A Beautiful February Day

We had a really nice day yesterday. Actually, as far as winter goes, we've been having a really nice winter: not too cold, not much snow (especially compared to last year) and a goodly number of sunny days. Of course we'll probably pay for this in the summer, when it will either rain everyday and be more like Ireland than Massachusetts, or be hot, muggy and not rain at all, creating drought conditions after the lack of snow over the winter.

Aren't I a ray of sunshine?


Anyway, yesterday... I hadn't seen Tico and Dusty since last weekend, when we'd had one of the few really cold days. I'd left them in their heavy winter blankets, so on Tuesday, it having started getting into the upper 30s and 40s again, I'd called to ask that they be switched back to their sheets. Unfortunately, that message only made it as far as Tico - poor Dusty was in his winter jammies still when I got there, so I pulled the blanket off him immediately and left him naked.

Both of them have pretty good coats - Dusty's being particularly unique: he'd been clipped in the early winter because it had simply grown too long and too early for his comfort. Now a considerable amount of it has grown back. Nearly white. He's a palomino, and the girl who clipped him for me had been practicing before doing her own horse. She gave him an eventer clip, which looked really precious on a 28 year old quarter horse. With the clipped hair grown out now, he looks particularly odd.



Though yesterday was pretty fine, Tico seemed a bit wired. He was giving me the horsie silly eyeballs while on the crossties as I did a quick sheath cleaning (what can I say - he's a pig and there was gross black junk stuck to the inside of his legs), brushed him, saddled him, and was preparing to put his bridle on. My friend Elaine was working at the barn yesterday, and she was doing the afternoon turn-out changing of the guard. She opened LC's stall door, and Tico decided that was the most frightening thing EVAH, pulled back hard nearly sitting on his butt, broke his halter, and ran out the back door.

I grabbed the broken halter (I have no idea why) and my lead line, and followed in time to see the tail-in-the-air horse equivalent of the one finger salute being waved jauntily my way. He started running down the track between the turnouts, finally stopping about half way down. I muttered under my breath "you better not roll in the mud with that saddle on, buster..." but he was more interested in trying to eat the dead grass, thank goodness. I wrapped the leadline around his neck, turned him around, and threw him in his stall where he got to enjoy the after-ride carrots I'd placed in his feed bucket, the twit.

I finished tacking him up in his stall and we headed into the indoor for a little bit, so I could get on (mounting blocks RULE) then out the door and down the track between the turnouts again. Lately I've been riding him in what Dover Saddlery calls a "Hackamore Noseband":



You attach it to a regular headstall, and when adjusted correctly it rests on the bone (not the cartilage) of the nose and applies pressure there. It isn't and shouldn't be necessary to strong-arm a horse with that, and Tico is pretty well-behaved in it. I like it in the winter particularly, because cold bits make for unhappy horses, and he seems to like it, too.

The wind was howling down in the back ring. For some reason, it's always much windier down there than up at the barn about 100 yards away. I don't know what the crows were up to, but the murder sounded like they were murdering each other in the field beside the ring.

To make things even more akin to Armageddon as far as the tiny brained equine was concerned, some people were walking dogs out in the field behind the ring, continuing on to the graveyard. We could glimpse them through the trees, but not really see full bodies.

I asked them, quite nicely, if they would please say something so my horse wouldn't think they were demons from hell come to eat the poor little booger. Nothing. I asked again, more loudly. Not a word - except they appeared to try to go further into the woods. Which didn't fool Tico, not one bit - he now knew they were planning an attack. Jerks.

It made for a lively ride. There were a couple of nasty little spooks which seemed more crow-related than demons in the graveyard related, but other than that he behaved pretty nicely, and we had good lively trots and easy controlled canters. I was actually pleased with the little twit by the end of the ride.

Last night, just before falling to sleep, my mind pulled back the memory of one of the spooks, and my body jerked in a larger reaction than I'd had while it occurred. Isn't it odd the way the mind works?

Happy Birthday, Dusty!

On this day in 1983 in Richmond, VA, a scrappy little palomino QH colt was born. He was shown by his Ammy owner at AQHA shows for a few years in VA, doing pretty well and amassing some 40-something WP points along the way. He was also thrown into an AQHA reining class to fill it and make it count; having never been competed in reining, he nevertheless took second in that class.


