getting well? plus adventures with horses
I'm finally hungry again. I haven't been hungry since two Saturdays ago. I've been so dizzy and nauseated, I haven't eaten more than a bagel a day. When they weighed me at the doc's Thursday I'd lost four pounds since the week before.
I've had a horrible cold on top of everything (three boxes of tissues gone in two days bad). But last night I snapped out of it enough to get hungry. I ate almost a whole frozen pizza, while avoiding the kitty's snatching paw from the back of the chair. (I had to bop her in the head finally, she never usually gets grabby about my "people food". Maybe if she hadn't turned her long nose up at the expensive canned food I gave her, she wouldn't be so hungry!)
Anyway, I'm on my second bowl of cereal here today. Though now I'm kinda eh about it, and wondering why I poured such a big bowl. I want food, but not more of this stuff. *picks at it* I have tacos to make for dinner, but not much else foodwise in the fridge.
What I really want to do is go Home--to the farm, but I know it is a stupid thing to do when you are already horribly congested and wheezy. Mom wants me to worm and rearrange the horses again. The logistics of getting them moved around with the very high creek between the pastures is going to make things trickier than they were when it was dried up last fall. Only Rachel and Gen-Gen will go willingly across our little bridge. Though Jasmine, who never would get on it as a foal even with her mother has crossed it with me the last couple times I tried it with her. As a baby, she would not set foot on it, not even to be with her mom who was screaming for her, she would just stand there, and if her mom got too far away, she would canter back to the stall and wait for her to come back, unlike any other foal we've ever had.
So it's weird that one day she just decided to cross that bridge on her own. Well, I was playing with her in the yard, and since she shied at some trailer mats we had drying on the grass by the barn, I started working with her to make her walk across them and then some tarps, and she was following me around when I wanted to put her back in with the mares, and somehow I just knew it would be a good time to try the bridge. As soon as she started to go across behind me, I bolted like crazy, because EVERY OTHER HORSE I've ever gotten to cross it always charges across in a panic. Not Jasmine, she always does things her own way, and she walked across very slowly, carefully placing each hoof in the center of a board, even her hind ones which most horse just let trail along and aren't really careful with. She even moved closer to the sides of the bridge and put her head down, smelling, and checking out how far to the ground it was or what was down there on both sides, which is a lot more than any other horse I've ever had has done. This is why I keep looking at mule training books to figure out how to train that filly. You ask her to do something, and her response is always, "Why?"
Willow, Jazz's older sis, did cross the bridge till she was two, and I was leading her across when she started gawking at the pond and not paying attention even though I was shaking her halter cause her hind end was drifting, and one foot went off the edge, and the rest of her followed. She landed in the drink and I was sure I'd killed her. But she popped back up at the surface and got herself up and out of there. Of course, the next time we had to cross, she was so nervous, and frantic, that she ended up knocking herself and my sister off the bridge. And after that she wasn't going to do it anymore. Lacey has gone over a couple times, but unreliably. So most of our horses can only be moved around when the creek bed is dry. We don't ask them when it is full, cause the ground turns to deep sucking mud, and there is quicksand in more than one spot on our land, and what seems like dry ground can disappear out from under you at any time. The family we bought the land from said in the 1800's a whole wagon and it's team disappeared right in front of them once, and they had cows vanish now and then.
I'm not sure I wrote up all the ridiculous measures we went to last time we moved them around to get them all safely across. My goal for the summer is to get everyone finally trained to go across that bridge. I just hate to do it, cause it can be so dangerous--that's how I got my leg permanently wrecked in high school, I got pushed off the bridge by a young bratty Rachel. (Well, that injury combined with coltfromhell kicking me in the knee while I was in deep sucking mud.)
Anyway, most people when they see our narrow, sans railings bridge can't believe any horses go across it at all. I dream of having a culvert or two put in and an earth bridge made that you can take a tractor over, but that would be a hell of a lot less picturesque.
