Heaps of Horseshit

Yes, I could have said "meadow muffins", but there were few muffins in the mix.

I could have said "droppings" but there were few of those as well.

"Poop", "excrement", "waste", "doodie" ...

This morning I went out to the ranch to check on Dink. He was moved from a little pasture back into a paddock a week or so ago, so I knew the paddock would need to be cleaned and he could be let out into the big arena for some exercise and a nice roll in the dirt. Pasture is always nicer than paddock, but I wasn't upset that they brought him in ... he's an easy keeper and he was getting really fat again on pasturage.

I found out that wasn't the reason they brought him in, though. They'd put a young filly out there with him, and the sassy little snot beat the hell out of her, chasing her around the pasture like a tyrant. The owner of the ranch said, "So that's why he's in jail."

Unfortunately, the paddock they bunged him up in was NOT cleaned, so that paddock was pretty deep in ... doodie.

Now before you gasp and think that's horrid, let me say that Dink didn't care. His food is out of the doodie, and anyway, out here in the hot summer valley, horse doodie dries and crumbles to a non-icky powder much the consistency of dry sawdust.

Nevertheless, no matter how other people let their paddocks get deep, I don't like it, and so I went to shovel the stuff out. With a wheelbarrow and a tined scoop, I began moving manure. It's not a particularly hard job, but when the wind blows the crumbled dung-dust, well, you better hope you're upwind.

After ten wheelbarrow loads, there is no euphemism in one's head. It is shit.

I don't know how many wheelbarrow loads I took out; more than ten, I know, but I wasn't really keeping track. I've never minded the smell of horseshit in my whole life, and really, oddly enough, in the quiet of the ranch, with just the sounds of horses moving around and no task to have to worry about, shoveling the paddock clean was a peaceful exercise. The enormous draft horse in the next paddock watched me, his great head over the rail so that I could occasionally stroke his nose. A couple times Dink thundered across the arena, head and tail in the air, to see if I was ready to let him back in to finish his breakfast; when he did, I took a break to watch how beautifully he gallops.

On Sunday, the shoer will come by and trim Dink's feet and put new shoes on him; now his paddock is clean; and if I am tired out by the morning's labor, I can take satisfaction in knowing that it was a way of restoring some order to the world. And it was a hell of a lot easier than stacking wood, which I would have had to work on had I not opted to move horseshit.