Posts Tagged ‘horses’
So Happy
We were only away a few days but Pequenita seemed extra happy over our return yesterday. It seems as though she understands the routine of our leaving for days at a time and so maybe the occasion of our return is becoming something of an increased expectation for her.
She was rather comically clingy for the first part of the afternoon and then again when I sat on our bed and opened up my laptop.
I don’t mind giving her extended scratches when she shows so much appreciation for the touch, despite the limitations it creates for getting any real writing done.
The horses weren’t what I would describe as clingy when we showed up at the barn. Mix was in “bossy-mare” mode and preferred to pay amped-up attention to the two chestnuts, Mia and Light. They all looked noticeably more shaggy as their winter growth is filling in nicely.
Our weather is holding in “uneventful” mode while vast swaths of the country are experiencing events. The precipitation spinning around the low-pressure center in the middle states is staying just to our south. This buys us time to continue the process of winterizing Wintervale.
Today we plan to pull the pump from our landscape pond and cover the water with netting to capture leaves during the off-season. We also will remove the plastic awnings over the windows of the chicken coop and place solid plastic panels over the screens. Even though there won’t be any birds in there, we still want to keep it from filling up with snow.
We pulled in our plastic rain gauge to keep it from getting cracked when water freezes in it. We’ll be in the “in-between” season for a while, where precip can fall as rain and snow on any given day.
I’ll be happy to stay inside and give Pequenita scratches during weather like that, thank you very much.
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Just Being
So, I never did get around to draining hoses yesterday, but I did get to hang out with the horses and eventually wrestle with an unfamiliar image editing program.
After the horses finished cleaning their feed pans yesterday in the cold morning air, I noticed the three dark mares position themselves sideways against the sunlight to soak up some warmth. Mix, being a gray, didn’t seem to receive the same reward and thus showed no similar tendency to assume that position.
As the day warmed up, the tables turned. The horses have a good start on their winter coat, which is nice in the morning when it is cold, but when the temperature gets summerlike, those brown coats head for the shade.
Mix didn’t seem to be bothered at all.
Still, when nap time started to come upon them, Mix was quick to join the herd under the tree. They looked so peaceful there, I decided it would be a good time to stand among them.
I recorded a bit of my experience so you could enjoy a taste of what it was like.
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No wonder I didn’t get around to draining hoses. I did end up mowing some grass for another last time this season. Today, I am going for a bike ride with friends.
When summer temperatures linger into October at our latitude on the globe, it invites all sorts of summery behaviors.
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Little Motivation
This morning I dug out one of my winter hats –the one that is actually a Buff® made of half thick pile fabric/half ultra-stretch polyester microfiber– for the first time in over half a year. There was frost coating much of our fields. Cold temperatures feel so much colder this time of year.
Yesterday, I fell asleep on the ground in the sun while sitting with Delilah in wait for an appliance repair person to appear in the allotted window of time between 9 and noon. The warmth was soothing until Delilah would stand in the way and cover me with her shadow. The chill that instantly resulted was irritating.
The repairman showed up around 12:45, spun the basket of our washing machine by hand, and immediately pronounced the bearings were in need of replacement and that would require a new appointment on another day. Cyndie is wondering if we should bother with the expensive work or simply replace it with a new one for a little additional expense. I don’t have a good answer for the question except for my strong aversion to disposable devices.
I don’t know what it is but I am feeling little motivation to pursue any productive effort the last few days. A strong pull to just stand among the horses, or as I did yesterday, lay around with Delilah has become my most appealing notion.
It is warming up nicely and the sun is shining brightly so I am hoping to muster the energy to drain water from hoses and roll them up on a day when the weather is pleasant instead of waiting like I almost always do until it is ridiculously cold and the hoses stiff.
I’m wondering if getting my body in motion will result in it staying in motion for the bulk of today’s daylight hours.
I have recently updated system software which has rendered my old familiar image editor inoperable. Time to pick a new program and learn how to use it. That project doesn’t require my body to get in motion but it does beg for some motivation. Right now, that motivation comes from having initiated a 10-day free trial with the first potential replacement.
