Shame on me. It has been November since I wrote last? I can't believe it.
Well, I'll have to summarize November and December and then get more in depth with January's happenings.
Hmmm, November. The rain started. We went to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, I made a big announcement at Thanksgiving dinner. We got another horse! Paddy. Or Paddy O'Furniture, as we affectionately call him. Or Paddycakes. He's a doll. As much as I love Miles (oh, and I do!), I must say that Paddy is the best horse that I've ever bought. Amazingly, he's also the first horse that I bought without letting my emotions get involved. To be honest, I thought that he didn't seem to have a lot of personality, and he seemed kind of aloof. But he had a great work ethic, and has experience in eventing, and he passed the pre-purchase with flying colors, so I brought him home. Turns out he has tons of personality (but not in such a bratty way as Miles), is very sweet, and has surpassed Miles in herd heirarchy. So Paddy is bossman, Miles is number two, and Old Man is at the bottom. But Paddy is very sweet about being the boss. He's not pushy with people at all. Since we brought him home, I noticed for the first time that Miles and Monty laid down to take naps during the day. Maybe they feel protected by Paddy. They all take turns having a lie-down-snooze, Paddy included.
I don't think anything else exciting happened in November.
December. Well, we had some glorious days of beautiful sunshine. Colin and I were commenting on how brilliant we are to come up with the plan to live here. While Sacramento and areas south as well as west are fogged in and cold and gloomy, we have sun. Glorious, warming sun. Ahhhh, winters here are a piece of cake. Yeah. Right. We spoke too soon. We did enjoy some beautiful days, but then the rain started again. And it didn't stop for a whole week. Then it stopped for about a week and started again for another week. Our property was a muddy mess. The arena stood up to the torrents very well and was actually rideable a day after the rain stopped. Yay Colin for doing such a great job on the french drain.
For Christmas, my parents and my brother and his girlfriend came up to visit and we had a lovely time. Of course, my parents spoiled us even though I specifically requested they not do so! My mom made a family recipe on Christmas Eve, which was delicioius. Colin made a wonderful Christmas dinner of fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, and corn bread. Dessert was lemon meringue pie. After dinner, some neighbors came over and we all continued to drink wine and eat pie and chat and a good time was had by all. Oh yeah, and my mom drove the tractor, helping me with poo chores. It was very cute.
And then, just a few days later, "Open Gate". (You'll remember this all started with "Franco Gate"...all fiascos are some "gate" or another) I had gone to the feed store to buy hay on Monday, for delivery on Wednesday. I bought orchard grass. On Wednesday morning, the feed store called to say they only have Rye. Well, I don't want Rye, I want Orchard, so I called around and found another feed store that did have Orchard. Thing is, they couldn't deliver it right away (and I wouldn't have expected them to be able to). I didn't need the hay right away, but the rains had started, and the longer I waited for a hay delivery, the muddier the pasture got, and they had to drive up a small hill in the pasture to deliver and stack the hay. So time was of the essence, to get it stacked before the rains got worse. Colin and I hooked up the trailer and went to pick up one ton of hay from the other feed store. The horses were in their stalls with the doors closed so that we could get the hay in the barn (and it was pouring outside so I didn't want them in the other pasture because there's no shelter there other than trees). We finished unloading and stacking the hay, and my hands were frozen and I couldn't feel my fingers. I was closing up the trailer and asked Colin to let the horses out. Well, we had a miscommunication on the status of the gate. I thought he'd close it before he let the horses out, and he though I would have closed it before I asked him to let the horses out. Unfortunately, we didn't realize this until it was too late.
I got back to the house to warm up, turned around to look out the window, and saw three horses in the driveway. Ummmm, NOT GOOD. So I put my shoes on (not even my boots, damn!), put a hat on, and ran outside. I hadn't ever taught Colin how to catch a loose horse, unfortunately. He was able to get ahead of them and I told him to hold his arms out in order to "push" them back towards the barn. Paddy was very excited (so much for his perfect horse status) and ran by Colin, and of course Monty and Miles had to follow. The one good thing in this scenario is that they chose to run up the hill to the neighbor's house, not down the street. Whew for that. So they ran up the hill, through the neighbor's yard, wreaking havoc along the way. The neighbors tried to help and suggested we open the gates to their pastures to see if we could get the horses in there. We tried, but the horses had another idea. They ran to the corner between our two properties, but every time we tried to get close to catch them, they'd run along the fence line. The fence line that they were running was actually between our neighbors and their neighbors up the hill, whom we had not yet met. Monty, sick of being chased around, thought he saw an opening and turned to it, but was stopped by a barbed-wire fence. Smart boy. But not for long. Miles decided that that was probably a good direction to go in also, and dog-piled into Monty. Oh shit. Barbed-wire fence is NOT A GOOD THING. "Don't move, please don't move", I was thinking. Nope. Monty and Miles tried to run through it...or maybe Miles running into Monty pushed him into it. Either way, they were both tangled up in it. Colin went to get wire cutters from the neighbors, and I just watched the horses, totally scared shitless that they were going to really hurt themselves. By the time Colin got back, they had turned around and jumped out. As they went running past me, I could see that Miles had gotten a laceration across both arms. Monty looked ok. Colin directed them into an open pasture of the neighbors, and in the meantime Paddy had somehow gotten OVER the barbed-wire fence into the not-yet-known neighbors. So, with Monty and Miles safe in a pasture, Colin and I went through the BWF (barbed-wire fence) into this lovely mowed pasture of someone we don't even know. I asked Colin to go up to the house and introduce himself to our neighbors. In the meantime, Paddy was running around like a maniac, head down, ears pinned, tail in the air. Paddy ran towards the BWF, then would slam on the brakes and do a sliding stop. This happened numerous times, all the while with me walking around, gently calling "whoa Paddy, whoa Paddy". Finally he had his fill of it all and let me catch him. Just then, Colin and the new neighbor came out with a carrot. I had Paddy haltered and it was time to head for home. The neighbor said we could cut the BWF and go home that way, but I wasn't going near that thing, so we had to take the long way home.
