~:: FarmFriday: Equine Adventures ::~

Horse notes:

1)  Last Saturday, when I opened the barn door – happy and carefree and unsuspecting – I ended up frozen right in the doorway.  When you know a place as well as I know that one, you know when the slightest thing is out of place.  Well I’m telling you – any one of you guys would have known something was up, had you been standing there at my elbow.  The barn looked like a giant eagle had been nesting in it.  Hay strewn all over the place – but not wildly – more as though bales had been lovingly disassembled, sifted through and patted down into a kind of nest.  Bales that were supposed to feed the horses for another full day, turned into roving.

Everybody else came to ask if it was breakfast time.

Hello?  Ready to feed me?  Breakfast?  Now?

But Jedda, who had spent the night in the horse jail, did not show up at her stall gate.  This is because the inside gate to the jail was already open.  Into the barn.   How she got it open, I do not know. She is a horse of very little imagination.

Jedda, in the jail.

However it came about (she said, not yet willing to admit her own collusion), Jedda turned out to be the giant eagle.  She’d evidently had a very good sleep after her all-night dinner. Thus, the nest effect. She’d even left plenty of eggs in the nest.  Brown ones.

She was now standing very still outside in the sun, her back end to me, one foot cocked, not at all interested in eating again.  EVER.

Wasn’t much I could do.  Eating like that can easily kill a horse.  But she is built like a tank.  I let her out of the jail, figuring the best thing for it was to let everybody else give her some exercise, keep things flowing, as it were.  They are always glad to chase each other around. In the end, she did fine.  So this is why, if I ever ask you to feed for me, I will tell you to check all the stall gates 8 times before you leave.  I guess I’m going to have to start doing that, too –

2) This morning when I got to the barn, the weather was gloomy (how novel!!) and it was chill (what a nice change!) – but dry.  (Sarcasm ends here.)  Well, dry-ish.  The ground in the arena is still total mud.  I mean squelchy, unpleasant mud.  But something had changed. And that something was equine at-ti-tude.

For some reason, it was Circus Pony Time – they were all snorting and flinging heads and tails around, high stepping around the arena and play fighting with each other.  Hickory especially was lifting those feet and dashing from one side of the oval to the other.  He even went the entire length of the thing bucking fit to burst.  And Zi was giving Sophie, who was stuck in the jail but still managing to put on a great show, a fit.  He’d say rude, inappropriate things, and she’d pretend she didn’t want him too. Then they’d whirl around, pretending to kick each other—close enough to the fence panels, I was nervous somebody’d get a leg through and break it.  The leg, not the fence.

It was beautiful chaos.  Beautiful and crazy.  They were horse-dancing-of-joy.  I have to admit, though, my favorite part of it was when Hickory went roaring across that slippery arena and started into yet another spontaneous, mud-splattering slide-stop, lost his footing and ended up in an ignoble pile, on his side in the mud, right at the fence line.  Didn’t phase him.  He was on his feet, surreptitiously brushing himself off and bucking like a new lamb within seconds.  I think he was hoping nobody had noticed.

But I was snickering.

Too bad I didn’t get a picture of it.

3)  Today turned out to be Spring Pasture Day.  G came out with me and very kindly helped me get the electric fence up and running.  I’d bought new fence material this year, Electobraid in stead of my old two inch white tape.  Holy cow is that new stuff wonderful.  It’s the best stuff I’ve ever seen – a lovely rope.  So lovely, I’d like to have a halter and lead made out of it.   I mean, not really – not at that price.  But still.

Guy got the energizer up and running, and I got the first two fencelines up.

Not sure what he was doing here, but it’s kinda cute.  Maybe saying, “Call me?”

This is what that “multiple exposures” line in the Image menu does.  Wow.  Weird.  But see how fast he moves when I ask him to help me?

His horse of choice.  And the dog who looks up.

So we trundled down to the barn and opened the bit gate.  The horses couldn’t believe it.  We’d just fed them up on hay so they wouldn’t have stomach troubles with the new grass – and they just weren’t expecting it – freedom, running, dry ground, REAL GRASS.

On her way, Jedda, filthy and shedding and old as the dirt she wears – but still with a lot of go.

The shark horse – the mighty Dustin, also goin’.  Look at the gravel fly under that rear left hoof.

They only got ten minutes’ worth.  But a great time was had by all.

All cleaned up.  Ready for Easter!