A beautiful by-product of a stormy day

A quick trip to the barn this afternoon just to clean Dude and Bestie up. It had been raining off and on all day, so I knew they'd be muddy. As I was leaving the barn to head home, a beautiful rainbow across the way caught my eye. At first it was really low against the trees and just barely over the sugarhouse ...




Then it seemed to disappear for a bit, but reappeared over the hill ...

Hooves and their issues

It's been a tough spring for the horses' feet. After the snow melted, there was a stretch of time in April when the horses went out onto the muddy pastures. Then the weather pattern shifted into endless rain in May that turned the fields to swamps and came down heavy enough to merit the horses being in for days at a time. While in, they alternated between standing on dirty shavings and standing on clean shavings. Sort of a wet/dry cycle for their feet. And once the rain stopped, they started going back out again, but the fields were still pretty wet.

As a result, Bestie's normally beautiful feet seem to have gotten kind of soft and prone to having chunks along the edge getting pried upward by rocks, and eventually chipping off. That's what happened to the spot in the photo above; it was a like a piece about an inch and a half long bent upwards, then eventually broke off. Her feet are about the ugliest I've ever seen them around the edges. Luckily she still has good frogs. I'm thinking about putting shoes on her front feet for the summer, both to protect the edges and because the rocks on the paths to the paddocks are hard on her soles, as are any rocks that are on the road when we ride.

Dude's feet aren't too bad around the edges, but his frogs are close to nonexistent, especially in the back, where he doesn't have shoes on. It's like they've gotten spongey from the wet ground and have just peeled away. Pretty yucky. I'm not sure what else to do other than try to keep them cleaned out and keep his stall as clean as possible.

Fingers crossed that we return to a dryer weather pattern that helps the ponies get their good feet back soon.

Chatting with Dude

One of the treasures unearthed as my daughter has been cleaning her room were the notes from a psychic's visit to the barn to talk with the horses. The notes were taken by by the psychic's sister, who spent hours sitting beside her in the tack room as a procession of people anxious for insights into their horses' thinking came and went.

I'm going to type the notes exactly as they are written on the folded up page of legal paper that Katie found. Even though the punctuation is sporadic and the notes are choppy, it's pretty easy to tell which comments are observations by the psychic and which comments she was passing along to us as made by Dude. I'll just preface this by saying that there was no conversation about Dude between us and the psychic before she talked with him. All we told her was his name. The conversation occurred in March 2005, many months after Dude had suffered a significant hip injury and was confined to his stall with exercise limited to handwalking. The psychic began each session with a rundown of the aches and pains the horse communicated to her.

Dude: Physical discomforts - Right side of mouth all the way in the back. Left hind from ankle down. Right front bottom of hoof.

Personality: "Charlie Sheen."
Dude says he is everybody's. Getting some sadness - "I'm not doing my job." He feels like he let you down. I used to be important!
Show me his person: Showing you bigger than he is - You are in control. You can count on him.

He is a little ticked off. "I used to go out." You don't come often enough. Doesn't like his neighbor. A lot of complaining - told him why he is in his stall.

He has a really nice jog - keeps his head down.

What does he say about Katie?
You have a nice back. Your left foot tends to drift back. You have good hands. He likes going counterclockwise. Katie wants to lean to the left.

He is a bit heavy on the forehand.
Doublebeating.
Transition from trot is not good.
He is good.

What does he like to do best?
Eat.
Where was he happiest?
Showing himself at age 2-3.

He would be a great mayor/greeter. A little depressed.

Reading the notes, years after this session, I can still remember how blown away we were by the comments on his perceived lack of importance, and depression, given what had been happening with his injury. Katie and I both got teary eyed about it. The whole period after he hurt his hip was a long haul ... no turnout, cranky horse cooped up, teenager trying to get to the barn every day and hand walk him and graze him, not knowing if he'd come back from the injury.

