Our First Horse

Bill is out of town this week, so I’m pretty much on my own with the horses. I did convince The Kid to help me turn them out yesterday morning, and he kept me company while I mucked out the stalls last night, but this morning he was tied up with a video game so I had to let them out of the barn on my own.

We have a routine now, and the horses have expectations. I open Moonshine’s stall door and she sticks her head out to see Bill down by the fence with carrots. She moseys out while I let Valentine out of his stall. He can’t see Bill from where he is, so he snuffles up some hay in the barn aisle while I try to convince him that carrots are MUCH better than old hay. He finally goes out, they get their carrots and I go down to join Bill and love on them before they head out to the pasture for the day.

Well, this morning Moonshine stuck her head out and no Bill. No carrots. No reason to leave the barn. There’s a storm brewing too, so she pretty much just wanted to go back in the stall. I finally got the gate closed behind her so she half-heartedly headed over to the fence. Valentine actually exited much faster than he usually does, but as soon as he saw that there was no one at the fence, he started out to the pasture. Moonshine, of course, followed him. I called but they ignored me. So I ran out to my post at the fence and whistled. They both stopped, looked back and apparently realized that hey, there really were going to be carrots today, and RAN back to the fence! It was so cool. Now, I know you cynics out there will say that they only came for the carrots…but they did respond to my whistle. They’re actually pretty well-trained about that now, they come to me at night too. (Okay, okay, they’re coming for oats then, but still.)

The best part this morning, though, was when they came back to the fence. They crowded up together and I gave Valentine his carrot and Moonshine…sneezed on me. I’m not talking a little cat sneeze either, it was a blast. All over my head. While I was telling her how gross and nasty that was I fed her a carrot too and while she was munching that down she sneezed on me AGAIN! This time with carrot puree! She got Valentine too, he had the evidence on his head. I’ll tell you what, no one can sneeze like a horse.

Then I headed down to the house for a shower.

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Here’s another funny little quirk my horse has: practically every single morning when we go up to the barn to let the horses out, Valentine pokes his head out and looks at us, then quickly retreats back into his stall to let loose with about 5 gallons of pee. I swear he does it on purpose. He’s actually held it till we let him in at night, too. Six acres of pasture and he has to pee in the stall.

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…also, Tree: about 50; supercharged F-150 SuperCrew: 1. We went a few more rounds with the tree in our pasture that blew down a few weeks ago. If you look closely at the very blurry picture to the right, you will see two chainsaws - one pointing up, one pointing down. The reason why it’s so blurry is that it was taken at about 7:00 at night with my cellphone. It was the only camera on hand, and I only had it in case I needed to call 911. (Thankfully, that was not necessary.)

(Tree in daylight, sans chainsaws)

It was yet another of those things that seem so simple and turn out to be anything but. About 1/3 of this tree had split off the trunk in a bad windstorm, and it was a pretty big tree. It was kind of an eyesore, probably not too safe for the horses who liked to wander underneath it and most importantly, was an irresistible magnet to the neighbor kids who were denied permission to play on it but were doing so anyway. So we headed up to this tree at about 4:00 Saturday afternoon (that would be December 30) thinking that we’d just get the broken limb detached from the trunk. About 15 minutes later, the chainsaw got pinched in the cut. No problem, we think, we’ll just wiggle it out. Half an hour later, we decide to try a crowbar. Half an hour after that, we decide to try an axe. Half an hour after that, we decide we’ll just hook up a tow rope and pull the limb loose with our truck (there was only a small un-sawed part left). Twenty minutes of skidding and fishtailing later, we decide we might need help. So we call up our way too put-upon friends, the Watsons, and ask to borrow a chainsaw. Mr. Watson generously offered to not only bring his chainsaw, but to help.

Five minutes after his arrival, his chainsaw is also stuck in the stupid tree. Again, out comes the crow bar; again, no luck. This time, we skipped the axe and went straight to the truck. The Watson chainsaw came out fairly soon after we began pulling, but our saw still wasn’t going anywhere. Another ten minutes of revving that V-8 and sliding all over the place, and the father of the neighbor children joined us. (The tree is about 20 yards from their back door; he was wondering what all the ruckus was.) We eventually moved the tow rope to the other side of the branch and pulled the limb downhill, and it finally gave up the ghost - and the chainsaw. What was left of it. Needless to say, we were done chainsawing for the day and the tree will rest unmolested until we get a new chain and bar.

Can you find the horse in this picture?

