Posts Tagged ‘Cayenne’
Overwhelming Bliss
Early in the day yesterday, after scrubbing out the automatic waterer for our horses and scooping up manure from the paddocks, I paused for a moment and felt deeply moved by the overwhelming bliss of our place.
Delilah had been a particularly attentive companion during my chores, and afterward, wandered over to rest in the shade. The horses seemed thoroughly content; Legacy and Hunter up under the overhang of the barn, and Cayenne and Dezirea outside the paddock, grazing on the tiny strip I had opened up for them.
It was quiet, except for a few friendly bird calls, and the weather conditions were idyllic. It brought tears to my eyes. This is the environment we have endeavored to create. When it isn’t a muddy mess out here, we have pretty much achieved what we dreamed of accomplishing.
We have 4 fabulous horses, in space that is serving them well, and they seem pretty happy with their situation. We’re pretty happy with it too, and right now I am blessed with being able to be home to care for it every day.
I was working hard to keep Delilah engaged with me while I was giving her some time off-leash. My chores led us down to the labyrinth where I was fixing the sagging wall around the stockpile of fertilizer.
Suddenly there was a great commotion and I spun to see a turkey shoot into the air and fly off over the trees into the woods. I don’t know if Delilah scared it up, or if it surprised her. It was quite a sight. After it was gone, Delilah carried on as if nothing had happened.
To keep her occupied and discourage her from wandering off, I tossed a hunk of a branch into the woods for her to chase. Later, she came to where I was working and almost stood too close. It struck me as odd. Then I stepped back from what I was doing and saw that hunk of wood laying on the ground behind where I was sitting. She had brought it back to me and dropped it. That’s why she was standing so close.
Since it worked the first time, I decided to do it again, later in the day. I tossed a stick into the woods. I figured she wouldn’t find it among all the other branches on the ground. Silly me, I should know better. I should also have had more sense than to send her bushwhacking through our woods.
By the end of the day, she had more burrs stuck all over her than I have yet seen. I spent a long time brushing them out before Cyndie got home, hoping all the while that Delilah hadn’t also been exploring through any poison ivy during the day’s escapades.
Rest assured, I scrubbed my arms thoroughly as soon as we came inside.
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Horse Joy
John and Cyndie playing with horses; two pictures that I did not take. Thank you to Julie Kuberski for the beautiful photo of Cyndie exercising Legacy in our arena space. I realize that I just included a picture I had taken of Cyndie and “Legs” doing this same exercise a couple of days ago, but this image by Julie is just too wonderful to pass up.
The other one, Cyndie took with my new rugged-duty, waterproof camera. I carry it in one of my pockets most of the time, so it gets exposed to a lot of dust and dirt. There is a sacrifice of some image quality, but it gets the job done well enough to tell the story. I am interacting with Cayenne in this shot.
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.Horse wisdom is bringing us great joy.
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Double Bonus
Once again we have experienced one of our favorite things about Wintervale: the addition of visitors. We got a double bonus yesterday with a visit we were expecting, and also a drop in surprise! What a blessing it is to have friends and family be a part of our world here. It is especially rewarding when a visit includes the offer of labor toward projects.
Our special friend, Julie, whom I met years ago on one of the annual June cycling/camping adventure weeks, and her niece, Cecilia, came for a day of food, friendship, and work. Julie brought lunch she prepared, then Cyndie guided them through some exercises with the horses. After that, they all pitched in to help me work on relocating our temporary fencing to move the horses on to new grazing. The previous spot was getting a little too short.
Julie sent me a couple of pictures from her camera. This is Cecilia working in the round pen with Cayenne, and a picture Cyndie took of Julie in the “arena” with Legacy.
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Just as we had returned to the house for a break to have some popsicles, we received this great surprise: my niece, Liz’s husband, Nick, arrived with two of their kids, Ben and Heidi. Joyful energy abounded. Delilah had a blast when Ben tossed things for her to chase, the kids were cute as ever with the horses, and Nick offered his assistance for anything I needed help with.
Turned out I did find some heavy lifting for which his offer of help was a timely gesture.