Speaking of crazy things Willow did when she was two, Mom reminded me of when she got away from my sis (she's famous for letting horses go when they get antsy, and catastrophe following) and ran out onto the very thin ice on our pond. Even Rachel from the pasture saw her kid going out there and called her in alarm, but Willow persisted in getting herself in danger. I had totally forgotten that until she reminded me. I have vague memories of it. I remember that she got over the edges which broke out from underneath her into the middle, so she wouldn't head back to shore. I know that she had one foot go through the ice more than once, she'd fall and pull herself up, and then finally her whole body went in. We helped her pull herself out of the hole, it was shallow enough there that I think she could sort of get purchase with her back feet. I remember reaching in and trying to catch her front legs, and us helping her get them up on the ice, and my sis and I pulling on them to keep her from sinking back in again. It took agonizing minutes to get her to climb out of that ice. She got out and scrambled further out onto the ice. We caught her and led her back, but the ice near the shore gave way and spooked her away from us.
So my sis and I were standing with her on groaning, sinking, cracking ice, and water was pouring on top of it up to our ankles, and we were surrounded by a ring of water--and Mom was screaming on the shore and not helping much, but I think she went to try and get Dad too, who couldn't be bothered to get up, typical. I remember we caught Willow, and the ice started to give away dangerously and we kept moving frantically trying to get away from the springs. I know I yelled for my sis to just leave Willow, our weight together was too much, and we were on our bellies at that point trying to spread our weight out and scrabbling along. My fingernails were broken and bloody when I got inside. It was so cold, if we went in there wasn't much chance of us even surfacing again. Willow had the sense to move too, I felt bad for abandoning her, but she probably didn't mind as much as I think cause horses can't exactly carry each other along when they have to run from a predator. That whole section of ice facing the house was under water and or cracked apart by then. We met up with Willow in the middle of our pond (it's about 4-6 acres depending on season) after scattering, where it is the shallowest. The ice couldn't sink much till it hit ground, so we were okay there for the moment. Willow was glad to see us again and wanting us to get her out of there. Since my sis was the lightest, she held Willow, while I was going out to scout out for a safe place to lead her off the ice. We were all soaked and shivering violently, and the wind was whipping us, and it was so so cold. We circled around and good thing my sis and I was been in the pond enough to know where all the deep spots are, though we never swam in it due to all the snakes, snapping turtles, leeches, and just how creepy and bottomless the thing is in certain areas. Well, there is no firm bottom in it at all, you sink deep into mud just putting a foot into it, but some areas we lowered rocks on strings and they never stopped sinking until we ran out of line, and not even lillies grow there.
The best bet was the spot that was shaded by trees where the sun didn't hit much, away from the big warm springs, and finally we convinced Willow that she was just going to have to get wet again to get out. We knew it was shallow there, but she didn't, and she had been barely able to get out of the water when she fell through before. I don't know how we convinced her, but I remember we ended up running all together over the ice as it broke out from under us, and when we turned around on the shore it was all open water.
I'm not sure how we warmed her up again in the barn, but I think Dad finally came out and we took the heaters and the brooder we used for chicks and hung them over her in the stall while we rubbed her down with stacks of bath towels. She didn't stay wary of the heaters for long once she figured out they made heat.
Fortunately, the terrible twos were over eventually, and Willow matured into a relatively sane horse, who just doesn't do bridges. Or like ice. But that one is sensible. My sister's arm clicks from her Jo falling on her by taking the turn around the barn too fast on the ice. Her letting him bolt back to the barn whenever he felt like it and at whatever speed he felt like is just as much too blame. When she went to college and I rode him, that horse hurt me a few times before I cured him of it--at least with me. One ride with my sis and he was bolting home again. *sigh*
Rachel avoids walking on ice, even if there is snow over it. She'll stop and put her head down to show me when the terrain is getting dangerous. She has horse sense. :) I think I've mentioned this before, but once I was riding with my dressage friends who were teasing me that my horse couldn't walk a straight line, and at that moment BOTH their horse dropped to their knees, pitching one of them onto the road. Examining the road after, we found that there were big patches of ice under the thin film of snow, and that Rachel's tracks wove between the icy paths. I think she can smell the ice. They can smell water, so how else could she know? Or else she could feel the road getting slippery there and moved away from it?
