"H"orse musings

I get to see my horses on this farm way more than in SD , I think its the flatness and the fact that the paddocks wrap around the house....grin. In any case with two turned out together in a mini (that's pronounced "my-knee" for the uninitiated!) I get to see interactions, normal horsey ones. The kind we forget all about living as segregated as we did in CA. This morning i wish i had my camcorder out. Boo was having cuervo execute a perfect turn on the haunch both directions at a walk. Both with their ears forward. They had just finished a good mutual back scratch( I know! Boo letting some other horse lips touch her!) and Boo turned him one full round right, then one full round left, then he backed out of her grasp and walked away. Very cool! And done is such harmony. No tail swish, no ear pin, no worried eye....it motivates me to become better in my fluency of the language of horse. Where there is understanding, there is perfect compliance. Johns mantra" If he knew it he would do it!" So true dahling!

Way back in the first posting I mentioned my trailer loading with Cuervo,( the one practice before we took off that included the trailer itself.) and how cool it was. Even though all we accomplished trying to load in the back of my trailer was two feet in before i put him up. Well, let me tell you what i learned about my little boy. First of all he tried from the second we got up there until we where done. To top it off, we had no issues (except one, thunder storm in Tucumcari, came out under the chest bar after a huge crack of thunder, good thing he is short, he missed his withers entirely and caught the top of his butt) with the trailer the rest of the trip. Was i worried about this, not practicing with the trailer, not at all, we have mad leading skills so i knew the added distraction of the trailer would be a non issue. Now am i going to get him so good that i can sit on top of my trailer and ask him to load up...well maybe ill start from the ground and after a couple of beers or a nice mojito try for something higher! grin. But the answer is "yes" i am. Its hot here so i have all summer for ground work, and I'm going to incorporate some really fun stuff that ill get on tape for YouTube. So stand by on that front.

Now back to the other thing I learned about my Cuervy. He showed me a few nice levades during our trailer practice, I was using the rope halter to load him in. As most of you know he is my bitless boy. Anyway the levades happened during a "come along" type tension on the rope. He was not pulling back or trying in anyway to get away. He was in fact not moving at all except for holding both front feet off the ground in a very controlled manner. If i asked him to move from his hip his feet went forward ( and several different directions grin) but with pressure from the rope halter, which is mild and was less than a pound he went up. I even did this with out the trailer and got the same results. What does this mean, well several things, first and fore most John always said to teach a horse to rear on command you can use a tie down or other head restraining device( isn't that scary to know? and people ride in these things...) anyhoo, I stored it away for future levade practice....but it also made me think of the setting I had my rambo bitless bridle on. I have it on the medium control where it crosses under the jaw on both reins. I started there not wanting the "extreme control" option as Cuervo is sensitive but not trusting the side pull option to be clear enough to teach a good stop. Well, silly me! As usual the human reasoning is flawed. What I should have done is start on the mildest option and gone from there. What the "levade" showed me is that, I have given cuervo the lip service of being sensitive but due to my own lack of confidence in the "experiment" of going all bitless beginning to end, I didn't give him the opportunity to teach me how sensitive and responsive he could be. So we go to the side pull option as soon as we start back up working in the bridle, and Ill keep you all posted.

Here's the thing that i wish all my horsey friends could have seen, the fact that, in a trailer loading session, we got some good trailer loading practice( and some of you would have been disappointed, because he did not get on all the way....) but we also learned some really valuable lessons in other areas of Cuervos learning. That's the crux of it really, is to not be so focused on what we are hell bent on achieving that day, to be AGENDALESS (a quote from Harry Whitney) so to speak and open to what the horse can TEACH US about himself. In this way we can achieve that perfect turn on the haunch, just like Boo gets him to do in the field. Its learning the nuance of the language. One step closer to becoming fluent......

Technical difficulties

We are doing really well, honest, its not to hot although it is hot, we haven't washed away in a rain storm or anything, our wireless network is not cooperating soooooo no blog, limited email, limited contact with the masses! pardon our dust! grin Its a work in progress.....



