Posts Tagged ‘Perceptions’
Uncanny Perception
While I was cleaning up a monumental amount of manure in the area nearest the overhang of the barn yesterday, the temperature was so warm that I needed to shed my hat and every layer down to my base shirt, and then considered tossing that, too. It was really nice out. Our barn is positioned perfectly to receive maximum solar energy, and is located in a spot that is usually sheltered from wind. Whenever it is even moderately nice outside, it is always even nicer on the sunny side of that barn.
The horses were grouped downhill from me, inside the back pasture. They looked like they were in a precise formation, lined up facing west and standing still as statues while bathing in the bright sunshine. I think it was nap time.
Next time I looked up from what I was doing, my suspicion was confirmed. It was nap time, and two of them were now laying down. I rolled the wheelbarrow filled with heavy, wet manure and snow through the barn to get out of the paddock and over to the compost area. In that amount of time, a third horse had laid down, leaving Dezirea the lone mare standing.
They looked awesome. I wanted to capture a picture of the scene, but from where I was standing, there were branches and a fence in the way, so I headed back up and through the barn. I kept an eye on them as I stepped out from the overhang and prepared to dig out my camera.
As happens all too often, that’s when the opportunity was lost. Hunter and Legacy picked up their heads and put their front hooves on the ground in the classic prelim to the magnificent effort of getting back on their feet again. Cayenne was right behind them. I immediately noticed that all four of them had reversed focus and were now facing east.
I looked that direction and spotted movement in the trees across the road. A herd of deer was coming our way. I was impressed at having watched the horse’s uncanny perception in action. Long before I was aware, the horses sensed the activity and rose to their feet to see what was coming.
Five deer, followed by three more, crossed the road and bounced through our neighbor’s field, leaping high in artful succession to clear a high-tensile wire fence that I don’t know how they can see. There were some young ones in the group, and it looked like a lesson in ‘follow-me; do what I do.’ From my vantage point, it looked like they had jumped too early, but all eight made their way across without incident. The little ones were pretty cute.
I looked back in the direction they had come from to see if there were any more, or for a possible reason why they were moving in the middle of broad daylight. There was an eagle circling above those woods, but nothing else. The horses had followed the action and were now facing west again, looking toward where the deer had gone.
About the time I was thinking about getting the blankets off the horses, clouds moved in and blocked the sun. Almost immediately I wanted my shirt back on, and shortly thereafter, my hat. What a difference direct sunlight makes. I ended up leaving the blankets on for one more day.
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Horse Sense
I have been reviewing a wonderful book we received as a gift from our friends, the Morales’ in Guatemala, which describes exercises for ground training our horses. It is serving as a good refresher for me about being aware of my movements and demeanor when I am with the horses. I know to do this, but I’ve become complacent about doing so regularly and with conscious intent.
By habit, I still find myself saying that I have no horse experience, but recently Cyndie pointed out that this is no longer accurate. I now have over a year of experience. I tend to overlook that because most of what I have come to know has been gained through simply standing among the herd, feeding them, or cleaning up after them. I have had very little formal training.
So far, my intuition has served me well. The horses came to us already trained and well-mannered, so there wasn’t a need for us to do a lot of work. Primarily, we have endeavored to get them familiar and comfortable here in their new home, and with us as their handlers. My simple routines of caring for the horses seem to be working well for both them and me.
Be aware of your bearing
Your bearing, your overall manner and conduct, is a blend of your attitude and your physical carriage. Your demeanor is what makes you brighten up a room when you walk in or causes people to turn away from you. So it is with horses.
You carry a certain amount and type of light with you wherever you go, and when you approach a horse, that light can be repelling or attracting. Your bearing is the air about you, your outlook, your manner. With it, you might fool some people on occasion, but you never fool a horse.
101 Ground Training Exercises for Every Horse and Handler by Cherry Hill
Our herd leader, Legacy, is the one horse who I have a suspicion is inclined to test my level of knowledge. I don’t think I always catch it, but something told me to assert my authority when he, and eventually the others, would take bites of hay off the bale I was bringing into the paddock in a wheelbarrow.
I started bringing a boundary aid with me and have established that no one gets any bites while it is in my wheelbarrow.
They still tend to test whether that was a temporary rule or not, but it is easy to let them know my policy still stands. They clearly grasp the concept.
Something else about Legacy: he continues to wear his blanket a little askew. I think he knows it bugs me, and he won’t let me fix it. Maybe it’s one small way he can pretend I’m not the boss of him. I’ll give him that one.
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Reclaiming Routine
We are mostly back to our Wintervale routine again. The horses are grazing hay from the slow feeder boxes as if that is the way they have always done it. I’ve noticed that Dezirea and Legacy have no problem sharing a box and eating together, while Cayenne eats alone and Hunter appears the odd horse out. I don’t know whether she is forcing the situation or he is choosing this on his own. He eventually takes a turn, but waits for his opening.
