Posts Tagged ‘horses’
Finding Fun
I wish I could say it’s all fun and games having a new “teen” pup that has found himself in an unfamiliar environment. At times Asher behaves like a big goof, but he is also a product of having needed to fend for himself to find food to eat in his earliest days. Left unchecked, he quickly resorts to searching for anything edible. Asher’s body is long and that means that when he stands on his hind legs, he is tall.
Nothing on our counters is safe from his reach, and at this point, he has not learned any self-control that would keep him from taking ill-advised risks to reach potentially edible rewards. We are being tested on every decision we make. To free ourselves from being constantly on guard, we have to think ahead and put up timely barriers to confine Asher to a safe space when we can’t be giving our full attention to his activities.
Still, there has been plenty of fun to be had.
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He is proving to be a good on-leash walker and only chewed through the leash one time while Cyndie was distracted with digging up invasive garlic mustard plants. He played well on the zip line in the backyard and rolled around in smelly leaves on one of our walks.
While on the phone to register ourselves as the owners who adopted Ash, Cyndie learned the paperwork indicated the dog was given his name because he was found on Ash Road. Ash R. I like that we will be going with the name, Asher.
The other names most often used yesterday were, Down and No.
Cyndie made great progress in teaching Asher to stay until she says he can release. We want to teach him that we go through the door first and then he can follow, and that exercise will go much more smoothly when he understands and obeys the “Stay!” command from which we could proceed.
Meanwhile, the horses are having fun because we have been opening up the hay field to them again during the daytime.
They had been confined to the paddocks for a few weeks awaiting the fields to get dryer and the grass to get taller. On the occasion of their first tall grass on Monday, they barely stepped through the gate before stopping to graze. Yesterday, I noticed they were walking a little further in, but it wasn’t all about grazing. They showed an interest in taking some serious naps in the grass under the bright sunshine.
My presence with the chainsaw didn’t ruffle them one bit. I needed to cut up a large dead limb that had fallen from the ailing willow tree in the small paddock. While I had the saw out, there were three fallen trees across trails in the woods and one other leaner in the woods between the house and the shop that I was able to clean up. Then it was time to unload new hay bales and stack them in the hay shed.
It was fun to get some productive work done between the sessions of fun with Mr. Hey-Play-With-Me-Some-More.
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Tried Telling
It’s difficult to tell how much the horses grasp the variety of things I find myself trying to say to them. Yesterday I decided to give them a little warning about the pending arrival of a new dog who will be living on the property.
Swings behaved as though she just didn’t want to hear it.
Light remained entirely indifferent to my words.
Mia didn’t look away but she didn’t seem happy to hear anything I had to say.
Mix was too preoccupied with finishing her dinner to participate in my attempts at communicating news about Ash.
Cyndie and I were talking about what nicknames might evolve from such a short name as Ash. One way to play with a name that is too short to trim into a nickname is to lengthen it instead. Our son, Julian, suggested “Ashford.” We like that a lot. Cyndie is prone to adding “bert,” as in Dogbert. Ashbert? I’m okay saying that.
I have come up with Asher. That’s one that we both feel could work for us. We just need to find out what the pup thinks about it.
A little research last night has us thinking the mix of breeds that visually matches his features and coloring are German Shepherd, Labrador Retriever, and/or Rottweiler. The mash of breed names becomes Sheprador based on the images Cyndie found that looked most similar to Ash.
All our wondering about what is to come will soon be replaced by real experiences. Today is the beginning of our next adventure of having a new dog. Huzzah!
Bark! Bark!
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Overnight Success
It was a treat to find obvious evidence yesterday morning that at least one of the horses took advantage of the new surface to rub against.
It sure is nice when a plan works out just as we hoped.
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Reuse Wrap
We got a start on the great idea that keeps us from throwing our scrap bale twine into the trash. After making a few long strands of braided scraps, yesterday we wrapped our first post to create an improved surface for the horses to rub against. I wish we would have known about this trick sooner because it is not uncommon to find lengths of the horses’ manes or tails snagged in a splinter of wood grain on the edges of the vertical boards of the posts.
