warming up, cooling back down

Our wacky winter is continuing - we've had a few days of nice warm sunshine, 70 today, and tomorrow we're looking at ice pellets and low of 18 degrees.

Keil Bay and I had the first ride in over a week yesterday - he had chiro this past week and with the weather weirdness we had not gotten in riding time. He seemed a bit stiff and I fretted some - thinking that maybe I'm asking too much of him. But I decided that even if we poke along it's probably better to keep riding than to stop. Today was totally different - very nice ride and lovely forward trot work. 

In hindsight I think his front frogs are shedding (and there's a longer story involving hoof trims which I don't really want to go into - suffice it to say I am seeing the value of allowing some self-trimming to go on and let the riding do the work instead of the rasp) and that he was just tender yesterday.

We had a bluebird flying around the arena as we rode and that was nice. I think spring is coming but it's clearly not here yet!

In other news, if anyone is using MidWest Agri plain beet pulp shreds, PLEASE make sure you rinse and soak and rinse and check for STONES.

I had been finding stones in the shreds for several months now - not daily, but off and on. Since I rinse the shreds in a metal colander, I realized I could easily hear them when rinsing - and I also have hands in the beet pulp as I rinse and inspect it carefully.

I decided that I needed to check more rigorously and when I opened the last bag, I started collecting what I found in individual ziplock bags each batch. What I found is rather stunning. After the second day I contacted the company to let them know that I was quite concerned. The quality control director emailed me within an hour and asked for photos, which I was more than happy to send. I also sent two days worth of stones at their request. They are supposedly checking into this and seemed to take it very seriously - I have continued to collect what I find, as I wanted to finish out this bag and have the entire "collection" of what was in it. 

I'll post some photos here later this week - but there are stones bigger than chickpeas as well as many tiny stones. 

While I'm happy that the company responded so quickly, I have switched to Blue Seal beet pulp pellets until further notice. 

The only way I reliably find these is by listening and sliding the wet shreds across the metal colander - they are not visible just by looking, and I can't feel the tiny stones just by running my hands through. 

I know I'll be complaining about ticks and fire ants and fleas and flies but I have to say it - I am ready for spring!!

warm-up

We have one tiny strip of snow left and have had really warm temps yesterday and today - though I did wake up this morning to roaring thunder and rain, so add that to the mudslide that is a part of the front field and several other areas.

I had planned to ride yesterday and in hindsight should have pushed through and done it. I had groomed Keil Bay the day before (along with a hoof trim touch-up courtesy of dear husband) hoping that he would be clean yesterday. Ha! That was crazy thinking on my part. He was caked in dried mud again, so I started from scratch, did a sheath cleaning, and made the critical error of not riding right then. 

Today there were some chores that really did have to be done. All water troughs needed to be dumped and scrubbed, which was painful - adding more water to the mud! - but necessary.

I brushed the Big Bay down quickly - yes, of course, he rolled himself on both sides, again! - and then did some mucking. 

Some of this is catch-up from not getting things done during the snow days.

Daughter encountered the first fly and I encountered the first mosquito so we got those milestones out of the way!

Meanwhile, inside the house, I am woefully out of touch with my cleaning routine, so I'm trying to plug that back in. The gym routine too.

I can say with a fair amount of happiness and pride that I am surging forward with the writing. Since I love doing it AND it can be done any time of the day or night, any weather, it has been easy to keep rolling with it. 

Right now I'm sitting in my green chair in my bedroom, and out the window I see a painted pony, Cody, Keil Bay, and two sweet donka boys grazing their hay while the sun is just starting to set behind them. And Keil Bay looks like a million bucks if I do say so myself! :)

Here's to getting all the good stuff in every single day. 

February column, Thoughts From the Barn, is up!!

Head over and read it - would love thoughts and comments there!

http://www.talk2theanimals.net/a-winter-night-and-light/

Big snow day on the hill

snow week, dog debacle

We'll see if it happens, but they are predicting snow today and tomorrow, ice pellets Wednesday, and more snow on Thursday. Then we warm up again!

We had a bit of a debacle here yesterday. The neighbors right next door have an adult daughter who has gotten a dog and she brings it over on weekends and lets it run loose on their property. Except (of course!) the dog is obsessed with our fence line and the horses and donkeys and since it is unleashed, has come under the fence at least one time and was charged by the pony. The owner was right there and saw it but denied that it happened.

The entire herd gets revved up and they start running. I've asked the dog's owner to consider putting the dog on a leash until it learns to come when she calls. As it is, what she is doing, which is to run alongside the dog with a stick trying to lure it away from the fence, is just teaching the dog to run the fence line, which is a huge mistake, in my opinion. I mean, let's create a dog that is an ongoing nuisance for people with horses!

Yesterday my daughter was getting ready to ride Cody when all this transpired. The parents and aunt (they are the neighbors who live there) came out and all four of them were up at the fence, in effect making it a game for the dog to try to get through. The dog was being rewarded by play when it approached the fence. The horses started running, Cody freaked out and started spinning, and the whole thing just went south.

I don't know how much more clearly I can explain to these neighbors that horses are prey animals and this kind of thing gets them worked up. We've had this discussion over the years with their other adult children and dogs, with grandchildren throwing sticks at the horses, with ridiculous tent gazebos being put up right at my fenceline, with guests coming over and trying to get the horses to come up to the fence, etc. etc. I told the dog's owner that at this point, with Salina gone, I am not as concerned about my horses, but I am concerned that the dog is going to get hurt if the pony and/or the donkeys get hold of it. And I told her that if her dog is in the pasture she is not to climb in the fence to get it because the very last thing I want is for her to get trampled by galloping horses. 

And the last thing I want to have to do is go out there and pick up a dead or injured dog and hand it to them over the fence.

I admit - it annoys me to no end to see my horses in protective herd mode. It was more stressful when Salina was here and I knew she could go down and get stuck that way. And it's clear that the donkeys have residual anxiety about that. I hate seeing them get so upset. 

At this point I feel like I have warned them, I have asked that they stop clustering near the fence (they have 10 acres!! Take the dog to the other 9.5!), and short of dog-proofing and privacy fencing that entire side of our property, I guess things will get resolved when the dog gets kicked or stomped and hopefully lives through it and learns to stay the heck away from big animals.

Huge sigh. 

A hundred acres in the middle of nowhere sounds pretty good to me right now!