L.E. and Miss Pearl

Yesterday, when I pulled into the driveway, I saw L.E. and Pearl out riding in the backyard and it took my breath away, it was so beautiful. She had just passed by the no-watermelon arch as I pulled in, and they were perfectly framed.

Instead of continuing on to my parking space, I threw my car in park, jumped out, and got all bossy, telling her to do it again! I was hoping I'd be able to take a couple of pictures. I am by no means a photographer, but I needed to take these pictures.

Almost...almost...

... got it ...

... just to be safe, I took another one.

L.E.'s safe space is across the street in the arena; riding outside of the arena causes her some anxiety, so she's been working hard on getting comfortable riding in the backyard. Riding at home isn't new to her, we've done it together for a few years, but it's not comfortable for her. It's funny, because anywhere outside of the arena is where Skeeter and I feel best, and we feel confined within the fence of the arena. L.E. and I are opposite in that way, but because we're opposite, I know what a big deal it is for her to ride solo in the yard.

Eventually, we'll be riding the farm roads. L.E. might never want to ride the mountain trails with us, but it'll be fun to hack out on the farm roads.

And, just because I love the pictures, here are a couple more.

I cropped it a bit closer, to remove the buildings and focus on L.E.

Then L.E. cropped it even more,
and the finished product is incredible.

Oh, Miss Pearl

Bill always said that horses are born looking for ways to kill themselves. Our horses are pretty good at not killing themselves, and rarely put themselves in situations where they might die. Notice, I said "pretty good", not great, not excellent, just pretty good.

Every once in a while one of them has to remind us that they are still horses, and are still looking for ways to kill themselves.

This time, it was Miss Pearl's turn. Jay and I had gotten home from a quick long-weekend trip, and were being lazy. I was lounging in bed, doom scrolling on my phone, when a text came through: "Pearl is stuck, can you come help me?"

I immediately jumped out of bed and into my jammies to go help L.E. with whatever Pearl had gotten herself into. For some reason, my brain told me that she'd gotten her grazing muzzle stuck on the hay net. I don't know why that image popped into my mind, but that's what I was prepared for.

What I was not prepared for was to walk out of the house to see her standing like a Breyer horse statue - head not stuck by the grazing muzzle in the hay net - by the feeder with L.E. next to her. It took me a second to realize that it was her hooves that were stuck. Miss Pearl is the only horse in the herd that has shoes. Skeets and Copper are barefoot, and until this spring, so was Pearl, but she had some lameness issues and L.E. had fronts put on.

Not one, but both, shoes tightly caught in the net.

The 3 Mustangeers had absolutely destroyed their last hay net, and with all of them getting chonky, we'd *just* replaced the old net with a new, larger, extreme slow feed net. Larger was nice, because it fit so much easier over the round bale, with a little room to grow. One of the reasons they were able to destroy the old net was because when we put it over a round bale, it was basically a stuffed sausage, bursting at the seams. The new, larger net was so nice - no fighting to get it to fit over the bale - but it also meant that there was some excess net that the horses could pull out of the feeder as the hay got low.

I know the risks of shoes and hay nets, but I just never gave a second thought to Pearl having been shod all spring and summer, plus a bit of excess net might lead to the situation we now faced.

Initially, I thought we'd be able to just cut a few strands of the net, to free her up enough to lift a hoof and untangle the rest. Let me tell you, when Pearl does something, she does it well. There was no room to cut just a few strands.

L.E. and I took turns cutting and cutting and cutting our brand new (one month old) hay net to pieces to free Pearl. 

I have never been more thankful for Pearl's training. Jessica, Pearl's Mustang Makeover trainer, hobble trains her horses and that hobble training saved us from a disaster. Pearl got stuck, and then stood patiently while we cut her free. She never panicked. Occasionally, she'd try to lift a hoof and back up a step, but never did anything more. Copper was completely oblivious to the goings-on and continued to eat, leaning into, and shifting the feeder, which was less than helpful. Even then, Pearl was a rock star.

When we got her free, she didn't bolt, she walked off calmly with L.E., showing off her fancy accoutrement on her shoes.

The highest of fashion for horse shoes.

Doesn't she look bothered?

Serendipitously, the farrier was already scheduled to come out for Pearl. L.E. and the farrier had discussed whether or not to continue with shoes, since her lameness has resolved. Pearl and the net made L.E.'s decision for her. When the farrier arrived, L.E. looked at him and said, "get those mothereffers off of her!" He took one look at Pearl's feet, laughed, and said, "hay net".

I was able to temporarily sew the massive holes we'd cut into the net together using baling twine. (What in the world would a horse girl do without baling twine?). I've ordered another extreme slow feed net from HayChix, and Pearl is now barefoot. I think we're safe for a bit.

