Our First Horse

I was making my way through the October 2007 issue of Horse and Rider magazine this week when I came across what I thought was a great premise for an article. It’s called “Barn Names” and it discusses something near and dear to my heart - the names we actually call our horses on a regular basis. For those of you newer to horses than I am, the official or fancy name (as I call it) given to a horse is typically derived using a combination of the names of the mama (dam) and daddy (sire) horse. So if Mitsy’s Goober and Trackside Smooch decided it was time to have a baby horse, the foal could quite possibly be referred to as Goober Smooch, Goober’s Smooch or Smooche’s Goober. That’s actually a cool name but usually it’s something like “YR All Dun Playin”, a real life example given in the article. I can’t imagine many people go around calling their horse by their fancy name (”here YR All Dun Playin. Who’se a good YR All Dun Playin?”). That’s why most of us have come up with cutesy, easy to say barn names like…well…Moonshine and Valentine.

The article was interesting but a little disappointing. I guess I expected more funny or clever names. Still, “Beau-Zo”, “Preacher” and “Lolly” are all fun and they all had stories behind them. But I know there must be some doozies out there. Have you come across a particularly interesting barn name? Do you know the story behind it? If you have a horse, what do you call him/her and why? I’d love to hear your stories.

You probably already know this by now but here are ours:

Valentine - our first horse. He had another name when I bought him but since he was a Valentine’s Day present for Mikki, the Kid and I came up with “Valentine”. It seemed to fit and it’s easy to say.

Moonshine - my first horse had some goofy fancy name that had the word “moon” in it. I couldn’t remember what it was (still can’t) so as a joke I called her Moonshine. Hey, we live near the mountains in east Tennessee and moonshine was a big deal around here during prohibition and some say it’s still made by the old-timers. So it was kind of a local joke, too. And lastly, she sure is pretty. I think she stands out like the glow from a moonlit night.

Okay, your turn!

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According to our thermometer, we hit 104 degrees yesterday, in the shade. Everything is dying or dead. The trees are giving up and dropping their leaves, our lawn makes a crunching sound as we walk over it and our horses are draining the water bucket at a record pace. It’s hot and everything outside is miserable. I feel bad for our horses because they’re black and they stand out in the sun for a good portion of the day. I mentioned a few days ago that Moonshine has a patch of sunburn on her nose (thanks to the those who suggested in that thread that we apply waterproof baby sunscreen, SPF50). Despite the plentiful shade in our pasture, they still hang out in the sun. So I grabbed the hose and decided to spray them down for some temporary relief. One thing I’ve learned about horses in general is that they don’t like “spraying” sounds, sudden movements, cold water on their what-nots and in general, things they haven’t pre-approved. I started with Mikki’s ex-show horse, Valentine, since he’s had more experience with things like cold showers. I let them smell the hose first, carefully turned it on so it sprayed a little and let them explore it with their mouths and nostrils. It’s the horse-way. Valentine loved it and began taking a drink from the hose (see picture). In fact he took a 10 minute drink from the hose, during which time I got a good soaking myself. I then gently sprayed his back, neck and undercarriage. He loved it! Moonshine stood nearby, wary. She was curious about the squirty thing, curious enough I was able to bring the hose to her mouth. She took a drink and I rubbed her neck and told her how pretty she was, in an effort to relax her. I tried to spray her down but even on a gentle spray setting, she didn’t really like it.

So for the past few days this has been our routine. Around noon when we see the horses coming to the barn for a drink, we head out to fill up their water bucket and spray them down to cool them off. And since it’s watermelon harvest time, we bring them some chunks of watermelon as a treat.

Have you been doing anything special to get through the heat wave?

