Our First Horse

We walked away from the barn the other day and looked back to see my horse with his head all the way over a low part of the pasture fence…eating a rose bush. There are no blooms on this particular bush, so he was just eating the leaves and thorny stems. Why? I don’t know. I did a quick search on the Internet to make sure rosebushes are not poisonous to horses, and it appears that they are not. I’m sure they’re not all that good for them, but apparently won’t hurt them.

Bill’s horse has a thing for wood - she chews on her stall door and the fence - so I told him, my horse thinks he’s a burro and yours thinks she’s a beaver.

That reminds me, we need to discuss bad horse habits. Maybe for the next post!

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I introduced my first horse “Moonshine” a few days ago and mentioned she is a registered paint. You can’t tell it by looking at her because she’s almost all black, just like Valentine. Well I forgot to mention that one of her favorite pastimes is rolling in the mud! Anytime there is any mud to be found, she will surely roll in it and later show up with a coat of mud plaster. So even though when clean she doesn’t look like a paint, she sure does during rainy days.

Not the best picture but you get the point. The clean one is Mikki’s fancy ex-show horse Valentine. The dirty one is my redneck horse, Moonshine:

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If you’ve followed this blog from the beginning, or skimmed over previous posts, you know that we moved to a small Tennessee town from the big city (Phoenix, Arizona) a year ago. Bill and I both grew up in small towns, but we had lived in cities for a very long time - 20 years for me. That’s long enough to become pretty “citified.” Now, I’m not your typical girl. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, my hair and makeup are not always perfect, and I’m no Martha Stewart around the house. But we had pretty comfortable, civilized lives and our house was a pretty typical city house. But all that has changed.

It started with the acquisition of “barn shoes.” If you have a horse, you have to have barn shoes and barn clothes, because stuff is going to get on them that looks bad, smells bad and probably won’t ever come off.

The next thing you notice is the creeping invasion of “horse stuff” into your life and your house. A new halter will hang on a dining room chair until you remember to take it up to the tack room. Saddle blankets make it to your laundry room. Horse medicines sit out on your kitchen counter. A few weeks ago, I had a bit drying in my dish rack. You don’t notice it happening until it’s too late.

And then the decor you swore would never be seen in your house appears. I just had a birthday (29 again, of course), and a dear friend gave me the most wonderful gift:

Now, here’s my dilemma. This cool sign doesn’t fit with my current decor. I don’t have a big enough house to have a “horse room.” But I’m not sure the sign would survive the weather in the tack room. So, is a horse-and-pony bedroom set far behind?

Only time will tell. But we’re definitely becoming horse people. And I think that’s a good thing to be.

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