So, with Paddy safely in his stall (and a quick check-over showed he came out of the fiasco uninjured), we went to get Monty and Miles. Miles's laceration looked bad enough to make an emergency call to the vet, so when we got them back in their stalls, that's what I did. While I was waiting for her to show up, I cleaned the wound and gave him some hay to keep him busy. But he wasn't interested in the hay. So I knew he wasn't doing too well. While we waited, I also gave Monty and Paddy a more thorough look-over. Monty came out of the fiasco without a scratch. Really. Anywhere. No scratches. Paddy had a few scratches, but very superficial and nothing to worry about. Just Miles, my little devil.
The vet came and cleaned the wounds out, stitched him up, and gave me some antibiotics for him. She thought that on one leg the stitches might not hold, but it was worth a shot. Unfortunately, due to my paranoia about my horses' care, I decided to cancel our vacation to Hawaii. We were going to meet my parents there and were looking forward to getting away from all the rain. But I just couldn't leave. We'll go with them some time next year. Or this year, as the case may be.
So that was the very end of our 2004. All in all, it was a very good year - bought the farm, got married, got a new horse - we're very happy here.
Now onto January. Well, the vet was right. Miles's stitches didn't hold. I kept him in for the first night, then let him out during the day. Between Paddy chasing him, Paddy licking his stitches, Miles licking his stitches, they didn't last long. The vet suggested I either put a blanket on him (the wound was in a place that would be covered by the blanket), or get a bib for his halter so that he couldn't reach the stitches and lick them. I did both. But the blanket did rub so I stoppped using it after a couple days. I kept Miles in most nights (which he wasn't happy about, as evidenced by the teeth scratches on the inside of the stall door), until Colin and I could put up a temporary outdoor pen for him. I needed to keep him separate from the other horses, and they were all in the small pasture at that point, due to the rain. On a clear day, Colin and I sectioned a part of the small pasture off. The area allows him to be in his stall and have a run-in area where he can be outside by himself. And I don't have to close him in. He's so funny. He doesn't really like to go out in the rain, but he likes to stand in his stall with his head out the door, getting rained on. The temporary fence has worked out so well that we think we'll keep it up even though we don't really need it anymore. It allows us to have a space for a horse to be isolated, if necessary, and it also lets us feed all the horses outside without anyone getting run off their food.
The vet came out twice more for follow-up. Once to take out the stitches that weren't holding anyways, and a second time to take out the stitches that did hold. She gave me some great stuff to spray on the open wound, and it is healing up nicely (although still an open wound at this point and it has been almost four weeks). Miles is now allowed out with the other horses overnight, and Paddy is happy to have his buddy back.
I can't remember if I mentioned it here or not, but Colin and I volunteer at the animal shelter on Fridays. I walk dogs and Colin cuddles the cats. Just last week, the volunteer coordinator sent out an email with pictures of cats whose Time Has Come. One picture is of two female cats, and Colin remembered them - they are supposedly used to being outdoors, and are very shy and aloof. Colin didn't think their chances of getting adopted were very good, as they didn't make a good impression. So we decided to adopt them as barn cats. We just went and picked them up today, and whoooweee do they have stinky butts. "Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?" They are currently in a stall (the weather here has been so nice that the horses pretty much stay out all the time and don't use the stalls, so we have one to spare at the moment) with food, water, a box with a towel in it, and a bale of hay. Last I left them, one was just laying on the ground, and the other was hiding behind the hay bale. We'll go out and check on them later. We were going to name them Eva and Zsa Zsa (they look like twins - definitely litter-mates), but due to the stinkiness of their butts, they may have different names. Eva and Za Za may be too classy for them. We'll see.
So that's the latest. Of course I continue to ride almost every day, and take lessons with my coach whom I love - she's great! Colin continues to play hockey and has worked his way through a list of house projects. Next on our list is a ditch up by the neighbor's house so we don't get their run-off during the rain. We still need to seed the hill in front of the house. Colin is working on plans for a pump to get water to the arena sprinklers. After that, we may take a breather...
0 Comments:
