Mikki and are night people. We prefer staying up late and getting up later. Fridays are the worst days to try and resist this tendency because most of the time we don’t have to get up early on Saturday. So here we were 10 minutes ago in the middle of the night diligently cleaning horse stalls. And it occurs to me…what the heck are we doing? It’s the middle of the night, most of the eastern time zone is in bed and here we are mucking horse stalls. That’s some kind of crazy. We mentioned to a friend recently if she ever finds she can’t get to sleep around 2 AM and needs some company, head over to our barn. We’re bound to be there. Any other night time stall cleaners out there?
Maybe He Won One of Those Fancy Rose Garlands Once?
We walked away from the barn the other day and looked back to see my horse with his head all the way over a low part of the pasture fence…eating a rose bush. There are no blooms on this particular bush, so he was just eating the leaves and thorny stems. Why? I don’t know. I did a quick search on the Internet to make sure rosebushes are not poisonous to horses, and it appears that they are not. I’m sure they’re not all that good for them, but apparently won’t hurt them.
Bill’s horse has a thing for wood – she chews on her stall door and the fence – so I told him, my horse thinks he’s a burro and yours thinks she’s a beaver.
That reminds me, we need to discuss bad horse habits. Maybe for the next post!
I introduced my first horse “Moonshine” a few days ago and mentioned she is a registered paint. You can’t tell it by looking at her because she’s almost all black, just like Valentine. Well, I forgot to mention that one of her favorite pastimes is rolling in the mud! Anytime there is any mud to be found, she will surely roll in it and later show up with a coat of mud plaster. So even though when clean she doesn’t look like a paint, she sure does during rainy days.
Not the best picture but you get the point. The clean one is Mikki’s fancy ex-show horse Valentine. The dirty one is my redneck horse, Moonshine:
If you’ve followed this blog from the beginning or skimmed over previous posts, you know that we moved to a small Tennessee town from the big city (Phoenix, Arizona) a year ago. Bill and I both grew up in small towns, but we had lived in cities for a very long time – 20 years for me. That’s long enough to become pretty “citified.” Now, I’m not your typical girl. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, my hair and makeup are not always perfect, and I’m no Martha Stewart around the house. But we had pretty comfortable, civilized lives and our house was a pretty typical city house. But all that has changed.
It started with the acquisition of “barn shoes.” If you have a horse, you have to have barn shoes and barn clothes, because stuff is going to get on them that looks bad, smells bad and probably won’t ever come off.
The next thing you notice is the creeping invasion of “horse stuff” into your life and your house. A new halter will hang on a dining room chair until you remember to take it up to the tack room. Saddle blankets make it to your laundry room. Horse medicines sit out on your kitchen counter. A few weeks ago, I had a bit drying in my dish rack. You don’t notice it happening until it’s too late.
And then the decor you swore would never be seen in your house appears. I just had a birthday (29 again, of course), and a dear friend gave me the most wonderful gift:
Now, here’s my dilemma. This cool sign doesn’t fit with my current decor. I don’t have a big enough house to have a “horse room.” But I’m not sure the sign would survive the weather in the tack room. So, is a horse-and-pony bedroom set far behind?
Only time will tell. But we’re definitely becoming horse people. And I think that’s a good thing to be.
But why wait? Bill found a really great site and he made the mistake of sending me the link. It’s called Cafe Press and they have a really neat concept. You find a design you like (they have over 23,500 designs for “horse lovers!”) and put it on a choice of items, such as T-shirts, hoodies, coffee cups, tote bags, calendars, journals, clocks, ornaments – dozens of choices that vary with the design you choose. Their prices are reasonable and the designs are just great. Some are beautiful, some are funky, some are witty. I like the witty ones myself, such as “I do my own stunts” with a cartoon silhouette of a rider thrown from his horse (see below). These were also my favorites, although I certainly haven’t viewed all 23,500 – yet:
“All I Need to Know In Life I Learned from My Horse” (you have to read that one)
“If this shirt is clean I haven’t been to the barn yet”
“Horses are only afraid of two things – things that move, and things that don’t.”
“Thank you for flying Air Amateur…” (you have to read that one too!)
“I’m being raised in a barn” (for kids, of course – or not)
And my personal favorite (click for products with this image):
Good advice, there!
And here is Bill’s favorite (click for products with this image):
Bill: “I have been there! It’s funny because it’s true. I’ll write about my stunt incident sometime soon.”
Well, it’s been a few months and I suppose I should introduce my new horse. That’s right, I have my own new horse now. Mikki and I have mentioned her a few times already so it’s about time you know just who I’m talking about. And I’ll explain why I call her Moonshine.
