when the party ended

We had a grand morning here yesterday, celebrating with the pony. It was a gorgeous day, and after lunch I went out intending to ride Keil Bay before leaving for the office later in the afternoon.

When I put his halter on he seemed grumpy, and I commented on it. We set up in the barn aisle for grooming, and I noticed right away that he had cut his lower eyelid. I went inside to get my med kit, some warm water, and a clean sponge, and then washed the cut to see what I was dealing with.

I knew when I started washing it that I would likely be calling the vet. Keil Bay is generally laid back about this type of thing, but he really didn't want me messing with that eye. Plus there was a small piece of wood chip on the edge of the cut that wouldn't come off, which made me think it was actually a splinter that was sticking in the wound itself.

This is the kind of thing that stresses me out. (I just need to insert here that right as I typed that last line and sighed, my son walked in with cinnamon toast and served it to me - I'd remarked earlier that I could smell his and it made me think of a happy household so he must have gone back down to the kitchen and made more!)

Anyway, I called the vet and fortunately the vet on call yesterday was right there in the clinic, which is only 15 minutes from our house. She hopped in her truck and came right over. Keil Bay got a little sedation so she could check the surface of the eye and make sure it wasn't scratched. Thank goodness it wasn't. She cleaned the cut and removed the splinter. Applied the ointment and gave him a shot of Banamine. By this time he had given me his head to hold in my arms. One of Keil's most endearing traits is his tendency to let me "hold" him when he is happy (usually after a good ride) or worried (usually a vet visit, a few times after the farrier put hot shoes on his front feet) Keil is a big horse, and there's something utterly charming about his desire to be comforted this way.

In the midst of the vet exam, the shavings truck came chugging up the drive. I motioned for the driver to stop outside the barnyard so we could finish the exam quietly. Once I had Keil Bay in his stall, the shavings got dumped, the vet got her check, and it was nearly time for me to leave.

We have spring vet stuff coming up and yesterday reminded me that I need to prepare for the two visits we have coming. One will involve Rafer Johnson getting gelded and the horses getting shots and Coggins plus dental checks. The second one will involve Rafer Johnson getting shots and the horses who need dental work getting that. This is all routine stuff, but I dread it. Our gang are all very good with the vet but I end up needing valium by the end of it!

Maybe cinnamon toast will do the trick!

Update:

Keil Bay's eye looks good this a.m. Less swelling and cut is beginning to close. He didn't fuss about the ointment, and took his Banamine over the stall door with no problem. However, he did come back in from the field with me after breakfast and stayed close while I mucked the paddock. I gave him a little hay so he could eat and hang out with me.

I went ahead and mucked his stall and left it open, in case he wants to hang out in the barn. Gave him some fly spray and once he realized I was done with the chores, he headed back out to the field.

The baby birds are growing up. Their little voices are getting mature and song-like now instead of the peeping sound. They get very loud if any noise happens in the barn, which Keil Bay discovered when he banged his stall door! I'll miss their voices when they leave us.

a painted pony turns 8 years old

Apache Moon joined our family during his fourth year, when my daughter was 7 years old. Since then he has taught us so many wonderful lessons about riding and ponies and how little girls and ponies together can make magic.

His many nicknames offer a glimpse into his personality: Patch Pony, Little Man, The Thelwell. He is smart, talented, nimble, and sometimes a bit of a devil. He knows how to take gates off hinges and let entire herds out. He knows when fence tape is hot or not. He handles our 16.2 Hanoverian gelding with no problem. And today is his 8th birthday!

After being serenaded this morning and served a gorgeous birthday breakfast, his first act as an 8-year old was to escape the barnyard.



His next was to get a little birthday ride with his girl.



At some point she'll outgrow him, but we plan to train him to drive so we can enjoy him forever.

These are some of the things this pony and his girl have done together over the past two years, all firsts for both of them. Thank you, Apache Moon! You're a superstar and we love you!

for the writers in the house

Derek Nikitas, author of the novel Pyres, as well as one of the short stories in the Killer Year collection, has a wonderful guest blog up today over at Murderati.

He's writing about literary thrillers - what they are, what the writers struggle with when writing them, and how they fare in the marketplace.

He totally nailed my current writing issue - what he calls "negotiating the interaction between subtlety and intensity." Which is exactly what I've been doing since late last week.

