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While Scooter is in hospital with pneumonia, I do not need a sick Tiger.  But he kept lying down yesterday, as we spent all day long putting a floor in the tackroom, and extending the walls up to the ceiling in a bid to keep the arena/hay dust out of everything we own.

 Char worked, cleaning a year’s worth of thick, fine dust off of everything I’d hauled out onto the drive, until Guy brought her a disinfectant (having gone with M to Home Depot for supplies).  She used the stuff, and it burned the first two layers of skin off her hands.  Fun.

So she spent some time riding Dustin - first bareback in halter, then with the saddle, since he wanted to trot.  And you don’t trot on Dustin without a nice think pad and a saddle between you and his spine.  That was when we noticed that Tiger was dull, and kept lying down. 

 At first, I thought it was just the nice afternoon.  So I sat on him, later to be overcome with guilt, thinking he hadn’t been feeling well.  I rode him up, and it was cool - Murphy applauded me,  sitting on an “unbroke” pony as he went from supine to upright.  And it was actually really fun.  Once he was upright with me still sitting him, he got confused.  Started to take a step forward.  Stopped.  Just like - “What am I supposed to do now?”  Then I slid off.

 Later, I could see that his flank was all tucked up, and kind of rippling from time to time - to the tune of interesting gastro intestinal noises.  Temp: 99.9  Respiration: 32/min  Heart rate: 36/min  Capillary refill: 4 secs

So I put him in the jail with water, and we all went home, cleaned up and went to Cocolitos for birthday dinner.  Took some to the kids in the hospital.  Went back to look for poop, which I was prayerfully grateful to find.  No horses dying of a torqued bowel tonight.

Today, I checked Sophie’s feet after their 40 minutes on the grass.  There is definitely a pulse in all four now.   Quick but not pounding.  I’m not sure how to go.  Tomorrow, I may keep her off most of the time.  I also need to check the others.  The wild bunch.

G read that a woman was killed, run over by her spooked horses when she went out to water them.  It could happen any day to anyone.  The other day, I was brushing Tiger, and followed him into his stall on the end of the barn.  Jetta was in there, too.  I had my back to the inside of the barn, one eye on Jetta, who suddenly ducked her head and turned away.  And I was being hit from behind, shoved, the way a wave shoves you, that great uniform strength just moving you forward.

 I yelled, shocked to find that somehow, Zion had gotten into that space with us, behind me.  xLike, why hadn’t I noticed?  And when Dustin took three steps out of his stall, all hell broke loose with these three, crowded into the 12 x 12 with me.  Zion pushed me about three steps before I was able to slip to the side.  When he squeezed out past me, I slapped him hard with the shedding blade, yelling.  

And then I went after the surprised and now dismayed Dustin.  ”Don’t you MOVE when I’m in the middle of the rest of them,” I shouted, admittedly unfairly, shaking my finger in his face.When I turned around, there was Sophie, standing over at the far side of the jail, watching it all.  And behind her, only eyes and ears showing over her back, was Zion, evidently hiding from me.  The dork.

Not dead then, me, today.  And it was just luck. 

By the way, I thought it was Tiger who was taking the rope off the gate to the jail.  

I tie it in a square knot every day making sure that jail doesn’t come open and trap one mare in there where the others can get in and kick her into a corner.

But it hasn’t been Tiger.  It’s Zion.

 I saw him yesterday.

Scalliwag. 

I have been dying to put the horses out on the grass.  But frankly, there hasn’t been any.  Usually, I start the season’s feeding in the third week of April.  But not this year.  Our winter left prodigious amounts of snow on the mountain, but the spring brought no rain.  Not for over a month.  

The grass is deep green, which is right, seeing as I dragged that spreader all over it in late March, but where the blades would be a foot high by now, I barely have a lawn’s height anywhere on the entire acre.  Last week, I lugged that sprayer all over for the second time, looking for thistles and mare’s tail, and got quite a bit.  But as I put the fence posts in this week, I found tons more.  I am not pleased with Adam for having us thrown out here where the weeds never seem to lose.

