Posts Tagged ‘horses’
Nervous Wreck
Last night I watched the last two “elite eight” games of the women’s NCAA tournament and found myself feeling more nervous about the situations of the games than the athletes who were involved.
When it comes to critical game situations, I am a wreck. Continuing to play effectively when you have 4 fouls is impressive. Having the clarity of mind to make a key pass in a split-second of opportunity is brilliant. Demonstrating the confidence and steadiness to hit a closely guarded 3-point shot reveals more nerve than seems possible from my experience.
Conversely, when I am working in the paddocks around four beasts who each weigh over a thousand pounds, I’m probably cooler than I should be. The other day, Light kicked out in my general direction so quickly without warning, I think it warped the laws of physics.
Suddenly I was no longer so calm and collected.
The horses have been moodier than normal the last few days. Maybe they are picking up on my tournament-watching energy of late. I think their nerves might be getting a little frayed, too.
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Special Communication
The mess of melting leftover snow didn’t go through the usual overnight pause last night because the temperature never dropped below freezing. I read yesterday that the blanket of white covering the ground melts from the bottom up. When the air gets cold enough overnight, it is easy to walk on the old snow because a frozen crust is created. It wasn’t easy this morning.
The wash of chunks that rolled off the plow blade beside the driveway is melting in its own interesting ways.
…I enjoyed a special interaction with Light in the paddock this morning. After I had filled their hay nets and the horses finished gobbling up all the feed from their buckets, I still had some housekeeping to finish. Light approached and pushed her nose toward my shoulder. I chatted with her while continuing to look down toward my task on the ground.
Light made a little “chomp” at the air by me and I questioned her about her intentions.
“Were you thinking about biting me?” I asked without changing my energy or activity.
I expressed my disapproval of such craziness as Light wandered up to the overhang.
Then I experienced an insight about a possible different motivation behind Light’s original gesture. Maybe it was a “love nip.” Maybe Light was indicating her appreciation for my efforts.
I vocalized, “You’re welcome,” to the air in her absence.
Then I heard Light pooping up under the overhang.
You may draw your own conclusion, but I smiled a special smile as I scooped up behind her in finishing my efforts tending to the mares for the morning.
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Gates Closed
My least favorite time of year for the horses is when the time comes to restrict their access to the fields. Cyndie made the call this week to close gates so the horses are now confined to the paddocks until the grass grows to at least four inches tall. Hopefully, it won’t take long now that the rain and snow have improved conditions greatly for spring growth.
The grass on the back side of the barn is already looking as green as summer.
The labyrinth isn’t looking very summery.
It hasn’t seen any foot traffic since all the rain and snow fell. The undisturbed surface caught my eye. It’s a nice look.
The opposite was happening just beyond the fence in the back pasture. There were some very prominent tracks from some critter that appeared to be getting taller as the rest of the snow in the field was dwindling.
The low angle of early morning sunlight casts a good shadow for each step taken. I have no idea what animal was plodding along inside the fence.
It is much easier to identify the deer tracks in our woods. There has been a lot of activity visible lately by a fair-sized herd. It appears they have developed a taste for the large batch of acorns that covered the ground under one particular tree this fall. We frequently referred to the trail that passes the tree as a “ball-bearing” zone. The large area of disturbed snow and leaves reflects either a high number of deer present or a hyperactive few.
Looking at the evidence of their activity leaves me feeling for the poor horses who have nothing be a few hay nets to graze until the snow disappears. Then they will put non-stop pressure on any new blades that try to sprout inside the confines of the board fences until the day we get to open the fields back up to them again.
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Ensuing Calm
I always envy the stoic way the horses appear to take whatever nature dishes out and emerge from the worst weather with a look of understanding that better days always arrive eventually. Why is my impression one of surprise about the ease with which a nice day shows up after the tumult of wind and heavy precipitation in all its forms?
On Tuesday night, I dashed out after having showered and eaten dinner to run the plow up and down the driveway before the slushy mess entirely froze overnight. It was an exercise that paid off for me yesterday. All that saturated snow around the driveway was rock solid in the morning.
The partly cloudy skies yesterday allowed for enough sunlight to dry up most of the residual scraps of icy snow that lingered.
The afternoon included a visit from the farrier to trim the horses’ hooves. She reported clear signs of new spring growth showing up in their feet.
During my morning rounds of scooping poop, I came across so many frozen plate-sized mud impressions sluffed from their hooves it looked like every step they took in that mess of snow and mud came with a new unwanted sole attached. It reminded me of the time that was happening to me with mud sticking to the bottom of my boots.
