Posts Tagged ‘horse behavior’
Reunion Tales
Now that I’ve had a whole day of not going anywhere, life feels faintly familiar to the norm to which I have grown accustomed. Cyndie drove to the cities to visit her mom, so I had a quiet day with Asher. We went for a walk after breakfast and then took a nap when we got back to the house. It’s going to take me a couple of days to pay back the sleep debts I accrued last weekend.
The highlight for today is going to be a visit from two of Cyndie’s classmates who heard plenty of stories about our property. I wish we could host all the people who show a sense of wonder and interest when we describe our place. It is rarely a convenient opportunity for most people, so we are thrilled that this particular time it appears to have worked out just a couple of days later.
I got permission to share a story of Cyndie’s from an interaction at her class reunion. She was looking forward to talking with a guy whom she remembered had poked fun at her buck-tooth and thick-glasses appearance when they were young. The memory had always seemed curious to her because the guy was the only other particularly noticeably buck-toothed, thick-glasses kid in her year.
Turns out that it wasn’t him. At least, he has no recollection of it and doesn’t think he would’ve ever done that. Now Cyndie is questioning her memory. Was it someone else teasing both of them, and she mistakenly placed it on the other victim? We’ll probably never know.
The eventual outcome is the best of results. The two of them ended up having a wonderful exchange and quickly bonded in their shared experience. I might add that he turned into as good-looking a guy as Cyndie did into a beautiful woman. They might not have even talked if it weren’t for this mysterious memory.
Happy surprises like this are one of several reasons I am a big fan of reunions.
I enjoyed reuniting with the horses yesterday. They don’t offer up grandiose gestures of being happy to have us return after several days’ absence like dogs do. Asher doesn’t hide much with that wagging tail, licking kisses, and leaning into us for scritches. No, the horses are much more subdued in their acknowledgment.
Swings just stood stationary when I put my face to her nose to exchange breath and stroke her neck. Staying put was her way of telling me she was happy to see me.
The amount of food I found spilled beside her bucket last evening was more than I’ve seen before. We need to start soaking her food to help her cope with failing teeth. Do they make dentures for animals? [not a serious question]
Moments after I took that picture, Mix moseyed over to eat most of what had been spilled.
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Cumulative Stress
From the National Weather Service:
Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses. Prolonged heat waves lead to cumulative heat stress for those who cannot adequately cool down and recover each night. Cumulative heat stress significantly increases the risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke as time goes on.
Cyndie and I enjoy the luxury of geothermal air-conditioning that allows us to cool down and recover every night, but the horses don’t have that same luxury. We have been watching them closely during this current heat wave. So far, they appear to be coping with the hot weather just fine. Still, we try to do what we can to bring them some relief.
We already have had fans placed under the overhang where they like to stand, mainly as a way to reduce the number of flies bothering them, but fans work just as well to offer cooling, too. Although at the temperatures we are experiencing this week, it makes it more like a blast furnace to blow such hot air at them.
As an alternative, yesterday we put out a sprinkler to spritz the air with a cool water mist.
Mia was the only one to show interest. She approached very tentatively at first, then put one foot into the spray, and then the other. When she put her face down into the mist, I knew she was liking it. Eventually, she turned all the way around and let the spray reach each of her back feet.
If they didn’t cool off enough overnight last night, we’ll turn the spray on again today to see if the other’s level of interest changed.
The Extreme Heat Warning lasts until Thursday night, and we are now under an Air Quality Alert through Thursday as well. I do miss the luxury of having a lake out our door to immerse myself in for an instantaneous cooldown. Thankfully, stepping into the air-conditioned house works almost just as well.
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Pile Diminished
Amid sweltering heat and humidity, Cyndie forged into hard physical labor on her first day back in our home time zone. I asked if she felt up to moving the horses around to make room for me to dump lime screenings with the big tractor. The horses didn’t get the memo. No matter how she tried to coax them out of the way, they remained a nuisance the entire time we worked.
On the plus side, they weren’t the least bit jumpy about the loud revving engine, the jerky movements of the tractor, or the sudden banging of the loader bucket. They give every impression of fully understanding what we are up to and seem to fully approve.