It was cute having the horses be only mildly curious about the strange new decoration in their environment. They took turns approaching to sniff the braided twine and I wondered if they could smell that our hands had been working the twine. They definitely witnessed us working on braiding multiple sets of twine scraps over the last few weeks. After giving it a sniff, they seemed perfectly satisfied that our project was harmless and we could be left to wrap uninterrupted.
When we stopped back at dinnertime, I noted there wasn’t a single hair of evidence that any of them had rubbed up against it yet. There was plenty of hair on the ground where one of them had laid down and rolled around, so there is no question they are still heavily in spring-shedding mode.
I really like the new feeling of happiness each time we cut another bale open and pull off the twine as compared to the old feeling of frustration over what we were going to do with the mountain of cut pieces proliferating non-stop. Now, it’s more like a perception of not having enough twine to braid.
I want to offer another shout-out to Kim Hallin of Unbridled for posting her helpful video about the concept of putting our old twine scraps to good use.
We are looking forward to our horses developing an appreciation for this upgrade to their hangout space. I’m particularly hopeful that they will like rubbing up against it a lot more than chewing it to bits.
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Peaceful Meditations
I had plenty of time to meditate on the gratefulness for a warm bed during a fever yesterday, and the luxury of having Cyndie be able to give me a full day pass from outdoor chores. This morning dawned much friendlier with sunshine replacing the gray skies of the previous wet days.
On Friday afternoon, I laid down on the driveway to capture a view of the precipitation falling that was flirting with the difference between sleet and hail. Today we have the bright sunlight amplifying the increasing green of our fields. You know the philosophy of meditating on what you want in order to manifest desired results?
Mia was showing a Zen-like focus on the acres beyond the paddock fence this morning. Even though it is sunny today, it is way too wet to be walking on our turf, as can be seen in the amount of hoof-traffic abuse the surface inside the paddock is suffering. The poor horses can’t help damaging the very grass they would love to be eating.
Soon, the situation will improve and the horses will peacefully be grazing in the pastures again. And, soon we will be walking the circuitous path of our labyrinth again.
In less than two weeks we will be hosting an event on World Labyrinth Day at Wintervale. My favorite global meditation for peace happens every year on the first Saturday of May as people all over the world create a wave of peaceful energy by participating in their time zone at 1:00 p.m.
World Labyrinth Day at Wintervale
I’m going to visualize May 6th as a beautifully sunny day with the ground dry enough to support foot traffic without becoming a mess. No matter what, it will be a day bursting with love and peaceful vibrations flowing around us from one time zone to the next. Cyndie will bake scones to serve with coffee and we will encourage meditations start before 1:00 and continue well beyond the official hour.
We will already be feeding the meditation of peace before it arrives and continue after the crest rolls away to the west for as long as there are people present to stroll.
If the weather is bad, well, we will make peace with that, too.
You do what ya gotta do.
Peace!
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Not Snowy
At least it hasn’t been snowy on the ranch the last two days. It has been rainy, however. Wednesday night we experienced a thunder and lightning storm that had me sounding stressed in my slumber. Cyndie spoke soothingly and I recall hearing her voice, but not what I had been dreaming at that moment. She said I quieted right down and my breathing soon returned to normal sleeping mode.
When we stepped out in the morning to feed the horses, I asked Cyndie if she had arranged the rocking chairs under the tree by our driveway.
She said she hadn’t touched them. That meant the way they were laying in the image above was accomplished by the wind. Previously, the chairs were upright, sitting side by side, and facing downhill.
The chilly rain is keeping the horses under the overhang space where they can munch hay while staying out of the wind and keeping dry. When they aren’t chomping bites of hay from the net bags, it appears they are using them as a surface to rub against. I found a mat of horse hair coating the outer surface of one.
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This serves as a good incentive for us to get our newly braided strands of old-cut twine wrapped on one of the posts for them to rub. We are making decent progress in converting individual lengths to reusable bundles!
It’s not as fun to do braiding when it’s so cold and wet but while waiting for the horses to finish the food in their pans, I twist up a section to pass a few extra minutes. When it is sunny and warm, sitting under the overhang braiding while the horses watch is a lot more fun and we get a lot more done at once.