For the time being, we are electing to let their herd behavior play out. Cyndie mentioned yesterday that she wants to get back out there as soon as her strength dictates to work on refining their manners. The horses have probably had a bit too much autonomy while she has been out of the game.
Yesterday we drove back to the cities (again) for her 6-week follow-up appointment with the surgeon who performed her hip replacement. I have a suspicion that he tells many of his patients this, but we are happy nonetheless that he said he wishes all his hip surgeries looked as “tight” as this one. He also seemed extremely pleased with the appearance of the healing incision.
Cyndie reported that she experienced the biggest boost from simply reading the physical therapy order written by the doctor’s assistant, which said, “Prognosis for full recovery: Excellent.“
The surgeon wants Cyndie to remain cautious for another 6 weeks to give her body every opportunity to grow around the artificial joint with a goal of avoiding any dislocations for a good 30 years on. She is cleared to drive and hopes to return to work on Monday. We spent time waiting at the Minnesota DMV to pick up the disability parking tag authorized by her doctor, only to learn we needed to get it from Wisconsin.
Then we were able to spend a bit more time waiting at the Wisconsin DMV office. They told her it was the craziest day with the most people they had ever served, and were short staff due to it being the day after a holiday. Luckily, and contrary to the all too frequently faced reality, Cyndie was greeted by an exceptionally pleasant and helpful clerk who shared these details while taking time to phone Cyndie’s doctor for information that was missing from the form.
Seriously! He didn’t send her off to fill out the form properly and come back at a later time. And at the end of a day that was their busiest ever.
Could this be the kind of benefit one experiences when they have sent love to those around them? We like to think so.
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Overwhelming Goodness
We are so lucky to have just had the best time with family and friends the last 4 days, upon which we returned home to find all of our animals so well cared for and the house clean, topped off with a fresh homemade loaf of bread from our house sitter, to boot.
On Wednesday, New Years Eve, we continued our charade of mimicking being up at Cyndie’s family lake place by inviting everyone to join us at the Original Pancake House for breakfast. It worked perfectly, especially with the added bonus of not needing to wash any dishes ourselves, afterward.
While visiting before our food arrived, we learned that Cyndie’s brother, Steve, would be hosting some of my oldest friends for a gathering to celebrate the new year. With our plans wide open, it became a priority to make it over to his place, but not before we stopped by to see her brother, Ben’s house. It was to be my first visit after completion of a substantial renovation they had done.
Thus our day was filled with added opportunities to be with family, and the evening provided a chance to relive some old Eden Prairie elementary school days memories. In addition, we shared a brief session of making music and singing harmonies, which harkened back to the earliest versions of our collaborations as budding rock ‘n’ rollers. That was a particularly precious treat for me.
After that late night, we arose at Cyndie’s parents’ house in the middle of the morning to prepare for a small group arriving to watch the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team play in the Citrus Bowl game. The good food and fine company were great, but the game fell well short of living up to our high hopes.
Cyndie and I were all packed and ready to high-tail it for home as soon as the outcome was final. This was the first time since we got our animals that we have both been away for more than a couple of days, and as much as we enjoyed the mini vacation, we were both beginning to miss them all.
Delilah gave us the best reception, and Pequenita made it clear in her own way that she was pleased to have us back. Andy had taken good care of everything and left us with a warmest of glows over our good fortune. We are lucky to have found him.
It’s a pretty nice way to start the new year and has us humbly counting the many blessings of overwhelming goodness gracing our lives today.
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Sibling Revelry
Despite a sloppy wintry mix of precipitation doing its best to dampen our spirits (sorry ’bout the pun), the gathering of Hays relatives was a joy and a half. As always happens to me at family gatherings of limited duration, the riches of access to siblings I grew up with is enticing, but the reality of our usual chaos leaves me wishing there was more time. It is hard to finish a story, and sometimes a single sentence, without interruption. My attention is too often wrenched away from the person I was listening to, and time flies by so fast, the hour of departure comes up way too soon.
Regardless, every moment was precious. Reconnecting after long periods of separation, with siblings who share so many tendencies and characteristics, is refreshing and invigorating. I tend to feel a kind of validation of who I am, discovering the brothers and sisters that I grew up with remain so similar in behavior and perspectives. I am among my people again.
I’m lucky that, as a family, we all get along. These are the people who inhabited Intervale Ranch with me from the day I was born until 9 years later, when our family moved out and the property was razed for development into an industrial park.