The added cushion of the screenings is an improvement over the hardpack they have been stomping on to dislodge biting flies. Although it won’t be long before they have the new stuff packed down, too. The old surface we are covering was once loose screenings, too.
The slope to the south end of the overhang is just enough steeper than the north that the tractor wheels would spin before I made it up, unless I made a run at it with a higher than comfortable speed. It made for a repeating series of “Coming in HOT!” situations. I only almost busted fence boards one time.
After working two separate sessions in the heat, we were ready to call it a day.
The pile is now greatly diminished. We may go back to using a shovel and wheelbarrow to finish the rest of it off, spreading it in any low spots or other high-traffic areas that get muddy after rain.
The forecast predicts we will be able to find the muddy spots as early as sometime today. Soaked lime screenings that haven’t been well packed will take on the texture of wet cement. It’s a price we are willing to pay in the short term while making improvements for the longer term.
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Bucket Loads
Today is Asher’s and my last full day managing the ranch on our own. The house has been cleaned by professionals whom Cyndie hired before she left. This girl thinks ahead and knows my ability to endure dust and dog hair is different than hers. Tomorrow, I drive to the airport to pick up the pair of travelers and all the Norwegian souvenirs they collected.
I suspect that Cyndie will be excited to see the changes that have occurred at home since she left. In case you ever wondered why we call our front field the “hay field,” this image serves as a clear example:
They started raking the grass into windrows in the early afternoon, and when I came out of the house after a late lunch, there were already four large round bales parked in the field. That round baler machine sure makes short work of the task.
Conversely, I was making long work of the job of moving loads of lime screenings up to the barn overhang. I opted to use a wheelbarrow to move 15 shovel-fulls at a time, because I was working with the horses surrounding me the whole time.
It will go much quicker when I can use the loader on the big tractor, but I need a helper to manage horses and gates, and be my eyes on the perimeter of the bucket I can’t see from behind the steering wheel.
I got most of the north side of the overhang covered yesterday.
They didn’t wait for me to finish before christening it with the first dump of manure. I’m not sure if that was a message relaying an opinion or simply a show of acceptance for the update.
I would love to get more done today, but we are about to get hit with a thunderstorm that has put any agenda I had for the day on hold. I should probably be thinking about how I’m going to keep the floors clean for a whole nother day for Cyndie. Wet weather usually translates to dirty paw prints.
Not that I tend to notice, though.
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Happy Moments
There are so many happy moments at Wintervale, I hesitate to label one over another for preeminence. Usually, at the time I am experiencing a joyful situation, it tends to feel like it’s the best. Maybe all of them are the best. I’ve often written about how gleeful it is to clean up a pile of accumulated fallen branches by turning them into woodchips.
Every time Asher lollygags around on our property in close contact with us, regardless of what we are doing, it always feels like a best moment.
Yesterday, we received one of our favorite good moments when a nearby farmer showed up to cut the hay field.
Initially, the horses showed absolutely no concern with the activity, which surprised me a little bit. Especially since Mia is normally on high alert for anything out of the ordinary that shows up. Eventually, Light stepped up toward the fence to supervise the operation.
She seemed to approve, because she soon rejoined the others in ignoring the tractor entirely. For the record, it is a very happy moment whenever I find the horses remaining calm and comfortable while noisy machines are making a racket in their proximity.
Seeing the field freshly mowed makes me want to get out right away to cut all the tall grass that remains along the edges and in the corners where his mower didn’t reach. Having all the edges cleanly cut also creates happy moments for me every time I see them.
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Rain Came
Excitement started bright and early yesterday with a farrier appointment at 8:30 a.m. sharp. The horses had barely finished eating their morning rations. There were two more people in attendance than usual, and one of them brought vaccines. The horses each received three shots.
All four horses queued up calmly and showed no need to mess with each other. That doesn’t mean they didn’t make the farrier work up a sweat. She used a lot of muscle to hold their feet in position against the horses’ frequent decisions to pull them away from her.