Before the rain got intense, Cyndie and I stepped out to pull our custom netting from the top of the landscape pond. It’s proved to be a convenient way to keep leaves out of the pond over the off-season.
I hadn’t gotten around to putting the pump and filter back in before the rain picked up. I ended up moving on to something else and the pond stuff sat out in the rain for a couple of days before I remembered about it all and moved the buckets back into the garage –after pouring out the water they had collected. It reminded us to put out our rain gauges.
The last few days of spring weather have been messy, limiting our outdoor accomplishments, but at least none of the precipitation coming down on us has fallen as snow. Thank goodness for that.
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Getting Excited
Straight out of the “fake it ’till you make it” playbook, I am pretending to be excited about how nice the weather will be once the weather stops being so dang crappy. Cold, wet, & windy are not my favorite conditions to be doing anything outside in April. Cold that hovers so close to the freezing point that some materials turn solid while the rest just get slippery, muddy, or miserably anything-but-frozen, is a surefire recipe for grumpy.
Not that I am getting grumpy. No, not at all [humph!]. I’m really excited! Just because the horses are acting all grumpy over the conditions this week doesn’t mean I’ve been influenced to the point of wanting to yell at Mix for being such an a**hole unkind member of the herd.
Was that suspiciously specific?
I mean, who runs other horses off and then comes back, turns herself around, and poops where the food was served? Who would do such a thing?
Mix.
After she kicks the fence separating her from Light.
We ended up splitting the herd in two in hopes of reducing intra-herd shenanigans that tend to leave one horse [read: Mia] out in the rain. I think the separation made Mix grumpier because it left only one horse as a target for her grumpiness. She and Light began to have their own little spat from either side of the fence between paddocks.
I’m getting excited for the day when they all mellow out because it is warm and dry again. Honestly, I’m finding it a struggle to remember that it reached 80°F for a few days last week. Seems like so long ago now.
The tiny wildflower blossoms are probably thinking the same thing.
Those blossoms are few and far between so I guess the majority of growing things didn’t fall for that unusual burst of warmth that came and went like a mystic dream. I’m nurturing my ongoing excitement for the real warmup of the season that will allow for vigorous raking of our grass areas around the house.
Opportunities to play with my new mower won’t be far beyond that.
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Not Money
For several days in a row this week, we were able to give the horses more attention than they have gotten from us in a long time. I think Cyndie’s increasing mobility has paid off for our horses in boosting morale. They have never given us any indication that they like to be brushed. Actually, just the opposite, but after Swings finally reacted with such whole-body acceptance to Cyndie working her mane the other day, we have fresh hope that we can teach them all this same appreciation.
Yesterday, we did some bale-twine braiding while the herd munched a noontime snack. We figure it will help them accept our plan to wrap posts and hang braided strands if they’ve watched us making them. I am so happy to have discovered this simple reuse option for the polypropylene twine since I didn’t come up with a local recycler that collects used bale twine. Keeps it out of the waste stream for a while longer at the very least.
While I was noticing the horses looking so happy to be watching us, I was reminded again that this retired phase of their lives is the first time their existence wasn’t related to making money. The reason they were born was that people wanted to make money off of them. The reason they were trained to race was money driven. After their racing days ended, all four mares were repeatedly bred in hopes their foals would become money-makers.
We don’t know for certain but based on the horse’s behavior, we imagine the grooming they received previously could have been rather business-like as opposed to focusing on the emotional needs and desires of the animal.
I don’t mean to imply that the treatment they are receiving from us isn’t rainbows and lollipops all the time. I wrote yesterday about working on disciplining their bad behavior. We have also recently taken the annual step of closing off access to the pastures. Mia so sweetly showed up at a gate Cyndie had just closed and forlornly gazed out at the field as if to ask for a pass.
Sorry, no can do.
At this point, it’s for the good of the grass. We need the turf to firm up a bit and the grass to grow at least six inches so the field will become robust enough to support the pressure of four heavy and hungry beasts.
So, we are giving the horses a dose of our own “This is for your own good whether you like it or not.” The difference is that our decisions aren’t based on making money off them. I would like to believe they can sense the distinction.
