Here I am working on that thing I'm always working on. My seat. I'm getting some good tips from my vaulting coach on how to knit my body together the correct way. Check it out.
I've been doing some writing and video work for Associated Content. (Under the pen name "Kimberly West") The nice thing is, they pay you for it. Check it out. (Just click on the vid above.) If any of you want to learn more after reading about it, send me an email. Happy to tell you what I know. The nice thing is, you can write your blog articles and then sell that content to AC by selling the non-exclusive rights.
You meet all kinds when you're out searching for a new horse or pony. This one I won't forget. Ever. I wish I had the money to save all of them. (This is an excerpt from a larger piece.)
Later that afternoon, a man hauled from his lopsided shed a terrified-looking sorrel gelding not quite 14 hands high, manhandling the pony like it was some kind of wild bronco. And when he turned the pony around to tie him to a fence post, I was startled to see that the little fellow's lower jaw was jutting out like a bulldog's, bottom teeth protruding. The man hadn't told me about this when I inquired after the pony over the telephone. "Broken jaw," he grumbled at me, almost daring me with his glowering eyes to say something about it, go ahead, his swagger taunted, as all of a sudden he was hollering loud enough to set that pony back on it's haunches, "Hey you kids! You get back inside that house right now!" to the three or four children who were half hanging out of the open windows of the doublewide, anxious to see the strangers in their driveway.
I cast a beseeching look at my husband. You know, the man who can read my mind. He knew I wanted to rescue that pony right out of there, right then, as quickly as possible, but he took me by the arm, nodded at the man who'd just tossed a saddle on the down-and-out pony's back like a fifty-pound bag of sand, and said, "Let's go." As we got back in the truck he reminded me that I can't save all of them.
Catching up with The Amazingly Well Red Dawg (who is sporting her fancy new southwestern collar) after her brush with death with my son's testy quarter horse mare Piñon.
Tell me, Red Dawg, what have you learned from your experience?
I'm hungry.
Yes, well, we'll get to that in just a few minutes. (Didn't you just gobble down half a can of Trader Joe's Lamb and Rice Dog Food and then some of Lila's too?) What tactics will you use in the future when dealing with testy, pissy mares like Piñon? Any words of wisdom for your fellow Australian Cattle Dogs out there?
Bacon is good.
I guess we'll have to talk some more about horse safety, won't we? And I'm still going to have to watch you like a hawk apparently ...
With all of this snow and the unusually cold and bitter weather we've experienced in the aftermath of our epic snowstorm, I'm keeping a good eye on my horses' water intake. For some reason, they don't seem to drink as much when it's really cold. But I can tell you for certain that they are digging into that free choice hay out there in the feeder, and that their food intake hasn't slowed down. In fact, I think they're eating a little more.
One of the reasons I like to feed free choice hay is that it allows my horses to graze throughout the day, more as nature intended. And it keeps their delicate systems moving, which can help reduce their chances for colic.
A colleague of mine raises miniature horses, and she's going through a colic with one of her tiny mares right now. She thinks the reason behind it is that the mare hasn't been drinking enough water in this highly unusual blast of weather.
I've often been perplexed by the use of the word blue in reference to the coloration of blue heeler dogs and other animals. Consider blue roan, for example. A color of horse. But after taking this photograph of Lila, our blue heeler puppy, it's all clear to me now!
And as I looked out the windows of my house this frigid winter morning onto miles and miles of rolling hills and mountains covered in snow, with the thin early morning sun just creeping over the horizon, the whole landscape, even the piñon, the pine, and the juniper are drenched in it.
And now for some mooshy gooshy stuff and how I'm such a great equine ambassador
In looking back through some of my videotapes the other day, I realized that nearly every time I take the camera down to the barn, I take this same scene. This big black shadow is looming around in nearly every shot, either heading straight at me for a good scratchin' or towering over my kids.
Maybe he's really not a Percheon (3/4) Quarter (1/4) cross. But some strange interspecies Black Lab/Perch mix. I wrote recently about our unfriendly appaloosa. Well, Toby's got to be just about the friendliest horse I've ever known. He's going to scare some hikers on the trail up in the Pecos this summer, I suspect. I can just see him greeting everyone.
Our Andalusian Caprichosa has a habit of thrusting her head right at anyone she meets on the trail, sniffing inquisitively, just being sociable. After I realized what she was up to, I have to keep an eye on her and see who's amenable to such horse friendliness and who's not. With some idiots hikers not liking horses on the backcountry trails (Eek! Horse poop! How the hell do these city dwellers who venture into the forest once every couple of years with a thousand dollars worth of brand spanking new REI gear think this country got settled? By SUV? Maybe Coronado drove a Lexus? Lewis and Clark a Humvee?) and even managing to limit backcountry usage in some places (so I hear), I do everything I can to be a good equine ambassador up there.
I'm going to have to watch The Big Boo. To the uninitiated, his social overtures might be a little intimidating. Don't want my Percheron to get me thrown out of the National Forest ...
(I can see now that his baby-elephant-sized poops are going to be potentially offensive to someone with more refined sensibilities than mine. As far as I'm concerned, they can limit their outdoor forays to the city park with all those nice clean pigeons.)
