Posts Tagged ‘horses’
Moderately Disorienting
Just because we had July-like temperatures on the first day of October, it shouldn’t be all that disorienting. But over the weekend, both the college Gophers and NFL Vikings won their games and that knocked me for a loop. Not really, but I like to poke fun at the subject of local teams having a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Some things that make the summery heat and humidity disorienting at this time of year are the shorter hours of daylight, the lower angle of the sunlight, and the fall-colored leaves covering the ground.
Oh, and the hum of lawnmowers cutting on neighboring properties.
I got a small portion of mowing done between periods of throwing balls for Asher to chase. He is not a fan of heat and we needed to take frequent breaks inside where he likes to lay on the cool floor tiles.
Plenty of panting was included during his cool-down sessions.
We are expecting a visit from the farrier today to trim and shape horse hooves. We’ll have fans blowing under the overhang. The horses are growing their winter coats, so this kind of heat in October has got to be more uncomfortable for them than it is for us.
They may have been hot yesterday, but they didn’t look the least bit disoriented by it.
.
.
Avoiding Calamity
More than six inches of rain caused flooding in New York City yesterday. Our property was surrounded by massive lightning-filled blobs on radar but the areas of greatest intensity just missed our exact location. At sunrise, when I would normally be walking Asher and tending to the horses, dramatic rain and thunder were peaking in intensity.
When I finally ventured out between the waves of rain, I found the horses squeezed under one side of the overhang, understandably jumpy. The roar on the metal roof when precipitation is heavy amps up the drama factor considerably.
As I made my way cautiously around and between the frequently rearranging foursome to clean up manure, the threat of potential calamity was noticeably increased. Avoiding an unfortunate issue relies on luck as much as intelligent decision-making.
As far as I can tell, the horses weren’t aware of the flooding in New York. They don’t know that the dysfunction of elected officials in the U.S. Government is once again threatening a shutdown of our federal workers. They have no idea that health insurance premiums continue to climb out of balance with individual incomes. (Cyndie moved to Medicare this year leaving me alone on our previous plan. The cost for one person [me] went UP! when she was removed.)
The horses are masters of dealing with the immediate moment and their immediate surroundings. I find it wonderfully soothing to clear my mind of the calamities playing out in the world and pause my activities to stand with the herd to feel their energy, even when that energy is one of heightened alert.
Nothing else matters.
The moment the weather calms, the horses do the same.
I met with some precious luck yesterday afternoon after a slip of footing provided a mental flash of a possible worst outcome which did not materialize.
Asher was making a sudden turn toward a recently placed rodent control station that I wanted to clearly train him was “off-limits.” My hasty reaction led to a step with too much momentum onto a surprisingly slippery rock surface. That fraction-of-a-second thought process recognized I was going down and the destination was covered with many bigger rocks.
Face first was guaranteed calamity. Out shot my right arm and my hand landed incredibly hard. The dog still needed attention and I ignored the pain to deal with him. A moment later I was left trying to assess what bones in my hand and wrist were at risk of fracture.
Cyndie was up at the lake and I was home alone. This was not a good time to need medical treatment.
Fingers all moved. Wrist flexed. Ice controlled swelling. Final assessment: a wicked bruise.
Calamity averted.
This morning, returning to the house after walking through the woods with Asher, I found the rodent control station (which had been secured in place with a 10-inch stake) lying in the middle of the front yard. He obviously had beat me back to the house.
More training will be required.
.
.
Foggy Morning
The weather app on my phone notified me that we were under dense fog conditions first thing this morning. That proved to be a spot-on analysis.
It wasn’t all that obvious in the woods where Asher and I were breaking spider webs that crossed our trails. When we reached the fence of the back pasture, it was as if none of our neighbors existed.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The horses didn’t seem overly worried about their limited views. They were spread out with heads up when I came around the corner, appearing well aware of my arrival.
Every morning there is obvious evidence of burrowing critter activity in and around the barn overnight. There is enough spillage from the horses’ sloppy eating that barn pigeons and rodents find more than enough motivation to hang around. For some reason, this morning a couple of rodents didn’t wait until I was gone to emerge from their tunnels to scrounge. That’s the first time I have actually seen them.
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the neighbor’s orange cat lurking around our property of late. I wonder if Asher would be okay with us getting a barn cat to keep the rodent population from exploding. In the meantime, we will be adding some traps in the barn.
One of our ash trees near the (vacant) chicken coop is proving to be our “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to the onset of autumn.
Every year it drops leaves sooner than most other trees have begun to change color. This year it stands out more than usual for being so bare-branched so soon.
Is the middle of September early for bare branches? Sure seems like it to me, especially when we have 80°F temperatures forecast for the coming week. It still feels an awful lot like summer around here, even with a cool fog blanketing the landscape this morning.
