Sno'crastination

Monday December 15 2008

Winter is really, really, here - we finally got a layer of snow on the ground!

I've been so thrilled - I've been checking the on-line weather forecast every 5 minutes like other people follow, say, politics before the election, or an auction on ebay that they're bidding on. When today's snow chances went up from 40%, to 60%, to 80%, I was really excited. As I was when the forecasted temperature for Tuesday night went from 10* F, to 6*F, to 4* F - that's FOUR DEGREES. As I was when the snow really started falling, and began accumulating on the ground. Yeahoo! I kept giving Steph the exciting winter updates as they happened. Steph, a warm weather person, does not find them as exciting.

But - and I don't say this lightly... couldn't the real winter have waited just ONE MORE DAY?

With me already having to bust the thickening ice in the stock tanks several times a day, and with the temperature going to get so low on Tuesday, I rather desperately need some stock tank heaters. I couldn't get into town the last few days because of extenuating circumstances, and I didn't want to chance going in today on snowy, icy roads.

However, I really have no excuse since I did know that winter was on its way since, oh, April, and I've sort of put it off till the last minute... and now it's a bit too late.

Well, it gave me an excuse to spend much of the day outside in the snowflakes and accumulating ground cover, trying to figure out the stock tank thing.

Which was squeezed in between taking pictures of the ever ebullient Jose, playing with Mac in the snow.







I borrowed a stock tank heater from Carol, figured out which of the three tanks and pens needed it most, knocked a lower fence rail down so that 2 pens can share one heated tank, drug a long hose (which I'd first drug inside the house to thaw, and made a mess) outside to a non-frozen spigot, filled all the tanks - since this will be difficult when it's 4* - set up the floating heater in one of them, and tried to rig it so Dudley won't get to the cord and chew it and either break the heater, shock himself, or short out the power.

For the other stock tanks, hopefully I'll get into town tomorrow, and at the least, I've pulled out a pulaski to bust the ice. If it really does get down to 4* (and here it will probably be less then 4*), I might have to get up every few hours to bust the ice...

Next year, I'm not going to wait so long to prepare for winter.

Winter Has Arrived

Saturday December 13 2008

That big first winter storm I was all excited about? Well, this isn't exactly what I had in mind.

"80% chance of snow!" is what I went to bed with last night.

What I woke up with is: very slight evidence of snow. Whether it was a real serious snow or not I wouldn't know, because the wind whipped up a gale during the night, blowing all our snow (if we got it) to Texas. It should be arriving there about noon. There's probably a good dumping of snow in the Owyhee Range 6 miles away... but I can't be sure, as everything but the Rooster Tail foothill is currently visible, and that has a dusting.

And the only difference between a hurricane and the gale that kept me up most of the night, (sleeping in the living quarters of the horse trailer - wind whistling and howling through cracks in the windows, things flapping and popping) was about 70 degrees. Wind storms like this always make me think of, say, the Donner party, part of a wagon train snowbound in the winter of 1846-7 in the Sierra Nevadas and the raging blizzards they lived through, or the storms of the Dust Bowl in the 1930's, in Oklahoma, where the wind howled and moaned and screamed and drove people crazy. Or that hurricane my family and I stayed to weather out in Texas in 1981.

Now, I'm not complaining, mind you, as it's really COLD : ), and especially as the horses appear to be handling it with ease - everybody's heads are buried in the hay out front; the horses in the back Fat/Lame/Naughty pen either have their heads buried in the hay, or their butts backed up against the windbreak. Stormy's hair is standing on end - he feels like a soft woolly bear. In no wind, the hair standing on end creates an airspace around the horse that can trap heat and keep him warm, but when the wind is blowing, it blows away the trapped warm air. But none of them are shivering. And the eating helps keep them warm.

While I'm definitely not complaining, I'd just been hoping, for, say, 2 inches of snow and a 5 mph gust of wind now and then, not a 50 mph gust and no snow on the ground.