Activities lately: working on the dog fence which is almost done, walking, job interviews,( wee!) hay hunting, eating at restaurants that are OK, and trying out massage envy on the east coast....the jury is still out, we have other masseuses to try there in hopes of finding ones like Robert and Eric in San Marcos...we miss you guys!



next few blogs will be photo essays, i have two in the works (one horsey) the other about cemetery's...there are lots of dead people here! Off to perspire....

So we're building this dog fence....

Tim and I are building the dog yard. YES , I am helping. So all you nay sayers out there just help yourselves to a can of shut the hell up. Today I was given the illustrious job of measuring where the boards go across the posts and marking those out. I was also to clamp blocks of wood onto the posts for guidance. Yesterday I wheeled cement around and poked poured cement with a stick to get it flush around the posts. Obviously I'm not using the power tools as every ones limbs would be in grave danger but I do what I can. grin

In any case, its all taking shape and will be a grand thing for the doggies when completed. Mother Nature is helping Tim pace himself. Mr gettin' it done has had lots of rain showers to slow his progress but that's a good thing. Nothing wrong with working all morning and cutting off at 2 or 3 pm I say. I try to keep him well supplied with Gatorade, and water when he'll drink it. Hes given up caffeine.....pick your selves up off the floor....he has and for what ever reason is having no withdrawals. Bastard! I had head aches for weeks. But we have the fridge stocked with caffeine free soda and decaf coffee....beats me, I'm just glad its his idea. Now if I can just get him to learn to "sit a spell" we'll be doing something! Yesterday he sat for about 5 minutes on the porch swing with me before hopping up to go inside for this or that. He returned to find me with my pants around my ancles. Not what you ar thinking gutter brains, No i had a ant biting me! It crawled off the swing into my drawers and was taking little nips all the way down my back side so i had to see what it was first....sheesh! Any way he said he was pretty sure there are rules agains dropped trau. on front porches and I said thats what he thought as everyone knows a good pee off the side of the front porch is living! He had no reponce to that and went inside! Poor Tim, we'll make him a southerner yet.

Spiderwick? Dragonfly Pond? Sandy bottom?

This place screams for a name, but since its not ours there wont be an official one. We are torn of course between something complimentary and something more descriptive! There are bugs lots and lots of bugs, biting ones, flying ones, colorful ones, slithery ones, ones we don't want to meet barefooted in the damp grass. There are lizards, toads, frogs, snakes and worms.

There are wasps a plenty. This place is a coastal swamp essentially and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if we see a gator sunning on the drive one of these days. In fact I queried Chester of two men and a truck about the possibility of gators in residence in the pond, and he said" I dunno stick yer little toe in..." har har!, then he goes" On second thought there may be snappin turtles, dont go stickin nothin in thar." Yikes turtles more fierce than gators....greeeeeaaaat! alrighty then, flip flops back in the closet!

One thing, we are having trouble with? fire ants...the stuff to kill them all dead apparently kills fish, birds, old people, and small children. Just the kind of thing I want my dogs and horses around. Not to mention the chickens. So there might have to be some pyromania happenin he-ah. Another Chester suggestion was to douse the ants with gas and set them a' fire......I'm beginning to worry about Chester! grin. However gasoline tends not to harm wildlife after it all burns up...well, the wild life not soaked and set alight at least. I was willing to live and let live with these ants you know, but one mound of the little biting f***ers became two, became three ,became two hundred in the course of a week. And they don't play, they swarm and bite like bastards! I'm off to fill the gas can! grin Speaking of fire, we have smelled smoke twice, people burn stuff here, legally! Tim made a comment that was pretty profound "Strangely the smell of smoke doesn't fill me with dread here!" yup, maybe a few more times of smoke filled nostrils and my stomach will stop clenching at the thought of escapeing safelty with all the critters.