We’ve always intended to have more than one horse. In fact, we’d like to have three – one for each of us. But since we knew nothing about horses when we embarked on this first-horse adventure in February 2006, we thought it wise to become familiar with our first horse before buying our second. Then when our guest horse Blaze left, we noticed that Valentine seemed lonely. Horses after all are herd animals so we began to casually look for a companion horse. While at our favorite tack shop, Mikki and I glanced at the bulletin board and inquired with Charlie if he knew anyone who was selling a good, gentle, inexpensive horse. Charlie put us in touch with a guy who does some work for him on the side and that very afternoon we drove to a small farm like ours to look at a mare for sale. The man selling her said he didn’t want to sell her but he didn’t get to ride her much anymore and he was in need of money to pay a stud fee for his other mare, which was about to foal. The horse stood like a statue out in the pasture as we walked around her, touching and rubbing her. I’m not really sure what we were looking for but I guess we hoped anything that should concern us would stand out, hopefully with a sign that said: “don’t buy me.” She looked good with the exception of her hooves which were in need of trimming and were worn rough since she wasn’t wearing any shoes. The owner said he hadn’t ridden her much (warning flag 1) and that she threw him once and it kind of scared him (warning flag 2). He admitted he wasn’t much of a rider, though. Heh, neither were we! Now, this is the point when we started falling in love with this horse, enough that we were willing to ignore the warning signs (I didn’t listen to any of the advice I dished out in my post about “Should you buy a horse?“). She was gentle and didn’t mind us touching her feet, back, belly and head. She haltered well, too. We went home to think about it and a few days later decided we wanted to buy her.
Mikki and I knew we didn’t know what to look for so we asked our farrier, Gabe, if he’d be willing to come up and take a look at her for us and bring her home if he thought she was a good deal (we don’t have a horse trailer and he does). A few days later my new horse Moonshine was on a trailer headed for our barn and a very curious pasture-mate.
Once we were home, we let Moonshine and Valentine smell each other over the fence and then let her into the pasture to see how they’d react to each other. In equine society, females rule the herd and despite being a whole hand shorter than Valentine, Moonshine quickly took the leadership role and Valentine let her. I think he was just happy to have a friend…a girl-friend at that! I have some video of the moment when they met that shows them running around together. Someday I’ll post that because it’s fun to watch.
As I said, it’s been several months now and these two horses love each other’s company. You never see them very far apart and the pecking order is well-established. They’re beautiful together and at times I wish Valentine was a stallion. Their babies would be beautiful!
And the particulars: Moonshine is 15.2 hands tall, black with a white star on her head and snip on her nose. She weighs about 1,000 pounds. A registered paint, you wouldn’t know it to look at her since she’s all black but she’s registered as breeding stock. She’s also part quarterhorse and Thoroughbred. The Thoroughbred part really shows when she runs, I think. Boy is she fast! It’s interesting to see the two horses together. Valentine runs oddly, as gaited horses do (he’s a Tennessee Walking Horse) while Moonshine runs like a racehorse.
And now about her name. Her official name is moon-something. I can never remember what it is but being near the mountains in east Tennessee it just seemed funny to call her Moonshine. It’s funny but for me, the name also refers to her radiant beauty, like the shining moon. Moon shine. And it rhymes with Valentine. You might see her name as Moonshine or Moon Shine.
So now you know most of the story. You’ll be hearing a lot about her on ourfirsthorse.com. And while technically we have our first horses…the name of our site and horse blog still applies, since Mikki and I each now have our own first horse.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted September 7, 2006, to approve the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. The bill, labeled H.R. 503 for the House and S. 1915 for the Senate, bans the slaughter and transport of horses in the United States for human consumption. It will likely come to vote during the next legislative session in 2007.
I’m a little late with this post but news about this vote wasn’t very widespread so it seems like a good idea to give an update here. A couple of interesting things I learned today:
Apparently, 92,000 horses were slaughtered last year. Wow, that’s a big number. If you read my Willie Nelson Against US Horse Slaughter post, you’ll remember I go back and forth on whether or not horse slaughter for food should be legal. I’m still not sure but after learning of this 92,000 number, I wonder what will happen to these 92,000 horses a year if this bill passes?
The vote was 263 for approval and 146 against approval. That’s a pretty wide margin but closer inspection of who-voted-how raises questions in my mind. For example, in Kentucky, a “horse state”, all representatives voted for the bill. But in Tennessee, where I live and a place I’d also consider a “horse state”, almost all representatives voted against the bill. Political party-wise, there was strong support of the bill with both Democrats and Republicans and although several Democrats voted against the bill, a quick scan indicates it was mostly Republicans voting against the bill. I wonder why. I hear some so-called “poison pill” amendments were added at the last minute so maybe that’s why. Things aren’t always as they seem.
