Rain mandala

Finally, some rain on November Hill. I put in a rain gauge in the flat upper bed and measured .6 inches on Saturday, .5 inches on Sunday, a trace on Monday, and more yesterday that I need to check.

We need even more but it's nice to have some each day instead of a deluge all at once.

I noticed a batch of huge rusty-colored mushrooms in the back this morning. I'm sure some things are popping up with the ground staying damp for so many days now with not much sunshine.

The birdbath created an interesting mandala when I emptied it yesterday so I took a photo. May we all get the water we need to sustain our needs. I'm thinking too of California and the wildfires and hoping the winds die down, rain falls, and the fires are soon under control. It's been an intense late summer and early fall with hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires.

Horses and humans, meeting in the middle

Last night in the barn I was cleaning feed tubs and waiting for husband to bring out the dinner buckets. Keil Bay thought I was getting ready to feed, so he joined me at the feed room door, but when I just stood there, rubbing his neck, he nudged me, a big (some would say rude) nudge with his muzzle.

I stepped back to catch my balance, made a little shriek sound, and the Big Bay's eyes went wide and a sliver of white showed. He raised his head. I collected myself. Then, just as suddenly, I relaxed and breathed out in a sigh. He lowered his head and made a soft snort.

Keil Bay and I know one another well enough that this kind of communication happens all the time. He got overly excited about dinner, I misread his appearance at the doorway, I offered affection, he wanted food, he expressed himself, I reacted, he reacted. Then we both breathed and relaxed and grounded ourselves together. I think if you simmer the essence of horse and human communication down to its most basic, this is what you have.

I kept thinking about it, though it's not a new idea to me, nor to most people who spend time with horses and spend more time pondering how this relationship works.

Horses are large compared to humans and their instincts tend toward flight in moments of fear, boldness in times of play, and what to a horse is a simple nudge asking for movement, can be a rough shove to a smaller human. A shriek quite normal in volume as a reaction of surprise by a female human is incredibly loud to a horse.

This could have gone another way if Keil didn't know me and I didn't know Keil. Years of living together have taught us a few things.

Horses bolt and flee when things get scary, sometimes they rear and spin. Humans grip on tight and fold forward into a modified fetal position. Humans usually tense up, horses do too but their tension is released by their motion, if allowed.

Put the human who grips on tight and folds forward into a ball of hard muscle on a horse trying to get away from something scary and you have a recipe for disaster.

For humans to coexist peacefully with horses we have to engage in a mutual training down of our natural instincts. We teach the horse not to bolt, not to run away, to keep his hooves on the ground, to spin only when we ask him to. We teach ourselves to sit up straight, to resist the urge to grip on tight with hands and legs, to let our seats go deep instead of forward, to relax our bodies into the horses' forward motion. It's almost never an equal endeavor.

A young horse with less training usually needs a more experienced human and vice versa. Personalities play a role, and for the human, a basic philosophy about how we treat "others" plays a role as well.

I think the best horse people meet their horses in the middle. They listen to the horses to learn how to give at the right moments, in ways that are safe for both, in consistent patterns of behavior that build trust.

The image I have is of a human and a horse walking into an open space, an arena, or a field, and both working in unison to control instincts and join forces. A well-known Rumi poem came to mind, but I'd never considered it in the context of humans and horses. I think it fits pretty well.

Out Beyond Ideas

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.


When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense

Corgi tales

Baloo is getting so big now, and although he looks like an adult he is still very much a puppy and seems to be going through a teething phase right now as he has been going through the yak milk chews faster and has also had a few chewing mishaps.

In a 3-day period he chewed up my checkbook that cat knocked to the floor, chewed up a paperback novel that fell off the sofa arm (my fault for leaving it there), and in an odd accident, while chewing on the handle to the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers I have in our dining room, learned how to open the drawer.

The first day he just chewed the handle and I sprayed it with a no-chew concoction. That night he opened the drawer and removed everything in it and spread it all over the living room floor. The drawer contains a huge number of intricately braided ropes and lanyards and other things made by my son when he was younger. Some of the patterns of braiding and the knots are works of art, and some are connected to carved wooden handles he also made. I put it all back, used the air can as a firm NO, and hoped that was the end of it.

The second night he opened the drawer and took it all out again. I heard him and sprayed the air can again and put all the stuff back again.

Today, the third day, before leaving the house for awhile, I piled all his chewies and toys and bones in a big pile in the middle of the dining/living rooms and resprayed the concoction on the drawer handle.

When I got home he had opened the drawer yet again, removed all the ropes and handles, and spread them out almost like he was admiring them. They weren't torn up, or chewed, simply spread out all across the floor.

I have removed them all from the drawer now and figure I'll just leave it empty for awhile, but I can't even express how funny it was to see him figure this out and proceed to take all these treasures out three days in a row and lay them out like he had, indeed, discovered his very own treasure.

The expression on Bear's face - I had nothing to do with this - was also priceless!

Breakfast at the Small Cafe

It was hard to choose today. I ended up getting the dark rye with eggs and salmon. Delicious! I haven't tried the mushroom toast yet - that's on my list for next week unless another special catches my eye, which often happens. Too many good options, not enough Saturday or Sunday mornings!

November Hill farm journal, 39

We are waiting and hoping for rain today. It's extremely dry right now, and while that seems to be agreeing with horse and donkey hooves, the pastures need a good deep drink.

Leaves are falling, acorns are falling (and being browsed by busy squirrels, deer, and horses), and the sky is the autumn blue I love best.

The pollinator garden is totally planted as of yesterday. I'll write more about that later.

Right now the sun has broken through the clouds, birds are singing and tweeting through the open front door, Corgis are chomping down on their Himalayan yak milk dog chews, and the cats are sleeping in various spots. It's a nice day.

A couple of sad things:

Baloo's basic obedience class and Bear's Canine Good Citizen class were both canceled due to not having enough people/dogs signed up. I'm sorry we won't be going; Bear loved his basic obedience class last year and also his Canine Good Citizen class. We were unable to take the final test to get his certificate due to my schedule, so I had hoped going through that class again would be a good review and we'd take the test at the end. Baloo is doing well with basics - still tweaking his "down" and working on the "stay" but he is smart and will work hard to earn his treats.

The sadder thing is about the kittens. We learned that to be truly safe bringing in feral kittens to our home with other cats we would need to have the kittens tested and retested for FeLV and FIV. Until the second test results were done (in a few months) we would have to keep the kittens separated from our other four cats. Unfortunately we don't have a way to do this for the length of time we'd need to and so we've decided to let the kittens go to another home. I'm not sure what we would do if they ended up testing positive. It's generally recommended that positive-testing cats not be housed with those who are negative for these two diseases.

Sending out good thoughts to New Orleans area as Hurricane Nate moves in.