• Time Flies
• The Horses Demonstrate Why You Don't Leave 
  Them to Their Own Devices for Four Months

• Sunday 23 - Finishing up the Shelters and Horse Training Musings

• Tuesday 25 - Playing My Little Pony
• Babby Chooks!!
• Friday 28 - No DVE for Uno
• Saturday 29 - Roop Gets Back in Gear

Back to October 2008 • Forward to December 2008 

Time Flies

So what happened to the rest of October and November? In my defense, work was really busy and we never got home before it was time for bed. That went on for a couple of weeks, then we were building shelters, an' it poured with rain. Jackit and Zini both suffered from colics, involving one expensive trip to Loomis Basin vet clinic and a couple of trips for Jackit to Ann's (where he miraculously gets better, running up and down calling to his "wimmen"). We think it was caused by the rye grass I was feeding. Kind of strange, but that's the best we could come up with.

Quickie Rides - Saturday 8th - pft and I managed a quick ride at Meadowbrook just as the rain was coming in -  we did lots of wooden bridge practice with Uno and Fergus and explored some of the more obscure trails, and I even ended up hand-walking Uno in some wobbly rocks for a while - that was a little alarming on the broken leg which hadn't been asked to do anything like that recently.

Fergus isn't great at the whole bridge thing, but could be persuaded after a while. On the other hand, Uno wouldn't do them at all until Chili or Fergus had demonstrated their lack of troll-like qualities and trustworthiness by crossing in front of him. <sigh> Needs work.

Considering both pones were barefoot and the rocks on that trail are pretty horrendous, they came off relatively unscathed. I'd rasped them both just before during a rasping blitz doing Zini, Uno, Fergus and Jack.

Ann and I rode to Greenwood Lake the next day - another quickie, but better than nothing at all. We rode alongside the scary wire fence that cause Uno to leap off the bank the last time I rode there with Leslie. This time, I hand-walked him while plucking the fence until he grew bored with the whole thing. Good pony. The sunset on the lake was quite lovely. They are closing this trail soon which will be sad.

After a week of rain, the sun finally came out again...

Horses Demonstrate Why You Don't Leave Them to Their Own Devices for Four Months

We'd been going for a whole 7 minutes, when Chili lollopped up  behind us to catch up, spooked Uno into a couple of mini-bucks, followed by a nose-in-the-air bolt - straight for some very thick bushes. I decided I wasn't going to fit through the bushes with him, so grappled with the fast-approaching undergrowth and came off - right into a big patch of poison oak.

Landed on my butt (nice bruise brewing immediately), rolled over, peered through the poison oak sticks and had to push back out of them and go in search of the errant pony.

Uno was standing, a few hundred yards away looking worried and scuttled a short distance before I was able to amble up and "rescue" him. He'd skewered his legs and face a bit in the bushes, scraped up my saddle some, dislodged the GPS, but otherwise looked none the worse for wear.

After hand-walking a short while to settle us both, I hopped back on and we finished off our little three mile jaunt - a little nervous, but faking calmness as best I could (OK, so I got off a couple of times when it seemed prudent to do so).

In his defense, Uno'd been stuck in a little pen (because of the rain) for a couple of weeks. He seemed to be dealing OK with it, but it isn't something I ever would have asked a full-arab to do, so how fair is that? Plus it was weird hot-windy. Plus he was on his own. So I'll cut him some slack.

The following day, Ann and I rode from Cool down to No Hands Bridge and along to the waterfall and back. A nice 9+ mile ride with a good bit of uphill trotting and Uno did good. Needless to say I got off several times to make sure that he stayed that way - mostly when we met hikers with children on the narrow trails with drop-offs.

He's a lot fitter and stronger than perhaps I'd realised. And Ann pointed out that his bit wasn't really fitting him at all - too big and dangling in his mouth. Evidently when I switched bridles I didn't get it adjusted properly <roll eyes>. So we'll cut him some slack, but think about things and remember that he is a greenie at heart.

We'll chalk this one up to operator error, shall we?

"Incidents" with Hopi - Saturday morning, I tried to rasp Hopi's feet. I say tried, since I got his front feet done but was having difficulties with him not wanting to deal with his back feet.