But we still have a little chance of snow during the next few days, and the wind will die down, and then the temperature is going to drop... low 20's during the day and teens at night. I don't have my snow yet, but winter is definitely here!

Anybody up for a ride?

Horsenalities

Thursday December 11 2008

We've been watching some Pat Parelli DVDs that Steph got. This series starts out talking about the "Horsenalities" - the personalities of horses, and how you can categorize them to help you with their training.

We've watched a series of the Clinton Anderson DVDs too. Like them, hate them, love them or be annoyed by them, all of these natural horsemanship trainers have good things you can learn from.

Parelli's approach is to divide the personalities into groups: Extrovert or Introvert, Right-Brained or Left-Brained. You can use these to decipher horses' behavior and work with them accordingly. For example, a left-brained introvert (who is lazy) would need more stimulation in training than a right-brained extrovert (who is a chicken and might try to bolt in fear).

Each category has good points and bad points to it - say, a Left-Brained extrovert can be charismatic, smart, playful (good) and at the same time naughty and willful (not so good); and you want to work on damping down the bad points, while encouraging the good points.

Any time I hear just the word "Personality," I think Jose. He's a complete Extrovert. And he just doesn't seem to have ANY of the bad qualities that go with that. For me, he's the perfect horse. He has enough go, he has enough whoa. He comes up to you, he's polite, he's respectful of your space, he's light. Even when you have treats in your pocket, he'll ask politely for them - whereas somebody like Finneas, or Stormy, who think with their stomachs first, will try to take them by flattery or force. Jose's curious about things - I swear he enjoys looking at scenery when we're out riding. He likes to sniff poo piles to figure out who left them. He likes to go check new things out.


He's smart - once he left the herd and came and stood by the fence, looking at the house till Steph came out to see what he wanted - he led her back toward the herd and the closed gate to the upper acres - she swears he was fetching her to open the gate.

He enjoys being around other horses and other people, but he can be by himself without losing his brain or being disagreeable. He plays, and encourages others (even Stormy!) to play with him. If nobody plays with him, he'll romp around by himself.

He's just the best horse. In fact, Jose's personality ranks right up at the top of any being I want and like to be around, horse or human.

(Jose) The Ripper?

Monday December 8 2008

OK, who's the cuprit(s)?

Mac is now on his third blanket in a month.

He and Rhett are wearing blankets 24 hours a day, because Steph and John are taking them south for part of the winter - aiming for the 4-day Death Valley Encounter and the 3-day Eastern Mojave Scenic, both in southern California, and for a snowbird hang-out in Scottsdale - and Steph doesn't want them to grow a winter coat.

Mac already thinks he's in Horse Heaven, what with getting grain and treats regularly, and now - getting to wear a blanket! Only special horses get to wear blankets! I dare say he never wore one his 9 years on the Rushcreek ranch in Nebraska. He didn't even know what carrots were.

One or two of the other horses are also enjoying Mac's pampering. The blankets make great PLAY TOYS.

I don't know who ripped his first pink blanket, but it became a big enough rip that the strap was in danger of falling off.

Retire that blanket, and on to the gray blanket. I had a feeling this one was an accident waiting to happen - or rather, a TOY waiting to happen. I'm not sure what kind of material it's made out of, but it crinkles and pops (sound-wise) like popping bubble wrap. And who can resist popping bubble wrap? When Mac moved, it crackled. This blanket just screamed "pop me!"

One day I saw a few horses not really interested in all-out playing, but rather pestering each other. Mac and Finneas were frozen in a nose kiss ("I can push harder than you!"). Jose picked on Dudley, though Dudley turned his butt and threatened to kick rather than play. Kazam was poking horses with his nose. Then Jose was nipping at Mac's nose, and Finneas was leaning on Mac's butt. Not two minutes later, I saw white stuffing sticking out of a rip on the butt of Mac's blanket. "FINNEAS!" But Finneas was mum. I didn't catch him red-handed, so I couldn't be sure it was him. And no way to really sew that up - the thin crinkly material won't hold stitching - maybe duct tape would stick to it.

