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.