With the day coming to a close, I was able to put final touches on removing slack from the tape, applying electricity, and opening the field to the horses great joy. This morning, in the low early light, my unwelcome shadow was unavoidable as I captured the horses in their new grazing space, where they are able to get in close proximity to the labyrinth garden.
Thanks to Julie, and Cecilia for helping get the fence up, and to Nick for bringing his kids for a surprise visit. It was truly a double bonus day for Cyndie and me. Delilah and the horses, too, for that matter!
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Amazing Growth
The growth of tree leaves, grasses, and weeds has been happening at an incredible rate the last few days. We have been experiencing some warm, sunny days after several weeks with plenty of rain, and that seems to be the ticket for massive growth.
During periods of rapid growth like this, it is even more important that we limit the time our horses have to freely graze on the fresh green grass. Yesterday, when I opened the gate leading to the small square of grass we fenced off, Legacy was hesitant about going for it, which caught me by surprise. Usually he is overly anxious to get on that grass. I wondered if he might actually be self-managing his diet. As an older horse, he is more susceptible to ailments caused by eating too much sugary grass.
Cayenne was interested enough to move in from another angle and pass through the gate. The other two chestnuts found themselves stuck behind Legacy, and showed no signs of stepping past his authority.
I began to wonder about Legacy when I spotted him alternating taking weight off his back feet, and decided to ask Cyndie to come out to see what she thought. None of the horses changed position while I was gone to get Cyndie, but when she arrived, Legacy walked right toward her.
After a brief visit, he turned and walked through the open gate. The others followed. I monitored their time and kept it brief, but by the end of the day, none of them showed any hint of a problem, thank goodness.
The rest of my day was spent using the gas-powered trimmer, interspersed with runs to the local auto repair site with our vehicles and my leaky ATV tires.
I cut all of the growth down in the round pen, making it available for immediate use —barring any new rain. Then I knocked down some weeds growing in the grazing area, to keep them from going to seed. I just kept following weeds and eventually made my way back to the labyrinth. Oh. My. God. The growth there is insane. It is so long and thick that I couldn’t have forced the reel mower through it. I resigned myself to clearing the entire length of path using the power trimmer. It took forever.
I finally ran out of gas, as in, with the can totally emptied, with just a short distance left to go to reach the center. We were on the way to town anyway, to pick up cars and repaired ATV tires, so I refilled the gas container and finally finished the chore before we headed in for the night.
With all the amazing growth happening down there, it is now glaringly obvious that the only new leaves popping from the transplanted tree are going to be the ones down on the trunk. No sign of life in any of the branches above. We have decided to try another time with a tree from a slightly different location.
Maybe it was an unconscious way to solidify the decision, but I accidentally tore through the protective paper around the trunk and ripped open the bark on that tree with the trimmer as I was trying to knock back the jungle of growth happening along the path.
I finished the day with a little good luck, though. While killing time waiting for Cyndie to pick me up to shuttle a car back from the repair shop, I successfully hunted down the hitch clip that I had dropped a few days ago. It’s a good thing, too, because if I had waited any longer, it would have been completely lost in the jungle of fast growing grass happening here lately.
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Grazing Gratefully
We seem to have turned a corner and there are finally areas starting to show signs of drying out. It is a very uneven process, and the spots that are still wet remain ridiculously saturated and a muddy mess.
We let the herd graze together on fresh grass yesterday! I pounded down the posts for our temporary fence to the desired depth, and when the ground around them dries out, it will be like they were cast in cement. 
With the posts ready, I was able to string up ribbon fence lines that will be electrified, but not before I first had to fix a connection on the existing fence.
I found a splice that wasn’t sufficiently crimped. While I was troubleshooting the problem, I had Legacy’s full support. I’m pretty sure he sensed I was on a project that would lead to him getting access to better grazing. He stood front and center on the spot where I focused my attention.
I wish I could have talked him into using his powerful bite to accomplish something positive for once, and get him to clamp down on that splice. My hand tools were all sub-par for the job. I achieved enough of a crimp to give me electrical contact for the time being, which allowed me to prove the concept and proceed.
Cyndie made a heroic journey on crutches, navigating the uneven and uncertain terrain, to provide moral support, showing up in time to witness the completion and testing phase. All that was left after that was to convince the horses that the gate was open.