Today, I was outside doing something when this little ball of white stuffing rolled past my feet.

Uh oh.

I went up to Mac at the water trough, and sure enough - a new long rip on one side exposed stuffing entrails, and even part of Mac's skin. There was a wet spot right by the rip. Who was standing next to Mac with a wet, dripping mouth? Jose.

But I could understand - really, once you taste the stuffing of that blanket, it just makes you want to rip out more!

So I brought Mac to the hitching rail, took his crinkly blanket off, and dug through the many blankets in the trunk. Steph seems to have a lot of blankets that fit ponies, though I don't know that she's ever had a pony. I found a blue blanket that somewhat fit Mac, and took the pink one to Carol to repair.

She's also going to give me some sour apple spray to spray on the blanket - maybe the other horses will leave it alone this time.

Or, maybe they'll love the taste of sour apple and rip it up more - I used to put a hot pepper/detergent concoction (that made my eyes water) on horse bandages at the racetrack, and some horses loved it and ripped their bandages right off!

Mac doesn't mind all the attention, and what the heck, he doesn't have to patch up the blankets.

S'no Panic

Monday December 8 2008

It's been so dry here this fall and winter - all year actually - and I've been near panicking, since it's already December, and we haven't gotten any snow here yet. It's been cold - freezing most mornings so that I have to break ice in troughs, and the poo I shovel out of pens has been so frozen to the ground the last few days I can't scoop it up! - but dry. We've had a smidgen of snow in the mountains maybe twice, which melts away in a few days, but nothing down here at the house. And the forecast may say 90% chance of rain or snow, and it may be raining or snowing around us, but in our little rain shadow drainages here, we often get nothing.

Sure, we can't ride much in the snow, unless we know it's going to snow all winter, so that we know to put special pads in the horses' feet, but dang, I love the snow. I love little rides in it, I love to hike in it, I love the cold, I love the beauty and the quiet. I've never spent much time in snow, so I'd rather have a lot of it when I get the chance - like we did last winter. (Everybody here thinks I'm crazy.)

After worrying so much about the drought and absence so far of snow, I went and looked back at my stories from last year; and the first real snow didn't come till December 7 - which is only yesterday a year ago!

And look at what I woke up to this morning!

I was so excited I had to go stand outside in the flakes coming down. It actually dropped enough to stick a little bit to manes and coats briefly, and to almost completely cover the ground in sifted white powder. It stayed on the ground for an hour, (and even several hours in the shaded spots), before the sun and wind came out and it evaporated, and the clouds left for good.

It wasn't enough snow to get excited about, and there's nothing more tantalizing in the forecast for the next four days, but it was enough to give me hope...

To Be (Wild) Or Not To Be

Wednesday December 3 2008

Carol and her horse Surri hauled me and Jose to Karen's house for a ride with Karen and Gil in the Owyhee foothills up above Murphy.

It was a chilly gorgeous fall day, perfect for a ride, though I sure could use some warm riding gloves. The thermometer said it was 48*, and it sure wasn't one degree over that - there was a good bite in the air from the westerly breeze.

We headed for Moore's Creek where Jose and I went with Karen and Carol last year to check on eagle nests, but today we turned to the west before we started into the canyon.

We climbed upward a couple hundred feet above the flats, passing two springs, and at the second one (piped into a water trough) we started seeing a lot of big horse poo piles - wild stallions leaving their marks. Jose was fascinated by the piles - he had to stop and thoroughly sniff every one of them.

The BLM had done a wild horse gather here in July of 2007. From July to September of 2008, Karen had seen, several times while out riding, a herd of about a dozen wild horses hanging out on the flats between these foothills and her house. She hasn't seen them since. But she had seen a couple of stallions on her last couple of rides in this same area - a chestnut and a buckskin. Often when a stallion doesn't have a herd (i.e. girls to fight over), he'll buddy up with other bachelors.