Here’s a neat site that shows how the House voted by state and Representative: http://capwiz.com/compassionindex… (opens in a new window)
We’ve almost come full circle here with the weather and our horses. Bill brought Valentine home in the dead of winter (28 degrees the night of February 13! Brrr!), experienced a gorgeous spring, survived a hot, relatively dry summer, and now it’s fall. Today, however, already feels like winter – we had our first frost last night and it’s supposed to be below freezing again tonight. So I guess it’s time to winterize around here.
What you need to do depends upon where you live. If we still lived in Arizona, we’d be celebrating right now, because it would finally be cool enough to ride! But around here, we’re dreading the cold and even more so, the MUD. We thought we were making progress with the mud pit outside the barn this summer, but as soon as it cooled off again, the mud came back. Yuck.
So here’s what we need to do, and what we probably actually will do:
It doesn’t get so very cold here. It’s often in the twenties and thirties at night but usually warms up to the fifties during the day. Our horses are already doing the most important part of getting themselves ready: they are growing the most gorgeous, thick winter coats. They just look stunning, I have to say. All the sunburned summer hair has fallen out, and thick, velvety new hair has come in. They’re also very fortunate to both be all black, it attracts the heat very nicely. Lucky them! If your horse doesn’t grow a good winter coat, or if it’s really cold where you live, you should purchase a good blanket. I’m not sure why they call it a blanket, because it looks more like a coat, but that’s what it’s called. Good luck with this – I’m told that most horses hate them and do everything they can to get them off, from pulling on them with their teeth to rolling in the mud to having their horse friends help them pull them off. But in some climates, they really should be wearing one. Please, though, try to preserve their dignity by choosing one that doesn’t look too goofy.
For our part, the most important consideration for winter is the food supply. The grass in the pasture actually sticks around all winter, but becomes shorter and scarcer and not a good thing to rely on for winter forage. Our ultimate goal is to seed the entire pasture with cold-weather grass in the winter, but you need a tractor for that and we don’t have one yet. Hay also becomes harder and harder to come by as winter drags on. Last year, we had a panicky moment when we actually could not find any more hay (after paying $4.50 a bale for the hay we had last found). Luckily, we mentioned our dilemma to a friend whose mother had a barn full of “old” hay that she sold to us for $1.00 a bale. This year, we are planning ahead. We built a loft in our barn so we could store more hay, and have begun to fill it up. (A note on hay storage here: the biggest risk with stored hay is that it will develop mold. As you dispense hay to your horses every day, check each flake for signs of mold. The easiest method is with your nose – moldy hay smells bad. Never feed moldy hay. You should be checking hay for other stuff anyway – I’ve heard of everything from plastic bags to dead snakes being found in baled hay. Maybe you should be wearing gloves as you’re checking.)
We have also supplemented the hay supply with a round bale of hay, which is in the pasture for the horses to munch on whenever they want. Since they spend most of their time in the pasture, that’s a good place for a supply of hay. Ideally, any hay in the pasture should be protected from the weather. A “run-in shed” is a good thing for this purpose. It’s a three-sided shed that protects your hay – and your horses – from rain, wind, snow, whatever. We have an old barn in our pasture that we intend to use for this purpose, but it needs some serious maintenance right now. So the hay is parked beneath a large evergreen tree.
Another important note about winter feeding is that your horses will need to eat more to keep their weight up. Keeping a body warm in cold weather takes a lot of energy. We give our horses more oats in the winter – they’re higher in calories than hay.
Although your horse won’t need as much water in the winter as in the summer, a supply of clean, fresh water is still just as important. If you live somewhere where water might freeze, you need to invest in a bucket or trough de-icer. You might consider one even if it doesn’t freeze – horses don’t like to drink icy cold water and may avoid drinking if they don’t find the water to their liking.
As for protection from the elements, most of our horse friends laugh at us because we don’t just leave our horses out in the pasture all the time. They say that horses are just fine out in the cold, and I’m sure they’re at least partly right. But we have a nice barn with lots of room, so every night we bring them in to sleep in their stalls, and if it’s cold and/or windy, we close the exterior windows to keep the drafts out. But that’s up to you.
The biggest winter problem for us, though, is the mud. We battled it with straw this summer, piling it on and mixing it in (in Arizona, we’d have adobe by now). The next step is a large load of sand, to help the clay drain better. The best thing to do would be to shovel out the mud, lay down a layer of stone, then gravel, then sand and put the original soil back, but again we’d need a tractor. So we’ll try out the sand and see if it helps.
You’ll be hearing a lot about mud again this winter, I’m sure.
