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.