Just a small announcement here to say that I am sick to death of snow and longing for Spring. I'm yearning for summer. Summer in the mountains, high up on Round Mountain in the Pecos Wilderness, where the grass grows as high as your horse's knees and you can lie on your back and look at the clouds floating above you in a field of cerulean blue. And if you're really lucky, and you stay there all day long, nice and quiet like beneath an aspen tree, you may see an elk striding across the cusp of the hill above you. Or a herd of deer.
My son's horse Pinon is on my shit list today. While she's as gentle and as solid a horse as I've seen, great with kids, she can't stand the tenacious heeler pups. In that regard, she is all mare, testy and irritable. For weeks now, she's been pinning her ears, shaking her head, giving them the curt flick of a single nostril in their direction. And those guileless pups don't have a clue.
I've spent a lot of time teaching them that they can't chase the horses. That the horses are mine. Not theirs. And they are not to chase, bark at or in any way taunt my horses. And they've been doing great. I think they have exemplary behavior around the horses. But that's no guarantee.
Poor Red Dawg was simply trotting behind Pinon yesterday when whack. That right hind hoof shot out with deadly lightning precision and got that poor pup right in the head. She flew through the air, landed in a soft heap of paws and fur and puppy fat, woofing piteously in pain and shock. I rushed across the pasture at the little heeler, expecting her to be dead when I fell to my knees to help her. But as I tried to carry her back up to the house, the Red Dawg wriggled out of my arms and trotted up herself. Now she did sleep quite a while yesterday in the house on her cushy bed in the living room. And she looks a little beat up. Just a little like Rocky Balboa after a prize fight.
As far as I can tell, she's OK. I hate it when this happens. But I haven't lost a dog to a horse kick. Yet. Horses and dogs can be a wonderful, and a sometimes trying, combination. Then add the kids who love the dogs into the mix.
Dennis rescued us! With a lot of help from Digger, the Kubota Tractor. And it only took two days to get from the barn to the road and then back up our quarter of a mile long drive. Now we have to dig out the woodpile and try to do some shoveling around the house, which is pretty buried.
We're not prepared for this type of thing here in New Mexico, you have to understand. Usually, we get a really good snow, and then at my elevation (7,000 feet), once the sun comes out, it all melts away, leaving a nice white blanket of snow for me to admire from a distance on the Pecos Mountains or the Sangre de Cristos. Frankly, I prefer sitting on my front deck all wrapped up in my woolies, sipping a hot cup of coffee, warm sun on my face, admiring the white stuff from afar.
My husband's Polish Arabian mare Miss Morningstar did not seem to enjoy the snow, especially as it was up to her little pot belly (or are those her wonderfully "sprung" ribs?) before it began to melt a bit and settle. She seemed rather indignant about the whole thing, frankly. Pawing at the cold white stuff with a diminutive front hoof, snorting, twitching her ears, rolling her eyes.
This is the same mare who sidewinds down a mountain trail, lifting each hoof way high like a cat to avoid puddles after a good rain or hailstorm, steam billowing from her aristocratic nostrils.
Well, I wrote SOS in the snow drifts, big enough to be seen from that Apache Tomahawk (whatever) helicopter that I was hoping the government would send over to drop me a case of Skoal in our down-to-the-last-quarter-of-a-can and no-way-to-get-to-the-store hour of need, but it never happened. Apparently, they had more important matters to attend to during our blizzard.
I'm a pretty good citizen, I think, with a fairly decent emergency preparedness plan. You won't catch me starving to death or perishing from lack of water in a natural disaster. After all, we New Mexicans are a hardy, can-do, stand-on-our-own-two-feet breed. But from now on, my emergency preparedness plan will include several rolls of ... Skoal. (For Dennis, not me.) Secreted away for just such Acts of God. Now where's a good hiding place?
One of the things that I enjoy about Australian cattle dogs is their unwavering, bright eyed, and bobtailed sense of adventure about every single day they are alive. As far as they're concerned, this 3 feet of snow that's way above their heads is yet another delicious episode in a life full of exploration and wonder. And this is the first winter for these two. I'd say they've had quite an introduction to the idea of snow.
Once the sun sets at the end of the day and all of the exploration is over, they tumble together in a furry heap of deep contented dreaming in front of the wood-burning stove.
Happy New Year, plenty of hay, and no chewing tobacco
It's 9 degrees this morning. Our three-plus feet of snow didn't melt yesterday. We've dug ourselves out from the barn almost to the road, and then we have to go back up our quarter-mile-long driveway.
I'm glad we have plenty of hay. And coffee. And I have enough food for a good month or so. That's what you do when you live in the boonies.
Unfortunately, Dennis has hit rock bottom on the chewing tobacco supply. (Imagine, if you are a smoker, being trapped in your house suddenly with no cigarettes.) When we break through to the road this morning with the tractor, one of us is driving that Kubota to the gas station a couple of miles down the road (uh ... as fast as she will go ... ) and buying every can of Skoal Straight off of the shelf.
If we can't get the tractor out, I will be walking there. No kidding. Happy New Year.