With technical assistance from my son, Julian, I was able to display a digitized version of a slide show I put together close to 30 years ago, which featured that old farm property. It provided an opportunity to exercise our memories, as we analyzed some of the images and compared recollections.
Meanwhile, there was non-stop food to be consumed, youngsters to get reacquainted with and entertained by, and horses to visit. Unfortunately, that last part with the horses was complicated by the weather conditions. They have been a little jumpy the last two days. I’m thinking there may have been some coyote activity in the area. That jumpiness was then compounded by wet precipitation which brought them to shivers.
As the bulk of our visitors wandered down to greet the herd, the attention suddenly needed to be redirected to preparing the stalls and moving the cold, wet horses inside. At least people were able to witness the process as it happened, and see the horses enjoy the reward of coming in to warm up and dry out.
Delilah was pretty excited to have so many visitors, but eventually adjusted to the clamor of all the conversations and quietly laid in front of the fireplace. She seemed more than happy to accept cuddles from Reese, one of the older grandchildren present.
It’s nice to see the kids doing well with our animals, because we see them as potential ranch hands in the years ahead. When their parents eventually start thinking about sending them off to some camp for the summer, we can put in a pitch for the valuable experience they could gain here, doing chores at Wintervale. Seems like a win-win.
Cyndie and I express our extreme appreciation to all the family members who made the trip through messy weather to bring our place to life with their love and energy. Here’s hoping we don’t let too much time pass before the next Hays family gathering materializes!
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Scary Sound
Last week, in the middle of the day when I was sitting in the house having lunch, there was a crash in the garage that was so loud that I was hesitant to even look to see what it was. It sounded like something had crashed against the inside wall, just feet away from where I was sitting.
I imagined a critter of some sort. It would have needed to be the size of a bison. I tried to think what hung on that wall that could have come loose and crashed down. If someone, or some animal, was in there, I wasn’t up for the confrontation. I kept eating.
After lunch, as I meandered about, washing my utensils and plate, throwing away trash, walking toward the door to toss recycling… I decided to take a look.
Nothing.
There was nothing amiss. No shelves tipped over. Nothing that had fallen off the wall. As I describe this, it occurs to me that I should have suspected a tree branch out back. That’s what it ended up being last time I went through this experience of trying to identify what caused the crash I heard that sounded like this.
With no evidence apparent, I went about my business and quickly forgot all about it …until much later when Cyndie arrived home. The second that I heard the garage door opener failing to lift the door for her, I realized what had caused that sound. The torsion spring that counter-balances the weight of the door had broken!
It took until yesterday to get a garage door service technician to show up. After two days of delay and rescheduling, I expected him to show in the morning to take measurements that would allow him to get the proper spring on order. When he didn’t show up, or call, I began to struggle with deciding to seek an alternative company.
Why is it so hard to get people to show up here to do work for us? Well, in this case, it is because he is an owner of a 2-person business and they have more work than they can handle expediently. I had left him a message, and was awaiting a reply that would help me decide about calling someone else for assistance.
Hours passed, in which I cleaned the garage, raked leaves, and chased Delilah through the woods after she darted out the door when I was hoping to give her some time off leash, running for tossed discs. She fooled me and took off like a shot, after squirrels in the neighboring woods, instead of for my stupid flying discs. Bad dog!
My faith in humanity was salvaged when Brian finally called in the late afternoon to report he was on his way and had picked up springs he thought would be the correct ones. I got a quick lesson in some very simple steps I could have done to maintain the doors in good working order. He tightened loose nuts. That’s something I could have easily taken care of, had I simply done a close visual inspection. He adjusted one track, and lubricated all the rollers and the spring, itself. I would not have known to do the spring.
Think about it. Every time the door opens and closes, the spring torques and it is rubbing against itself on both sides of each coil. Lubricate it. I can do that!
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Custom Workout
A while back we spread a thin base layer of gravel in the round pen and I drove on it with the 4-wheeler, hoping to pack it down. I’m not sure it helped. The turn radius that was required seemed to disturb the surface about as much as it packed it. I’d call it a draw. We let it set for a week or so, walked the horses on it some, then decided it was good enough. Time to move on to putting down layer-two: lime screenings.
It has been dry enough lately that the dump truck was able to back all the way through the paddocks up to the gate that opens to the round pen. I made a couple of test runs with our wheelbarrow to move material in, quickly deducing the tractor would be the more effective method. That meant I needed to remove a panel from the round pen, but that can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of effort. Tasks like that are why I don’t need to go to a gym and lift weights to maintain my chiseled physique.
Trying to maneuver an object that is too tall and almost too heavy to lift, while being careful to protect myself from exacerbating problems with degenerating discs in the lumbar region of my back, is an amazing workout on the rest of the body.