We recently had a recurrence of a problem with Valentine (see Getting a Room). As you know if you’ve read this blog, we have a mare and a gelding. We have a three-horse barn and their stalls are next to each other. Every once in awhile, Valentine for one reason or another decides that he wants to be in her stall. (As for what that reason might be, well, he is a guy – it’s either food or…well, this is a family show.) Since he’s 16.2 hands high (that’s 64.8 inches in people talk) and weighs about 1200 pounds, and there’s an inch of wood slats and a few nails and screws between him and his destination, it’s not too hard for him to accomplish his goal. So a few days ago, we came up to the barn to find one less plank of wood between their stalls. Again.
So this time, in addition to replacing the nails with screws, we took the simple but effective step of switching their stalls. The wall between their stalls is formed by vertical slats nailed to two horizontal planks, one at the top and one at the bottom. Moonshine’s stall was the smooth side of the wall; the nail heads were on her side. So Valentine could simply push on the boards and presto! Out popped the nails and down went the boards. By putting him in the stall with the smooth side, it made it much harder for him to remove the planks because he would have to actually break the boards. Of course, if he wanted to, he could easily do it, but shhhh…don’t tell him that.
Anyway, Valentine’s now in the middle stall and Moonshine is in the first stall. Unfortunately, after months of it being the other way around, we were bound to forget the new routine, and tonight we did. We opened the gate and let Moonshine into the middle stall. We could have just left her there, I suppose, but we really didn’t want to risk yet another replay of Getting a Room. At the very least, it’s a pain to put those boards back up, and the worst-case scenario is an injury to one or both of our horses.
So we needed to switch her into the other stall. Let me tell you, that was easier said than done. There were OATS in the feed trough. Once her head was in there, she wasn’t letting them go. Since we don’t leave halters on our horses (I’ll have to post the reasons for that someday), I couldn’t just grab her and pull her out of the stall. We tried to get her out of the stall by pushing her around. Normally that would work, because she’s actually very obedient, but have I mentioned that she really likes OATS? She wasn’t budging. I risked life and limb and stood in front of the bucket to keep her away from the oats while Bill tried to lure her out with a handful of oats, but she’s no dummy. Trade 2 cups of oats for about a tablespoon? Come on. Eventually, Bill went for the halter while I tried to keep Moonshine from eating my jacket till he got back. We got the halter on and pulled her out of that stall into the right stall with no problem, and let a very anxious Valentine into his stall to discover if there were any oats left for him. Needless to say, that bucket required a refill.
We like bringing treats to our horses and usually that means an apple or some carrots we buy in bulk. But one treat they’ve been craving is something I just refuse to give them…my fingers. Well actually there is a list: fingers, hands, arms, ears and sometimes feet/shoes. My horse, Moonshine, is very gentle and uses her tongue a lot so it seems like she’s kissing you. “Aw, how sweet…HEY stop that!” I’ve found that keeping my palm open towards her keeps her from being able to vacuum my fingers into her mouth but I keep thinking, horses are herbivores, right? I mean they don’t stalk and eat small animals, that I’ve observed. Come to think of it, I almost never notice any small animals in our pasture. Oh well, I suppose my fingers are so interesting because they just held an apple or carrot. But since when did apples and carrots wiggle and move around so much, huh? So if you end up with your own horse, watch those fingers! Those of you with horses already know this I’m sure.
And as a side note, carrots this time of year can be purchased from Costco for about $5 per 10 pound bag!
We walked away from the barn the other day and looked back to see my horse with his head all the way over a low part of the pasture fence…eating a rose bush. There are no blooms on this particular bush, so he was just eating the leaves and thorny stems. Why? I don’t know. I did a quick search on the Internet to make sure rosebushes are not poisonous to horses, and it appears that they are not. I’m sure they’re not all that good for them, but apparently won’t hurt them.
We like bringing treats to our horses and usually that means an apple or some carrots we buy in bulk. But one treat they’ve been craving is something I just refuse to give them…my fingers. Well actually there is a list: fingers, hands, arms, ears and sometimes feet/shoes. My horse, Moonshine, is very gentle and uses her tongue a lot so it seems like she’s kissing you. “Aw, how sweet…HEY stop that!” I’ve found that keeping my palm open towards her keeps her from being able to vacuum my fingers into her mouth but I keep thinking, horses are herbivores, right? I mean they don’t stalk and eat small animals, that I’ve observed. Come to think of it, I almost never notice any small animals in our pasture. Oh well, I suppose my fingers are so interesting because they just held an apple or carrot. But since when did apples and carrots wiggle and move around so much, huh? So if you end up with your own horse, watch those fingers! Those of you with horses already know this I’m sure.