I had enough hay to tide me until the second cutting of alfalfa.  Much confidence.  Wondering where I’d put the left over when then new harvest came in.  Not now.  I’m lucky if I can make it till then.  So last week, I started putting up the electric fence, in hopes that irrigation would kick things in to gear - assuming the water ever started coming down the ditch.I was late getting ready anyway - what with M leaving for South America and the trip to Disneyland, and G leaving Kansas City for the East and my Aunt being 88 and delicate.  But now, after doing a little every day, I have got most of the fences up, and I have only two more days on the charge for the solar energizer.

I let the five of them out on the grass Tuesday, May 6th, for fifteen minutes, which was really more like twenty to twenty five.  I had checked Sophie’s feet for a pulse before that and had felt absolutely nothing.  When I brought them back in - and they were surprisingly obedient, which is to say, I only had to yell for five minutes and swing ropes and chase back and forth - they ran back down the drive to the arena quite handily.  But I didn’t get down there myself, what with having to chase Sophie along, so they hit the arena bucking and throwing their heads, circled the thing and came pounding right back out again.  I wasn’t stupid enough to think they wouldn’t run through me, so I was philosophical about it; I’d closed the gate to the grass, so all they could do was get down there and moon around, staring over the fence, before things heated up again.  And sure enough, here they came back again.Zion actually seemed to be listening to me.  He was the first to give in, and led the charge back up the drive and into the arena.  Sophie lingered, eating the grass on the verges till I fetched her with a personal invitation.  I put her into the jail - well, she chose it - and once I had her eating a little hay, took her pulse again.The pulse in the white foot is a little easier to feel every day.  

Today was their third day on the grass.  I’ve fed them each a flake of hay in the morning to fill them up.  Then let them out as time allowed - an hour after the hay the first day, but several hours later the next day - it was the first day of irrigation, which means I was in the middle of a day-long anxiety attack, and the first thunder storm since last year.

 I was at the hospital with Scooter - four days old and with pneumonia already.  I asked Stan if he’d open Hinckley’s gate and bring the water down for us, which he was glad to do.  But as it turned out, John had shut the water off way up at the river not an hour before we needed it (WHY?????).  So Stan went to the river and turned it down.An hour later - still no water in our ditch.  Poor Stan went up and down the main ditch, looking for the danged water, which seemed hung up between Goodmans and our place - while the thunderstorm raged around him, pounding him with rain and hail.  He gave up after an hour.  Fifteen minutes later, the water, with all the power of the river behind it, came roaring out of the gate, pushing a massive plug of dead leaves and trash in front of it.  All of which is now strewn all over my pasture.But we did get the water.  We got two inches of rain in two hours, and two cubic feet of water on top of that.  If the grass can’t deliver after that, I’m quitting the business and buying rabbits.

 No.  Not rabbits.

Anyway, Sophie is already reacting to the grass, so I’m going to have to go very carefully with her.  The pulse is still slow and still faint.  But it’s there.  Dratted girl.  But everybody looks in good weight at this point - including old Jetta.  I’m not seeing ribs.  The Baby, Tiger/Hickory - he’s gotten so tall so fast, I’m not surprised that he’s the thinnest of all of them.  We’ll see how it goes.

 I have about eight bales left. If the grass is strong, it may be enough to carry me through.

Why do I do this to myself?  Maybe because of Zion, who ran up the drive today, and then stood there behind the open arena gate, watching me as I came up the drive, his white blaze all attention.  He waited patiently there, as though it were a fence, making no move to escape, which he easily could have done.  And so I gave him an extra handful of alfalfa leaves.  

Went to feed this morning and found that Tiger/Hickory/Baby had slashed his face on something.  A couple of months ago, I got there in the morning to find the jail gate off its hinges - didn’t take a forensics team to figure that one out: somebody had his face under the gate, reaching out those lips to get every single molecule of hay that had been flipped outside of the stall.  In came Dustin.  Up came the startled head - bang into the bottom of the gate - over to the hinge, which sheered off about three inches of hide up the nose.That little patch on his golden face is now blackish.  And I’m sure this new slash - another strip of hide gone, too, too close to that eye - will grow in dark.  He’s going to look like an etcha-sketch.  This time, I can’t figure out how he did it this time.Ah well -  

So last night, Geneva and G and I went to a two hour lecture about laminitis, presented by a vet prof from Colorado State.  We kind of hadn’t expected that many people to show up, but there had to have been two hundred people or more in that room - everybody from chicks in mullets and chewing tobacco jackets, guys with full beards, pearl buttons and cowboy hats to older women in crocs and guys who looked like doctors.
It was an interesting lecture.  He had a power point (yawn), and he went over the same four points about five different times.  And in the end, what he had actually said for two hours was: we don’t really know anything.  The treatment is even swinging back to age-old treatments  (stand the horse in a cold stream to take down the inflammation) once looked down on as just silly. 