I also remember that we were both a bit perplexed by the "Charlie Sheen" description (even more so now!). The session was fascinating, as were the others that we ended up sitting in on and listening to. My favorite line from our session? "You can count on me." He's a good boy. And Katie is definitely "his" girl.

Book review

I just finished reading a great novel, "The God of Animals." Let me just say I was a sobbing mess while reading the final pages, and that's all I'll say about THAT in order to not spoil the ending. :)

I can't remember how I found it. I'm always trolling for new books and looking for recommendations, especially for book club reading material. It's writer Aryn Kyle's first book, which is perfectly amazing as it's such a great story. The narrator is Alice Winston, who I believe is 12 when this coming-of-age story starts. As if the whole "coming-of-age" thing isn't hard enough under normal circumstance, Alice is dealing with the death of a classmate, the fact that her older sister has recently run away with a rodeo cowboy, her mom's refusal (for years) to leave her bedroom, and her dad's exhausting efforts to keep the family's horse breeding and showing operation going.

Alice is a loner who struggles with relationships, and it's really sad to see her trying to make her way, particularly since she receives very little attention from her parents. All of the relationships in the book are complicated and murky; nothing is what it seems. There's a sense that each character has hopes and dreams, but it's certainly not predictable as the story unfolds as to whether those hopes and dreams will be realized.

The family's business is also full of complications, like the challenge of raising horses in such a hardscrabble setting, keeping up with the competition and the pressures of wooing of new customers. For the reader with horse experience there are bound to be elements of the familiar in the passages involving training horses, the crazy mix of tedium and drama at horse shows, the competition with other riders and barns, and barn personality dynamics.

I haven't read a horsey novel in a while, and this powerful story definitely was a great pick. But I should've had the tissues handy.

Spring ... not Vermont's best season

I've been waiting with an increasing sense of desperation for the warm temperatures of spring. Once the snow melts in our neck of the woods, especially when we've had a bunch of it as we did this winter, the mud sets in. And unless the temperatures warm up, the muds stays ... and stays ... and stays. We're at that stage now. There have been a couple of warm days scattered here and there over the last few weeks, but for the most part we've had lots of rain, gray skies, cold days and even some sleet (today).

Due to the weather, the horses have had some stretches indoors, which I completely understand; I certainly don't want them tearing around in the mud and hurting themselves, and the horses and I are definitely in agreement that we want the grass to grow. Right now, when they do go out, they're being turned out on the low end of the paddock area, which tends to stay the muddiest. The paddocks on the higher end of the slope are being saved so that the grass can come in.

Yesterday the sun was shining so I took off from work a few hours early to enjoy the blue skies and relatively warm (50 degrees) weather. I rode Dude out to the outdoor arena with barn owner Julie on her horse Sky, and it was really pleasant. The path to the outdoor was fairly dry, and it was super nice to feel the sunshine and see everything greening up.

Then today we woke up to the sleet and wind. Yuck. I went to the barn mid-afternoon to take care of Dude and Bestie. There were two jumping lessons going on so I couldn't get them into the indoor for a roll, and because of the wet weather the path to the outdoor (and likely the outdoor arena itself) was really muddy. Our options were pretty much limited to grazing along the path. It was fairly windy, and Dude was hyper sensitive to every little bang of the barn door, so I didn't stay out with him too long. There's not enough grass to distract him from being crazy, and after his third leap sideways I decided to save my right arm from further yanking and marched him back into the barn. He pranced the whole way, snorting at all the invisible scary things outside. Sigh.

Bestie was fine when I took her outdoors, so she hit the jackpot - a walk up to the top of the ridge where there's a patch of growing grass, and a graze for about 20 minutes. She definitely was on alert with the wind, but she seems to process stuff more than Dude, who goes into reactive "the mountain lion's after me" mode. Bestie heard the banging sounds, looked up, and I could see her determine that it was the arena door. Splashing and clunking? Just a car coming down the road. No drama. Love it.