By the way, if you were wondering - our two very helpful horses spent all this time getting too close to the unstable tree limb, too close to the chainsaw and too close to the truck, in addition to not moving from behind the truck when we needed to back up, trying to go through the gate with the truck each time we opened it, and scaring Mr. Watson by appearing suddenly in front of him in the dark (they’re pretty much invisible at night, being black - see picture to left).

Sometimes I think our life is just a bad sitcom.

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A few Saturdays ago, the three of us headed to Dollywood to see it all decked out for Christmas. It was a sunny and warm (in the 60’s) and we live only about an hour or so away. One of my favorite parts about Dollywood was a visit to the carriage maker. The park has real craftsmen on staff doing things (mostly) the old-fashioned way. It’s part theme park attraction and part craft preservation. I’ve never before seen someone build a carriage. What struck me the most is how reasonably priced the carriages were. You can get yourself a fancy brand new one or two-horse carriage, complete with hydraulic brake system for around $2,500. Now that’s a lot of money but you get a hand-built horse carriage made from high quality parts that can be used for pleasure riding, parades, weddings…whatever. If we find ourselves with $2,500 too much one year, I’d love to buy one of these. I can’t even imagine one of our spirited horses pulling a carriage but I’m sure they’d be fine with training. Of course, Moonshine and Valentine probably couldn’t be paired due to their size differences so I guess we’d need a one-horse carriage. Mikki wants a doctor’s carriage like the one in the picture above. I think it would be fun to have a wagon that seats four. And I could probably justify spending that much money by saying we’d use it to make money giving rides at parades, fairs and other events. It would be an investment! Riiiiight.
Here’s a picture of an unpainted carriage up close:

And here’s a picture of the carriage shop inside:

Do any of you have a carriage for your horse(s)?

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Yes those are carrots and I am happy to see you. When Mikki and I let our horses out of their stalls each morning, we use a few carrots to coax them out of the barn and into the pasture. I don’t know if we’re helping them develop a bad habit but I often don’t have the time or patience to wait 10 minutes while they inhale leftover hay bits from the barn floor before moseying on out to pasture for the day. Our horses just don’t seem to care if we’re in a hurry or not. But they do care about carrots. So our daily routine has me shoving a pair of carrots in my back pocket and heading for the fence and Mikki heading for the barn where she opens up the gate and horse stalls while I shout tempting statements about how yummy these carrots are and how I’m gonna start eating them myself if the horses don’t come to the fence soon (I’m usually bluffing). This works every time, of course. Carrots disposed of, I sneak a kiss onto Moonshine’s long face while she’s still chewing and head off to do whatever I do each day. And I am not surprised when animals I sometimes encounter follow me and show a keen interest in my rear. This would embarrass some but I know they’re just looking for carrots.

By the way, horses seems to have good memory. One a few occasions when I’ve had to let them out on my own, they both know exactly where those carrots are sitting. I’ll turn around to open a gate or something and a half second later feel a carrot or two leaving my back pocket. They really like carrots.

A little side note - we were recently watching Iron Chef on Food Network and the “secret ingredient” was citrus. One of the citrus fruits was something called “Buddha fingers”, a strange little food that actually looked like a small hand with fingers. And you can eat the whole thing. This is one fruit we will never introduce to our horses. Finger-shaped carrots are bad enough but goodies shaped like an entire hand would be going too far.

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You’ve heard us talk about it before (Getting Out of Barn Duties and Bill takes over horse duties for the day) but now I have a new pondering about managing horses when you’re sick. Up until now, it’s mostly been either Mikki or I who has been sick. That’s not so bad because the other can pick up the slack and there really isn’t that much work that has to be done. Tuesday night Mikki and I both got sick with something harsh. We think we both have the flu. Now everyone eventually gets the flu and we’ll make it through but I have to tell you…it’s a pain in the butt doing horse chores when you have the flu! Today we compromised a little but doing the worst horse stall housekeeping job ever. We finished our nighttime routine of feeding the goats, filling water troughs, filling hay troughs, sort-of cleaning stalls and feeding oats in a new record of 12 minutes flat. I should be in bed right now moaning about how achy I am but instead I wanted to share these thoughts in the off chance I’ll croak. Let the world know we risked our lives taking care of our beloved horses.

But seriously, I hope our horses can forgive us for sort-of shoveling and sort-of raking manure to the sides of their stalls in our rush to get back to bed. And while our horse friends insist our horses will be just fine if we left them in the pasture overnight, we’re not ready to give up pampering our horses.

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