Can you tell which direction the breeze was coming from in the image above? Cyndie said the pattern of blown snow had disappeared from the asphalt moments after she took that photo. The dark pavement does hold some of that solar energy for a time after the sun had disappeared below the horizon.
The winds were light and the sunshine plentiful on the day after our 3-day storm. It provided a welcome calm, indeed.
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Saturated Snow
The weather played out just like the forecasters predicted. Overnight Sunday into Monday the snowflakes flew with an unrelenting intensity. I woke in the middle of the night and saw it was piling up to an impressive depth on the deck railing out back.
It started to change over to a mixture of rain and snow a couple of hours before sunrise. I knew the moment I stepped outside yesterday morning the snow was the consistency of wet cement.
Two of the horses stayed totally dry. The other two looked totally wet. They all appeared to be coping just fine.
I grabbed a shovel and headed down toward the road. I wanted to see how deep the snow was on the driveway and check on the mailbox that usually gets blasted by snow shooting off the blade of the township plow truck.
Just as I stepped out of the barn, I heard the truck coming. I was not going to get there in time to save the mailbox. Luckily, it wasn’t an issue. The driver was working at a controlled speed to push the slop to the side, not throw it well off into the ditches. The mailbox was fine.
The snow depth on the driveway was borderline worth plowing. The challenge would be all the water saturating the bottom couple of inches.
I decided to try running the Grizzly ATV up and down the driveway to disrupt the sloppy covering of snow, half hoping it might be enough to make it easily navigable by cars.
The ATV tracks made it look easy enough to plow so I went for it and lowered the blade at its sharpest angle. I don’t know that it made it any easier but the pavement cleaned up nicely in just a handful of slip-sliding passes.
I wasn’t going to even try the plow blade around the hay shed. I made multiple passes to break up the snow and called it good enough. When we went down to feed the horses at dinner time, there was standing water in many of those tire tracks.
Based on evidence on the ground in the paddocks, several, if not all of the horses, did some lying down in that soaking wet mess with their blankets on. Well, blankets mostly on. Swings managed to fold hers over off her butt.
You can see her back foot standing on the dragging blanket making it hard to move forward. That area just beyond the overhang is even more like wet cement with the combination of sand and saturated snow. The back corner of Swings’ blanket is a mud-saster.
Too bad she’s not one to stand out in the rain. Some precipitation might help rinse off all the muck.
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Just Weather
When a long-duration storm is dishing out its worst, there doesn’t seem to be any other news that rises above it. I tried to keep one eye on NCAA March Madness Tournament basketball games yesterday but the other eye was darting between the snow out the window or the radar updates online.
It snowed most of the day but we didn’t get a lot of accumulation until the sun went down. The temperature hovered right around freezing and the line where snow changed to rain appeared to be slowly moving north as we turned in for the night.
Cyndie put blankets on the horses in the afternoon because Mix and Mia were shivering from the wetness and also because of the likelihood that the cold precipitation would change to rain and soak them even more. We leave it up to them to decide whether they want to stay under the overhang or stand in the rain.
I’m always surprised by how often they choose to walk away from the cover of a roof over their heads.
I’m anxious to get out there this morning to see what the conditions are like in the paddock. Muddy, wet, and snowy all at the same time, I suspect.
As they say, we need the moisture.
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Blowing In
When Asher and I set out on our routine morning walk today, the sky was filled with heavy-looking clouds that cast a dark mood over the landscape. The weather forecast warned of strong winds but we weren’t feeling that on the ground yet. The blanket of low clouds overhead, however, was moving past at a high rate of speed.
It was as if the blue sky was blowing in.
The horses radiated a deep calm as they consumed their feed from the buckets. That sharply contrasted with the barn pigeons that were cooing with an insistence that bordered on drastic urgency. Maybe it was egg-laying time.
The ground surface around the overhang is so dry I should be celebrating freedom from coping with massive levels of mud but the reality it reflects is the threat of drought that hovers near. I had time to contemplate the current conditions because Light and Mix were both taking their sweet time about emptying the feed buckets I was waiting to retrieve.
I treasure that we have settled into a routine that allows them to eat at their individually chosen leisurely paces as opposed to the racing randomness that was happening not that long ago. There are still moments when we need to convince one or two of the horses to get out of each other’s way to end up at what has become their designated positions, but once they get there, extra shenanigans rarely interfere.
The deep calm that materializes is something I don’t take for granted.