I loath the frustration of not being able to do what I want to in manipulating software, especially when I am unable to discern whether it is because the software simply doesn’t support the feature or just that I don’t know how to operate the program yet.
My primary life motivation leans toward avoiding frustrations as much as possible.
The lure of visions of standing among horses is strong. It would be frustrating to fight against that.
Draining hoses can wait until later this afternoon when it is even warmer. Software exploration can wait until after dark.
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Recent Scenes
Thanks to Cyndie for capturing these views of the last few days. Enjoy these visual examples of the world as it was revealed to her.
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Precious Moment
There wasn’t anything particularly special about my taking on the afternoon chores after work yesterday, other than it is usually Cyndie who fills that role on days I commute to the far side of the Twin Cities. She was on adventures of her own in the Cities yesterday, so I changed clothes when I got home and took Delilah out for a walk.
The rain shower I had driven through to get home had moved on but it had soaked things enough that the trees were subsequently dripping almost as fast as drops fall from a rain cloud.
Delilah veered off the trail in pursuit of some enticing scent. I had no intention of following her and stood my ground until she figured it out and retraced her steps back to me. She is so funny in the way her face communicates that she understands the drill and quickly resumes her position on the trail ahead of me, as if to demonstrate doing so was her plan all along.
When we came around to the barn, she marched inside to the spot we always hook her leash to and waited patiently while I tended to the horses.
They were all calm and quiet, and a little wet from the rain. After I dumped manure on the compost pile and came back to collect their empty feed pans, Swings approached me at the fence. I offered some scratches and a little loving attention.
She soaked it up and stayed engaged with me for an extended session.
The longer she lingered, the more I wanted to love her up with scratches and massage.
It became difficult to tell who was doing the loving and who was on the receiving end. The warmth was definitely flowing in both directions.
It was a truly precious equine moment.
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Maximum Transition
Wintervale is currently undergoing the full range of extremes in the transition from green tree leaves to none at all.
Very few of our trees seem to reach peak color on every branch at the same time. The majority become a mosaic of the original green that seems to resist the inevitable, the ultimate brilliance of autumn color, and the shriveling past-peak remnants bound to fall to the ground within hours.
The tree in the above image was sporting the most vivid reds two days ago. Yesterday, I noticed some of them just kept getting a deeper and deeper red until becoming almost black. Most of those have now fallen to the pavement below. Yet, there is still a limb or two with completely green leaves.
We experienced a couple of heavy rain showers yesterday, which surely contributed to bringing down batches of leaves en masse.
We are socked in with low cloud cover this morning which effectively dulls every view, but despite the few trees that have dropped many leaves in the last 24 hours, it still looks pretty special. I captured a long view yesterday before all the blue sky and sunshine completely disappeared.
The horses are growing their winter coats and the extended warmth and humidity we are experiencing had them sweating. The swing away from that to this morning’s cooler, wetter, and cloudier conditions provide a welcome change.
The season of bare tree branches is nigh.
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Well Kept
Keeping most things neat and tidy is one area where I am happy that Cyndie and I tend to agree. Overall, we strive to avoid allowing items to pile up around the property unnecessarily. If something can fit in the shop-garage, barn, or hay shed, it should get put away regularly. Brush piles should not exist indefinitely. That’s why we have a chipper!
Now if we would just get around to using it one of these days.
It’s interesting that we both independently agreed about allowing the knocked-over tree to remain in the paddock for a while after it fell. Likewise, that we each came to the same conclusion when it came time to remove it.
The old scratching post is now just a pile of cut-but-unsplit firewood.
While I was making the afternoon pass through the paddocks to scoop poop after serving up the horses’ feed pans yesterday, I felt a sense of satisfaction for the pristine confines we provide them. Cyndie and I are in firm agreement about regularly cleaning up manure from within the paddock fences.
We leave it where it lands out in the fields, but under the barn overhang and throughout the rest of the paddocks, we pick it up daily. It’s a way to reduce the throngs of flies that manure attracts but it also offers a level of respect to the horses that they get to live in a cleaner environment.
It makes the space more inviting for us to spend time communing with the herd there.
You know the old saying… cleanliness is totally loveliness!