Its all about me.....blah blah blah

Tim and I this, Tim and I that.....well, now for the really important stuff. How are the animals doing? In particular the horses and chickens who inspired the name for the blog in the first place! grin, so If you are one of the "family" followers I'll put an"H" somewhere in the title of each blog that is mostly "horse -centric"! you can skip on over those blog entries.....grin

I was brushing Boo this morning and do you know what I discovered? SOCKS...two hind socks! I haven't seen those in 8 or 9 years. The constant DG dust, piss tail and general funkiness of the whole lower half of horses in SD disguised those puppies for a good long while. I was so excited I brushed them out for about 5 minutes, something the BooBoo is enjoying again. Boo has never been a big fan of the brushing. The constant sun burning and abrasive soil in SD made an even worse case for the practice out west. Here though I have this little allie called mosquito who together with his friend humidity helps make Boo a very willing grooming participant. In the few weeks we have been gone, her coat is super short and slick, and her mane and tail can be combed through with out half a bottle of frizz ease. Her hooves are smooth, if not a little soft in the soles and her poor ears which where always, flaky and inflamed are now a pretty, smooth, pink again! She seems at home even with dusk bugs chewing on her. The first night it was rough. Both horses where flying around the field away from pine flies, horse flies and mosquitoes. So I brought them in until dark. Not the most convenient option nor the most favored by the equids even though it was hell being bitten at least they where outside. I coated them in every spray I had. It acted more like marinade as none of the 4 types (yes 4!) helped! So, the next day I hosed them off, soaked them in refreshmint by absorbine and put them out with a light misting of calm coat. Now that stuff works! Not their fly spray mind you, their itch treatment that smells like lavender, added some water to it and misted away. Yep, the horse fly landed but didn't nibble...Boo gave him the business end of her tail and it was done. Now they stomp a bit and roll in the sand once or twice but there is no running like the hounds of hell are after them.

Fly sheets and masks, I learned very quickly can not be used here, first of all they are for flys, which we have zero of. Secondly, with the damp, they rub immediately so after one ill fated night in clothes both pony's came in with chest rubs to the skin and facial hair removal to the skin. It was shocking! So i packed away the twenty nine sheets they both have and hope for better luck with the winter clothes.

Boo and Cuervo are learning to live together, Cuervy is so tolerant that her mock rhino charges with flailing hip threats, dont get much of rise out of him. He did get knocked for a loop the other day when he thought a rear might impress Queen Boo into toning it down. Well what he doesn't know is that nothing impresses the Boo, and once that bulk gets going, stopping it takes more than the few steps he gave her to reconsider her charge. That hip came around and WHAM! both of his hind feet left the ground. Lucky for him hes athletic. He went hopping off like he meant to! grin. She took his hay pile and peace reigned once again. Ah, a mixed herd, such entertainment!

We will get back to fun with ponies when the dog and horse fence are done and the chicken coop is complete....Its pretty hot for to much of anything most of the day, but there has been an evening or too where riding would have worked out....there's time, so much time....

Pigs and Perspective

What to my wondering eyes did appear yesterday on a early run to get hay? Well a black shuffling creature that i thought at first was a pygmy black bear or a really fat dog. Turns out it was a pig, a free roaming, pot belly pig. A human less, free roaming, black ,shuffling, pot belly pig, who apparently cleans up all our huskies poo on his/her nightly excursions.....narsty! In any case it posed for a picture as i couldn't be sure that i wasn't seeing things.

Hay retrieved we set out to find Costco and drove all the way to downtown Wilmington...oooooooooh, very pretty, very old and will have to be explored more fully on another visit. According to our very full of himself waiter,( he must have been in Dawson's creek or something...called himself semi famous, er, take a pill buddy) Wilmington is the up and coming film town. Julia Roberts and John Travolta live here, well la te da...giggle. Oh wait do any of them have horses? It was a nice jaunt and even though Tim and I where gone all day, we looked at the mileage when we returned home and we had only gone 56 miles! That's a run to sprouts and back for us in SD. We couldn't believe it. Did i mention how much we love this place?

Back to the crab pot for us tonight, i think that may become our new jags! that pound of shrimp went away awfully quick! we haven't even tried the clams, or crabs or oysters! sigh, it was wonderful.....not a salad in sight either! oh well..... ill eat one for breaky.