He was in a stall and every time I went back there, he'd move away. Finally I tied him and commenced clicking/treating for him giving me his foot; letting me put the stand next to his body; letting my pick up his foot and put it near the stand, etc.

Everything was going swimmingly until it wasn't. He moved away, tripped over the stand, went ballistic (still tied up) and proceeded to kick at the stand and make tools fly in all directions, slicing his leg up in the process. Of course Dumbo here had shut the stall door (never mind the horse is tied) so couldn't get out and really wished she wasn't there. <sigh>

No harm done (to me at least) and I glopped ointment on his cuts and did a little more with his other back foot before stopping for the day.

Sunday I decided to finish up. Got pft to come and hold him and with strict instructions that Hopi wasn't to run through pft in the front; commenced clicking/treating for Hopi giving me his foot. It was all going swimmingly until it wasn't (are you picking up a pattern here?).

Hopi decided he didn't want me holding on to his foot and pulled it up under his body away from me. I held on calmly and asked him to give it back and - WHAM - he kicked me sideways in the thigh. <sigh>. I nailed him on the meaty part of the butt with the flat side of my rasp, which promptly broke into three pieces. <double sigh>

So that was the end of rasping Hopi.

We left him shut in the stall and I went to the next stall over and click/treated Uno for stepping back away from me when I stared pointedly at his front feet - the idea being that Hopi would be sad that Uno was getting all the attention and click/treating. Not sure that worked, but it was better than nothing.

Poison Oak Effect - By Sunday (two days after being dumped) poison oak weals from the Uno incident were starting to erupt all over my body and I spent the rest of the week completely shut down - trying to sleep with ice packs, failing to sleep, scrubbing the patches with Mean Green (cheaper alternative to Zanfel - only with coarser scrubby granules, so you have to rub more carefully), taking cold/hot/scalding showers in the middle of the night, feeling like sludge, mopping ooze from my body, and generally wanting it to stop so I could get off.

After three nights being medicated with leftover hydrocodone (generic vicodan), I went to the Dr on Thursday and got prescribed prednisone and some antibiotics (owing to the ooze coming out of one arm). They say that prednisone can make you "excitable" and "irritable" - but how d'you tell, given that you want to chop your own body off from the poison oak. I'm starting to feel a bit like a drug addict with all the pill bottles next to my bed.

By the following morning, at least the ooze had stopped, even though the itching hadn't quite.

Here's just some of the PO weals - I had dots all over my legs, blobs on my front, blobs on both arms, a nice patch on my calf, etc... Couldn't lie on my front or back, so had to lie on my side. Oh, and I have an enormous bruise on my butt from landing, and one on my thigh from being kicked:

Sunday	Wednesday	Friday

Sunday 23 - Finishing up the Shelters

We did get around to building more shelters last month. It was kind of tricky given that I still didn't really have a working leg and pft had hurt his back, but we got a couple of roof panels up for the short-term - narrowly missing slicing off pft's head and slicing off my arms in the process, but giving some shelter against the rain that poured down for a few days. A couple of weeks later when it dried out a little, we were able to add more roof panels.

Today we drilled and screwed the plywood to the walls on the windward side, moved the spare panel into place, relocated the waterer, rearranged some stall mats, rearranged the gate panel to Uno's pen (which he now rules - the others are allowed in but only on his terms which works well) so that the gate opens flush instead of sticking out where ponies could run into it and slice themselves open (you know they will).

We now have a cluster of three 12' x 12' covered shelters between five horses, and the barn and covered area for the other three. The herd got rearranged a few times and now seems to be in a good place, with Provo, Mouse, Zinnet and Jack in one space; Fergus in the single paddock next door; and Uno, Hopi and Roop in the barn paddock.

Today was the first day I felt back in my body and head again after being dumped by Uno on 14th.

Horse Training Musings - My brain cells have finally come back enough to start figuring out a plan where I don't get hurt/dumped in the poison oak again. Started re-reading all the round pen stuff and came across the Marv Walker web site - his point was you can teach the horse to be desensitized to individual objects - here's a tarp, it isn't scary; here's a mop, it isn't scary; here's a refrigerator, it isn't scary, etc. Or you can teach the horse "I'm leader, don't you worry about that object".