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A few weeks ago we helped out bringing in the first cutting of hay for this year. It’s been 20 years since I helped “put up hay” and since I don’t have to do it for a living, it seemed like a fun idea at the time. I’m here to tell you, putting up hay is HARD WORK and I have a whole new respect for those who do it for a living. Here’s the square bale harvesting process in a nutshell:

1. At harvest time, a tractor pulls a hay cutter over the field being harvested.
2. Although not required, these days many farmers choose to use what’s called a hay tedder (some spell it “hay tetter”). A tractor implement, the hay tedder has circular rakes that spin as the tedder is pulled through the cut hay. This effectively fluffs and spreads it the cut hay to speed up and more thoroughly dry it. It’s important that hay be dry prior to bailing or else bacteria and mold will grow in the moist warm hay. I like to call the hay tedder a “hay fluffer”, much to the amusement of hay farmers.
3. After drying, the hay is raked into rows for the baler (using a tractor with a hay rake).
4. A tractor drives over the rows with a hay baler (some spell it “bailer”) implement. The hay is fed into the baler which compacts the hay into neat bales of a specific size (although somewhat changeable, we stuck with 50 lb. bales), cuts each bale into slices and then ties each bale with hay twine before spitting it out the back onto a hay wagon or onto the field, depending on what’s happening in step 5. There are lots of things that will stop a baler from working properly. This is the one single machine that seems to cause the most headache, as it’s in need of frequent maintenance, repair and kicking.
5. Up until this step, most of the work is done by machine. Step 5 involves manual labor. If you have a hay wagon, the baler spits the bale towards the wagon where someone reaches down and throws the bales to whoever is stacking the hay on the wagon. If you don’t have a hay wagon, the baler drops the bales onto the ground. These are then picked up and thrown onto whatever kind of trailer will be used to haul the hay (often a car hauler) by people following the baler in the field. We had several people collecting the hay and throwing the bales onto the trailer. The stacker had an easy job until the bales started stacking up. We stacked five rows high and that fifth row is a pain!
6. Once a trailer is full of hay, it’s sent off to wherever it’s going. Typically this means it’s unloaded into a barn that same day. Lots of manual labor here as someone needs to throw the hay up into the barn and someone needs to stack.

Trust me, by the end of the day, a shower is MANDATORY and you’ll be finding hay in places where you’d least expect it. The temperature that day was in the mid 80’s and humid so everyone was covered in sweat. Working with hay is itchy. I remembered not to wear shorts but forgot to wear a long sleeve shirt. It’s hard to wear long pants and long sleeves in the hot, humid summer but I’d rather sweat than be itchy all day.

Although the Kid and his friends came along to help, 50 pound bales were too much for anyone under 16 or so to move. Because of that, the 10-ish kids got to experience something far more fun. Farm kids learn to drive in the field during the hay harvest. The Kid LOVED it. I was a nervous wreck. Thanks to the ability to take pictures and video with my cell phone, Mikki was a nervous wreck, too, almost 2000 miles away on her trip. I put the drivers seat up as far as it went, raised the pedals, put the truck in four wheel drive low, dropped it into first gear and instructed our 10-year-old Kid to drive our air conditioned truck slowly behind the baler so the rest of us could do the heavy lifting. And he did a great job. This is one day when it paid to be small.

I want to close this post by saying how much respect I have for the farmers who do this kind of work every day. These people do it for a living and have strength and endurance that’s lost on those of us who are consumers only. I normally sit at a computer all day during the week and my out-of-shape body could barely walk the next day. I worked for five hours straight but these farmers were out there all day without much of a break and did it again every day that week. Amazing. Fortunately, I’ll forget how much work this was before the next harvest and will volunteer to help out again.

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Mikki wrote recently about one year with Valentine, her Tennessee Walking Horse. And a few weeks ago we celebrated one year with Moonshine, my solid paint. It’s hard to believe a year has gone by already. Although I introduced her in October of 2006, we actually picked her up at the end of April. And over the course of the past year she has been mostly predictable, in a good way. She did dump me off one time, an incident I have yet to write about. It’s not entirely her fault me and my ego experienced some pain and I’ve ridden her since, though cautiously. But mostly she’s a sweet, lovable horse who buries her face in my chest when she’s being shoed, loves to boss the much bigger Valentine, loves to chase him around the pasture occasionally (she can run circles around him), enjoys carrots and gracefully puts up with being saddled and ridden, except that one time .