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Next Level
For the second day in a row, Cyndie has been able to spend some quality time with the horses. Wednesday involved some impromptu efforts to detangle knotted manes which then paved the way for more thorough grooming of all four mares yesterday. Cyndie said that Swings was getting lulled to sleep by the soothing effect of being completely combed out.
We discussed a shared realization that the horses would do well to be given a dose of training to reestablish proper respect for our presence in their proximity. I have not done more than a bare minimum of discipline in the months since Cyndie broke her ankle and I took on the role of primary person tending to the herd. They each have a tendency to behave disrespectfully on occasion and Light, in particular, has reared up in front of us several times which is not safe.
They have had more than enough time to adapt to this place as their home and us as their handlers. Since they are beginning to show some signs of undesirable behavior, we want to move to the next level of interacting with them. By “we,” I mean, Cyndie. She is much more experienced than I am in doing groundwork exercises with horses. My expertise has more to do with filling wheelbarrows.
Cyndie’s mobility is improving every day but is not quite where she needs to be yet for being quick on her feet and dancing with 1200 pounds of horse. While I was working on cleaning up the winter accumulation in the large paddock yesterday, I saw Cyndie trying to correct Light’s behavior while hardly taking a step. Light wasn’t displaying much sign of feeling intimidated.
Yesterday, we also decided it was time to protect the pastures from the horses while the new grass was trying to sprout. They have really been interested in spending time in the back pasture lately and when I finally closed the gate that was their access to it, they did not seem happy with me.
Luckily, they are willing to nibble any grass that tries to grow inside the paddocks. They were all grazing in there in the afternoon before I closed the pasture gate.
When I came down to serve dinner, they were all busy on the far side of the pasture. They showed up promptly when I set out pans of feed, which then kept them occupied while I walked over and closed the gate.
It was the second day in a row of record-breaking heat and it was again accompanied by a dramatic gusting spring wind that triggered a fire risk warning. Apparently, that all ends today. The weekend is expected to involve much cooler temps and chances of slushy precipitation. I’ve apologized to the horses in advance that their thick winter fur has been brushed loose and carried off on the wind.
As tough as this hot weather has been to deal with so soon, a return to snowy precipitation is not the next level we were hoping to experience.
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Garden Fuel
Record heat yesterday put early pressure on the horses to cope with high temperatures before they have yet to fully shed their winter coats. We are experiencing temperatures that are more than 30 degrees (F) above average for this time of year. Production at Wintervale was focused on packaging for most of the day, bagging the precious commodity produced by the horses.
The remaining lot of seasoned compost from 2022 was bagged for distribution as Wintervale’s Equine Magic Premium Garden Fuel.
After moving three bags back to a stock location in the barn using a wheelbarrow, my tired arms thought up a better idea. the new electric mower has a small cargo bin behind the seat with a 200-pound carrying capacity. Using that to move the bags gave me a great opportunity to get some practice navigating our terrain.
I quickly discovered it doesn’t do well in saturated muddy areas. I never got completely stuck, but tires started spinning and forward momentum was interrupted. I’m not quick with my corrections yet because the steering maneuvers don’t come automatically to me. I need to think through a solution that tends to be a little late, coming after my unconscious reaction has already proved to be unhelpful.
While the sun was high, I stopped out in the Production area to see how staff were feeling about the 80-degree working conditions. Without trying to put any extra pressure on them, I pointed out that inventory is low after so much of last year’s garden fuel was repurposed as fill for landscaping along the edges of the driveway.
Mix assured me they understand my fixation with trying to pick up every last morsel that lands in the paddocks and she pointed out there was plenty more out in the pastures if I really needed it. She’s so helpful.
The main compost station would need to go through an expansion if I started picking up everything they lay down out there. We don’t have a roof over the main compost area so moisture control is not managed well. I can add water if the compost piles get too dry but when conditions get extremely wet I’m sunk.
With four horses working production, and me on my own managing the finishing, our operation isn’t going to become an industrial juggernaut for garden compost. As long as we have enough to share with interested friends, there will always be potential for bartered home-grown produce as a reward for all of our effort.
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Relative Something 