How well this works in practice is anyone's guess, but the idea sounds appealing. You have to teach your horses that a) you are leader and therefore they needn't worry their pretty little heads about anything because you'll take care of it and b) - as Marv Walker put it - if a ship sinks in Hong Kong, he wanted his horse to think that he, Marv, was responsible (and therefore a) applied).

Sounds good.

Biggest problem for me at this point is a lack of a round pen, but I've got some ideas. Uno, Hopi and Jack could all use some round penning to firmly cement me as their leader into their pretty little heads (and as leader, I am all-wise and all-knowing, right?).

I suspect the earning the trust sort of works the same way teaching a horse to load works. If you've never actually taught the horse, one day he'll decide not to and you're screwed.

OTOH, if you've taught it, then you can fall back on that training and go back through it, step by step, as a refresher (which they usually get "refreshed" on remarkably quickly, once they remember the alternative).

So I suppose that if the horse just trusts you for no particular reason then if something bad happens, how engrained is that trust? does he really trust you, or was it just convenient laziness on his part to let you lead until the going got tough?

Today's building activities meant lots of banging around, drilling, pounding on things making the whole barn shake and crash. Very good for the pones who, for the most part, barely flickered their eyes. I figured this was good - we could bang and it wasn't scary (and we were obviously responsible - at one point Uno even came up to pft, ostensibly to ask him to stop making that banging noise).

So I have hopes. Even Hopi seemed a little more relaxed around me today, so maybe he did learn something, however small last weekend.

Oh, another funny thing - the barn pones (Uno, Hopi, n' Roop) had dragged a tarp into their space and spent a lot of the day eating off it, pulling on it, etc. Good tarp training :)

Tuesday 25 - Playing My Little Pony

The other day I realised that I don't feel like I'm living my life unless I'm totally exhausted at the end of the day. Unfortunately, you can only keep that up for so long before you get sick, so it's not a good way to be. But it was an interesting thing to realise.

Anyhoo, I'm healthy enough again that I went back to feeding today (pft has been doing it since I got PO-ked) and it was nice to be back. Roop's mane has been braided up for months and was starting to unravel and knot so I played My Little Pony on him and conditioned and brushed until he looked like a girl - and he promptly filled his mane up with hay and dead leaves. Tonight I went and finished braiding him up, so he'll be all spiffy for another couple of months.

This evening Uno and I spent a while up in the arena checking out how the kimberwick felt on him (I stole Roop's since I haven't been riding him and should continue to concentrate on Uno, so not having a bridle set up for him is a good deterrent). 

Uno was very peaceful tonight so we mostly did suppling exercises and worked on giving to the bit, and he listened nicely. Out of curiosity, at the end, I trotted a little and tried some one-rein stops. Not great, so we'll keep working on it. His reaction is still to stick his nose in the air.

Chili ate a tailing rope she was tied up with when we were at Loomis Basin last month which necessitated a quick visit to REI for more rope supplies last night. This evening I rigged a new one up (a red one to go with Uno's Christmassy Green-n-Red motif) and checked out how well (or not) the green rump rug might work for Fergus for DVE next month - he looks a bit like a gawky boy who's trousis are too short. I also dug through the trailer to check on Gu supplies and to find the hand-warmer packets and just generally figure out what was going on in there - last June's trash was still lying around - ack!

Nearly Forgot - Babby Chooks!!

Sweeping the soggy muck out of the barn the morning of 4th November, I heard loud, upset peeping coming from the chook house. 

??

When we got home the previous night in the pouring, pouring rain, the main flock were perched on top of the hay area door in the barn, so I just left them there overnight. Normally if I find them there - say if Provo has helpfully shut their chook house door before it  was time for bed - I scoop them all up on the end of my broom and "fly" them back to their house. They are particularly stupid when it's dark and just perch on the end of the broom looking puzzled and you have to push them off when you get to the destination. I can carry three at a time doing this.

Anyhoo, overnight, the "sitting hen" must have done her job - there were two tiny babby chicks in the nest box this morning. Whee!! 

