cyndie slides the stall doors open and steps in to strain out the soggy hay while I fill a spare bucket with water from the frost-proof hydrant. We do a little hand-off of strainer and bucket through the door and she pours it in.
In a way, it is a lot of rigmarole but the horses understand the drill and tolerate us quietly. We tip our headlamps down to keep them out of the horses eyes, so it becomes this tiny circle of light we move around within, amid the larger space of darkness and sleepy equine souls.
In minutes, we leave as quietly as we came. Stepping back out into the frigid night air, we realize that as cold as it is in the barn, it does protect them from the extreme bite that these winter evenings have been dishing out this week. Our new routine is helping all of us cope as well as possible during these sub-zero nights.
My experience dictates that when this pattern finally breaks, the next phase of winter will feel remarkably warm and comfortable to us. We’ll adjust our routine to one that is much more relaxed. The horses will stay outside at night again, and I won’t have to clean their stalls every day. Until that time, we’ll keep making our special night-time excursions to tuck the horses in for the night.
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Cold Morn
It was warm yesterday in that relative way that 32° F feels on a January day in our region. That makes this morning’s well below zero wind chill feel so bitterly bone chilling harsh.
Last night Cyndie and I were comfortably lounging by the fire when our daughter, Elysa, phoned to report she and Anne were coming to spend the night. If they hadn’t driven through the blowing snow, we wouldn’t have noticed how nasty the weather had turned until we were ready for bed and giving Delilah one last chance to pee for the night.
Their arrival and report of blowing snow alerted us to conditions we’d rather not make the horses endure. It is a good thing we didn’t neglect them. By the time we got out to ready the stalls and bring in the horses, they were already wet with blown snow and Cayenne was shivering as the temperature plummeted.
This morning in the barn the horses were warm and dry, allowing Cyndie to cover them in their newly washed blankets and let them out for some exercise in the daylight. They will definitely be back in the barn tonight for the even more extreme drop into the negative temperature numbers.
It is hard to determine how much snow fell, because there has been so much wind. The snowplows were out clearing the roads of drifts, but I don’t need to do much work on the deck. All we have is a small mountain range that drifted up to the back door. The rest of the wood has been blown clean and dry.
Clean, dry, and COLD!
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Reclaiming Routine
We are mostly back to our Wintervale routine again. The horses are grazing hay from the slow feeder boxes as if that is the way they have always done it. I’ve noticed that Dezirea and Legacy have no problem sharing a box and eating together, while Cayenne eats alone and Hunter appears the odd horse out. I don’t know whether she is forcing the situation or he is choosing this on his own. He eventually takes a turn, but waits for his opening.
For the time being, we are electing to let their herd behavior play out. Cyndie mentioned yesterday that she wants to get back out there as soon as her strength dictates to work on refining their manners. The horses have probably had a bit too much autonomy while she has been out of the game.
Yesterday we drove back to the cities (again) for her 6-week follow-up appointment with the surgeon who performed her hip replacement. I have a suspicion that he tells many of his patients this, but we are happy nonetheless that he said he wishes all his hip surgeries looked as “tight” as this one. He also seemed extremely pleased with the appearance of the healing incision.
Cyndie reported that she experienced the biggest boost from simply reading the physical therapy order written by the doctor’s assistant, which said, “Prognosis for full recovery: Excellent.“
The surgeon wants Cyndie to remain cautious for another 6 weeks to give her body every opportunity to grow around the artificial joint with a goal of avoiding any dislocations for a good 30 years on. She is cleared to drive and hopes to return to work on Monday. We spent time waiting at the Minnesota DMV to pick up the disability parking tag authorized by her doctor, only to learn we needed to get it from Wisconsin.
Then we were able to spend a bit more time waiting at the Wisconsin DMV office. They told her it was the craziest day with the most people they had ever served, and were short staff due to it being the day after a holiday. Luckily, and contrary to the all too frequently faced reality, Cyndie was greeted by an exceptionally pleasant and helpful clerk who shared these details while taking time to phone Cyndie’s doctor for information that was missing from the form.
Seriously! He didn’t send her off to fill out the form properly and come back at a later time. And at the end of a day that was their busiest ever.
Could this be the kind of benefit one experiences when they have sent love to those around them? We like to think so.