We descended back onto the flats, after stopping to admire the view of the distant Snake river valley to the north, and the further snow-covered Boise mountains above that. Then as we continued west, there they were - the two stallions Karen had just been talking about, on a hillside about a mile away directly ahead of us. If there's enough feed (there was plenty of winter grass) and water (the springs), and the weather is mild (only one skiff of snow so far this fall), and it's safe (not many humans bother to go out there, and cougars are present, but not abundant), the horses have no need to roam great distances.

We were downwind of them, but it wasn't long before the chestnut's head popped up from grazing and turned immediately toward us. He was at a right angle to us, but something had caught his ear or eye or survival instinct. He couldn't have heard us, with the breeze blowing toward us, and the sun was at our backs, so he must have only seen 3 indistinct moving black dots. He stared in our direction for a while, and then he decided we were more than just dots. He turned to face us, and even from the distance, you could tell he was on full alert, his head high in the air and standing completely still. He stared some more, then he decided we were something to get a little alarmed about. He turned a prancing circle and stopped and faced us again, and by now the buckskin knew something was up, and he too was on alert and a bit excited, also turning to face us.

Now our horses had seen them too - a couple of horses in the distance running around - but with no rider! And the two were acting funny - what was this all about!? Jose was extremely interested in investigating.

The two stallions decided that fleeing was the best option, so they whirled as one and ran away, heading uphill. Just at that moment, we went down in a little drainage and out of sight for a while. A few minutes passed while we continued walking along our trail, then suddenly on the little rise about a hundred yards ahead of us, the two stallions popped up on top. Their curiosity had overcome their fear, and they'd come back to get a closer look at us.

All 5 horses - domesticated and wild - were on full alert. We all stared at each other. The stallions looked down at us, whirled and ran and came back and stopped - the chestnut spinning away out of sight then coming back to the top of the ridge, the buckskin running back and forth, his tail in the air - and our horses' eyes and ears were riveted on them.

Karen's horse Gil had seen them before, and in fact had been closer, so he wasn't worried, but Surri was definitely consternated, and Jose - well, Jose was absolutely enthralled, and he wanted to go closer! Jose loves everybody (and everybody loves Jose) and I'm sure Jose wanted to go make their acquaintance, and I don't doubt Jose would have induced them to play for a bit. Of course, he might have gotten chased, but he would have made a game out of it.

Finally the two stallions whirled and took off running, for good this time, and Karen and Carol turned to leave; Jose really wanted to follow the stallions. I urged him to follow his domesticated buddies, but he kept stopping to look back, bewitched, until the stallions became such dots that they coalesced with the distant hillside. Karen figures they escaped the BLM gather - the helicopters rounded up the herds of mares and foals, but it's quite likely they missed lone stallions hiding out in draws.

On our way home, Karen took us by the skeleton of a wild stallion - she'd came across him in April, alive but emaciated and dehydrated, and she'd found his skeleton 2 weeks later. We passed loads of poo piles, so many that Jose only chose to stop and sniff the biggest piles.

It's romantic and exciting seeing wild horses running free... but it is a hard life out there in the wild for a mustang. It's something we all know and can accept: Nature taking care of Nature.

But then there's the dark, realistic side of wild mustangs: the BLM is in a pickle with 30,000 wild horses to deal with. Make that 66,000 wild horses: 33,000 wild ones roaming 10 Western states, and approximately 33,000 in BLM holding pens. What do you do with them all?

Living long-term in a BLM holding facility is no way for a wild horse to live. And some live there for 20 years. And 33,000 of them aren't handled and gentled and petted and ridden and given treats in these pens - they are just fed hay every day. That's it. In limbo between wild and domesticated. Not to mention feeding 33,000 horses every day costs a lot of money, (as does the man-power to put it out), as most of you with horses right now who are complaining about the price of a bale of hay (and the availability) will attest to.