Ahhhhhhhhhh

That was today ... an ahhhhhhh day! Sunny, temps in the 50s, just one of those days after a l-o-n-g winter when you feel GOOD to be outside. Unfortunately, the fields are a mess with mud, so the horses didn't get their own ahhhh moment. Too bad, because I had left both of them unblanketed, and they would've enjoyed a nice muddy roll.

I decided to ride Dude, who was very fidgety on the cross ties. It didn't help that the hay cart was making its way through the aisle. Our ride didn't start out too well. While I was tightening his girth outside the barn he moved, one rein slipped down, and he stepped on it and snapped the leather up by the bit. Sigh. I took him back in and changed him into Bestie's bridle. Then we headed down the road, only to meet Scary Man with a Chainsaw working in a yard about two houses down. Dude was having nothing to do with that; in fact, he spun and headed in the other direction.

The good news was that as we pranced by the barn, another boarder came out with her horse and we headed out together, which pacified Dude quite a bit. Considering he hasn't been ridden since December, he was really very good. He had a few little spooks at random things, but nothing major.

The only sort of unsettling portion of the ride occurred as we approached our turn-around spot. We had decided to turn around at a property that has goats, horses, and miniature donkeys. I had just finished filling in my riding partner with details about Dude's unfortunate past history with miniature donkeys (he tried to attack one at a show; can't remember if I've written about that debacle) when the goats came running up to the fence. Dude was definitely eyeballing them nervously. Luckily the donkeys were not in a pasture with road frontage; they were set back in another field (thank goodness for small favors). And they didn't bray, which is what provoked Dude in the first donkey incident. Apart from some nervous snorting and a significantly quickened pace, he tolerated the goats fairly well. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have made it by there if we hadn't been with another horse with a "Goats, so what?" attitude. Or he would've made it by, but not in a way that would've kept me in the saddle :)

The nice thing was that all of the vehicle traffic that passed us was very respectful and slowed way down. I'm always so grateful for that, especially because it doesn't always happen. All in all, it was a really fun ride. I haven't been on either horse in so long, and this was a great way to start the spring season.

Blankie shopping

Back to talking blankies; actually, turnout sheets. I feel like I go through this every year about this time ... in winter the temperatures usually stay cold enough that the horses don't get wet - the snow might collect on their turnout sheets but it is generally easily brushed off and doesn't soak through. But now that we're moving into spring, it's become very clear that the waterproofing on the turnout sheets is shot. This is actually round two (and maybe even round three) of waterproofing, because I've had these sheets at least four years and have sprayed each at least twice with tent waterproofer after the original waterproofing seemed to wear off.

So I've been combing the catalogs, looking at "denier" and weighing closed versus open front, and of course the all important thing ... color. Is there a perfect turnout? Everyone seems to have their favorites. I really prefer the turnout sheets over the insulated turnouts because our barn is warm - I like being able to get that top layer off of them when they're inside in the winter, but still leave a layer on.

I was told in a tack store that the higher the denier, the more durable and waterproof the sheet is. Both Dude and Bestie need waterproof horsey wear, since they're out all day (although not when it's absolutely pouring) and when the weather is cool I don't like them to get wet. And Dude needs durability since his friends like to goof around with the blankies - he's got a tail flap on one sheet with a row of bite marks neatly imprinted along the edge, and a few little nibble holes on the rump section of the sheet that are bound to become bigger. I'm leaning toward Rider sheets for both of them: Bestie's first sheet was a Rider and it lasted well, in fact, she still wears it as a back-up when her main turnout is in the wash. So, 1200 denier for Bestie in a cute girly plaid, 1680 denier for Dude in a no-nonsense masculine gray/forest green combo. The pages in the catalog are folded down, ready for the call to place the order tomorrow. Whew ... I feel like I've spent an awful lot of time thinking about this. Fingers crossed that they're in stock!