Dusty in Virginia

When he was 6 he moved to Massachusetts and started wowing them at the North Shore and South Shore Horsemens Association shows, consistently winning Quarter Horse Hunter Under Saddle and Palomino Pleasure classes(ridden western) and Massachusetts Horsemens Council and New England Horsemens Council Year End Championships. I met him then, and introduced him to carrots, a treat he'd never seen before. I also introduced apples to him. He learned to love them both. :)

A few years later he bucked off his then owner at a show, not out of meanness; though I couldn't prove it, I'm pretty sure he was stung by something. She never forgave him, and I started riding him at the shows towards getting him sold. I didn't ride western at the time, so we took our ribbons in Palomino Pleasure in a hunt seat saddle. He won, despite his rider's lack of show experience or enthusiasm for showing - he was that good.

I finished out that year, rode him a bit in shows the next, and ended up buying him myself and "retired" him - to trail riding, which he absolutely loved. He was 13, and I've had him ever since.


On a trail

We've been through a lot together. So today (like most days when I go to the barn to play with my boys, to be honest) he is going to be stuffed full of carrots and Kashi bars, petted and loved on, and told what a wonderful old thing he is. A funny thing: one of his old curmudgeon idiosyncracies is that he's lost his taste for apples; a horse who used to lustily chomp into any and all varieties of apple now sniffs them and turns his head away - so apples won't be on the menu... or at least not for him. Tico still thinks they're quite nice.

Dusty has changed in many ways since I first met him. He mellowed out and calmed down considerably - he'd been a very nervous horse when he was owned by his previous owner. He never used to grow much of a winter coat, but that was another thing he apparently learned to do, too. :)


He's started to shed, but is still really hairy despite my best shedding efforts, and we had a string of warm to hot days last week and early this week. So last weekend, I did a really rushed clip job on him, knowing that the barn was going to be closed for Easter (they close Easter and Christmas) and he'd be in his stall all day when it was going to be warm.

Here's a photo, after I did the clipping. I've since cleaned it up a bit.


After the clipping.

Aesthetically, he could have looked better. There was a kind of plucked chicken look to him at the end... but a friend said he looked like a big, well-loved plush toy with worn spots from the hugging, and that seems fitting.

Happy 27th, Dusty!

Postscript: some videos from a bit more than a week later:
Tracking right, ignoring me

Tracking left, still ignoring me

And still tracking left, doing whatever the heck he wants...

A Reminder of My Misspent Youth

Today was a gorgeous day. A little breezy, in the 70s, the sun shining. I got to the barn around noonish.

I groomed Dusty first, giving him a long workover with the rubber mitt, really massaging his withers and shoulder and butt. He made the horse faces of appreciation.

I also wormed him, and he made the horse faces of disapproval: tense lips and chin, ears half-back, the hairy eyeball... completely disgusted. As usual, he would sniff but refused any and all treats for about 15-20 minutes afterwards. Shuffling carrot bits and Kashi Bar crumbs around in his grain bucket, he was a pitiable picture. But he got over it - they were gone when it was time to be turned out.

Tico'd been doing his usual jealousy faces at Dusty while I'd been giving Dusty attention, seesaw bucking in his stall: butt up, shoulder up, butt up, shoulder up, ears back, threatening to kick the wall (he's been seriously screamed at when he DOES kick the wall so he doesn't do it that often anymore).

He got growled at a bunch of times today, and each time - my attention now on him - his ears would go forward and he'd give my his angelic face, "Who, me? Wha?" and poke his nose out through the hole by the grain bucket, mugging for a treat. Brat. Sometimes, he got them. OK, most of the time. I'm a sucker for a cute face.

I put Dusty away and got Tico out. I brushed him, cleaned his feet, put on his leg wraps, saddled him up, coated him in fly spray, and headed outside. Of course, this all took more than an hour - I'm a slow groomer, and easily distracted - I like to play with him: tickle and kiss his nose, scritch his ears, make him move his legs by pointing at them, have him do silly tricks, for which he earns carrot bits, so he's a more than willing participant.

I mounted up in the indoor and we headed out the back door. About 5 steps out, he stopped.