But the point was that there is hope, and there are ways to treat horses.  You don’t have to lose a horse once he’s actually gone chronic - which is what they call it when the bone has separated from the hoof wall.What fascinates me about this is the intricate and unlikely construction of the hoof, and its even less likely attachment to the coffin bone.  They are actually more or less zipped together, interfacing ripples lined with little  - I don’t even have the vocab for this.  How a thousand pounds of dynamic horseflesh can be supported by those fragile, complex laminae, I don’t understand - unless you can divide the weight of the horse by the number of ripples in the laminae, each ripple taking part of the pressure of the load. 

By the way, a long toe is a dangerous thing, putting far more pressure on that delicate connection than a normal toe will do.  I went home to look at Sophie’s feet.  I thought that I saw founder rings on her hooves this morning - very tiny ones, four of them.  But when I looked this afternoon, I didn’t see them.  She’s cool and there’s no digital pulse at all in the fetlock, so for now, that girl is sound. I’m going to have to check her every day from the moment it starts to warm up for certain.

 Hickory kicked me today.  Not because he meant to.  He was trying to scratch an itch on the fetlock of his right hind - you know that awkward way they hold the leg up, then reach around hard with the head, till they can scratch with their teeth?  I always try to help.  And I got in there and started scratching.  At first, he was puzzled - still trying to get to it with his teeth.  Then he just stopped and watched me scratching, that leg suspended up under his stomach.  I gave it a good going over - then suddenly, the foot just popped over and caught me sharply on the outside of the knee - like the scratching had just felt so darned good, his leg just jerked.

First time I’ve ever been kicked, and it was purely my own fault. 

 Mark Twain said, “I’ve done eleven good deeds in my life and lived to regret every one of them.”I think the pony was embarrassed.  But we made it up together later. 

We took the guys off the pasture today. We had to. The horses were beginning to look like professional mud-wrestlers, and the pasture more like ground beef than a grass bed. Taking them off sounds easy. It’s not. We had to go buy a new panel for the expanded and wonderful new Jetta Jail, and another gate, then we had to switch one of the big gates with the panel to the south of it (because of the newly expanded and wonderful Jetta Jail) - which means we (and I mean G) had to dig the panel and gate out of six inches of something like permafrost.

When we got that finished, we unloaded the new panel and gate. Then we had to take an ice pick to the last panel, which had wintered on the north side of the barn, and was three feet in ice. At that point, we opened the driveway gate. We have a gate way down at the end, where the drive meets the road, and the driveway is lined with fences. But it’s always thrilling territory to our five guys, who discovered the open arena gate and filed through, eyes huge - as if they’d never escaped before in their lives.

They headed happily down the drive, sure that there must be grass to find, and spent a while sadly standing with their heads over the closed gate at the end of the drive, gazing longingly at the drippy, muddy pasture they’d just left. Then they gave it up, and the rodeo began. Suddenly, here they came, one after the other in a perfect line, pounding back up the drive like lions were after them - heads up, tails up, blood up. They galloped by (no cantering here), back through the arena gate, hooves throwing mud everywhere, and began a mad spring dance. They kicked. They reared. Sophie, who is our most heavy and awkward horse jumped all four feet off the ground at once. They thundered out onto the poor pasture, gouging and slipping and whirling and chasing, then back into the arena, down the driveway, back up the driveway and through the arena into the pasture again.

My Zion stopped his floating trot (tail so high, it was curving over his back like a Malamute’s) and stood tall, alert and lovely, staring at me and doing a series of short, explosive snorts. Blood up indeed. His legs were set to run, his ears were pricked, he was ready for anything, and so was Dustin.

Then we started assembling the jail. And everyone had to come in and examine the tools, and smell the new gate, and gaze in a puzzled manner at the panel which was now where the old gate had been - and check out the old gate in the new place, smelling it, and maybe bravely stepping through it onto the pasture. Tiger could not leave us alone. He wanted to know everything. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know how. He wanted to be inside the new space, and outside the new space, and he wanted to open the new gate with his nose.