The Aliens Came

The other night, just as I was dropping off to sleep, I thought I heard hooves on gravel. That couldn't be right. It was the middle of the night, and I hadn't heard anyone at the horse's gate. Surely, I was imagining it, right?

But years of sleeping with one ear cocked to the window, just in case the livery horses got out, told me I wasn't imagining it. There were some definite hoof scurrying sounds on the gravel farm road right outside my bedroom window.

Well, crap.

Up and into my jammies and muck boots I went, grabbing my glasses and a flashlight on the way out, just like I'd done countless times in the past. I saw L.E. come out of her house just as I started sweeping the yard with the flashlight, but not expecting to see our kids. Yes, I'd heard hooves on the gravel, but no sound had come from our pen to indicate it might be the Wild Ones. The last "horse break out" had been a few years ago, and those weren't our horses that broke out. 

L.E. said that she'd heard shoes on the asphalt and wondered who was riding in the dark, before it dawned on her it could be our horses. The horses must have remembered they're not allowed to cross the street without a human and come back into our yard.

As I swept the yard, I saw Skeeter and Pearl racing around, running and bucking. No Copper. I swept my flashlight to the pen, and there he was, the good boy, just standing inside the fence watching the show. I noted that the gate was closed and the fence looked good from where I was standing. I had no idea how the girls got out, but that was a problem for later. We had to get them caught.

I grabbed Skeeter's halter from the hook, and L.E. grabbed Pearl's. They had calmed down when they saw us, and found a tasty bit of hip-high weeds to munch on. I'm so thankful that all of our horses are "flashlight broke", which is something we intentionally worked on. They know that humans with flashlights or headlamps usually have food/treats and they don't freak out about the weird lights and shadows that come with flashlights. Since they weren't worried about the flashlights, and they'd found some tasty treats, catching them was a breeze. Pearl, with her grazing muzzle, was a little harder to halter, but L.E. got her caught. 

We took them into the pen and started looking at the fence. It all looked good as we methodically ran our gaze around the perimeter. And then we got to the truck gate and the last two panels. The gate was closed, but the panels were ... missing.

There are usually panels here.

One panel was folded back against the gate, and another was laying on the ground inside the pen. It made no sense. 

If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn someone drove
through our fence. 

Well, crap. Closing a gate was what we'd anticipated, having to rebuild the fence in the middle of the night was not. We couldn't turn the mares loose while we tried to fix this, so we decided to move the horses to Estes' pen. The problem with that is that it's wildly overgrown. Pearl had her grazing muzzle on, but Skeets doesn't have one, and with her cresty neck, I wanted her in that pen for the shortest amount of time possible. I did not want to risk founder. Which meant, L.E. and I would have to fix the fence in the dark so that we could move the horses back from Estes' pen.

We threw Copper's halter on him, and moved the horses. They were so happy to be moved - they'd been put on a strict diet, and getting to go to the other pen where the weeds were thigh-high was a treat. When we got back to their pen to check out the damage, we found that the panel closest to their shed had been ripped clean off and was the one laying on the ground.

The other panel had been torn away from its "holey tape" as well, and the only reason it was still standing was because of the baling twine I'd put on it forever ago.

The mystery was, and still is, how on earth did this happen silently? Neither L.E. nor I heard a sound. There should have been some thrashing or crashing, or something, but other than hearing the mares' hooves on the gravel, I heard nothing. We looked at the ground for any hint of struggle and couldn't find anything other than the usual hoofprints-around-the-watering-post prints.

L.E. and I worked to put the panels back in their position, or as close to it as we could. We decided that if baling twine had saved one of the panels from coming down, that it would be good enough to hold them together until Jay and I could sink a post to attach the panels to. I had just used some holey tape to attach some repurposed garden gates to the greenhouse, so I knew exactly where it was.

I grabbed the tape, then went into the shop to get the screws and drill to attach the panel to the shed. It was just another moment in life that I was so thankful for Bill's help around the property. A few years ago, he and Mom had come down for a work weekend and he wired the shop. It was a treat to be able to just turn on the overhead light, and pull the rechargeable drill battery off the wall.

It ain't pretty, but it'll do.

I expected that L.E. and I would be working into the wee hours trying to fix the pen well enough to hold the horses for the night. I was pleasantly surprised that it only took us about an hour from the jail break until they were back in their own pen.

Jay works second shift, and pulled into the driveway just as we were haltering the horses to move back into their own pen. Talk about timing on his part! Show up just in time to walk his horse back.