Reading his blog post this morning was like going to a top-notch writing workshop. He hasn't solved my problem but he has named it, and that's the first step toward conquering it.

Even if you're not a writer, Murderati is a great read, especially if you're a novel reader who likes mysteries, suspense, thrillers, etc. There's always good conversation in the comment section too - so don't skip that part!

And if you have a preference as a reader for subtlety over intensity, or vice versa, I'd love it if you commented about it here. I know it's a subjective thing, but I'm really curious about what readers look for in their idea of a "great read."

practical barnkeeping

This morning we had to rescue Muffine Eloise from the top of a stall divider. In her crazed efforts to get to the birds' nest full of babies, she got hung and couldn't get down. (well, perhaps she could have, but we couldn't bear to watch, so we got the ladder out and ended the agony)

Once I had the ladder out it seemed fitting to go ahead and start my spring cleaning ritual.

I use a few squirts of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap in a bucket of water and the old raggedy barn broom to swipe down cobwebs, layers of dust, and whatever else might be sitting on the stall walls and doors. It smells wonderful, is totally nontoxic, and has a repellent quality for insects. Perfect for the barn.

We have an extra long light bulb changer that is perfect for wrapping rags around (dipped in the peppermint mixture) and getting all the highest cobwebs.

Once I'm done with that I intend to get the fans down for a thorough cleaning so they can be hooked up for hot days.

The tack room will get emptied out, wiped down from floor to ceiling, bin lids dusted off, tack cleaned, DE sprinkled around the perimeter to keep insects out. Then everything will go back in. Somewhere in this process I need to wash the horse blankets so they can be packed away until next fall.

I have learned by my own mistakes when it comes to washing the blankets. The best way is to hang them over the fence and do a preliminary rinse/scrub to get as much of the dirt and hair off as possible. Once that's done, they go through one complete cycle each in the washing machine with Rambo Blanket Wash, and then one complete cycle with nothing to make sure they're rinsed thoroughly. Then they hang in the sun until mid-day (the washing has to be done early) and turned to the opposite sides for the afternoon. At the end of a sunny day, they're nice and clean and dry, and I pack them into big plastic bins with layers of lavender buds to keep them smelling nice and to keep insects out.

I *may* substitute a new organic lavender laundry detergent this year for the blanket wash. I haven't decided yet. But it smells heavenly and is very gentle.

We'll check stall doors and windows and replace hooks and hinges as needed.

I would like to clear out all the stalls, remove the stall mats, and fill any depressions before replacing the mats - but I may wait and do this in the fall.

Meanwhile I've discovered that the cedar mix sawdust we got last time is quite wonderful with just one wheelbarrow of pine shavings per stall mixed in. I'm not sure yet how I'll proceed - have two separate deliveries and piles? Use bagged shavings from the feed store? It's a work in progress, but I do like the mixture and how it feels and holds up day to day inside the stalls.

There is one more big project that has to do with the barn itself. I'd like to move the hay out of the spare stall, dissemble the middle wall, and reconstruct it so it can be used as two single stalls OR one double stall. We have that set-up on the other side of the barn, but I need it on Salina and Rafer's side, so that when Redford comes there will be one big stall for all of them, with two mangers.

Hay storage will then need to be addressed. Sigh. I want a hay barn but not sure that's in the cards right now. So I may put up one of the heavy duty "tents" that I've been researching. They have floors, air vents, and anchors that go a foot into the ground. With wooden pallets to keep the hay up off the floor, one of the dark green blend-in-to-the-forest ones should do nicely.

If while reading this you hear a very loud THUMP, don't panic. It's my husband, who just passed out at the next few weekends' to do list. :)

(oh, and in case you might be concerned, here is Muffine Eloise post-trauma. I think she'll be just fine)

continuing adventures in lunar fullness

It's been another very full day on November Hill.

Rafer Johnson decided he wanted to venture further afield than the barnyard yesterday while I was finishing up mid-day chores. I found him outside the tape we have up, marching around the compost bin, standing on a little mound in the edge of the woods, surveying his donkeydom.

Salina was okay with it until she realized I wasn't, and she went to the tape and began to call him. He just looked at both of us.

