Our First Horse

I know you’ve heard it before: “X is my life,” or “He eats, breathes and sleeps X.” Well, I’m hear to tell you that horses have actually become our life. Occasionally, work or sleep or some other mundane thing intrudes, but generally everything we do in some way relates to the fact that we have horses.

This weekend, for instance, we drove all the way to Knoxville (about an hour) to rent a chipper/shredder at Home Depot on Saturday. We spent about six hours collecting fallen trees and branches in the pasture and sending them through that terrifying, but oddly satisfying, maw of wood death. Then on Sunday we drove the hour back to Knoxville (missing church, btw) to return the behemoth within our 24-hour rental period. We are both so sore we can hardly move and have stuffy noses from the dust, and our bank account is $150 lighter (not counting the gas to drive up there and back twice) - but about 27 tons of deadfall is now nice, neat mulch. Of course we want our pasture to look nice, and that’s probably why most people would spend their Saturday clearing it out, but frankly we could have left all that stuff indefinitely. That’s a lot of hard work, and the “natural” look is best for a pasture, don’t you think? But our horses walk through the woods out there all the time, and we’ve been concerned for their safety for months now. So once again, we devoted a weekend to horse maintenance. Last weekend…well, I don’t actually remember last weekend, but past weekends have included putting up hay, fixing fences, fixing barn stalls, clearing weeds in the pasture, driving to the city to get horse supplies - oh, and actual riding, once in a while. Our weekends coming up will include installing a new outlet to plug in the stock tank de-icer, building out the unfinished stall for Romeo, fixing up the old barn for hay storage, installing electric fence…and that’s just what has to be done before winter.

I wish we had known ahead of time how time-consuming horse ownership really is. On second thought, maybe it was better not to know.

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We had been having a pretty good year so far rain-wise. Last year was desert-like in east Tennessee but this year through July was almost normal, yielding a few cuttings of hay for most fields. Someone must have bragged about it because from August 1 through August 24, we had absolutely no measurable precipitation. And everything died. Our grass died, the hay fields look bad and even some trees seem to be shedding their leaves early. Today marks a break in that dry spell. We’ve had a decent steady rain and more is predicted for the next few days. I’ve never loved rain so much as when I became a horse owner. So much of the horse life depends on rain.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that one of our frisky horses broke through the fence…AGAIN. This is the third time this has happened at this spot and the second time the break resulted in an escaped horse. Apparently horses can’t read signs. Not an exit…NOT AN EXIT! Fortunately I work from home and my office is close enough to this section of fence for me to have heard a loud noise. I went to investigate and found Cash eating grass in our backyard. The other horses were chasing each other no where near the fence. It’s cooler today and raining and it seems to have made them frisky. Our backyard has some yummy grass so it was hard to incent Cash into leaving it. Oats did the trick, along with a lead rope but given our last escapee incident with Cash, I expected him to bolt at any second.

This time Cash broke through a double fence board. I image he must have kicked it because he has no marks on him. That section of fence is a little low so perhaps it was tempting to him. When we get an electric fence, we’re going to bypass this peninsula. In the meantime, I replaced the broken boards with a 2×6 and added a riser to make it seem higher. It’s not the most attractive fence section but hopefully it will do the trick until the electric fence is installed.

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An inside joke

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I love to take pictures so it’s not uncommon for me to go check on the horses with camera in hand. I have a nice zoom lens and was able to capture the following hilarious interaction between Cash and Valentine at the water trough. I especially love the lips and hillbilly expressions on Valentine. It’s like they have their own comedy routine! I recommend viewing the full screen version of the slideshow:

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Romeo participated in a youth rodeo this past weekend and placed 1st, 2nd and 4th in a few competitions. The competition was pretty good but in the end Romeo and his rider were apparently better in the mud (it rained one day). Of course the ribbons go with the rider but we’re proud of both the rider and our appaloosa. It’s neat having a horse already trained for barrels and poles. Now we just need to train his new rider (I’m working on it)!

I went one of the two rodeo nights and snapped some pictures but since the competitions happened after dark and I was using a long lense on my camera, most of the pictures came out too blurry. (BTW, the picture above is just one I snapped at the event. That’s not Romeo. He doesn’t do roping…yet)

Okay, so how many of you do the rodeo shows or barrels or pole bending? If not, do you want to? I haven’t seen any “gymkana” events here in east Tennessee but I know Laura out in Colorado has been active in that this year. She’s even been on a cattle drive!

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I was searching the Internet a while back for something, and I came across an artist y’all will really enjoy. Her name is Mary Ann Kennedy, and she’s right here in Tennessee. She is a horse person like we want to be horse people - she lives and breathes horses. And she writes music about horses - good music. They aren’t the kind of songs you listen to and think, “That’s pretty, but what does it mean?” These songs celebrate the relationship between humans and horses in a very real way - some are funny (”Cleanin’ Stalls”); some are poignant (”Horses in Heaven”); all are true to life. Our current favorite is “Green on Green.” It pretty much describes Bill’s relationship to Moonshine:

“Green on green makes black and blue
I wouldn’t ride that horse if I were you…
Today you might get off scot free
But chances are eventually
He’ll go up and you’ll come down
That’s when you’ll understand this song…”

Yep, a green horse and a green rider, bad combination! We also like “Jack Russell” - we have 3 of those little monsters. There’s also “Hayin’ Time,” “Horsin’ Around,” and a beautiful song called “Fireflies” that makes me want to go riding in the dark this summer.

Those songs are from her CD “Hoofbeats, Heartbeats and Wings” from 2005. She just came out with a new CD: “Rhythm of the Ride.”

We just got it, but there are some great songs on it too. The title song is great, and I really like “Heart in Your Hands” - it’s a great reminder of the responsibility that goes along with loving our four-legged friends.

If you have a CD player in your barn, there’s nothing better to listen to while grooming your horses, taking care of your tack or, yes, cleanin’ stalls.

Song samples used with permission

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