So there's not much point to this post, except that I'm hungry and miss my hooved family. :)
I've had a horrible cold on top of everything (three boxes of tissues gone in two days bad). But last night I snapped out of it enough to get hungry. I ate almost a whole frozen pizza, while avoiding the kitty's snatching paw from the back of the chair. (I had to bop her in the head finally, she never usually gets grabby about my "people food". Maybe if she hadn't turned her long nose up at the expensive canned food I gave her, she wouldn't be so hungry!)
Anyway, I'm on my second bowl of cereal here today. Though now I'm kinda eh about it, and wondering why I poured such a big bowl. I want food, but not more of this stuff. *picks at it* I have tacos to make for dinner, but not much else foodwise in the fridge.
What I really want to do is go Home--to the farm, but I know it is a stupid thing to do when you are already horribly congested and wheezy. Mom wants me to worm and rearrange the horses again. The logistics of getting them moved around with the very high creek between the pastures is going to make things trickier than they were when it was dried up last fall. Only Rachel and Gen-Gen will go willingly across our little bridge. Though Jasmine, who never would get on it as a foal even with her mother has crossed it with me the last couple times I tried it with her. As a baby, she would not set foot on it, not even to be with her mom who was screaming for her, she would just stand there, and if her mom got too far away, she would canter back to the stall and wait for her to come back, unlike any other foal we've ever had.
So it's weird that one day she just decided to cross that bridge on her own. Well, I was playing with her in the yard, and since she shied at some trailer mats we had drying on the grass by the barn, I started working with her to make her walk across them and then some tarps, and she was following me around when I wanted to put her back in with the mares, and somehow I just knew it would be a good time to try the bridge. As soon as she started to go across behind me, I bolted like crazy, because EVERY OTHER HORSE I've ever gotten to cross it always charges across in a panic. Not Jasmine, she always does things her own way, and she walked across very slowly, carefully placing each hoof in the center of a board, even her hind ones which most horse just let trail along and aren't really careful with. She even moved closer to the sides of the bridge and put her head down, smelling, and checking out how far to the ground it was or what was down there on both sides, which is a lot more than any other horse I've ever had has done. This is why I keep looking at mule training books to figure out how to train that filly. You ask her to do something, and her response is always, "Why?"
Willow, Jazz's older sis, did cross the bridge till she was two, and I was leading her across when she started gawking at the pond and not paying attention even though I was shaking her halter cause her hind end was drifting, and one foot went off the edge, and the rest of her followed. She landed in the drink and I was sure I'd killed her. But she popped back up at the surface and got herself up and out of there. Of course, the next time we had to cross, she was so nervous, and frantic, that she ended up knocking herself and my sister off the bridge. And after that she wasn't going to do it anymore. Lacey has gone over a couple times, but unreliably. So most of our horses can only be moved around when the creek bed is dry. We don't ask them when it is full, cause the ground turns to deep sucking mud, and there is quicksand in more than one spot on our land, and what seems like dry ground can disappear out from under you at any time. The family we bought the land from said in the 1800's a whole wagon and it's team disappeared right in front of them once, and they had cows vanish now and then.
I'm not sure I wrote up all the ridiculous measures we went to last time we moved them around to get them all safely across. My goal for the summer is to get everyone finally trained to go across that bridge. I just hate to do it, cause it can be so dangerous--that's how I got my leg permanently wrecked in high school, I got pushed off the bridge by a young bratty Rachel. (Well, that injury combined with coltfromhell kicking me in the knee while I was in deep sucking mud.)
Anyway, most people when they see our narrow, sans railings bridge can't believe any horses go across it at all. I dream of having a culvert or two put in and an earth bridge made that you can take a tractor over, but that would be a hell of a lot less picturesque.