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Slowly Learning
I finished my first slow hay feeder box for our horses yesterday. I wish they had been around when I was placing it under the barn overhang and loading it with hay. The herd was on the far side of the hay-field at the time, happily grazing in the warm winter fog. Later, when the time came for them to come up for the afternoon serving of their feed supplement, surprise sightings of the new box in their space startled the heck out of each one as it came into their view.
If they had been there while I was working on it, they would have been putting their noses all over it in curiosity about what I was up to. I didn’t have time to linger with them, because I had a date planned to get Cyndie to a movie and out grocery shopping for the first time since her surgery. We even ate out at a burger joint to make it feel like a real event. It was a grand success, and she surprised me with her endurance traipsing the food aisles on her feet for the long duration.
I figured the horses might completely avoid the foreign object, but this morning discovered one or more of the brave souls figured out there was hay in there. Overnight there was enough activity to leave scraps on the ground around the box and create divots in the bale beneath the metal grate. Looked to me like one or more of the horses had spent enough time there to get comfortable with it.
We don’t want the horses to become frustrated by this obstructed source of hay, so I will continue to provide it in the existing feeders for now to allow them options. The hope is that this new system will be easy enough for the horses to accept as a pleasing source of grazing that is always available to them.
In that regard, I felt there was something wrong with my method after inspecting the results of their progress after one night. It appeared they were only able to make limited headway into the bale, leaving the grate resting high on spots they hadn’t pulled apart. My initial intuition was that I had designed the whole thing wrong, based on the bale positioned with the cut edge to the side.
If I turn the bale 90° so that cut edge is up, it resembles the appearance of growing grass. The ends all point up. It will be easier for them to pull a bite from between the squares, and the grate will be more inclined to drop down as they consume the bale. It seemed to me that would be less frustrating for them. So I tried it.
I immediately discovered a problem in that the bales aren’t symmetrical. When dropped in there on its side, the bale is too tall for the box! Back to the drawing board. That is why I only built one to start. I laid the grate on top and stood there for a while as Legacy took to the sideways bale right away. Eventually Cayenne joined him and they seemed to be having a fine time with it, until the loose grate laying on top suddenly shifted as she pulled aggressively at a bite. It banged the wall and they bolted away in a panic.
The thing is, I may be jumping the gun. I have a couple of thoughts about it now, after giving it some time. I don’t know for sure that the first way wouldn’t work, given enough time. Also, I put an entire bale in there, and maybe it was too tight that way. If there was just a portion of a bale, maybe they could make better headway.
I’m not sure how I will proceed. Maybe if I give them more time, they will teach me what to do. I am slowly learning.
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One Year
A year ago today, our horses arrived at Wintervale. It feels like an awful lot has happened in the year since that day. 
One of my favorite memories is of the day Hunter laid down to chill next to me while I raked the paddock. They have done a great job of helping me to feel comfortable navigating in their space.
That thought takes me back to the previous May, when I traveled to Arizona to attend Cyndie’s final session of Eponaquest training, where I met Dunia and had my first lessons on interacting with horses.
That weekend gave me confidence that allowed me to quickly adjust to becoming a caretaker of our herd of four. I recall that on the first day we opened the big hay-field to the horses, I walked up to the top of the hill to check on them, and their reaction to my sudden appearance was to immediately gallop in my direction.
It surprised me, and I suddenly became aware of being in a precarious situation. Instead of succumbing to panic, I relied on the knowledge gained during that weekend session in Arizona. With my energy and the wave of my arm, I projected my barrier distance, which they instantly respected. I was not trampled by the stampeding herd, despite the possibility.
Even though I have grown a lot in the year we’ve had them, I feel as though I barely have started to learn about horses. I am lucky that they are so patient with me. I think they understand that I mean well, despite my sometimes fumbling methods.
Another shot from the previous year… Couldn’t help but chuckle when I spotted this as I scanned through the image archives. Poor things. This was not one of their prouder moments.
It is our hope to accomplish a variety of improvements this fall, intended to alleviate the muddiness they were forced to deal with in the spring.