It was late enough in the day that we needed to put out their afternoon pans of feed, and that had their undivided attention. It also seemed to temporarily satiate their appetite, so they lolled around in a just-fed stupor, paying little notice to the fact I had opened a gate to the grass.
Hunter was the first one to show some interest in why I was walking around in their paddock. I was able to entice him to come toward me, but only up to the area where the mud got thick. They will cross mud, but they need a big enough incentive to do so, and he hadn’t yet figured out why I was urging him to come across. Before long, Legacy wandered over to see what was going on.
I pulled out the trick that I learned from Dunia at the Epona seminar, walking an arc in front of Legacy until he took a step, and then I turned and lured him along by my energy. We pulled Hunter and Cayenne right behind him. I needed to go to the hay feeder in the far paddock to convince Dezirea to join the fun.
While they grazed, I wandered back to the paddocks to restock the hay feeders. When I returned, Cyndie had gone back to the house, so I phoned her to confirm how short a time they should be limited to on this rich spring grass.
“Now would be good.”
“How do you suggest I do that?” I asked.
I tried calmly coaxing them to head back into the paddock, but these Arabians move from calm to panic in a blink, and you’d think I had slapped them on the butt and fired a shot from a pistol.
Of course, they were all juiced up on fresh grass. They carried that sprint into the paddock far longer than was necessary, from my perspective, but who can blame them? They had finally gotten what they wanted for so long, and that quick, had it taken back again.
I will not be surprised if I find them lined up and waiting at that gate when I show up to put out their feed this morning.
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Special First
Yesterday was one of those days when I found myself saying, “I did not picture myself sitting here when I woke up this morning!” My day felt so full that I can’t believe I was able to fit it all in. We entertained new friends visiting for the first time, discovered The Roost, (check it out!) where we ate pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven, and then I went for my first bike ride of the year. But the highlight for me was time I spent with the horses in the morning before all the rest of that started. Let me tell you about it. It’s what I do.
After amazing myself with completing both a blog post and getting the horses fed, I was trying to clean up manure in the paddocks. Legacy had other priorities. He really wanted a chance to get out and have a taste of that sweet green grass growing up everywhere surrounding his fence line. Up to now, I had yet to even place a halter on one of our horses, but with Cyndie laid up, my time had come.
Legacy was so persuasive, with his calm and subtle closing of any distance I attempted to create between my nose and his. Finally, he stepped forward to stand on the pile I was working to create, and I realized that the task I was on would be impossible to complete.
While pondering whether I would be able to pull off what I was now considering, I stepped inside the barn and picked up a halter. After several tries to decipher which end was up, it fell into place and became exceedingly obvious. I looked up and found Legacy had been watching my progress and was positioned as close to me as he could possibly get, at the door. How could I deny him?
I climbed the fence to enter the paddock and showed him the halter, even though it was clear that wasn’t necessary. He was all in. He helped me get it on him and off we went, to my next and probably biggest challenge. I needed to manage his position, the opening of the gate, and the continued containment of the other horses, all at the same time. I’ve seen Cyndie do it, so I just followed that image in my mind. It helps that the horses all know the drill, as well. They behaved perfectly, and suddenly I had Legacy out on some grass, and he was almost as happy with that as I was for successfully getting him there.
In succeeding turns, I got each horse out on their own for some time grazing fresh grass, and then a short walk. While I was out with the last horse, Cyndie arrived on her crutches, clinging to a bag of carrot treats. She was able to see me survive Cayenne having a little panic attack, spinning around on me, toward the end of her walk on a trail.
This time with the horses was a significant milestone for me, a very special first time of managing that level of care. I am very lucky and extremely grateful to have this wonderful herd serve as my teachers in this adventure we are on here. Something tells me they feel the same way about having Cyndie and me.
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Nature’s Course
If you live on a river, or have ever paid attention to flood stages, you are probably aware of the time it can take for a river to crest. That phenomena is playing out in our paddocks now, as the first day of sunshine after the dreadful week of soaking rains produced wetness and mud that is the worst we have seen. There will be a time-lag before we get the drying for which we so dearly yearn.