It was a very exciting morning. At the end of it, Jetta had a new house, better than a jail, and was safe, eating her dinner, from all gelding or mare depredations. Only one thing I’d forgotten. And since I didn’t go to the pasture to feed the next day - sending the boys out into the drizzle and rain, I didn’t remember for a full day. Last night, more than half asleep, this flash of knowledge came into my head - like a sudden instant messenger thing: Jetta had no water.

I sat up, grabbed Guy, and at one in the morning, went out to rescue the poor girl. I felt like trash. It hadn’t been hot. In fact it had been cool and wet - but my gosh. What an idiot. We walked down the long drive in the cloud diffused light of a hidden moon, answered softly all the questioning nickers, and let the girl out. There was some shuffling around, but soon enough, Sophie took her turn in the jail, and Jetta drank for three minutes straight.

All is fine now. There is water in the mare house. There is safety there, too. And spring is coming. With all its mud and mess and promise, it is finally coming.

Had to haul in another almost $300 worth of squeegee to clean up the stalls - one mucky, wet winter. But everybody’s doing fine. Geneva says not to worry about thrush till it gets warmer - as it will soon enough now. So this year, I’m going to get better at cleaning out hooves. My hay has been super this year, bless my farmer, and it looks like we’re going to have some thirty or so bales left over after the pasture opens up. Bought 162 then 12 more, and it was almost absolutely perfect, which is saying a lot, if you know anything about hay.

The baby is HUGE. Taller than Zi or Jetta - maybe bigger than Dustin, which will not please him at all. The other day, when I was mucking out the open stalls while the great fur-balls were eating, I once again faced the two butt ends of Zion and Tiger (the baby) who share a stall when they eat. They make this V with their heads apart and their back ends together. When I need to get between them, I either have to take my life in my hands, or go around to the barn door and come at them from the front. Neither is acceptable. So I have started going in on Zi’s off side, between the barn wall and his body, then leaning on him with my arm over his back, and pressing on his far side to get him to move into me.

I know that’s chancy - being pinned between the wall and a thousand pound body is not a great experience. But at first, he didn’t get what I wanted him to do at all. So I’d squeeze in further, duck under his neck, come up on his other side, between him and the baby, press on his ribs and get him to move away from me.

A week or so ago, I tried the move-into-me trick again, and lo and behold, he moved right over as I asked. I scooted up to his head so as to be out of the way, and he had the most irritated look to his ears. But he did it. And the next day, he did it again. He doesn’t welcome the intrusion - he IS eating, after all. But he got it.

Yesterday, when I was cleaning once again, I looked at those two great behinds, and at the muddy ground, and didn’t want to do either thing. So I just said, “Zi. I need you to get over. Can you get over?” And he did it. No ears this time, just crossly shifted his weight and moved completely aside for me - no touch, no push on my part. Just language. It was the coolest thing ever.

Sarah Christopherson rode by again today, her horse fetlock deep in the gritty snow on the roadside. That arab mare was on one, tossing her head and dancing. “I think they smell spring,” Sarah laughed. And truly, when I jumped the fence this morning to walk next to Tiger, one hand on the crest of his neck, he turned as if to nip at me. Cheeky indeed. “No,” I said. He turned away, as if he were thinking that over, then did it again. “NO,” I said, and he seemed to settle down. Sometimes, when I try to walk next to him, in his rhythm, it makes him nervous, and he will suddenly speed up - hopefully without kicking as he does. But after I spoke so firmly, he seemed to lose his cheek, and walked with me easily.

Still, even Jetta was bucking and kicking a little the other day in the crisp pre-snow afternoon.

I looked up at Sarah, riding in just a hoodie in sub-thirty degree weather. “Get home before you freeze,” I told her. But I’ve ridden horses in the ice and snow and I know the truth - especially on a fractious mare whose fretted herself sweaty - a person sitting on a horse is almost always going to be warm as toast.

I am told that horses, like some dogs and some cats, pick one particular part of the pasture or the corral to use as a loo. And it’s true - I have the dead spots in my pasture to prove it. Or at least, last year I did. For some reason, this year, the whole entire five horse herd decided that the strip immediately outside the barn - all along the backs of their stalls - was The Place. I’ve had it dug out and filled with tiny, clean, tumbled gravel twice now, hoping to shame them into stopping. But alas, they are dedicated.