L.E. and I had mulled over how this could have possibly happened. It was a foregone conclusion that Skeeter was at fault. She's the queen of horse yoga, and often sticks her face under the fence to get at the green stuff. She also has a bad habit of pawing at the fence. We weren't sure what she had done, or how she'd done it so silently, but we knew in our gut that she was the culprit.

Except ... she had no marks on her. None at all. I checked her legs, her face, and her neck. Granted, it was at night, so I was checking by feel, but there was nothing to indicate that she was the one at fault. But, who else could it have been?

Aliens.

It had to be. There was no other explanation.

.

.

.

The next morning, Jay and I went to the hardware store to pick up a 4x4 so we could sink a post to attach the panels to. Those two panels were the only two that didn't have a post, because we were afraid to dig near the hydrant when we put all of the other posts up. Now that we've had the automatic waterer installed, I knew that where we needed to put the post wouldn't be near the water line, and it would be safe to dig.

I went into the shop to get the auger to dig the hole, and Jay said, "it was Copper." Huh? "It was Copper." I was still not following him. It was Copper what? "Look at this," he said pointing to Copper's head.

Yep. It was Copper. He had the missing hair on one side of his head and green grass stains on the other to prove he was the culprit.

Jerk. And to think I'd been praising
him for being such a good boy while
the girls were running wild.

Jay thinks he tried horse yoga and failed. That he got his head stuck and when he backed out, the panels followed him, scaring him enough that he didn't want to go near them to leave the pen. The mystery of who tore down the panels has been solved, but I still have no idea how he did it so silently.

I'm So Ashamed

 For real.

#1: I haven't posted any horse content since May, 2021!

#2: Even worse, I haven't ridden my horse since November of 2023.

November 6, 2023

I'm lucky that Skeets is such an amazing horse, I really am. While I haven't been riding, I try to spend at least a few seconds with her each day, even if it's just for cuddles. I just don't seem to have enough time in the day to get everything done. I spent the summer of '23 building Whimsy with Mom. My focus was on helping Mom heal, and so we spend our time working on things other than the horses - she was still feeling a bit unsteady around them due to her TBI and the fact that her body took a beating during the accident. We kind of focused on Bill's death, but Mom spent time in the ICU for a collapsed lung, flail chest, TBI, and fractured jaw. Even though she's bionic, it takes time to fully heal from injuries like that.

We worked with the horses here and there, but always for very short periods of time. Despite my lack of attention, Skeeter continues to be a love bug and comes when called. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was under the weather, and she rested her forehead against my chest and just breathed. It's amazing how magical horses are, isn't it?

With my new-found grandma crochet skills, I crocheted each of the horses a Christmas hat and we've been making them do their Christmas pictures in their stocking caps. It's so stinkin' cute!

The Bionic Cowgirl with Washoe and Alloy

L.E. with Miss Pearl*

Me, with Skeets and Copper

I had thought to get our pictures taken with them under the archway in front of Whimsy, but they weren't really having it. Mom, of course, got Washoe to stand nicely under the archway, but it was too narrow for both of her boys to be in there with her. I'd taken Skeets and Copper through it several times prior, in an attempt to make picture day go easier, but it didn't help. They feed off my anxiety for Christmas pictures. It always seems like we're in a rush to get them done before the weather hits, or because our schedules are crazy and we only have an hour or so to complete them.

I'm working on the path under the arch, so this year there will be flagstone rather than slippery, crinkly cardboard, so I think the kiddos will be more amenable to walking through and standing.

January, 2025

Despite only getting scratches and kisses, along with very occasional outings, Skeeter still seeks me out. I am forever grateful for my mare.

*This is one of my favorite pictures of L.E. and Pearl, because Pearl's not a cuddly horse, so to see her leaning into L.E. makes my heart so happy.

Almost a Week of Rides!

 Well, maybe not a full week, but four out of five days is pretty good.

LE rides way more frequently than I do, as she takes lessons across the way at Inspiration Riding Academy a few days a week. I, however, am 100% a fair weather rider. I did my time riding when the weather was shitty and choose not to any more. 

When I got back from Arizona a week ago, I had to go into quarantine because Jay was sick. That meant I had to work from home. While I generally *despise* working from home, it does have its perks. Namely, the ability to ride in the afternoon if the weather is nice.

January 29

We had a short little ride in the back yard. It had been a couple of weeks since I'd been up on Skeets, so we kept it easy. I'm never really afraid that she'll buck or do something stupid when we've had time off, but sometimes it takes a ride or two to get back in the groove after we've not ridden for a while. It was a nice ride, nothing terribly spectacular about it, but good for getting her moving.