Speaking of crazy things Willow did when she was two, Mom reminded me of when she got away from my sis (she's famous for letting horses go when they get antsy, and catastrophe following) and ran out onto the very thin ice on our pond. Even Rachel from the pasture saw her kid going out there and called her in alarm, but Willow persisted in getting herself in danger. I had totally forgotten that until she reminded me. I have vague memories of it. I remember that she got over the edges which broke out from underneath her into the middle, so she wouldn't head back to shore. I know that she had one foot go through the ice more than once, she'd fall and pull herself up, and then finally her whole body went in. We helped her pull herself out of the hole, it was shallow enough there that I think she could sort of get purchase with her back feet. I remember reaching in and trying to catch her front legs, and us helping her get them up on the ice, and my sis and I pulling on them to keep her from sinking back in again. It took agonizing minutes to get her to climb out of that ice. She got out and scrambled further out onto the ice. We caught her and led her back, but the ice near the shore gave way and spooked her away from us.
So my sis and I were standing with her on groaning, sinking, cracking ice, and water was pouring on top of it up to our ankles, and we were surrounded by a ring of water--and Mom was screaming on the shore and not helping much, but I think she went to try and get Dad too, who couldn't be bothered to get up, typical. I remember we caught Willow, and the ice started to give away dangerously and we kept moving frantically trying to get away from the springs. I know I yelled for my sis to just leave Willow, our weight together was too much, and we were on our bellies at that point trying to spread our weight out and scrabbling along. My fingernails were broken and bloody when I got inside. It was so cold, if we went in there wasn't much chance of us even surfacing again. Willow had the sense to move too, I felt bad for abandoning her, but she probably didn't mind as much as I think cause horses can't exactly carry each other along when they have to run from a predator. That whole section of ice facing the house was under water and or cracked apart by then. We met up with Willow in the middle of our pond (it's about 4-6 acres depending on season) after scattering, where it is the shallowest. The ice couldn't sink much till it hit ground, so we were okay there for the moment. Willow was glad to see us again and wanting us to get her out of there. Since my sis was the lightest, she held Willow, while I was going out to scout out for a safe place to lead her off the ice. We were all soaked and shivering violently, and the wind was whipping us, and it was so so cold. We circled around and good thing my sis and I was been in the pond enough to know where all the deep spots are, though we never swam in it due to all the snakes, snapping turtles, leeches, and just how creepy and bottomless the thing is in certain areas. Well, there is no firm bottom in it at all, you sink deep into mud just putting a foot into it, but some areas we lowered rocks on strings and they never stopped sinking until we ran out of line, and not even lillies grow there.
The best bet was the spot that was shaded by trees where the sun didn't hit much, away from the big warm springs, and finally we convinced Willow that she was just going to have to get wet again to get out. We knew it was shallow there, but she didn't, and she had been barely able to get out of the water when she fell through before. I don't know how we convinced her, but I remember we ended up running all together over the ice as it broke out from under us, and when we turned around on the shore it was all open water.
I'm not sure how we warmed her up again in the barn, but I think Dad finally came out and we took the heaters and the brooder we used for chicks and hung them over her in the stall while we rubbed her down with stacks of bath towels. She didn't stay wary of the heaters for long once she figured out they made heat.
Fortunately, the terrible twos were over eventually, and Willow matured into a relatively sane horse, who just doesn't do bridges. Or like ice. But that one is sensible. My sister's arm clicks from her Jo falling on her by taking the turn around the barn too fast on the ice. Her letting him bolt back to the barn whenever he felt like it and at whatever speed he felt like is just as much too blame. When she went to college and I rode him, that horse hurt me a few times before I cured him of it--at least with me. One ride with my sis and he was bolting home again. *sigh*
Rachel avoids walking on ice, even if there is snow over it. She'll stop and put her head down to show me when the terrain is getting dangerous. She has horse sense. :) I think I've mentioned this before, but once I was riding with my dressage friends who were teasing me that my horse couldn't walk a straight line, and at that moment BOTH their horse dropped to their knees, pitching one of them onto the road. Examining the road after, we found that there were big patches of ice under the thin film of snow, and that Rachel's tracks wove between the icy paths. I think she can smell the ice. They can smell water, so how else could she know? Or else she could feel the road getting slippery there and moved away from it?
So there's not much point to this post, except that I'm hungry and miss my hooved family. :)