And this year, with all the cold and snow - more snow than we’ve seen in a decade (all that global warming, dang those republicans) - they’ve evidently decided to install indoor plumbing. I thought I’d also heard that horses didn’t like to muck up their eating area. This is a dirty lie. Or rather, the truth is the dirty part.

Dustin’s stall stays fairly clean. Nobody really dares even enter that area. I suppose I should explain that these are not real stalls, as my barn is completely open on that side. But I’ve defined several open backed twelve foot square “stalls,” mostly to slow down Dustin and Sophie, who tend to want to chase everybody else out of anywhere at all. And feeding times are more peaceful if Dustin can’t just raise his head and scare the next guy away from his trough.

It’s the baby, mostly. I’ve caught him at it, tail raised and bliss on his face. I spend hours and years of my life raking the stuff up and then shoveling it into the cart, then schlepping it out to where I’m trying to build a dike that will keep the irrigation water out of the back of the barn. Only to come back next day and find a new, fresh supply - usually too frozen to rake. Or at least, frozen enough to give me an excuse to give up and go back home where it’s warm.

Compounding the issue is the fact that every one of the darn horses slops his hay out of his trough - they scoop up the stalks with their noses and throw it several feet away - forgetting, I guess, that sooner or later, they’re going to be interested in eating it. The stuff falls in the muck, which would not pose much of a problem, considering the pick-up sticks stacking it does - except for the fact that the same horse will, a few moments later, shift his position so as to get his nose further into the trough and step on the stuff on the ground. Stamp on it really. Mash it into the gross mud and muck and — I can’t go on.

Isn’t there somewhere in the world where people build houses out of bricks made of straw and manure? Didn’t I see that on Nature or something? Then why, after this entire several months of straw strewing, do I not have have nice, natural brick flooring in those stalls?

At least there’s still snow on the ground. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a thaw. And when it comes, we’ll be up to our knees in the brown, and the sweet smell of a winter’s worth of self expression will probably knock us flat.

I bought 174 small bales - 75-85 pounds - for the winter. Piled them up fourteen feet high and twelve feet across. I’ve learned to keep the stack covered with tarps because the barn, being metal, warms up enough in the sun to drop tons of condensation on the hay, which can get down inside and rot the bale out.

Everybody’s doing fine. Sophie and Hickory are on the thin side - and, of course, the aging Jetta Moon, but the boys are fat and sassy. Mostly sassy. I worry about their hooves being in the muck of the stalls, which I cannot keep dry or clean. Somebody has started using them as an outhouse. I’ve seen Hickory doing it, but I suspect there’s also a herd of something like elephants that comes in the night and mucks everything up. That, mixed with the hay stalks, should actually have more or less cemented in the floors of the stalls. No such luck though. I don’t want thrush again this year. But it’s so darn cold and muddy, I don’t want to get down with those feet. And even if I got them cleaned out, the feet go straight back down into the muck again, so what’s the point?

I love to be with them, though. I love playing the mind games and hearing their requests and demands. When you spend enough time around horses, you can hear them very clearly, even though the communication is all in the look in the eyes, the tilt of the head. Tonight, Dustin had his head over the stall gate, and I nuzzled him over and over, nickering, and he never moved away. He smelled so warm and horsie, I just couldn’t stop doing it.

Hickory-Tiger-Baby is HUGE. And getting pretty darned cocky. He will actually come up and nip Zion’s flanks now. Zion is not much of a fighter, so he simply moves off - but it looks like he’s allowing himself to be driven, ears pinned back. Obviously, he finds the whole thing deeply annoying. But we’ve also seen Hickory take on Dustin, and the biting goes back and forth there. I am hoping that, by spring, I don’t have a real sass-bucket on my hands for training.

I talked to Sarah Christopherson from the barn down the road the other day. She was riding out on her arab mare, coming down the shoulder of the road in the freezing cold, and we had a good talk, very pleasant, about nothing.

It’s almost too icy under the snow for me to take the car down the drive to the barn. Got a huge truck load of squeegee today, though. And hope to put it into the stalls soon, just to life the horses out of the thaw.

Nobody reads this blog but me. But still - it amazes me that I own horses. Like holding magic in my hand.