January 31

Since our beginning ride went so well, and Skeeter was being pretty much a rock star, we decided to take our show on the road. The farm road, that is, and ride in the big field to the east of us. Skeeter was feeling pretty good and *trotted* up the road. More than once. Now, as a general rule, she's lazy and won't expend any more effort than necessary, but she was feeling good.

We did have an "oh shit" moment when leaving the property. She veered to the left of the road, right where the irrigation ditch crosses. That wouldn't be a problem, except that there's an old metal grate that sticks up and I was afraid she was going to step down into the ditch and impale us both on that damn grate. I managed to get her stopped and moved over, but I wasn't too pleased. Then she trotted out nicely behind Miss Pearl and I forgave her. We spent a good bit of time in the big field, just walking around. 

Skeets has a big problem with wanting to rush back home, so we spent some time working on slowing down and turning away from home. We did some slow, long zig-zags away from home. In a word, she was amazing. And I don't say that about my mare often.

February 1

No pictures from this ride. I had my hands full with a naughty mare. I should have known things were going too well. She didn't want to be caught, which is rare, then she didn't want to stand tied, which is not rare. Over the last couple of years, she's turned into quite a pull-back. I'd been working around it, but I know she needs to be able to stand hard-tied anywhere, for any length of time, so I came up with a game plan.

She does not pull-back because she's afraid, as most people assume. She pulls back because she doesn't want to stand tied. Now, for the most part, I can just loosely wrap the rope around the hitch rail and fake tie her, and she stays where she's supposed to. Except when she doesn't. She's pulled back when hard tied and gotten away only a couple of times, but that was enough for her to think if she pulls back, she's going to get away. In the vein of making the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard, I came up with a game plan. Every time she starts to pull back, she gets put to work: backing, quick circles, yielding her hind end. This requires me to only tie her loosely (for now), so I can get to the lead rope before she pulls it too tight to release. Even using a quick-release knot, the girl can throw her head up and pull back fast enough to make a quick release a no-release knot.

(I know people will tell me to let her stand hard tied and fight until she realizes she'll not get loose. Except that doesn't work with her. I watched her pull back and fight for almost an hour when tied to a trailer once. Another time, she managed to get herself bound up tighter and bloody her nose. She's got a stubborn streak a mile wide. If I hard tie her and allow her to fight it out, she's one who will end up hurting herself.)

Anyway, I had this grand plan to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard. The hitch rail is her resting spot. Man, that worked so well! I only had to correct her twice, then she stood like a mannequin while getting groomed and saddled. I mentally patted myself on the back.

Once we were both on the same page, we had a lovely ride. A bit shorter than we'd hoped because we had to do more on the ground than usual, but it was still a win.

February 2

Ride four. Man, I could get used to this riding frequently thing. Except, between weather and work, it's not always easy.

I thought we'd had a break-through with tying the day before, but in true Skeeter fashion, she had to push it to see what she could get away with. She did lots and lots of work before standing nicely at the rail to be groomed and saddled. If nothing else, she's going to build some really nice butt muscles from all of the quick backing she's having to do.

Again, we had an issue with her gravitating toward the death grate by the irrigation ditch, but we got past it without impalement. The mares took turns being good and less-good. If Miss Pearl was acting up, Skeets was being an angel. If Skeeter was acting up, Miss Pearl was being an angel. Those two definitely keep us on our toes.

I wouldn't call Skeeter barn sour, but she does like to find second gear on the way home. In the past, it had turned into a fight, where I felt like I was ripping her bottom jaw off. (Figuratively speaking, not literally.) LE suggested that I slow her down and then release the reins rather than getting into a fight with her. Perfect freaking solution, wish I'd've thought of that! Turns out, we get along much better if I just remind her to walk and not fight.

Because I don't want her thinking that the ride is over when we get back home, I continued to ride around the back yard. Little missy took exception to that and decided to have a little temper tantrum. We were trotting in what was supposed to be a circle (it was round-ish) and I felt her think 'I'll show Mom!' just before she attempted to break into a lope. Problem is, she's not athletic. Not even a little bit. While she thought she'd break into a lope as part of her temper tantrum, she forgot to tell her feet what to do. The mind was willing, but the body said, 'huh?'. What should have been an awkward at best trot-to-canter transition ended up being, hell, I don't know, stumbling and trying to stay upright. I blew my right stirrup, but managed to stay on and get her pulled to a stop. I couldn't stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it. Her derp ears went straight out to the sides and she had the good grace to look embarrassed while LE and I laughed our butts off. I'm so sad we didn't get it on video, because I know how silly it felt. I can only imagine how it looked.

I made her walk a couple of more laps around the backyard before calling it a day.

Sadly, we haven't had a chance to ride since then, but I'm looking forward to more riding time. In fact, I have big plans for us this year.