Moonshine is my first horse so this past year has been a huge learning experience for me. I’ve learned about horse behavior, health, maintenance and expense. I’ve experienced joy and frustration. And in the past week I’ve even experienced the healing comfort a horse can bring during times of personal trial. Sometimes you just need to hug a horse. But now that I have some of the basics of horse “ownership” down, this next year I’ll be focusing on the next phase of our relationship in the roles of horse and rider. Mikki and I hope to soon build our round pen, to facilitate training. We’re going to saddle our horses up more often. And we’re going to absorb all we can from more experienced horse owners about riding and then competing. Yes, this will be the year we “get our money’s worth.” Our weekly horse duties are changing to include a training regimen. Realistically we won’t probably feel comfortable showing until next year but that gives us a year to practice and get our horses familiar with going to shows. None of us are getting any younger and we have no idea what the future holds. So we’re going to grab the saddle by the horn and hold on for dear life as we try to get the most from this horse ownership experience.

Hopefully next year about this time we’ll be writing positive notes about our second year of horse ownership.

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Our dogs look forward to farrier visits. I think they mark it on their little doggy calendars, in fact. When the farrier visits, he trims all eight of our horses’ hooves in neat slices, just perfect for gnawing. This to me is disgusting. Mikki and I pick up the shavings but invariably one or two get by us and a few days later we see one of our dogs happily chewing on it. They must be good, too, because our dogs will protect this illicit snack with their lives. This can’t be healthy for them, right? I’m sure hooves carry all kinds of nasty bacteria dogs shouldn’t be ingesting. But then again as much as I love dogs, I realize they are pretty gross. I mean how do you reason with something that will eat its own barf and dig “Almond Roca” out of the cat litter box for a particularly chewy treat? Can horse hooves really be worse than poo and week-old garbage?

Our worst offender is our older Jack Russell terrier. He is a hoof aficionado. This last batch he got into didn’t settle too well in his tummy and we got to see what it looked like partially digested…on our living room carpet. Pretty gross. But that’s the dog theme…gross.

Do you let your dog(s), if you have any, munch on horse hoof trimmings?

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We spent a good part of this past weekend setting up a garden. Now the significance of this for us is that we’re previously desert people and are not used to gardening. I haven’t had a garden in almost 20 years and Mikki, an Arizona native, has never had a garden. Horses and the ability to garden were two of the top reasons for us deciding to move to Tennessee. So this weekend we put up some fencing, tilled the soil and began planting. As a horse owner, the thought occurred to me that we really ought to devote a portion of our garden to vegetables our horses like. I’m not sure we’ll save much money…a five pound bag of carrots at Costco and Sams Club runs around $2.50. But if we stagger our carrot planting, for example, at least we won’t have to make a trip to the store to buy them this summer. And we’ll know they were grown without any pesticides, except maybe some sevin dust, if needed.

The only trouble with this plan is, I don’t know what else to plant but carrots. I gave Valentine and Moonshine a radish the other day. She like it, he didn’t. I like radishes too but I could give Moonshine the ones I don’t want. I’ll call them horse radishes (haha). I suppose celery is an option. I’ll have to do some experimenting. Our garden is about 25 foot by 20 foot so we’ve got ample room to grow tomatoes, beans, some corn, strawberries, melons, etc.
As a horse-owner, having a garden is great. Now I know what to do with all that composted manure from the past year. I walked right past the fertilizer section of the Home Depot garden center and laughed.

So this horse owners garden right now consists of only carrots. Any suggestions on other veggies I should try, specifically for horses?

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