It seemed to me that their hooves were a mess, but the farrier, Jamie, said they hadn’t grown a lot since her last visit, but they had chipped, cracked, and “pancaked” out a bit. She did a lot of filing, but didn’t need to do anything particularly drastic for any of the horses.
After tending to the horses, I turned my attention to mowing the labyrinth, which hasn’t been trimmed in a long time. I soon found that I couldn’t leave the mower at my usual low setting because it kept bottoming out over the shocking amount of mole activity.
It’s either one or two very busy critters, or a large population has decided our soil has the best grub worms ever. Getting the center of the lanes mowed was good, but it made the tall growth amid the rocks even more ridiculous-looking. We should probably spend more time walking the path to pack down those tunnels and annoy the moles.
Meanwhile, Matthew, our log guy, has made progress replacing rotted boards on the shop wall.
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Then the rain came, and all activity ceased. Well, not all. I still succumbed to a little nap before feeding the horses. They didn’t show any reaction to the shower. Asher shortened his walk to get out of the wetness, which was just fine by me.
Although I’m grateful that the rain meant I didn’t have to water Cyndie’s flowers and gardens.
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Split Attention
So much sports to watch now that the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament is underway. Last night, it was complicated by the concurrent broadcast of the 6th game of the NHL Stanley Cup final series. It is not an easy feat to pay close attention to both at once. At least the Carolina Hurricanes solved that issue in the future with their Cup-winning victory over Vegas.
Of course, the Tour de France bike race will start in July, so my attention will be split again, soon.
I spent the early part of the day using our battery-powered string trimmer to cut the growth beneath the fence line around the back pasture. Precision timing (or mere chance, if I were to be honest) had the trimmer battery drained just in time for me to catch the start of the first World Cup game of the day.
As long as I’ve accomplished something along the lines of property maintenance, I feel justified in lounging around watching athletes entertain me with their team skills for the rest of the day.
It helps that the horses and Asher have been taking care of themselves for the most part, lately. When we came in for lunch, Asher decided he wanted to stay sprawled out in the front yard, enjoying the breeze and keeping watch over his domain.
Mia was showing us that she understands what the shade sail is for. The other three horses demonstrate much less interest, preferring to remain under the overhang. Their loss, I say.
While I was watching sports deep into the evening, Cyndie occupied herself with packing preparations for traveling to Norway with Elysa. They will be celebrating a milestone birthday for E, experiencing the light of the midnight sun, and visiting with Friswold relatives while they are there.
I have warned them that Norway will be playing two matches during their visit, so the people may be a little preoccupied on those days –or I should say nights, given the time difference.
There will be no shortage of things commanding my attention while Cyndie is away. Here’s hoping Asher will remain content to stay within our property boundaries for all the days I am the sole person in charge.
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Extra Excitement
We stepped out of our geothermally air-conditioned home yesterday morning into an almost tropical humidity that had me sweating after just a few strides. There had been a rambunctious thunderstorm in the wee hours before dawn, and the weather service was warning that the day could bring even more severe storms in the afternoon.
It was not going to be a day for mowing. After breakfast, I decided to do some rearranging in the compost area.
I removed the pallets from around the most active pile and positioned them beside it. Since the pile was still cooking pretty well, I’m going to leave it standing for another day or two before stirring it up and tossing it back inside the pallets for a second round of composting.
While I was working on that, I suddenly heard the sound of splashing down at Paddock Lake.
Three of the horses were really getting into it as I approached with my phone to record the action. Mix walked away just enough to stay out of the frame. They kicked so much that it looked like they were trying to empty the puddle by working together at the same time.
After I was back in the compost area behind the trees, I suddenly heard the pounding hooves of running horses. They had sprinted out into the hay field, where they stood atop the high spot to survey their surroundings, looking like lords over their domain.
They weren’t out there for very long when the pounding hooves started up again, and I could hear them racing back to the barn overhang. I always wonder if their sprinting triggers memories of their days racing against other horses on the track.
