Salina, equine goddess, takes charge of her own treatment

Salina has been off on her left hind for a couple of days. I haven't been sure if it's an abscess or if she did something (she galloped up the hill a few nights ago) so haven't yet done any abscess-related treatment. She is eating, whinnying as usual when her donkey boys go too far away, and is making her way around the barnyard at her own pace.

This morning the biggest thing she seemed to want was for me to rub a bug bite on her flank. She stretched her head neck about in a perfect straight line and turned her head back and forth with great pleasure as I rubbed.

I gave her a remedy this morning that fit her symptoms about as perfectly as you can get. Usually when you get a remedy right with homeopathy you will either see a quick improvement or sometimes you'll see a brief worsening of symptoms before things start to shift.

Husband just came in to tell me (he's been working on a project in the barnyard so was able to see what was going on in the barn) that Salina soaked her own foot in one of the water buckets just now. She stuck it in, stood there, and then after 15-20 minutes she took it out, and when he checked, it looks like an abscess is getting ready to blow.

I noticed earlier today that one of the water buckets in the barn was dirty in a way it never usually gets - I wondered what in the world had done that - now I know.

Salina is soaking her own hoof.

We have pretty much stopped soaking hooves as a treatment for abscesses, preferring to wrap with Animalintex. But Salina, being 27 years old, has likely had her hooves soaked over the years and I guess she's taken matters into her own... hooves!

Sometimes I wonder why anyone anywhere doubts the intelligence of these animals.

an apache moon night and the black mare's song

When the moon gets to the point that it looks like the moon on our painted pony's left flank, we say it's an Apache Moon... and we have one of those this evening. The moon is a bit over half full, and lying on its back, as Isak Dinesen wrote in her book Out of Africa:

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?

November Hill's evening song today included pulling out spent squash plants to make room for new ones, being joined by two donkeys and a black mare who love to help weed, finding the toad prince in the barn aisle, and listening to Back Porch Music on NPR while the horses ate their dinner tubs.

The best part of tonight's song happened as my husband and I, along with Dickens E. Wickens, cowboy cat, walked the path from barn to back gate. My husband called out good night to the equines, and Salina whinnied in response: wait - something's not right.

So we turned and went back to the barn, realizing that Rafer Johnson had not been turned out with the herd. He was standing by the gate to the front field, and Salina was letting us know we needed to come let him out.

The black mare knows the song of being a mother, and we have learned to listen when she sings.

waking to neighing and dreaming short stories

Two nights ago I was wakened by neighing. I woke up, not sure I'd really heard the sound, when Salina neighed again, right outside the bedroom window. I woke my husband, who went out to check the barn. The neigh had been very clear - come out now.

My husband found we'd left the gate to the front field open. The geldings had discovered it and went out for a middle of the night frolic. Salina wisely woke me up and they were led back to their paddock and the gate closed.

I'm a sound sleeper, a vivid dreamer, except if something's wrong. How perfect that Salina knows that about me. Aside from everything else, it charms me completely that Salina's paddock extends far enough that she can actually come to my bedroom window and neigh.

Last night I dreamed of a friend's apartment in Paris. Somehow I had visited her without a current passport, and was worried that my old one would be checked and found lacking on my return to the US. Crazily, in the dream, I thought, oh well - the worst that can happen is I'm stuck in Paris! I imagined briefly what it would be like to live out my life there.

Most of the dream involved looking room by room at the lovely apartment. The living room was small but with very high ceilings and a huge window that led out into a quite large back yard. The yard sloped up to a rock face, around which were planted many blooming, dripping perennials. A corner of the yard sloped down to a small pond, and my friend explained that she was still working on designing a terraced dock, with places where she would plant ginger grass. I suggested dwarf-sized fruit trees which would hang over the pond so that she could row beneath them and pick fruit in its season.

Back inside, she had papered one wall in many sheets of thick, jewel-toned paper edged with lace. It made a rich block of color that reflected onto the rest of the room. The kitchen was simple but stocked with the utensils one needs to make a good meal. On the other side of the kitchen was the front door which led right into the busy Paris street. The room had nice windows for people-watching, and I wondered if she might turn it into a writing room - or would the activity outside be too distracting. I stood for a moment in the window and watched the people pass.

Up the stairs a gorgeous crimson and cream carousel horse was suspended by a cord. The movement of air as I walked up the stairs caused it to turn slowly in a circle. The bathroom too was tiny but functional. On my way back down I marveled that the horse had transformed into a dolphin. This was apparently a special feature of this hanging art - it transformed for each ascender and descender of the stairs into a symbol just for them.

The stairs shifted near the bottom to a second stairway that led to the bedrooms. My friend's bedroom was like being underwater - many shades of blue hung from the ceiling: small sheets of silk and sateen fabric. It was quiet and peaceful and she decided to lie down for a nap. Two other friends were resting as well, but not asleep. I made my way to the guest bedrooms, small but perfectly adorned with antique quilts and warm lamps and thick pillows.

On my way back through the first bedroom, my friend's sister arrived to greet us. She was very tall, an older, very elegant French woman who came to us in turn, held our faces in her hands, and divined without a word from any of us who each of us were and what we had come to Paris to discover about ourselves.

Someone noted the beautiful antique parasol she carried, and as she opened it to show it off, it crumbled, and the quaint old Paris she represented seemed to crumble with it. Suddenly she transformed into a wild-haired, temperamental artist, who stormed into the guest bedroom to rest.

In the end to the dream, the two sisters slept, one peacefully, the other restlessly. The worry about my passport faded in the moment, and I breathed out a small sigh of relief and decided to enjoy the visit, now that I knew why I was there.

(It's probably relevant to know that my birthday is on Leap Day, and I have one coming the end of this week. I was in Paris for my sixth real birthday, a journey that I made alone and which represented my first real step forward as an adult in the world. The first night in Paris I had a panic attack and suffered a case of head-to-toe hives. But then I woke up, looked outside the tiny window, and made the choice to discover something new about myself in a new city. This Friday will be my 12th real birthday. I suspect this dream marks some changes between then and now.)