Posts Tagged ‘horses’
Ice Breaking
Oh, the weather outside is frightful… My first clue was that the door didn’t open when Delilah and I intended to step out yesterday morning and she bonked her nose on the glass. We had been out that door the night before on her final walk before bed and stepped into a windy snowstorm. At that time, I decided we should walk down and check on the horses.
Delilah wasn’t really all in for that because she just wanted to do her business and race back inside. We trudged through the blowing snow to the barn and I made her wait while I attempted to convince the two chestnuts they should come over to the big paddock so I could close some gates and split the herd in two for the night.
That would have given them each a better chance of commanding some space under the overhang, as the alternative allows Mix to pull rank and make the chestnuts stay out in the precipitation.
Well, neither Mia nor Light wanted to come into the big paddock so, after several aborted attempts to coerce them, I spent the next fifteen minutes relocating hay nets to get the bags under the roof. Then I filled them with extra hay to give the horses plenty to eat in case they got cold during the storm. Delilah politely tolerated the long wait.
I wasn’t aware that the overnight precipitation eventually turned to rain which froze into a half-inch glazed crust on top. To push the front storm door open required enough force to shatter that crust covering the snow on the front steps.
The next thing that stood out about the overnight accumulation was the noise it made when walking.
Each step broke the crust and sent fragments sliding across the icy surface around us. Poor Delilah ended up standing in her own pee because it flowed in every direction on top of the glass-like surface beneath her.
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The horses seemed to navigate okay since their weight kept them from sliding on the surface, but they made a clattering racket when they walked around. Delilah occasionally had a paw slide out from under her if she didn’t break through on some steps.
Today we are due to receive 2 to 4 additional inches of snow on top of that crust. I’m not sure we will like the outcome of that scenario, but I’ll hold out hope it ends up not being problematic.
At least I have no pressing need to drive in it!
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Holiday Afterglow
A particularly precious aspect of family gatherings over a holiday is the physical assembling in collective display of love and affection 
for each other and the sharing of our immediate concerns and joys. I am greatly blessed to be a member of Cyndie’s family and together we are humbled to be parents of two incredible individuals in our daughter, Elysa, and son, Julian.
The previous two days were filled with hours of family time, regardless of the growing threat of the highly contagious coronavirus spiking once again around the world. We will serve as examples of the full vaccination/booster combinations to constrain any possible infections from severe illness or forced hospitalization if sickness arises in the days ahead. We hold no confidence that the latest omicron variant was completely absent the whole time, despite the lack of any symptoms or known contacts in those present.
Out of an abundance of caution, not all family members chose to participate in-person, in order to protect those with greater vulnerabilities to the threats of infection.
This morning, Cyndie and I are warmed by the residual energized emotions of heartfelt sharing with so many relations we dearly love.
My body feels hyper-nourished and a little over-sweetened by the feasts we gleefully enjoyed. Man, this family cooks and serves regal holiday meals.
The time shared at the home of Cyndie’s mom in Edina was a bit more emotional than usual due to activity underway to prepare the house for sale and the thought process and physical work of transitioning Marie to new living space at Friendship Village in Bloomington.
The next few days will involve intense effort by many hands to replace Christmas decorations with a much more austere simplicity in preparation for the realty company to film the full walk-through for online “open house” reviewals.
I will do my part by holding down the ranch so that Cyndie can offer her full-time attention to helping her brothers carry out the herculean task of processing in just a few days, lifetimes of accumulated family possessions.
In a perfectly timed gift after my final day of commuting to a day-job, Elysa gifted me the perfect shirt reflecting one of the responsibilities that will become an enhanced focus of my increased hours available to manage the ranch.
The EFRU has gained a new full-time member and I couldn’t be more proud.
I feel great pleasure every time I push our wheelbarrow out of the barn door and under the overhang with a calm greeting of, “Housekeeping!” for our horses to know what comes next. It doesn’t hurt that they smartly recognize what usually follows the tidying up of their accommodations. That is when their feed pans are served up.
Today is my half-birthday. December 26th is always a day I feel rather celebratory in the afterglow of Christmas magic.
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Seem Settled
The most recent batch of wild weather is now history. Yesterday, I cranked up the chainsaw and cut apart sections of the downed trees that obstructed our trails. All of them were already dead and have inspired me to consider being more proactive about tending to the potential hazards to our fences.
Speaking of our fences, I am surprised at the resilience of our high tensile wire fence. Despite the heavy pressure on the top wire of a section where one of the larger trees landed, no damage resulted. After I cut the tree into pieces, the wire returned to its original appearance. At our cold temperatures, I expected the stretch would have remained and required re-tensioning of the top wire.
