Our First Horse

Always Double-Check Stall Latches

January 23, 2007 Mikki Comments 1 comment

We haven’t had any incidents recently (knock on wood), but one of our biggest fears with the horses is that they will get out of their stalls at night. This has actually happened three times – twice with Valentine, and once with Moonshine. (Not counting the time Valentine got into Moonshine’s stall.)

The first time was pretty funny. Our barn is situated so the horses’ stalls are on the side closest to the house, with their windows facing the house. When we walk up to the barn, we walk to the south side where the big door is, open the gate and go in (there is a gate at each end of the barn, one to the driveway and one to the pasture). Usually, when we round that corner the horses’ heads are poking out of the stalls into the barn “aisle” to greet us. On this particular morning, there was an entire horse in the barn aisle, munching on hay. Apparently, we (read “I”) had not latched Valentine’s stall door all the way. He didn’t seem to mind.

Just a couple of weeks later, Bill came to me one morning with our digital camera and showed me a picture on the screen. “What’s wrong with this picture?” he asked. I studied the photo of a horse grazing and suddenly realized that the pasture fence was behind the horse. “He’s on the wrong side of the fence!” I said. “She, actually,” he replied. Again, we had forgotten to check the stall door latches, this time on the outside door, and Moonshine had been wandering for who knows how long. Long enough to eat our budding corn stalks, anyway.

The last time was a fluke; Valentine actually broke his stall door open one night. But these experiences remind us: always check all your stall doors, and gates, then check them again. Better safe than sorry!

But don’t be surprised to find your horse on the wrong side of a door anyway. Some horses actually learn to open latches on their own. Ours have been nosing around the doors, and I just know we’re going to find them outside one day when we’re sure we checked those doors.

Equine Fresh Shortage Reported

January 21, 2007 Bill Comments 0 Comment

If you use wood pellets for horse bedding, you may have heard of the brand Equine Fresh. There are many brands of wood pellets out there and I suspect there will be many more since wood pellets are quickly becoming the preferred bedding for horse owners around the U.S. But the reason I’m writing this note about Equine Fresh is that it’s the brand carried by Tractor Supply stores. Until recently Tractor Supply also carried Woody Pet, perhaps the most well-known wood pellet bedding brand. But we have it on good authority that Tractor Supply decided to stop carrying Woody Pet in favor of the less expensive and larger-portioned Equine Fresh bags. As I recall, Woody Pet was in the neighborhood of $7 a bag for 35 lbs. while Equine Fresh is around $6 a bag for 40 lbs. We’ve tried both and haven’t noticed any difference in the two, so we’ve been buying Equine Fresh exclusively…until today. It seems all of our local east Tennessee Tractor Supply stores are completely out of Equine Fresh and, of course, Woody Pet. Turns out the Equine Fresh people lost their sawdust supplier and are frantically looking for another one. In the meantime, their inventory is almost depleted, which means no more shipments to Tractor Supply (or anyone else, for that matter). Of course, Tractor Supply sort of burned the bridge with Woody Pet, so they simply don’t have any wood pellets in stock at all now. Rumor has it there is a small shipment of Equine Fresh coming into one of our local Tractor Supply stores (and I’m not telling which!) that is expected to be sold out practically before the pallets hit the pavement. Drama in the wood-pellet industry! Who knew it could be this exciting?

So why all the fuss over wood pellets? Well, I’m not sure I’d go stand in line for some, but I will say we’re converts. Without rehashing all the benefits, allow me to refer you to our post about using wood pellets for horse bedding from last year, entitled “Serta or Tempurpedic?“, referring to the relative luxury of the soft pellets versus some of the alternative bedding choices. You can see pictures of the wood pellets in detail in that post.

We managed to find an alternative supply of wood pellets locally at Co-op but they were more expensive. We paid around $6 per 35 lb. bag. Hopefully Equine Fresh gets their raw material supply problem worked out soon. The source of information for this article sounded ominous, though: “If they don’t find a supplier soon, they’ll probably go out of business.” He did assure us, however, that if Equine Fresh goes under, they’ll find another company to fill the need. I’m rooting for Equine Fresh, though, they have a good deal going.

So if you use Equine Fresh and your local Tractor Supply or other farm supply store still has some, you might consider heading down there asap to buy all you can. We’re seriously thinking of stocking up on wood pellets by buying a pallet or two next time. We could probably get a price break, too.

One more thing…Equine Fresh is made in Canada. So is Woody Pet. And all the other wood pellet horse bedding manufacturers we’ve ever seen in these parts. I wonder why wood pellets only seem to come from Canada. Do any of you know? Just curious.