The horses are beginning to show some impatience with not only the enduring mud, but probably more so, the wait to get on the fresh green grass they can see all around their corral. I began work on installing temporary fencing to allow them limited access to some grazing just outside their paddock, and was able to push the posts in most of the way by hand because the ground is so saturated. Even if I get the fence up, we can’t put them out there until it firms up enough to support their weight without them churning it into a mud bath like the sacrifice area of their paddocks.
After the rain finally stopped, and the temperature rose out of the 40s, I took the blankets off the horses. They really wanted to be brushed after that, even though a couple of them played hard to get and made us wait out a few dance moves of avoidance before settling down so we could go to work. Yesterday, I got a hint that we didn’t give them as much brushing as they wanted. Cayenne and Hunter took it upon themselves to cooperatively work on removing each other’s shedding coats.
When I first spotted them, I was amazed at the vigor with which each horse worked. It was so obviously a joint operation of sheer pleasure that I found myself mesmerized and wondering if I should maybe be embarrassed about peeping at their moment of shared passion. Hunter’s mouth was open, teeth bared, and he was grinding back and forth on Cayenne’s flank, bringing up vast tufts of hair that easily rivaled what our brushing produces. She was working with equal intensity on his back.
It was as vivid a presentation of “you scratch mine, I’ll scratch yours” as I have ever seen. It was such a classic scene that I figured I should take a picture, but I hesitated, figuring it would be over by the time I pulled out my phone. After staring at them with increasing fascination for a couple of minutes, it occurred to me that I could have long ago had my phone out for pictures. I snapped a few, but of course, none of them really do the scene adequate justice.
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Uninvited Situations
As April draws to a close, we would like to be preparing our minds for the transition that May should offer toward connecting us to summer. Instead, we are feeling shriveled and wrinkly from 6 inches of rain in 6 days. The events and situations of the last few days are beginning to take a toll. I think one of my unconscious responses is to clench my jaw more than usual. I have been trying to practice better awareness of that habit. Each time I catch myself clenching, I am startled at the discovery. How is it that I so easily start pressing without realizing it? I can’t help but wonder about how often I do it and fail to notice.
Our house feels uncomfortably out of whack, because I haphazardly pulled furniture out of the far end of the sunroom and stashed it anywhere and everywhere to get things out from under the leaks.
One of our garage doors is so water-logged, the electric opener can’t lift it. When I pulled the release handle, a pin popped out and now the bracket hangs loose, and swings menacingly.
Cyndie reported that she discovered one of the boards of the wall separating Legacy and Cayenne’s stalls in the barn was wrenched loose and lying in Legacy’s stall yesterday morning. She thought Legacy had done it, but I am suspicious of Cayenne, as she appeared to be working on the next board down while I was in there feeding them and freshening their water buckets. I’m gonna need longer screws.
After throwing one of Delilah’s toys for a series of “fetch” exercises before dinner, she walked past me on one ‘retrieve’ and stepped into the wading pool where we often wash her before letting her in the house. Pretty smart way to let me know she is ready to go in. After we got inside, I toweled her off and noticed she started to favor her left front foot, sometimes drastically avoiding putting any weight on it. She went from walking fine, to limping obviously, in an instant.
I have developed my first poison ivy rash of the season, on the inside of both arms, very consistent with the most likely source being contact with Delilah’s fur.
When I got home from work yesterday, I noticed something on the floor in front of the kitchen sink. There were six small ball bearings in one spot. I deduced that they must be from the pull-out waste basket under the sink, but I have no idea why or how.
These kinds of little uninvited situations start to have a cumulative effect, but they are probably small potatoes compared to what is really weighing on my mind. Today I will be driving Cyndie to an appointment to have an arthroscopic procedure done to clean up her hip-joint. She will be confined to crutches for an uncertain amount of time.
It sure would do us wonders to have the rain end and get a little warm sunshine beaming down on us soon. It would at least be one less reason to grit my teeth.