She had been sitting on three eggs - two of which I "knew" wouldn't hatch because they'd been lying around long before she started sitting. I'd marked those two with mud and left them in there for encouragement (i.e. to dissuade her from nesting out in the St John Wort in front of the house). One of those two "marked" eggs is still intact and although it could be a late starter, I doubt it'll hatch. Interestingly, it was also a long thin egg, so maybe the chick started in there but didn't have the right shaped space to continue to grow? [Nope - I broke the egg open a week or so later, once I was sure it wasn't going to hatch and there was nothing in there - phew, no ickiness to deal with]

She's a good mumma - I was shocked at how thin she has become when I picked her up to inspect her offspring. I can easily hold her in the palm of my hand (with her legs dangling). When Ann was growing the chooks for me, this one was her favorite and would perch on her finger when she was a tiny oik.

When I went to vote (note the casual "I went to vote" slipped in there - <grin>) I got some chick starter and put a small container of it in the nest box with them all. Within 30 seconds of the mumma starting to eat, the two chicks were going for the bits falling out of her beak and within a minute or so had figured the feeder out for themselves.

Ann and I acquired a bird hutch a couple of months ago that someone was giving away and so I spent the afternoon clearing space for the hutch in the barn aisle by putting back all the junk that came out of the trailer when we were fetching shelter panels last month. The family had to be installed quickly since they couldn't continue to live in the nest box - what with it being 4' off the ground.

The Family Three Weeks Later:

Friday 28 - No DVE for Uno

Well, we got about half a mile this afternoon before Uno went lame - left front. I dug a rock out of his foot. Hand-walked him some more and he was still lame, so I dug another rock out of his right rear. He still wasn't quite right, so I hand-walked him some more, and he seemed better. Got on and he seemed better still. Trotted lightly and he seemed better. Got to another steep downhill, got off and started to hand-walk down that, and about 20' down he slipped slightly and came up DEAD LAME (like - holding his leg up) on the right front. <sigh>.

We dispatched pft back the nearly three miles to get the trailer while I coaxed Uno down the hill to the road at the bottom. Then Ann and I sat down there waiting, chilly, with our pones, watching Uno stand with his right front stuck out in front of him, while Leslie and Brandi Apple trotted briskly two miles up the hill to the top and back for a quick work out.

pft arrived with the trailer, unloaded Fergus and retacked him up and pft and Leslie rode back the three miles to the other trailers, and Ann and I loaded up Uno and Mecca and drove home, turned the horses out and went indoors and ate desserts.

Four hours later, pft and I finally loaded Fergus and Uno back up (after they'd been lounging and eating at Ann's) and brought them home. Upon unloading Uno, he could barely put weight on that right front and it is v. puffy, and he was looking v. sorry for himself.

Guessing he pulled a tendon in that right front. <sigh>

He got 2 g of bute and an ice boot and is confined back to his pen.

:(((

Lucky I've got eight horses, eh?

So I'm taking Roop out tomorrow after five months off. He's got 4 weeks to get in shape for LDs.

Saturday 29 - Roop Gets Back in Gear

With Uno out of action, it was time to get Roop out of mothballs so we drove up to Balderston for a 6+ mile loop with Ann and Jess. 

Managed to get a size 0 on the other foot - one that Ann and I found on the trail the other day (I didn't have another size 1 Epic because I had to butcher it when Uno ripped the gaiter off his size 2 boot).

Then I didn't have a bridle for him, since I'd dismantled his for Uno to wear (and then you lent me that Myler bit).

Then someone had hidden his crupper.

But we got his clothes on in the end and I walked him out and he was fine. Got on and it was sorta like I'd never left.  YAY!

He was sort of a good boy - a little excited, but no worse than bad Abi who was v. naughty, or Fergus who was also wound up. He was bad when he kicked at Fergus when he got too close behind - that was scary.

I probably walked him a couple of miles - just because - and my ankle is achy now, but it was OK. I din't want to overdo it with him.

T'was nice to have him back, even if he did sound like he had a bucket on his foot and was sliding all over the place in the pine needles and mud. He felt really good and just the same - not particularly puffy. Not particularly sweaty (given that he has a thick coat and it was gorgeous 70 degrees out there). I was v. happy.

On to December...