We prefer to see them basking in the comfort of a dry surface. In that regard, a little sunshine goes a long way…
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Great Starts
Our fall colors are off to a brilliant start. It was a little foggy when I woke up, and became thicker as time passed. It made me wonder what the dew point temperature was. In checking, I discovered it was 44°(F), which is what the air temperature had reached, so we were at 100% humidity.
I could see the sun rise over our horizon, and instead of burning off the fog, it became more obscured as it climbed. When it finally burned through the milky soup, the changing leaves began to radiate color at maximum glow.
My week got off to a magnificent start of its own yesterday, because the excavator finally showed up to create a better defined drainage swale across our pasture! Of all days for my cell service to go wonky, I didn’t receive the call that he was on his way. I was working down in the woods, clearing trail. I dragged a few branches out into the open to toss on the brush pile, and immediately caught sight of him up on our driveway. It was a very happy moment.
We briefly discussed a plan, which started with me moving the horses out of the way, into the pasture to the north of the driveway. Of course, I was wanting to do this quickly and placed the halter over the first horse that allowed. That happened to be Hunter. He did fine, until we reached the pasture gate. Then he became hesitant. I succeeded in getting him inside and headed back to get Legacy. Next, came Dezirea who was showing a little extra nervousness. The sound of the excavator’s skid-loader may have contributed.
When we arrived at the pasture gate, the rambunctious boys were crowding our path. I grabbed the handle of the web-line that creates our “gate,” and opened it to guide Dezirea in. As I did that, Hunter took advantage of me and hopped over the web as it sagged, getting himself loose outside the pasture.
In that second, he gained all my attention, but I had the gate handle in one hand and Dezirea’s lead line in the other. Luckily, he simply started grazing in the grass out there, giving me a chance to release Dezi from the halter and secure the gate before going after him. It was the classic opportunity for me to be in a hurry and him to not want to be caught. I know how that exercise plays out, but I felt pressured to get the last horse out of the paddock and open gates for the excavator. After a couple tries to entice him into the halter again, which he rebuffed instantly each time, I resorted to just getting the lead line over his neck.
It is not very secure, but he begrudgingly allowed me to force his return using that method, getting him back through the gate again and inside the pasture. It took some effort to relax my energy by the time I made it back to the paddock for Cayenne. She was her usual angelic self, and with the horses all together in the north pasture, I could focus on facilitating the excavating.
It was a joy watching the skill of the operator, Andrew, as he worked to create the gently sloping channel across the width of the south grazing pasture.
Now I have a time-sensitive need to get some grass seed planted. It’s so close to too late in the season that I had given up thinking about that part of the project. However, the weather prediction indicates there could still be enough time to get some growth.
Anything that starts growing now will be helpful come spring, when the flowing water could cause significant erosion if we don’t do anything.
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Daily Companions
First things first: Dezirea is hanging in there. I don’t think she is quite herself yet, but at least she didn’t return to the condition in which we found her on Thursday morning. She’s on a restricted diet and seems to be satisfied with it. She tends to move off by herself, but before long, one of the herd will wander over to check on her. Sometimes she responds by coming back to the group, other times she stays put.
We want to have her drink as much water as possible, so I filled a bucket and brought it to her where she was standing. Soon, each of the other horses wanted to get their drinks from the bucket. I guess it was something novel. I wonder if the water tasted better.
I decided to intercede on Dezirea’s behalf and motioned a boundary to prevent the other horses from disturbing her. The boys quickly lost interest and returned to the hay feeder. Cayenne stayed nearby. Slowly but surely, almost politely, she navigated her way around behind Dezi, pausing several times, until she was eventually positioned within reach of the bucket of water. I didn’t have the heart to chase her away after that effort, and she got her turn to drink from the bucket.
Delilah continues to improve as a companion dog while I am tending to chores around the property. She will appear to be totally engrossed in hunting in our hay-field for anything that moves or that has a scent, but when I finish cleaning the paddocks and head toward the upper gate with a full wheelbarrow, she comes running.
Yesterday, after I dumped the wheelbarrow and began turning some of the composting piles, she gave me a good laugh. I turned around to find Delilah had taken a position in the shade, laying right in the middle of a knocked down pile of manure, looking all regal and poised. She looked to be the queen of her castle, oblivious that she wasn’t laying on a silk-covered bed.