Vacationing with horses on my mind

January 19, 2007 Bill Comments 1 comment

I just got back from a mini-vacation to the west coast that involved visiting family, spending a few days with a good friend, a couple of days of driving across the desert southwest and even some horseback riding. My thanks to Mikki for doing all the horse chores herself and to the Kid for keeping her company while I was gone. I’m sure there is a trip for her coming up that will have me in the barn doing all the chores alone for at least a few days.

Wherever I go, I usually bring a camera. Hey, I like to take pictures. I also knew I’d be driving (riding as a passenger, actually) across Arizona and California and thought I’d be able to snap some photos of horses and horse property along the way. I ended up spending a good deal of time with horses on my mind. Over the coming days, I’ll post about some of the interesting things I saw/did, horse-related. One of the funny things I noticed myself doing is wondering how my horses would like it where I was visiting. I have this habit of thinking about what it would be like to live in the places I visit. I’ve lived in both Arizona and California so this wasn’t much of a stretch. Except this time I wondered how I would get my horses there, where we would put them and what we’d have to do to keep horses in that climate. Oh, and how much it would cost to have horses in these places.

I had the opportunity and privilege to hang out with Gary and Jennifer, friends of my step-son Chris in Maricopa, Arizona who showed me just how different it was managing horses there compared with what’s common in Tennessee. For example, hay isn’t cheap in the desert and the hay available locally in Maricopa was of poor quality. Instead, they feed their horses pellets made from alfalfa and molasses. Also, this time of year, horses in the low desert don’t really need much in the way of shelter. In fact, most of the horse property I saw there didn’t include any overhead shelter. It just doesn’t rain there much and it doesn’t get very cold. And boy is it dusty! The dust is fine, like powder. I’m not sure if I prefer thick dust or the slimy red clay we have here in Tennessee.

One thing I realized on this trip is just how many people have horses in Arizona and the desert portions of southern California. I just never noticed it before. It’s kind of like buying a car and from that point forward noticing how many of those you see on the road. One of the neatest things about owning a horse in the desert is the sheer amount of space in which to ride. You could ride for days through state or BLM land on horseback. Gary and Jennifer were gracious hosts, allowing my step-son and I to ride a couple of their horses. This was one of the highlights of my trip. It was freezing cold, the sun was going down fast and Chris and I got to ride off into the sunset on “our ponies,” singing “Should’ve Been A Cowboy.” Except for the temperature, it was perfect. The sun went down and the stars lit up, one by one. Chris and I shivered in our boots but it was worth it. How many people got to ride horses into the sunset in the beautiful southwestern desert today? Not many. I will remember that ride fondly for some time to come.

A couple of other horse observations during this trip:

Desert horses seem to enjoy eating dry grass and tumbleweed.
Desert horse manure dries fast.
Desert horses seem to enjoy eating their own manure.
I prefer horses that neck-rein.
It’s exciting riding a horse in the dark.

More on this later but I do want to say thanks to Gary and Jennifer for saddling up their horses and entrusting one of them to me. Thanks to Chris for humoring me by agreeing to ride horses in the cold and dark.

Bless You!

January 15, 2007 Mikki Comments 1 comment

Bill is out of town this week, so I’m pretty much on my own with the horses. I did convince The Kid to help me turn them out yesterday morning, and he kept me company while I mucked out the stalls last night, but this morning he was tied up with a video game so I had to let them out of the barn on my own.

We have a routine now, and the horses have expectations. I open Moonshine’s stall door and she sticks her head out to see Bill down by the fence with carrots. She moseys out while I let Valentine out of his stall. He can’t see Bill from where he is, so he snuffles up some hay in the barn aisle while I try to convince him that carrots are MUCH better than old hay. He finally goes out, they get their carrots and I go down to join Bill and love on them before they head out to the pasture for the day.

Well, this morning Moonshine stuck her head out and no Bill. No carrots. No reason to leave the barn. There’s a storm brewing too, so she pretty much just wanted to go back in the stall. I finally got the gate closed behind her so she half-heartedly headed over to the fence. Valentine actually exited much faster than he usually does, but as soon as he saw that there was no one at the fence, he started out to the pasture. Moonshine, of course, followed him. I called but they ignored me. So I ran out to my post at the fence and whistled. They both stopped, looked back and apparently realized that hey, there really were going to be carrots today, and RAN back to the fence! It was so cool. Now, I know you cynics out there will say that they only came for the carrots…but they did respond to my whistle. They’re actually pretty well-trained about that now, they come to me at night too. (Okay, okay, they’re coming for oats then, but still.)

The best part this morning, though, was when they came back to the fence. They crowded up together and I gave Valentine his carrot and Moonshine…sneezed on me. I’m not talking a little cat sneeze either, it was a blast. All over my head. While I was telling her how gross and nasty that was I fed her a carrot too and while she was munching that down she sneezed on me AGAIN! This time with carrot puree! She got Valentine too, he had the evidence on his head. I’ll tell you what, no one can sneeze like a horse.