In the time it has taken me to finish my breakfast and write this, the wind has arrived at ground level and a fresh blanket of clouds has blown in. With a little luck, maybe it could blow some needed precipitation our way.
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Here Today
In moments of wondering about the ways of the world, my mind seamlessly bounces from comparing to the past and trying to imagine a future. I suppose my current need to select a version of Medicare insurance that suits me is contributing to my pondering how long I might live and what serious illnesses might force me into expensive services from doctors, clinics, medical labs, or hospitals.
It’s a crap shoot and I am not all that concerned about simply rolling some dice and maybe flipping a few coins for guidance.
More immediately, I’m aware that mass consumption of the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament games on television this weekend has me remembering what high school was like for me and how it compares and contrasts with the experiences of the kids in the stands and on the ice this year.
Plus, long-time play-by-play color commentator, Lou Nanne has announced this is his last tourney because he is retiring after 60 years in the booth, so the broadcasts are filled with flashbacks honoring him. It’s like looking at a scrapbook of how the world looked throughout my life. I remember that!
Campaigns for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election are cranked up and that has me wondering (and a little bit worried) about this country’s future. Top that off with the increasingly treacherous climate warming and my greater concern becomes the future of the entire planet.
I’ve contacted a local landscape company asking for a quote to address the settling of the earth around the foundation of our house. This is one of the recommendations that arose from the inspection visit by the neighbor I called last month. Taking care of that will remove at least one of the variety of possible contributing factors leading to the wet basement we experienced after it rained last December.
Seems like we’ve eliminated all the other causes we initially suspected. Updating the landscape around the house will not only be good for moving water away, but it should also make the place look sharper. If you can improve both function and appearance, it’s a win-win!
Who am I kidding? I know what really has my brain all muddled today. My least favorite weekend of the year is the one when the powers that be force the seasonal changing of our clocks and tonight we adjust one hour forward to Daylight Saving Time. That’s one less hour of sleep for humankind, one giant leap for our natural body clocks.
Cyndie and I have decided on this occasion, we will alter the time we reference for feeding the horses and Asher so that their internal clocks won’t experience any change. We have the luxury of adjusting our times because we are retired and don’t need to align our activities with jobs out of the home.
The times today or tomorrow are no different for animals. I wish I could say the same for me.
Especially Content
It is hard to ignore the precision I employ in cleaning up beneath the horses when comparing the area around the barn overhang after a weekend of someone else taking care of things. My obsessiveness becomes much more obvious after I find how much manure is scattered in places I normally clean up but the “real” horse people disregard.
I’ve seen no clear evidence that the horses care either way, but I tend to believe they appreciate my fastidiousness. It’s kind of cute when they make a clear gesture of walking over to stand and poop where I am working. They can be so helpful that way. However, the fact that they so often step in the piles and kick them around every which way when I’m not there makes it seem like they might be sending me a different message.
It was really great to have a few days away from horse duty but the amount of pleasure I’m finding from being back with them again tells me I might be more attached to them than I was aware.
Oddly, I had a rather extreme dream where I was rubbing my face against Mix (like I do when wrestling with Asher) and found myself having a too-close encounter with her teeth.
No close encounters in real life yesterday while I was moving amongst the herd before bringing out their rations. They seemed especially content. Like they were happy to have us home.
The un-winter-like weather may have had something to do with that, too, I suppose.
Not much seems to fail when nature serves up its finest versions of non-threatening conditions.
I’m feeling especially content to be able to enjoy the horses while they are all getting along and radiating the ultimate in equine peacefulness. It’s a pretty special thing to return to after a weekend away.
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Snowscape Again!
I got what I wanted! I’ve pared down the photos to seven from the many more pictures we couldn’t resist taking of the glorious snowy scenes that greeted us yesterday morning. What a difference a day makes.
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The snow won’t be around for long. By the end of the day yesterday, I bet we lost half of what fell. The driveway was clear and dry just a few hours after I plowed. Even though the air temperature never rose above freezing, the mid-February sun was at a high enough angle to have a big impact on surfaces.
We expect to be on the road before noon today on our way to Hayward for the weekend. Our newest horse volunteer will tend to the herd while we are gone. Here’s hoping they don’t give her a hard time. The mares were unusually rambunctious yesterday at feeding times.
Thankfully, they understand our routine enough to calm down quickly after a few mouthfuls of feed. The hanging buckets have been a good change in almost entirely eliminating their tendency to chase each other around like a game of musical chairs.
Tomorrow, I post from the lake place! Maybe I’ll take a picture or two.
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Relative Something 