All this activity happened in such a short span of time that I wouldn’t have had a clue if I wasn’t working near them in that moment. The horses spend the majority of their time standing under and around the overhang, so it can seem like they are practically sedentary.
It’s nice to have witnessed proof that this is not necessarily true. Just because I wasn’t around to notice doesn’t mean they haven’t been sneaking in a little extra excitement every once in a while.
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Sour Dock
Also called Curly Dock, we learned of sour dock from a local farmer who was supplying us with small squares of hay back when we had the Arabian horses. He pointed out that it was the only weed in his hay and that horses didn’t like it. It’s toxic for livestock, so I don’t blame horses for not liking it.
Yesterday, Cyndie and I took a crack at digging up the larger sprouts around the paddock, since they are too much for the string trimmer to chew through.
Some of the stalks are beginning to swallow our fence wires. While we were working, the horses wandered over to inspect our progress.
Cyndie had been putting the stalks into old feed bags, but they filled up so fast that she went back and got a wheelbarrow. Mia came over, grabbed a mouthful, and pulled a bunch of them back out of the bag. I thought she was going to eat some, but no, she just dropped them on the ground. She knows sour dock is toxic. I think she was just messing with us.
Then the mares turned around and formed a line to graze the short grass in the paddock.
Each time I finished digging up one plant, I would find another one nearby. Soon, I realized that this would become an endless task. Our two big fields may not look like there is a lot of sour dock at first glance, but wherever there is one, you can find another close at hand.
The weed is difficult to pull up because the main root is carrot-shaped and can reach ridiculous depths. I wish our attempts at growing carrots looked as good as some of these.
We filled two wheelbarrows full and are now left with figuring out where to dump them so as to avoid any possibility of spontaneous regeneration. It does enough of that on its own.
Away from the fence lines, we resort to mowing the fields to disturb the cycle of growth. The back pasture is more than ready for me to bring out the big tractor and brush hog to knock down the weeds and shorten the grasses to a more enticing blade height for the mares.
The front field we let go until the guy who grazes cattle on the neighboring field has someone cut and bale for feeding his cattle in the winter.
It was so fun having the horses come mingle with us as we worked that we’ve decided to find other activities to do in their spaces that might add a little excitement to their day. Their life of retirement is pretty much filled with napping, grazing, and waiting around for feed bucket servings.
They could benefit from occasional disruptions to their routine, triggering an urge to satisfy their curiosity.
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Creative Solutions
In more than a decade of living here with horses, I have never gotten around to making an effort toward improving my primitive methods of composting their manure. If I were truly serious about maximizing my operation, I could have put in a base material on top of the bare ground and installed a roof to avoid rainstorms from saturating the piles.
Yesterday, as I was turning over the lone pile that has been cooking for a while, I was dealing with the inevitable tendency of the drying material to resist holding a cubic shape. It naturally slides off to become much more of a pyramid. Since the outer 6 inches won’t be actively composting, the narrowing top portion of the pile is much less efficient than a cubed shape.
Having contemplated a lazy man’s method of a walled fixture to square up the sides, I finally took steps to test my theory.
With my mindset of wanting to reuse materials, I headed down to the hay shed and scrounged for three pallet possibilities. Right in front, I found a scrap roll of 1/4-inch hardware cloth covered in pigeon droppings. How appropriate, I thought.
I stapled the hardware cloth to two of the pallets and relied on the third having minimal gaps between its boards. Grabbing some loose polypropylene twine lying nearby, I put everything on a wheelbarrow and headed to the compost area. Crudely tying the corners of the pallets together, I tossed the pile inside, easily making it much taller than previously possible.
Why it took me so long to do this is a testament to procrastination.
There is an area in the paddock where the clay soil at the surface is pottery-grade quality. When it gets wet, the weight of the horses sinks their feet down a dramatic depth. The soil around that spot has less clay, but is equally messy when wet. So it doesn’t make sense to me how the horses can create a dry path at an angle across the middle of this otherwise disastrous zone.
I don’t know how they do it, but I wish they would make paths like this in all the other messy areas of the paddocks for all of our sakes.
Creative solutions R us.
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Relative Something 