.
.
No Plan
Sometimes I don’t have a plan for my day beyond the endless list of possibilities awaiting attention around our property. There are always plenty of things to do around here but my motivation doesn’t always rise to the occasion. Add in weather complications or limits of daylight and plans are often subject to change.
When I don’t have a plan then there is nothing to change. I did successfully accomplish a combination of driveway raking and grass mowing yesterday, so that felt like a win. I pushed the ol’ Greenworks lawn tractor to the single digits of battery percentage, making it back to the garage without needing to go get a spare battery.
While raking dirt near the road I was interrupted by the daily mail carrier delivery, a special US Postal package delivery, and a visit with our neighbor to the south. I think he is happy to see our property being well-tended. He always expresses a belief that we should be riding our horses and then regales an oft-repeated tale of the retired racehorses his friend had that were sway-backed beyond belief. They both lived into their 40s he tells us, I think as a way of suggesting ours may enjoy similar longevity.
Yesterday, Cyndie noticed that Swings has a “chunk” of her hoof broken in a way neither of us have seen before. She checked with This Old Horse and learned it wasn’t a cause for major concern. Other than that, I think the herd is showing signs of enjoying the gentle transition toward fall as our temperatures have started to moderate and the hours of daylight are shrinking.
I asked my neighbor if he expected good fall colors this year since we are seeing fewer hints of change than in previous seasons. He said the dryness we are suffering will likely bring good colors and the lack of change so far is just because it’s early yet.
It feels to me like the dry spell is shriveling leaves to brown more than triggering a color change thus far. Time will tell.
I won’t plan for spectacular fall colors and see if that helps. A failure to plan is a plan to fail, no?
.
.
Just Dropped
Turns out, Swings’ mask didn’t vanish after all. She just dropped it where I failed to notice, despite walking surprisingly close to that very spot during my search. Cyndie found it yesterday morning.
I will admit to looking for the wrong color mask. Thought it was one of the black ones, although the fact it was light-colored should have made it easier to see.
As we were walking back from rolling our trash and recycling bins to the road yesterday, we came upon Swings’ mask lying in the hay field. Second day in a row she has wrestled her way out of it. I guess she doesn’t want to have it on her head when the weather is so hot and humid. Meanwhile, Mia followed Cyndie around with a cloud of flies on her face while Cyndie was looking for the first lost mask yesterday morning. Mia was lobbying to have her mask on as soon as possible.
While the horses are dealing with flies, our battle has become hordes of increasingly vicious mosquitos. Yesterday they were buzzing my head and as I tried to swat them away, two of them flew behind my sunglasses. Since when do mosquitos fly between eyelids and glass lenses? Makes it really hard to swat them.
Mowing on the zero-turn was a challenge because when I let go of a lever to swat a biting mosquito the tractor immediately turned.
Time for us to start wearing our own “fly masks” of the mosquito netting variety.
I needed more than mosquito netting to fend off wasps that were showing up around the door to the shop. The solution was more of the poisonous chemical variety when I finally located the nest being built in the outdoor light over the door.
That’s where I installed an on/off switch earlier in the year but I haven’t reached up there to turn it on all summer because it never gets dark until late. When I looked up at it, finding the wasp nest was difficult through the scary-looking multi-level webs of some very industrious spider(s).
I forgot to wait until all the wasps had returned at the end of the day so the afternoon got a little dicey as the disgruntled survivors dealt with the disaster discovered upon their return. Oops.
My bad.
.
.
Vanishing Act
One thing about the high humidity of the last two days that I didn’t expect is how spiders and mosquitos have taken over the woods. They probably like that it has been staying warm all night, too. It is very common to walk into a single strand of spider silk that crosses our trails but lately, it has been entire completed webs that remain invisible unless the light hits them at just the right angle.
Even after walking into it, you can’t see it but can feel it sticking and flailing to rub it off is far from successful. So you just flail even more.
Meanwhile, the mosquitos haven’t even been waiting for us to stop walking before buzzing our ears and attacking in numbers. It scares me if I have to pause and wait for Asher to do his business for fear I will be carried off by the marauders. I just resort to flailing as if I had just walked into a spider web.
One action that solves two problems.
So, Swings lost her fly mask yesterday. When we left the barn after serving their morning feed, all four horses had masks on, the fans were running on high, and we’d put out extra water for the day. When Cyndie checked on them mid-morning, Swings wasn’t wearing a mask.
We have not seen them venturing far from the fans very often since this nasty heat dome arrived so we both figured the mask shouldn’t be hard to spot. We were wrong. It was nowhere in sight around the overhang or inside the paddock. Nothing was visible looking out at the fields near the gates.