Our horses seem settled into a winter routine. Their overnight inside the barn stalls protected them from the rain that dripped off fence boards, freezing into little icicles as the warmth transformed into more normal December temperatures.
We had a dusting of snow overnight last night that revealed the horses stayed out in the open while flakes fell. They had little white blankets on their backs when we showed up to serve their morning feed.
There was just enough early sunshine to trigger their habit of standing sideways to soak up the rays. I noticed steam rising off their bodies as the snow blankets began to melt.
In the time since I returned to the house and finished my own breakfast, the sky has become overcast. At this point, the horses are more inclined to lay down and roll around to knock the melting snow blankets off their backs.
They’ve now seen a full gamut of winter conditions interspersed with an uncharacteristic warm spell and spring-like thunderstorm and appear to be handling it with minimal stress. That goes a long way to relieve us from fretting over how to provide them the best care.
It is helping us to feel settled with our late decision to keep the horses here full-time. If they are happy, we are happy.
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Just East
The most severe portions of the storm front slid past just east of us last night. I can’t wrap my mind around how much snow I needed to move last weekend. Yesterday, when I got home from work, there was almost none left. The outrageously warm temperatures throughout the day and the first half of the evening were worlds away from the experience I was having just days before.
In the face of the many advanced warnings of a severe thunderstorm with extreme winds and possible tornadoes targeting our region, Cyndie decided to bring the horses inside the barn so they wouldn’t get soaked.
I arrived with two horses in their stalls and two nervously pacing around in the barn, unconvinced they should enter the confined space. In the face of their large nervous energy, Cyndie looked really small and at the mercy of their willingness to cooperate.
The longer it took Light and Mia to enter their stalls, the more upset Mix became. She worked herself into a tizzy that included a lot of kicking and flailing about. Unfortunately, although we were hoping to keep them dry by bringing them inside, Mix worked up a lather of sweat in her little tantrum.
Eventually, the two chestnuts stepped into stalls but it took a bit longer for all four of them to settle down. Swings started to demonstrate some anxiety that echoed the pacing behavior she enacted shortly after first arriving here with us.
I got the sense there was a lot of post-traumatic stress triggered by the unexpected confinement.
We lingered in the barn for longer than we wanted to, hoping our calm presence would help them to settle enough to take advantage of the generous servings of feed and hay awaiting their attention. When the time seemed right, we slipped out to feed the dog and cat up at the house.
Before the storm front arrived, we did a follow-up check on the horses and found them all calm and collected, so we turned out the lights and left them in place for the rest of the night.
When the lightning became visible and the thunder triggered Delilah into a barking fit, we invited our pets to join us in the basement to await our fate. A short while later, the first intimidating gust of wind stressed the house and whistled above the chimney. A few blinks after that, the worst was over.
We took a short walk outside to check for results near the house and found nothing out of order.
Happy is having a threatening weather forecast not come to be.
Crazy is having over a foot of snow disappear in a couple of days in December along with summer-like severe weather outbreaks.
We didn’t even lose power.
Counting our lucky stars, and thinking of those who suffered damage just to our east.
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Battening Hatches
In the shadow of the storm that ravaged the middle of the U.S. last week, the prediction for our area this evening is a little intimidating. High winds and December thunderstorms after record warmth in the afternoon have us more on edge than usual.
Any time it rains here in the winter I wince. Everything about it is wrong. It will likely be a night to bring the horses inside the barn to protect them from getting soaking wet ahead of the drop in temperatures to below freezing.
The insolating properties of their winter coats don’t work so well when wet.
How come penguins don’t have that problem? Polar bears? Whatever.
If we had hatches, we would be battening them down today.
Last night’s sky at sunset was just dramatic enough to feel like a hint of what lies ahead. I will be very happy to find out our concerns were unnecessary if nothing significant materializes.
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Snow Cope
In a day of glorious sunshine yesterday, I labored to move what felt like an endless amount of snow. I succeeded in burying the Grizzly 660 ATV over the edge of the gravel drive around the hayshed. That forced me to get the diesel tractor started, but it wouldn’t be any help unless I could get chains mounted on the tires.
Those chains have been hanging in storage on nails in the back of the shop garage for two years and are so heavy that I can barely lift them. That is one reason I have found every possible reason to avoid using them for so long. Alas, necessity forces muscles to do what it takes and chains quickly became an afterthought while attention moved to dragging the ATV out of the snow and carefully maneuvering the Ford tractor to scoop snow into small mountains without getting it stuck, too.