Then I headed down to the house for a shower.

File This Under “Just Plain Weird”

January 12, 2007 Mikki Comments 5 comments

Here’s another funny little quirk my horse has: practically every single morning when we go up to the barn to let the horses out, Valentine pokes his head out and looks at us, then quickly retreats back into his stall to let loose with about 5 gallons of pee. I swear he does it on purpose. He’s actually held it till we let him in at night, too. Six acres of pasture and he has to pee in the stall.

Tree: 3; Chainsaws: 0

January 10, 2007 Mikki Comments 2 comments

Chainsaws stuck in tree …also, Tree: about 50; supercharged F-150 SuperCrew: 1. We went a few more rounds with the tree in our pasture that blew down a few weeks ago. If you look closely at the very blurry picture to the right, you will see two chainsaws – one pointing up, one pointing down. The reason why it’s so blurry is that it was taken at about 7:00 at night with my cellphone. It was the only camera on hand, and I only had it in case I needed to call 911. (Thankfully, that was not necessary.)

Split tree — (Tree in daylight, sans chainsaws)

It was yet another of those things that seem so simple and turn out to be anything but. About 1/3 of this tree had split off the trunk in a bad windstorm, and it was a pretty big tree. It was kind of an eyesore, probably not too safe for the horses who liked to wander underneath it and most importantly, was an irresistible magnet to the neighbor kids who were denied permission to play on it but were doing so anyway. So we headed up to this tree at about 4:00 Saturday afternoon (that would be December 30) thinking that we’d just get the broken limb detached from the trunk. About 15 minutes later, the chainsaw got pinched in the cut. No problem, we think, we’ll just wiggle it out. Half an hour later, we decide to try a crowbar. Half an hour after that, we decide to try an ax. Half an hour after that, we decide we’ll just hook up a tow rope and pull the limb loose with our truck (there was only a small un-sawed part left). Twenty minutes of skidding and fishtailing later, we decide we might need help. So we call up our way too put-upon friends, the Watsons, and ask to borrow a chainsaw. Mr. Watson generously offered to not only bring his chainsaw but to help.

Five minutes after his arrival, his chainsaw is also stuck in the stupid tree. Again, out comes the crowbar; again, no luck. This time, we skipped the ax and went straight to the truck. The Watson chainsaw came out fairly soon after we began pulling, but our saw still wasn’t going anywhere. Another ten minutes of revving that V-8 and sliding all over the place and the father of the neighbor children joined us. (The tree is about 20 yards from their back door; he was wondering what all the ruckus was.) We eventually moved the tow rope to the other side of the branch and pulled the limb downhill, and it finally gave up the ghost – and the chainsaw. What was left of it. Needless to say, we were done chainsawing for the day and the tree will rest unmolested until we get a new chain and bar.

Invisible horse in dark pasture — Can you find the horse in this picture?

By the way, if you were wondering – our two very helpful horses spent all this time getting too close to the unstable tree limb, too close to the chainsaw and too close to the truck, in addition to not moving from behind the truck when we needed to back up, trying to go through the gate with the truck each time we opened it, and scaring Mr. Watson by appearing suddenly in front of him in the dark (they’re pretty much invisible at night, being black – see picture to left).

Sometimes I think our life is just a bad sitcom.

Horse Carriages

January 9, 2007 Bill Comments 2 comments

A few Saturdays ago, the three of us headed to Dollywood to see it all decked out for Christmas. It was a sunny and warm (in the ’60s) and we live only about an hour or so away. One of my favorite parts about Dollywood was a visit to the carriage maker. The park has real craftsmen on staff doing things (mostly) the old-fashioned way. It’s part theme park attraction and part craft preservation. I’ve never before seen someone build a carriage. What struck me the most is how reasonably priced the carriages were. You can get yourself a fancy brand new one or two-horse carriage, complete with a hydraulic brake system for around $2,500. Now that’s a lot of money but you get a hand-built horse carriage made from high-quality parts that can be used for pleasure riding, parades, weddings…whatever. If we find ourselves with $2,500 too much one year, I’d love to buy one of these. I can’t even imagine one of our spirited horses pulling a carriage but I’m sure they’d be fine with training. Of course, Moonshine and Valentine probably couldn’t be paired due to their size differences so I guess we’d need a one-horse carriage. Mikki wants a doctor’s carriage like the one in the picture above. I think it would be fun to have a wagon that seats four. And I could probably justify spending that much money by saying we’d use it to make money giving rides at parades, fairs, and other events. It would be an investment! Riiiiight.

Here’s a picture of an unpainted carriage up close:

And here’s a picture of the carriage shop inside:

Do any of you have a carriage for your horse(s)?