Sometimes I indulge him. He likes to sight-see, so I sat still in the saddle while, head high, he gazed fixedly to the right. One of the trailers usually parked there was gone, maybe he was noticing that, I'm not sure. Then, turning to the left, he looked over in the direction of some of the turnouts, where horses were standing around, heads down, ignoring each other. Then again, to the right; then straight ahead.

I was getting a bit tired of the view, so I nudged him. He didn't budge. I nudged again. Nothing. I poked with the spurs and he woke up and started walking, just as Elaine, one of the other boarders, was walking towards us. "He's practicing to be a statue today", I said to Elaine, and she chuckled.

We wove on down the path between the turnouts, heading to the gate to the back field. The clover along side the turnouts was calling to him, I was preventing him from eating it, and so we sort of oozed along from one side of the path to the other, eventually making it to the back ring. Once there our path was a bit straighter - no grass to tempt him, and he knew that in that back field there was a lot of taller grass he could snipe a grab at walking along.

Have I mentioned that he's a pig?

Anyway, we got out to the back field finally, and started walking along. There are paths out there that go alongside the power lines, I was heading out to follow them. I had no other plan in mind - I considered going on the trails in the woods but I'd done that yesterday. I thought I might just take it easy - the view was wonderful, with some trees already turning red and yellow, and the taller golden stalks of grass waving with the easy breeze, the sun shining down... a perfect early fall day.

When we got to the part of the path that paralleled the power lines, I thought I'd ask for a trot. Tico willingly went into it, then up into a canter.

The wind was whistling by my ears, almost deafening, as he went into a full gallop. Wheeee! We galloped from the far end of the field up to where the path gets gravelly; that's where I asked him to stop. He did, eventually - my fat boy whose favorite gait is usually "whoa" had his head up, ears pricked, and actually pranced! He'd enjoyed himself.

I turned him around and we galloped off again, down the same path, until we got to where someone had dropped a tree across the path. I pulled him up (him still reluctant to stop), and we did it again. And again. Up and back.

I felt both afraid (he was, after all, the horse who helped me to invent the Superman Emergency Dismount) and super-alive. The wind whipped my face, stinging my cheeks. I know I'm 54 and shouldn't be riding like this. I know it's crazy and it's dangerous, and most importantly I know I'm mortal. The last time I rode a horse like this, I was an indestructable teen. And Dusty, in sedate hand-gallops, never felt this wild, this close to untamed.

On the final gallop, from the graveled area to the downed tree, I thought "I wonder if he's tired?" He's in better shape than he used to be, but if pressed to describe what kind of shape he was in, it's still pretty much "round".

I reached forward with the reins, midway up his neck, and leaned a bit forward. I never touched him with my legs; just the opposite, I was trying Very Hard NOT to touch him with the spurs at all.

He shifted into Sixth Gear. I could feel him both coil up and stretch out, close to the ground, flying. Oh. My.God. OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!

About 20 feet before the downed tree, I started to yell "whoa" and sit back. He galloped on. I sat back more, really trying to grind my butt into the saddle, and took hold of the reins. We turned off to circle to the right, at a *slightly* slower gallop. I finally got him stopped about 20 feet from the gate back to the barn.

He walked a couple of steps, then jogged, and tried to go faster again. "No, no, we're done for the day", I said, and walked him on past the gate to the track on the other side of the field, to get him walked down a bit.

I let him stop and nosh a few times, too. He'd given me an incredible adrenaline rush, it was the least I could do. :)

A Recent Day at Crystal Farm

It was late morning. When I got there, I was told that Tico had already been turned out and Dusty hadn’t gone out because the turnouts had been too wet in the morning.

No big deal - I figured, switch Dusty for Tico in that turnout, Dusty will get to stretch his legs and I can ride Tico.

When I saw Dusty in his stall, I changed my mind: he was coated in mud and loose hair. I decided I’d vacuum him first (I have a Shop Vac just for that use) and get the dead hair and mud off him, then I'd switch them around.

There was a LOT of loose hair and dirt, I had to empty the vacuum after doing one side of him, then again after the other.

Of course a few carrots and Kashi bars were passed his way all the while, and praise for being such a good boy, just standing there. Then I picked his feet and we started to go out.

It was then that I saw Tico in all his muddy splendor.