When serving their evening food, I took a walk through portions of the hay field and found nothing. At sunset, when closing up the barn and removing masks from the other three, I walked around in the back pasture and, again, found nothing.
That mask has vanished. We have no idea where she lost it. Usually, they rub up against something, so trees and fence posts are likely targets. I don’t believe the horses would have hustled out for a short visit to one of the fields and then returned before Cyndie showed up to check on them, so logic tells me it should be inside the paddocks.
I will expect to find it this morning while patrolling the taller growth in the paddock with the wheelbarrow looking for new piles of manure.
One other unlikely thing happened during this heat wave. We found a large branch about 3-4 inches in diameter lying in the yard beneath one of our larger oak trees first thing in the morning. It wasn’t windy and the wood looked healthy so I have no idea why such a large branch broke off.
When cutting it up, I saved several good sections for sculpting hearts and two long pieces that have a nice pattern. They will make for some nice coasters.
Can’t wait to do some sanding and polishing to see how they will look when all cleaned up. You know, do a vanishing act of those blade marks on the surfaces!
.
.
Our Turn
It arrived with a vengeance yesterday. It is our turn to cope with Earth’s new reality of oppressive heat waves. Tropical dew point temperatures push the high heat to feel ten degrees hotter and land us well into three-digit heat index numbers.
As with every weather extreme, the horses just seem to roll with it. We left fans on high under the overhang and they didn’t expend any more effort than necessary all day long.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Wearing masks to give their eyes a break from the never-ending harassment from flies, they stayed in the shade where the attack of solar energy was ameliorated by a degree or two. Well, except for Mia. When we showed up to serve their evening feeding, she was out grazing in the back pasture all by herself.
Cyndie decided to walk down and offer Mia a pan in the shade which she promptly accepted. It was uncomfortably hot but not intolerable with pockets of cooler air wafting out from under the shade trees on an occasional breeze.
Asher came out with us and pounced into the woods to force squirrels into hasty retreats to the highest branches above. When horses were tended to, Asher was more than happy to return with us to lie on the cool tile floor of our air-conditioned living space.
I took advantage of avoiding outdoor work by giving in to a delicious afternoon nap in the recliner. What a privileged life we live.
I shudder to comprehend how people in places where this kind of heat lasts for months deal with nights that don’t get cool. We went down to the barn just before sunset to close things up, turn off the fans, and remove fly masks but the heat had barely budged from the peak in the afternoon.
Light was sweating, which wasn’t visible when we fed them earlier. The heat of the day was still accumulating.
Our turn dealing with the blast furnace of this over-heating planet will be mercifully short. After today things will moderate a bit and by Saturday the forecast looks almost chilly in comparison.
The horses give me a sense that they understand this and use that superpower to bolster their impressive art of coping when conditions are just plain miserable.
Our retreat to the geothermally cooled house is a less impressive method of coping, but it is oh. so. effective.
.
.
Distorted Perspective
If it wasn’t so indescribable and unrecognizable, this would have been a candidate for my image-guessing game.
What the heck is that? It’s not The Bean (Cloud Gate) in Chicago but it could be a close cousin located at the Big Stone Sculpture Garden.
I like how the zoomed-in square photo has a hint of a snow-globe vibe. I don’t know that the sculpture is recognizable from that close view, except maybe to someone who just visited the site in the last few days. Even then, I’m not sure what the official description is for this wavy-shaped, mirrored blob that would appropriately identify it.
It made for a good blog post subject though. Entertainment for the eyes.
Not to mention it served me well since I didn’t take any pictures of the horses getting their hooves trimmed yesterday. It was not an easy day for the farrier, Heather, because the horses –more specifically, the chestnuts, Mia, and Light– were more skittish than usual and were not cooperative at all about standing on three legs for any span of time.
Their equine “pedicure” was somewhat truncated. Functionally sound, but cosmetically rough looking.
The other thing I didn’t take a picture of was my solution for getting the zero-turn tractor tipped up so I could clean out the bottom of the mower deck. After surfing through images of ramps for lifting cars that I was considering buying to lift the tractor, I thought up a way to do it with material I already had on hand.
There was an old deck board on the floor in the shop garage that I cut in two and propped up on the loader bucket of the diesel tractor parked right there. I screwed a couple of scrap chunks of 2×4 on each board to lock them in position on the bucket. It resulted in enough angle that I can lay beneath it and have reasonable access to the entirety of the 42-inch deck.
It also gave me a good view of the poor condition of the mower blades. I’m afraid the amount of rocks and sticks I hit this year while learning to steer with two levers has shortened the life of the blades considerably. I don’t feel bad about it. I knew what I’d gotten myself into and consider it a cost for not getting the driveway shoulders finished yet.
I hope to remedy that before fall is over, but maybe I’m revealing a bit of my own distorted perspective about the possibility. The landscaper we are waiting on does not have a strong track record of showing up in a timely fashion, or sometimes, responding to us at all.