2019 Update: unfortunately, the Dollywood carriage/wagon shop seems to have closed down some time between 2017 and 2019. I’m going to miss watching them build these!

My pocket smells like carrots

January 6, 2007 Bill Comments 5 comments

Yes, those are carrots and I am happy to see you. When Mikki and I let our horses out of their stalls each morning, we use a few carrots to coax them out of the barn and into the pasture. I don’t know if we’re helping them develop a bad habit but I often don’t have the time or patience to wait 10 minutes while they inhale leftover hay bits from the barn floor before moseying on out to pasture for the day. Our horses just don’t seem to care if we’re in a hurry or not. But they do care about carrots. So our daily routine has me shoving a pair of carrots in my back pocket and heading for the fence and Mikki heading for the barn where she opens up the gate and horse stalls while I shout tempting statements about how yummy these carrots are and how I’m gonna start eating them myself if the horses don’t come to the fence soon (I’m usually bluffing). This works every time, of course. Carrots disposed of, I sneak a kiss onto Moonshine’s long face while she’s still chewing and head off to do whatever I do each day. And I am not surprised when animals I sometimes encounter follow me and show a keen interest in my rear. This would embarrass some but I know they’re just looking for carrots.

By the way, horses seem to have a good memory. One a few occasions when I’ve had to let them out on my own, they both know exactly where those carrots are sitting. I’ll turn around to open a gate or something and a half-second later feel a carrot or two leaving my back pocket. They really like carrots.

A little side note – we were recently watching Iron Chef on Food Network and the “secret ingredient” was citrus. One of the citrus fruits was something called “Buddha fingers”, a strange little food that actually looked like a small hand with fingers. And you can eat the whole thing. This is one fruit we will never introduce to our horses. Finger-shaped carrots are bad enough but goodies shaped like an entire hand would be going too far.

Managing horses when you’re sick

January 3, 2007 Bill Comments 6 comments

You’ve heard us talk about it before (Getting Out of Barn Duties and Bill takes over horse duties for the day) but now I have a new pondering about managing horses when you’re sick. Up until now, it’s mostly been either Mikki or me who has been sick. That’s not so bad because the other can pick up the slack and there really isn’t that much work that has to be done. Tuesday night Mikki and I both got sick with something harsh. We think we both have the flu. Now everyone eventually gets the flu and we’ll make it through but I have to tell you…it’s a pain in the butt doing horse chores when you have the flu! Today we compromised a little but doing the worst horse stall housekeeping job ever. We finished our nighttime routine of feeding the goats, filling water troughs, filling hay troughs, sort-of cleaning stalls and feeding oats in a new record of 12 minutes flat. I should be in bed right now moaning about how achy I am but instead, I wanted to share these thoughts in the off chance I’ll croak. Let the world know we risked our lives taking care of our beloved horses. 🙂

Horse tonic ad — A fun tonic advertisement at Dollywood

But seriously, I hope our horses can forgive us for sort-of shoveling and sort-of raking manure to the sides of their stalls in our rush to get back to bed. And while our horse friends insist our horses will be just fine if we left them in the pasture overnight, we’re not ready to give up pampering our horses.

Horse Life Expectancy

January 2, 2007 Mikki Comments 0 Comment

Leafless tree When we first started talking about buying a horse, we sought out advice on the internet and from people we knew with horses. It was universally suggested that we should purchase an older horse, 15-20 years old, especially if we we’re mostly interested in pleasure riding. It is reasoned that older horses are generally more gentle and usually have more riding experience. This made perfect sense to us, even though we ignored it to buy the horse (now horses) we have now. As regular readers will know, we have two horses, 6 and 8 years old. That’s pretty young even in “horse years”. One benefit to their youth, however, is that we probably have many years to look forward to, if we keep them (and we plan on keeping them). Just how long could that be? In my quest to answer that question, here’s what I discovered:

Although some sources indicate the average horse life expectancy to be between 20-30 years, I found accounts of horses living much longer.
The Guinness Book of Records shows a record of 62 years old. The horse was named “Old Billy”, born in 1760. This, however, is not the norm.
One of the Champion horses lived to be 41! See Just Like Gene and Roy.
Some locals here in Tennessee report horses normally live into their 30’s.
We’ve been told that a “Horse year” is equal to 3 human years. This is the “dog years” approach, where we compare horse life expectancy to human life expectancy. The average American is living to be around 78 these days. In “horse years” that’s 26.

To be honest with you, some quick internet research shows “horse life expectancy” estimates all over the place. I’ve seen 20 years old and I’ve seen 46. My non-technical way of making sense of the wild variation is to average it out. My uneducated guess is that, barring unforeseen circumstances, our horses should live to be up to 30 years old. For me, that means when Moonshine is a senior citizen, I will be able to sympathize, as I will almost be one myself.

What have you heard or experienced?