I hadn’t recognized him at first – he was so coated in mud I wasn’t sure if it was Tico or the appaloosa Comet, another boarder, I was seeing. But there was a blue halter on the muddy face, and when I called his head came up and he came running over.

The switch went well - Tico can sometimes be a twit with Dusty, he's very jealous of any treats Dusty gets, and has been known to act out about it in his stall. I didn't want to see any such bad behavior with them out in the turnout, so I made sure to give Tico a treat, switch the lead line, and keep a good hold of his halter to make him pay attention - and he did.

The amount of dried mud on him, I didn’t want to just move it around and have it end up crusting on his skin so I decided to vacuum him too.

This was not a decision I made without some trepidation. He’s not good about being vacuumed and we've had some cross-tie breaking incidents involving the vacuum.

The vacuum has never done anything to deserve this kind of attitude.

While I've been accused of being a bit of a fluffbunny in my dealings with horses, I don't have a lot of patience with a horse who was good about something *once*, and then not. He'd apparently come to the conclusion after some thought that he didn't care for being vacuumed. Breaking crossties and going on walkabout on the property was definitely the option he preferred when the vacuum was presented.

Not being vacuumed was not an option as far as I was concerned. Still, I just didn’t feel like having to fix broken crossties again; so Tico, the vacuum, and I (with a pocket full of carrot bits), all went into his stall together.

I turned the vacuum on. He eyeballed the vacuum and cowered against the wall. He did a little tippy-hoof dance, and shot me the stink eye. I produced a carrot, and approached, vacuum nozzle in hand. The carrot reached his face as the nozzle touched his skin. His skin jumped, but he stayed put.

We continued this approach, for a bit - he'd get a piece of carrot if the eyeball was too buggy, but the vacuum was relentless. When he'd start to really get himself wound up, turning, or backing up, I'd growl "Whoa!" and he'd stop - he'd listen. Which makes me even more sure that it was all an act: if he was truly afraid he'd have knocked me down and gotten the hell outa Dodge.

I had to get him turned around to get the other side, and it all started again of course. The equine brain is a wonderful thing: things they see with only the left eye are completely surprising when they're turned around and catch their first glimpse - again - this time with the right eye.

With the continued application of well-timed carrot bits, we got through the ordeal. By the time I was done, he was still standing against one wall, but with his head down, relaxed.

So I took him out onto the crossties, and noticed a big nasty streak of black on the inside of his back leg. Crap! Out came the warm water, and he got a quick cleaning *down there*. :)

Of course this all took some time and I had things to do. I debated not riding at all, but decided I’d just do 15 minutes. I brought him out back, and we trotted and cantered a bit, and he was pretty good – a bit high headed, but moving up and not doing anything really naughty. There were gusts of wind, and everyone knows they carry horse-killing monsters, but all in all he was pretty well behaved.

I was just about to go back to the barn, but I thought I’d try something.

One of the other boarders had set up some jumps out back, including a tiny thing – basically they’d taken a couple of the X-shaped bottoms from some jump standards, turned them on their sides and set a rail across them. It was about one foot, maybe a foot and a half high.

Since this is a horse who doesn't like lifting his feet up all that high (and so every so often trips over things real or imaginary) I decided I’d have him walk over it, to get him to lift his legs.

We walked up to it. I gave him a chance to really look at it.

The first time, he bumped his front legs, not lifting them up high enough. He stopped for a moment after getting his front legs over, then tried his backs.

With his back legs again, he rapped against the rail. I think he was hoping he’d knock it down with one of his back legs and wouldn’t have to step up with the other, because he kind of ended up almost standing on it on the way over, and then getting a bit tangled in it. It stayed right where it was.

He didn’t like that at all.

I asked him do it again. His front legs he lifted right up and over, quite handily.

Then we stopped. You could almost hear the gears grinding in his head.

I didn’t do anything, just sat there waiting to see what he’d do.

He started to move... sideways. As nice a sidepass as you’d like to see. Until we got to the X, which was of course wider and higher than the rail itself.

He stopped again, thinking. He must have stood that way another 20 seconds, before I gave him a little nudge.

He *very* carefully lifted first one back leg, then the other, up over the rail, not even a tap.

For that, he got to grab some grass on our way back to the barn.