By the end of the day, I was about halfway done with cleanup. Today I resume clearing snow off the eaves of the house roof and then shoveling away everything that drops onto the deck.
The horses appear to be coping well with the quick transition to deep snow cover and tracks reveal they are making gradual advances on excursions out into the hayfield and back pasture.
The snow up around the overhang is well-trodden so it doesn’t seem all that deep but frozen clumps clinging above hooves provide evidence of the depth they are negotiating out in the fields.
We expect a few more days with highs above freezing and moments of sunshine that will give the horses plenty of opportunities to dry out between their journeys out into the powder.
Coping with all the snow is what we do, even when it requires effort at the limits of available strength at any given moment.
Robustness r us.
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Chronological Order
We did not experience deadly tornadoes last night, just a pleasant blast of big snow that has thrust us fully into what winter is usually like around these parts. Here is my photo exposé chronicling the views.
I did a little “pre-plowing” last night to break the project up into two episodes of medium depths instead of one massive task.
Just like the meteorologists were boasting, it was coming down at 1-to-2 inches per hour, but I would say the flakes were pretty small.
The pre-dawn light was enticing and the muffled sound in the woods was accented with sweet songbird melodies.
There was a hint of a labyrinth pathway under the fresh blanket of new snow.
The horses appear to have dealt with the storm well. We treated them to some sweet apple-flavored biskets after their morning feed to celebrate the novelty of their new deep-snow landscape.
There is a lot of plowing to be done between the barn and the hay shed. I didn’t spend any time last night pre-plowing that area. The driveway has about 5 new inches on it, not accounting for the areas where drifts will be much deeper.
The depths vary greatly depending on where we check but 11-inches was a pretty common reading I found up by the house.
There is a lot of snow to be pulled off the eaves of the roof. I would like to do that as soon as possible to take advantage of the bright sunshine we expect today but there is a lot of plowing that I’ll work on first.
It will be a gorgeous winter day to be outside, which is a good thing because I expect my snow clearing work will take me all day long to accomplish.
I will be thanking the universe the whole time that I am not cleaning up debris from tornado destruction instead.
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Short Shift
I had a very short shift of animal care last night while Cyndie was at her mother’s house for the night. Delilah seemed thrilled that we could walk through our woods again, now that the deer hunting season is over. The temperature was in the 50s(F) which seems really strange for any day in December, but not all that surprising now that the global climate is being cooked.
The warmth seems to have kicked our burrowing rodents into high gear. By the size of some of the fresh dirt piles showing up they must be building extravagant palaces beneath the turf. The soil they bring up looks so pristine. I really should collect it for future use. Not a stone to be found among the mounds of wonderfully sifted dirt.
Our habit is usually to just stomp the piles flat again but there was just too much dirt for that yesterday. I couldn’t pound them down enough so I decided to kick them around, instead. A little like kickin’ horse manure in the pastures.
I found the horses to be incredibly serene when we showed up to serve the feed pans with afternoon rations. It probably rubbed off on Delilah because she barely made a fuss while waiting for me to finish, barking only briefly at nothing in particular.
In less than an hour, all the animals were taken care of and I had the night free to lose myself in the first episode of the 3-part documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, directed by Peter Jackson.
Lose myself, I did.
I am eternally grateful to the fab four for allowing themselves to be filmed at the time and indebted to the camera operators and sound technicians who successfully captured so many hours of unscripted randomness. That we can all watch this unique footage some fifty-plus years later is remarkable to me.
With two more episodes to go, this documentary is the opposite of a short shift, and I will savor every drawn-out moment.
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Staying Put
Upon seeing Ward’s comment on yesterday’s post, I realized I haven’t written about our decision to keep our rescued Thoroughbreds through the winter. It’s actually been a gradual process for us to come to this conclusion. Recently, Cyndie affirmed our intentions with “This Old Horse” and this set in motion preparations for winter horse care.
They are fully supportive and provided contact information for some volunteer caretakers living near us who we didn’t previously know about. If we find ourselves needing coverage during a time we will be away, “This Old Horse” volunteers can step in.
We might update the horses’ feed rations or nutrition for the winter. “This Old Horse” will bring us heated water buckets for in the barn stalls. We will be contacting their hay supplier to coordinate a plan for when we will be needing more bales.
It is a wonderful partnership that serves the horses’ best interests and gives us the support that enables us to provide them a long-term retirement home.
We are very happy to report the horses are staying put for the indefinite future.
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Relative Something 