The thing is, when she is dry, she can stand up out of that pile and look as composed as if we had just brushed her. She will smell as wonderfully dog-sweet as she always does, not taking on any aroma of the composting manure. Having her lay in the manure pile is preferable to collecting burrs in her fur from all over our property.
Those are my primary work-day companions lately, Delilah and the horses. I am a very lucky man to have them.
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Peaceful Morning
One by one the horses buckled their knees and settled down to rest in the relative warmth of the climbing September morning sunlight. Cyndie and I were working nearby to put up a little barrier around trees we want to protect in the new pasture. I noticed we unconsciously dropped our voices to a whisper.
While doing some cleanup of some dead wood in a patch of scrubby growth, we discovered desirable trees previously unnoticed. The more undergrowth we cleared, the more surprises we found. The first one to catch our eyes was a fabulous oak that was about 10-feet tall and had deep green leaves, a course bark, and some bushy looking acorns. After clearing the tangled growth that had been obscuring it from view, we felt a thrill to know it was there and looking so fine.
We continued to cut back weeds and eventually uncovered a different kind of oak, a couple feet tall and with much more yellow-green leaves. After that, a maple appeared, along with a frail looking elm and a single sprout of a poplar. It looks so much better with all the suffocating weeds cut back. 
It only took one day for the horses to take interest in that spot and I realized we would need to do something to protect the trees. We created a perimeter with step-in posts and hung a green mesh fabric around the circumference.
Today I will mount a solar charging battery to electrify the fence around that pasture. It will be time for the horses to rein in their energies and mind their manners over there.
On that subject, Cyndie reported that while I was out last night, she went to collect the horses from the arena/pasture grazing area for the night and found only 3 of them there! Cayenne had slipped past one of the barriers and ventured out into the hay field for a few unauthorized bites.
A little electricity does wonders to keep them from testing the fence boundaries.
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Joyous Horses
We are currently experiencing an outbreak of ‘October’ around here, as our temperature has dropped 20 degrees, the clouds are hanging low, and the chilly north wind is gusting mightily. When this kind of weather strikes in September, Cyndie and I always think back to the year we were married and how cold and wet it was during the week before our outdoor wedding. We figured our plans were doomed, but luckily our special day was classic September with warm temperatures and a crisp, clear blue sky. Just the type of day we envisioned when we chose the date.
It always gives me hope that we can still have some spectacular warm fall days even though conditions may have drastically shifted toward the coming winter.
Yesterday afternoon I spotted the horses cavorting around the arena at high speed, kicking up their hooves and romping around. It occurred to me that they might be feeling the chill and wanted to generate some internal warmth. I finished the fence on the north side of the driveway, and I’m pretty sure they were growing anxious to get over there, so maybe they were venting some of that energy, too. They have spent a lot of time in the last two days grazing and standing as close to the direction of that new gate as their usual confines allowed.
Even though it was after 6:00 p.m. when Cyndie arrived home, I had patiently waited for her before giving the horses their chance. It helped that Cyndie had decided to put a pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning, allowing us to eat a rushed dinner as soon as she walked in the door. Minutes later we were marching to the barn for halters.
I mentioned to Cyndie that Legacy and Cayenne were hanging out together most of the afternoon, so we selected them as the first pair to make the short trip over. All four of the horses were still pretty amped up, and the dance to get two horses out of the gate —the two who had been selected— and only those two, was a bit precarious. Hunter and Dezirea went a little nuts over being left behind.
The heavy gusting wind was feeding their nervousness, so introducing them to this new space involved a bit of jumpiness. They seemed a little conflicted over the desire to be cautious, the ample supply of lush grazing, and the urge to check out the full breadth of their new pasture. We left those two and returned for Hunter and Dezi.
When the four of them were safely reunited in the new space, we were presented with a beautiful parade of prancing joyous horses, Legacy leading the way. They alternated between grazing and running for a brief time before settling down to mostly grazing, while Cyndie and I decided to do some tree trimming.
As darkness was about to descend, I headed over to put some hay out for them in the paddock, hoping it might provide some small consolation when we ask them to leave the pasture. It wasn’t needed. As I walked back toward them, Legacy and Dezirea were standing near the gate, ready to return ‘home.’
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Relative Something 