.
.
Special Greeting
Upon arriving home yesterday around noon, I was greeted by this sight:
Hmm. The two chestnuts, Light and Mia, were outside all the fences! I showed up at a very good time, indeed.
The other two horses were still inside the small paddock showing keen interest in the two escapees but not acting overly anxious about the situation. The scene was surprisingly calm given it was an extraordinary circumstance for horses to be roaming free beyond their usual boundaries.
I stopped my car well away from them so I wouldn’t trigger a reason for any change from their calm state.
Having learned a lesson when I became overly anxious the time Swings escaped the fences, I didn’t even approach the horses. Offering a friendly, gentle greeting, I eased my way directly toward the barn, scanning the fences for some clue as to how they had gotten out.
A gate in the larger paddock on the other side of the barn was open and in the moment that caught my eye, Light and Mia showed up behind me, just as I hoped they would. In the split second of trying to decide if I should go shut that gate or stay with the horses at the gate right in front of us, Asher came running up.
Our animal sitter’s boyfriend, Tyler was on duty, and seeing Asher led me to believe Tyler would be showing up right behind him. I’d hardly finished that thought when Tyler did appear. He looked more surprised than I was to discover what was happening.
I sent Tyler to go close that far gate and began the tricky process of opening the gate in front of me to let Light walk back into the paddock while struggling to convince Mix and Swings to not come out. As that exercise was succeeding, I glanced around to see if Mia would immediately follow.
I should be so lucky. It looked like Asher was trying to do some herding of his own, only in the wrong direction with her. Luckily, Mia didn’t overreact to the dog and promptly made her way around, showing interest in getting back in with the other three.
This was no easy feat. Now three horses were wanting to come out the gate I was trying to hold open for Mia and she is the most intimidated by the other three so she had no intention of stepping forward until they got out of the way.
Swings must have felt for me because she saved the day and turned away which helped direct Light and Mix to follow her and create a window of opportunity that Mia accepted. Somehow I pulled off all that without getting stepped on in my non-horse-wrangling shoes.
Tyler learned the fundamental lesson of NEVER leaving a gate unlatched thinking you will get right back to it. There is always a possibility of something distracting you from returning as planned. He had taken out a wheelbarrow of manure and was tending to Asher and thinking about getting laundry and dishes done before my return. All noble goals to keep owners happy with your service, but losing a couple of horses would have tarnished any sparkle of all the other deeds he and Anna are so conscientious about doing.
Thankfully, in this case, the horses helped to keep this from becoming a much bigger problem.
.
.
Lots Done
Sometimes I don’t accomplish very much by the end of a day. Other times –I don’t know why– I find myself checking off one thing after another on my list of tasks deserving attention. Yesterday was one of those days when Cyndie and I got a lot done, due in no small part to Asher being off to an all-day “Fit-Dog” session with a canine coach.
Cyndie kicked off the day by putting up a simple fence around my manure compost piles, hoping to dissuade Asher from rolling in them.
Before we started anything else, we decided to give the horses time to come inside the barn again to receive a snack in the stalls. Despite it requiring extra effort to convince Swings to come back out, we agreed it was another successful session. Once they were back outside, they moved out to the hay field which enabled us to close gates behind them so we could put fresh lime screenings under the overhang.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The horses got a little testy about being locked out of the paddock while we worked and took out their frustration by racing around, which was a treat for us to watch. It looks like Mix is unsure of what to think about the changes we were making.
While I had the tractor in the paddock, I mowed some weeds on one end and then used the bucket to drag washed-out lime screenings back up to fill the area I was doing by hand the day before.
From there, it was just a few gate openings and closings and I was free to mow the back pasture.
Keeping the momentum going, I slipped out the back gate when I was done and made a pass up and down the drainage ditch along our southern border.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
On my way back to the garage, I took a couple of passes with the loader bucket along the gravel drive in front of the hay shed to see if that would be an easy way to tear out the massive weed infestation. Earlier, while moving loads of lime screenings into the paddock, I had forgotten to lift the bucket high enough to clear the ground on the way out one time and it carved off a layer of turf. That revealed a nice-looking patch of the fresh gravel that was underneath which inspired me to try doing that intentionally on the rest of the loop.
The results were promising but if I’m going to clean up the gravel, I might as well put the back-blade on and use that for the purpose it is intended.
With energy to spare, I decided to hop on the zero-turn after parking the diesel and made my way into the round pen to mow down the growth in there.
Almost as good as a putting green, and with sand traps to boot.
We got a lot done yesterday and it sounded like Asher had a good play date at his “Fit-Dog” session. I’d say that qualifies as a double bonus of accomplishments.
.
.
Relative Something 