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Too Much Information Can Be Bad for You

Too Much Information Can Be Bad for You

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The Internet is both a curse and a blessing. Since I got Valentine, I have spent literally hours trying to get as much information on horses as I can. I joined several sites with forums, and I think they are great – real people talking about real horses with real-life answers to questions they have. It’s also reassuring to know that even experienced horse owners are perplexed sometimes. But if you go to “expert” sites – and I’m not suggesting you don’t – you’ll end up completely paranoid! After reading about all the bad things that can happen to horses, I’m afraid to leave Valentine alone! He could eat sand and get colic; fall in his stall and not be able to get up; trip in the pasture and break a leg; eat some poisonous weed; be bitten by a mosquito and get horse flu (I’m not making that up); eat possum poo and get myoencephalitis (not making that up either); or do almost anything at all and end up lame. It’s like having a half-ton toddler that can run 30 mph. What have I gotten myself into?

Say “Ahhh?”

Say “Ahhh?”

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Things are going quite well with Valentine. He hasn’t hurt himself or any of us yet, and I count that as a success. He and Blaze seem to be working things out (Blaze is also a gelding). We haven’t done anything very complicated yet. Mostly because we don’t have a saddle. We’re working on that. In fact, we don’t have anything yet but a halter and lead rope.

One thing we did right away was the deworming. When Bill picked Valentine up, the owner said we’d need to have him shoed right away (we knew this, he had actually thrown a shoe) and also that it was about time to have him dewormed. Bill doesn’t remember too many details about this, because it was cold and late and he was in a hurry, but he remembers that the brand is something “Gold” and it’s apple flavored, and that it’s really easy to do: “You just stick the syringe pretty far back in his mouth and squirt it in.”

Okay, back up the wagon! People say it; dewormer instructions say it; website information pages say it: “insert syringe as far back as possible and dispense.” What everyone leaves out is, how do you get the horse to open his mouth for you? Being new to all this, we’re a little wary about trying to convince a 1200-pound animal that barely knows us to open up and say ahhh. Have you seen those teeth? I know he’s an herbivore, but still! So we opted for the on-feed dewormer – you just put it on their oats and they eat it up. Great plan, we thought! So we sprinkled it on his oats the first time we gave him oats. Then we found out that Valentine likes to swish as many oats as possible onto the ground when he eats! We were alarmed, in fact, thinking he could taste the medicine, but we eventually learned that he eats ALL his food off the ground. He pulls his hay out of the feeder onto the ground. He drops apples onto the ground. He is, in fact, the messiest eater I have ever seen – and I have owned many dogs and survived two toddlers. So it looks like next time, we’ll have to figure out how to get him to say “ahhhh.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Today I received the most spectacular Valentine’s Day gift ever – a Tennessee Walking Horse.  The best part is, it was a complete surprise!  My husband spun such a web of deceit and lies, that when we walked up to the barn to “feed Blaze” and a big black head popped out of the middle stall, I was completely shocked.

I had met this horse before.  We went to look at him together about 2 weeks ago, and I fell in love with him then.  He is pure black, about 16 hands high and has a great temperament.  He is a 5-year-old gelding with 8 champions in his bloodline.  His “real” name is Clever Power, and his stable name was Paycheck.  We weren’t too taken with that, so we call him…Valentine.

I have to admit 2 things here.  One: while my horse is 16 hands high, I am only 5’2”.  I am not so naïve to think this won’t present problems – but I don’t care.

The other thing is:  I really am quite naïve.  I have never owned a horse, and haven’t spent all that much time around them.  But I am willing to learn.  I know that my learning process may be quite painful – but it’s certain to provide a lot of comic relief, too.

Wish me luck.

The Beginning: Living Our Dream

The Beginning: Living Our Dream

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My husband and I both grew up in small towns but moved to the city the first chance we got. 20-odd years of city living later, we really started to yearn for the simple life again. We had been visiting Bill’s grandmother in east Tennessee for 6 years, and loved the area. As we prepared for a visit in July 2005, we convinced my parents to join us – my dad will be retiring in 2009 and is looking for a nice place to live. We, strangely enough, want them to live close to us. Our diabolical plan: to make them fall in love with the place; find a big piece of property we all can live on; we all buy it, then we live here until Dad retires. Well, the plan worked! They loved east Tennessee. We found a house. Despite our realtor’s efforts to foil us, we bought it. We moved here in November 2005, and it is just wonderful.

We have a house, 2 barns and about 7 acres of partially-cleared pasture. Now we just need a horse! Actually, we have a horse, but he’s not ours. The former owner had a friend who kept his horse here, and we agreed to let him continue to do that. He is a beautiful sorrel quarter horse (I think!) named Blaze.

“Green acres is the place to be…farm living is the life for me!”