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Doggone Excitement
Sunday was a refreshing day of warmth and sunshine, which melted enough snow to bring us almost back to where things were before last week’s storm. As I expected, much of my day yesterday involved shoveling channels in the muddy ground to facilitate drainage of the melt water. Luckily, we got help from Elysa and her friend, Anne, who stopped by for a dose of country sun and to commune with all our animals.
Anne captured this beautiful picture of Legacy and Cayenne giving Elysa some love for her efforts.
In the morning, while Cyndie and I were working in the paddock, we spotted a local coyote hunter’s truck that had stopped on our road. Then I heard the baying sound of his hunting dogs and quickly became concerned about where Delilah was. We discovered her a little ways out in one of our fields, oblivious to the world as she buried her nose in the ground in pursuit of some enticing scent. We called her back to our vicinity.
A short while after that, the sound of the hunting dogs erupted again, this time closer, from the woods beyond our house. Delilah took off after the sound, despite my calls for her to stay. Uneasy about what the hunting dogs might do to the sudden appearance of our dog, I dropped my shovel and hustled after her. Before I got very far, I heard the hunter’s truck coming up behind me in our driveway.
He has been up to our house a couple other times, to ask permission to track coyotes across our property, so I was familiar with him. He assured me that Delilah was not at any risk from his dogs. Just then, she came sprinting back, now interested in this stranger standing with me. We visited briefly and then he checked his electronic tracker and found his pack of hounds had moved on, so he headed off down the road after them.
You’d think by this point we might have considered putting Delilah on a leash, but we went on about our activity as if that whole hunting dog concern was over. That’s not the way tracking necessarily works. After enough time passed to lull me into forgetting about it, I happened to glance up and spot an animal running along our southern property border. Initially, I wondered if it might be a coyote on the run from the pursuit, but it became clear it was one of the hunting dogs. By the time I located Delilah, it was obvious that she had seen it, too, and was already on the opposite side of that same field.
Despite both Cyndie’s and my protests, Delilah excitedly ran down to check on the new dogs visiting her turf. True to the hunter’s word, there were no threatening gestures from his pack, as the number of arriving dogs increased. What did end up happening was plenty of barking and eventually, confusion. With Delilah anxiously, but cautiously, trying to engage all these strange dogs, the pack seemed to lose track of their primary mission, and decided to focus all their attention on her. Delilah decided to retreat back toward us.
Soon there were hounds around and in the paddocks and a fair amount of chaos as Cyndie and I hollered, waffling between trying to collar our dog or the hunting dog that was now in proximity of our horses. In a flash the hunter’s truck was rushing up our driveway, and he apologized three different times as he hoisted each of his dogs up into their compartments on the back of his truck.
Happily, there were no problems that occurred from the close encounter between our dog and the hunting dogs. In fact, it turned out to be a great opportunity to increase awareness of Delilah to our surrounding community. The hunter happens to be a cousin of our neighbor whose property abuts ours on two sides. He approved of the orange vest we make her wear outside. He said he noticed her out in the field right away the first time he pulled over, and would make sure his cousin knows about her now, too.
I appreciate that, because we’ve been meaning to introduce her since we brought her home last July, and just never got around to making it happen.
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Last Blast?
With any luck, this will be winter’s last blast of snow. Most of the day yesterday, we received freezing rain and sleet. After their breakfast, we put blankets on the horses to give them a little extra shelter against the freezing moisture. Unfortunately, with our temperatures holding close to the freezing point, the ground stayed soft and those spirited Arabians were running all over the paddocks for some reason.
While feeding them dinner, we decided to bring them into the barn for the night, to give them a break from the mud and precipitation. When we opened the door, Legacy and Cayenne were standing right there, anxious to get in. Legacy had so much mud on his legs that it looked like he was wearing brown knee-highs. Poor Cayenne had a face full of mud from following too close behind another horse that was kicking up a mess when running.
I tried taking pictures with my phone, but couldn’t hold it steady and they were constantly in motion, so all of the images turned out blurry. It’s a shame because they were quite a sight.
I did get one picture before yesterday’s precipitation started to fall. I mentioned in a previous post that the labyrinth was a negative image now that the snow had melted off the rocks, yet still remained where it had been packed for the trail. Here is what it looked like a couple of days ago…
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Relative Something 