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Long Approach
Cyndie was walking Delilah on the perimeter trail and paused to take a picture of the latest version of fall colors developing along our landscape. Then the horses noticed her. Cyndie kept taking pictures of the next few moments.
“Hello there!”
Of course, it was Mix and Swings who approached to see what Cyndie was up to. Light and Mia just kept grazing where they were.
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Middle Two
As long as I’ve set off on the topic of featuring the horses residing with us since April, I would be remiss to stop at only the youngest and oldest. In the middle are Zodiacal Light (Light) and The Yellow Sheet (Momma Mia).
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These two chestnuts prefer each others’ company more than hanging with the other two horses. At the same time, when we moved Swings and Mix inside the barn for their turns with the vet for teeth work, Light and Mia became very unsettled at the separation, whinnying and hurriedly moving about.
In addition to similar coloring, they share equal subserviency to Mix’s demonstrations of dominance over them, accepting the situation with little complaint.
The easiest way to tell them apart is by the markings on their faces. Light has a “round star and stripe” and Mia sports an “irregular stripe.” We usually need to wait for them to turn around to look at us before we are sure which horse is which.
Mia is a little smaller than Light and she’s the older of the two. Born in California in February of 2000, Mia is about 63 in comparative human years.
Sometimes I think she looks older than Swings. Mia reminds us of our previous horse, Dezirea for her acceptance of the lowest position in the hierarchy of the herd and for being quick to react startled by many things.
Light was born in British Columbia in the spring of 2003. She shows a bit of caregiver trait in looking after the sensitivities of the other horses. She was actually rescued twice from kill pens, one time with a foal at her side.
Light and Mia are the perfect middle two for the herd, creating a wonderful balance of four different horses that together project a precious equine energy.
The rescue organization, This Old Horse, did a masterful job of selecting them as good candidates for our land when we expressed interest in the possibility. It’s been only five months that these horses have lived with us and with each passing day they seem more and more comfortable with the situation.
I think it would be fair to say the same thing about us.
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Swings Photographed
I didn’t set out to capture portraits of all the horses the other day. Moments after capturing the image of Mix that I posted yesterday, I turned to find Swings uphill from where I was standing. I had to change my position a couple of times to remove my shadow from the frame. The result provided a shadow of Swings that, for me, makes up for the other aspects of the shot I don’t like so much.
The background robs some of the definition her outlines deserve but I’m not discarding the image just because of that.
I like the way her shadow stands up against the wall behind her.
I like how the shadow appears to have its own personality.
I like how the outline of the head of the shadow is better defined than her actual head.
I like how Swings’ physical features and coloring come through looking totally defiant of her actual age.
Swings’ full Thoroughbred racing name is “Gate Swinger.” She was born in Kentucky and started racing as a two-year-old. Over her four years of running she earned $116,812. Swings is currently 26-years-old. That is approximately 75-and-a-half in human years. She is the oldest of the four now living with us.
When the horses arrived at Wintervale last April, one of the things we noticed about Swings was anxiety that led her to pace back and forth along a short distance of the paddock fence, from the barn overhang to the gate through which they arrived. At one point, I tried walking with her from outside the fence. She gave me a look like I was weird, but kept pacing.
I changed my tactic and switched to walking opposite her direction, back and forth so we passed each other in the middle. It caused her to give up for a while, but then she soon returned to pacing. I saw the other horses occasionally interrupt her pacing, as if to break the spell she was under.
After a few days her anxiety and that habit of pacing seemed to dissipate. Now she seems like the calmest of the four of them. As the eldest mare, she could easily take the role of herd leader because she presents herself as the most regal, but she doesn’t show a need to hold that complete dominance over all the others.
In fact, the order of hierarchy among the herd is a little complex. Swings will take over Mix’s feed pan in a gesture of dominance and Mix holds command over both Light and Mia, but Light is able to move Swings off her pan without any fuss.
The average life expectancy of Thoroughbreds is 25-28. Swings looks so good and has settled into such a zen-like calmness now that we will be very surprised if she doesn’t thrive well beyond the average range.
I will have plenty of opportunities to capture a picture of her that properly reveals how gorgeous all her features really are.
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Relative Something 