To be successful, there is a point when the too-tall object slowly begins to lean in an undesired direction that a person needs to give up trying to hold it upright, and let it gravity have its way. I pick my battles. It is a way to survive, allowing me to pick it back up and finish moving it where I want.
Strangely, I find the effort of moving the pile using the loader on the tractor almost as tedious as, and much less satisfying than, using the wheelbarrow. I suppose my unskilled technique with the machine is a primary reason. I expect I’d enjoy it more if I was proficient at it, but I don’t enjoy using it enough to spend the time necessary to master the nuances that currently evade me. Maybe in time…
When the entire round pen was covered with a thick layer of lime screenings, I experimented with a few methods of packing it. The tamper worked really well, and it was another great workout for the arms and shoulder, but I couldn’t justify spending the time necessary to do the entire surface by hand like that.
Dezirea made a gesture toward assisting me as I worked, but then chose to pack only a very small area by standing still for the majority of her visit.
I switched my energy to dragging a metal fence section across the surface, which gave it a nice appearance, but didn’t contribute a whole lot to packing it. Today I will bring in the 4-wheeler again to gently drive around, and drag that fence section. We’ll let time pass to help the surface settle and then order the delivery of sand to finish off the surface.
I’m mulling over how I will spread the sand with the tractor without disrupting the lime screenings at the same time. It will be a chance to practice taking my machine skills to a new level.
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Fire Fun
Sunday was no rest day from work, even though we were graced with a visit from family. We started a fire to burn a couple of tree root bundles along with the remains of the brush pile we chipped the day before. While that was burning, I used the chainsaw to cut logs out of the tree trunks that were too big for the chipper.
We had the ATV down there with the trailer full of tools, the tractor for lifting one of the tree roots onto the fire, and the pickup to carry all the logs back uphill for splitting into firewood. It looked like quite the activity center.
When visitors arrived, they were welcomed at the fire. While I stayed to supervise the burn, they headed up to the house for some lunch Cyndie had prepared. Bless her heart, she brought me down a serving of a fabulous stew/soup she made in the slow cooker using meat from our CSA share, courtesy of our neighbors at Walker Farms. It tasted extraordinarily good to my hungry appetite, standing in the great outdoors beside a stoked fire.
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Nieces and nephews brought all their youthful enthusiasm to interact with Delilah, walk the horses in the round pen, and help around the fire. Where there is fire, Cyndie’s container of s’more supplies is never far off.
Beck unknowingly handled the working end of the stick that had been used to stir the coals. Is it that obvious? Doesn’t really matter when there are marshmallows to be roasted.
The weather was perfect, with just enough wind to keep the fire energized, and just enough sunshine to feel comfortable outdoors.
After everyone was gone, and most of the equipment was put away, I walked back down to get the truck and to make sure the fire was done burning. It wasn’t, and I didn’t have the heart to extinguish it. It was a beautiful evening and I became mesmerized by the serenity of the fire, the horses nearby, the vista of fall colors, and the quiet that the end of the day offered.
Looking up at the trees that still block a view of our house, I noticed that we are at about 50% foliage. The last few days the leaves have been raining down heavily from some of the trees. The rest are not going to hold on to theirs much longer.
The season of more and more fire fun is upon us. Time to get that woodshed back up to cover our firewood. Probably also time for Cyndie to re-stock her tub of s’more supplies.
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Work Friends
Other than feeding our animals in the morning and again when I got home, yesterday was not a Wintervale day. I drove into the cities to spend a little time at the old day-job, allowing me the chance to again be with the fabulous people with whom I was previously employed. As wonderful as it has been to spend my full-time days managing our property, I suffer a great loss by no longer being able to work with the people who, in many ways, had grown closer to me than family.
Working 8-hours a day together for many years, through thick and thin, sharing responsibilities toward a common goal, has a way of bonding a diverse group of people. I wish I could bring them all home with me to help manage the ranch.
When done right, a healthy response to problems becomes a work of art. During my visit, an issue was discovered during final inspection, which was calmly investigated, and a solution devised. I watched the activity travel seamlessly from person to person, with ease. It was a joy to behold.
In the end, I don’t feel that I contributed any tangible value to the output of product. I served as a second set of eyes to review a completed new project. In fact, I was more of a hindrance to getting things done with all my chattering and catching up. They ordered pizza and we had a company gathering for lunch. (Don’t tell Cyndie, but it was her favorite from Gina Maria’s.) What’s not to like about a ‘work day’ like that?
It means a lot to me to not have to drive that long commute anymore. Despite the stop-and-go afternoon traffic coming home yesterday, the trip wasn’t annoying at all, because seeing them again had been such a rewarding pleasure.
They are no longer my work-mates, they have become friends from that place where I used to work.
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Relative Something 