While the BLM has, since 1971, "adopted out more than 220,000 horses and burros" (did they all live happy, safe, long lives?), trying to solve the problem of too many horses by offering mustangs for a nominal fee to anyone to adopt is somewhat hopeful, or foolish, when you consider the regulations.

Your application will ask to describe your "corral" and "shelter" and "access to water" and "type of feed"; you'll draw a layout of your corrals, and a map of where the horse(s) will be kept from the nearest highway; it will ask if you've ever been convicted of abuse or inhumane treatment of animals (that's "convicted"). (If you were convicted, and you checked the "no" box, would anybody know?) The form doesn't ask anything about your experience with horses, though that would seem to be a rather big factor to consider.

Sign your name to the Terms of Adoption and agree not to perform any of the Prohibited Actions, and if your application is approved (and why would it not be, if your drawings and answers look good?), and your wild horse is ready, bring your check for about $125. Bring a nylon halter and lead rope. You get your wild mustang. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Sounds fun and idyllic, doesn't it?

How many people who get a mustang know next to nothing about horses, much less a wild mustang? A young homebred unbroke Arabian can be handful enough to start and train. I've heard from several people that mustangs are a 'breed apart,' (pardon the pun), that you handle them in a different way, because they think differently. That is only common sense given their heritage, and the one mustang I've been around and ridden, fits that category.

But when you have too many wild horses roaming the ranges, horses die from lack of resources - food and water, as the skeleton that Karen came across proves. Suffering in that way is not pretty.

But what do you do - shoot thousands of mustangs? Send them to slaughter? That is absolutely tasteless - and just wrong.

But then what - make adoptions easier? I don't think this is the best possible 'solution.' It will likely lead to more mustangs going to slaughter - people doing it for profit, and people who just can't handle this 'pet' mustang - or afford to feed him - that they've mistakenly adopted. Once the mustang leaves the BLM, there's no way BLM has the man-power to check up on every mustang that's been adopted.

So then what... catch and sterilize or geld stallions and turn them loose? That doesn't remotely sound easy or practical. (Or cheap.)

Consider these options, then add in the argument from ranchers, that the wild horses are eating the feed for their cattle on their already overgrazed lands. (Unless you're vegetarian, this affects you too.)

I don't have the solutions.

I just enjoyed the privilege today of getting a glimpse of these two wild stallions. Jose enjoyed it too.

A Bird in the Hand...

Sunday November 30 2008

...is worth good bird karma.

I was walking to the house from a ride, when I noticed Spigot playing with something on the steps. What was it - a ball? stick? rag? He entertains himself with just about anything. He jumped forward, following something, then reached down to put his mouth on it. It was a little bird!

I yelped at him and leaped forward, and scooped up the bird. He didn't resist - was rather motionless, with his eyes already drooping. He'd probably flown into a window and Spigot saw him and picked him up. He was some sort of sparrow.

I didn't see any dog tooth marks on him, but he was probably a goner. Dang - I hate that - a bird dying on my hands. But, I figured I'd at least make him comfortable while he died, so I got a box and lined it with leaves and grass, and put him inside, and put the box in a dark part of the house so the dogs wouldn't get to him. He could still stand, but his eyes were closed.

A while later I was walking by and remembered to look at the bird... and instead of a dead bird, there was this bright-eyed, wild sparrow looking out, and when he saw me - he flew out! Flew straight to the window and smacked into it. Not too hard this time, but he fluttered down onto the sill. I grabbed a shirt and threw it over him, and picked him back up and stuck him in the box, this time leaving it covered with the shirt.

I let him rest another half hour in the dark, then I took the box outside to the creek (while the dogs were otherwise occupied). Took the shirt off the box, and got one quick picture before he flew right out of the box and up into a tree! He'd just stunned himself, all he'd needed was time to rest and recover.

This is my great second dose of Bird Karma for the year, following my Raven rescue in March - yes, I rescued, touched, nursed, cleaned, fed, held, a real Raven (with help from the neighbors), and I think he's still flying around here keeping an eye on me...