I got some butterscotch treats and a lead rope and called again. I really wanted him to come to me and get a nice treat, and he did. But when I went to walk him back underneath the tape, same way he'd gotten out of it (probably not the best thing to do on my part) he balked. What? You want me to go under that potentially live wire? No! I quickly realized this was a good moment to go along with the drama, so I acted like the tape was hot, undid it carefully, and we walked through together. Salina went along with this charade and stepped back a few steps as I set the tape aside.

That particular tape is meant to be replaced by a gate, but the horses respect the tape, so it's worked its way down the list. I think Rafer Johnson is raising it back up again!

All day yesterday I had crazed felines in the barn. The nest of birds has hatched out and they are nearly constantly cheeping frantically for food. The mother bird comes and goes frequently but by the sounds of it, she has many babies to feed and it's an endless job. The cats are beside themselves. This nest is high and well protected and the cats can't quite believe it.

I came in finally to do some work on my novel. My goal to get through a hundred pages this weekend was, shall we say, a bit over the top, and I was feeling stuck again with this new material. I gave myself a little bit of time to settle in and write, but it wasn't working. So I decided to do something I typically never do - time myself. I had to write for 20 minutes, no matter how badly or how silly - to type into the next scene for that long without stopping to think.

Thirty minutes later I had written a decent scene. This whole section of the book is proving difficult because it's tapping into my own "writing issue" - caution about going over the top, or getting overly dramatic with the story. In this case that caution is really blocking my forward motion. But I'm pushing past it, page by page.

Yesterday afternoon my daughter and I went out to ride. Keil Bay got groomed head to toe, including mane and tail being totally brushed and combed out. I'd helped my daughter get Cody tacked up, and by the time I was ready to tack up Keil Bay I felt like I had no energy left. There was a moment or two where I considered packing in the ride, but I decided to push past it. I put his forelock in a pseudo-braid and into the arena we went. I think because he looked so fancy, and had warmed up so well, plus cantered left extremely well (it's his harder side), I felt like trying something new. Something we'd never done before. "I think I'll do a flying change." I half expected my daughter to nix this idea for me, but her enthusiasm and assumption that I could do anything I wanted gave me a boost. 'Okay! I'll watch!"

We tried it three times going up center line. Each time I gave the cue, I felt the little bump that meant Keil Bay was changing leads. Each time, though, he broke into the trot out of that stride. The fourth time I was getting sloppy so I decided to canter up center line, break purposefully to trot, and then ask for the opposite lead. He did that perfectly, so I stopped there. I should have started with that and built up to the flying change. The day had a sort of wild air to it though, and I had decided to go right for the top.

The best part came next. My daughter decided to try the same thing with Cody. He's green to this, but they did a good job trying. I was thinking it was time to dismount and call it a day, but my daughter, in her characteristic desire for more riding, exclaimed "Wait, it's time for our victory lap!"

She led the way around the arena on Cody, in a big bold canter. Keil Bay and I followed. We kept going around and around, and Keil Bay got a little excited and tried to catch up to Cody. I have not cantered that much continuously since I started back riding several years ago. And nothing fell apart. By the final lap I was calling out "woo hoo" and absolutely loving the excitement. I'm thinking about hiring my daughter to be my riding coach. :)

A very interesting aspect of the day was that it began with an unusual bird sighting. I was sitting here in the garret and heard the most incredible squawking and fussing. It went on and on. Finally I got up and looked out the window. Two large crows were chasing a red-tail hawk out of the tree right outside my window. I was intrigued, but it's only today, a full day later with the little struggles from yesterday laid out before me, that I get the message. As important as I believe it is to start my days with intention (to create the day), I also believe that reviewing the day adds a wonderful depth that I would otherwise not have.

Our day came to a close at nightfall. I wanted the horses to have as long a time as possible turned out before the rain hit, so we took chairs to the front field and sat beneath the trees. My son came out to join us, which was a nice treat. We visited with each horse and Rafer Johnson in turn. (Rafer pretty much planted himself with his head in one of our laps and demanded that his turn never end) and as the horses moved gradually up toward the barn, we picked up our chairs and followed. A half hour later, they had moved us right up to the gate, and the rain started. As usual, they are truly in sync with everything around them. By simply following them, we too came into sync.

We all had a much earlier bedtime than the night before, and I'm happy to say, Corgyn and Apollo Moon were in sync with my need for sleep. I awoke on my own this morning at 7 a.m. And we begin again with a new day ahead.