That Dang Horse

It's been about two years and some since Lord Duquesne (AKA "Dink") fell ill and lost weight and I thought I was never going to get our feisty Appaloosa back to health. Thought he was going to die, in fact. He was 23 years old, after all -- that's pretty old for a horse.

I stopped taking him out on long trail rides; not only was he looking poorly, but I also found myself short on time and couldn't spare the nine hours or more spent on getting to a remote location, a long ride, and more hours to get home.

At the advice of our shoer, I began feeding Dink Purina Senior Horse Feed, five pounds of it a day. Amazingly, his gaunt frame started to fill out again, and by this past spring, I had to cut him back to four pounds. He was actually getting tubby!

I like him rotund. But the other thing that the Senior Feed seems to be doing is giving him lots of energy. By that I mean, TOO MUCH ENERGY.  He's always been a bit of a bastard, but lately he's been threatening to buck if I don't do what he wants to do; and while he hasn't bucked, I'm not thrilled with his head tossing and body-bunching and tail-switching just because I don't want to turn to the left or let him run up a bank.

Today I began my morning by stacking wood. (We got two cords of wood last Friday.) Then I had breakfast and went out to ride with a couple friends. We had to change our usual route because a farmer was burning piles of almond tree trimmings on either road we take out from the ranch, and found ourselves on orchard roads we'd never taken before.

Dink was plainly stimulated by the new trail. New barking dogs, new places with almond harvesting equipment being noisy, people on quads working under the trees. It wasn't much of a problem though, until one of the riders let her horse move on into the lead.

"Stimulated" became "freakin' obnoxious" in no time flat. He began to bunch up, toss his head, and prance. When I wouldn't let him charge ahead of the other horse, he got madder and madder. Higher prancing. Shifting his hindquarters back and forth. Tossing his head trying to break my grip on the reins.

The other horses, by the time we got back to the ranch, were calm and dry. Dink was wet with sweat from his ears to his tail. I was also pretty well soaked with sweat from the effort of keeping him under control.

I know I'm going to be sore from this ride. I also know I'm going to start cutting that Senior Feed with a supplemental hay pellet that doesn't have so much jazz in it.

A Search for Meaning in Lent

Ah, Lent.

Kicked off by Sebastian's death, Ash Wednesday found me running a fever and sick with some annoying flu, with its attendant malais, coughing, and having to sleep sitting up. For a full two weeks I had the energy level of a salted slug.

During that time, the family tried to adopt a new pup, but sadly, the breeder lied about the little tyke's mental and physical fitness, and he was returned to the breeder's ownership so that she can be responsible when he seriously bites someone, which he will undoubtedly do.

Howie turned 13. That's old, and my dear little dog is definitely showing his age. He falls down if he doesn't focus on how he moves, and sometimes he panics when he can't get his feet back under him. Fortunately he doesn't roam around the house when I'm not here, and when I am here, he's with me, so I can get to him and calm him down until he can regain his feet. But I've noticed him bumping into things, and getting confused if he wanders into an unusual part of the yard; I have raise my voice to get his attention instead of the whisper or snap of my fingers I used before.

And Dink, my horse, is now 24 years old. That's old, too. He lost weight again this winter, so I have to supplement his feed with five pounds of senior horse feed each day. His energy level has tapered off and he's having trouble chewing his food properly.

A couple days ago, in a mood of purgation, I cleaned out my bedroom closet. It was disgusting; I don't think I'd cleaned in there for five years, maybe more. I ended up throwing out two huge garbage bags of clothes that were so junky (and unworn anymore) they weren't eligible to donate to charity, getting rid of ancient electronic equipment coated with San Joaquin Valley dust, and packing two more bags of clothes that were donatable that I just didn't want to wear anymore.

What does this mean for a Lenten message to me? Loss, impending loss, paring down the things I hold... I keep going back to this paragraph in St. Ignatius of Loyola's "First Principle and Foundation:"

... as far as we are concerned, we should not want health more than illness, wealth more than poverty, fame more than disgrace, a long life more than a short one, and similarly for all the rest, but we should desire and choose only what helps us more towards the end for which we are created.

I love my life, the world I live in, the people and creatures around me. But I do not own them. I must learn simply to honor them all, and rejoice in the Creation that has held them.

The photo is of blossoms on my cherry tree.

The Good Life

I think that this is my favorite picture of me in the past ten years.

Just looking at it reminds me of how pleasantly cool the water was on my be-sneakered feet after a two-hour ride; how sweet the air was off the reservoir, carrying the sound of water-birds and distant motorboats; how good it feels to ride a clever and intrepid horse.

Bernie asked me the other day (as we were sitting out under the delicious shade of the eucalyptus tree on the front lawn) if I hadn't wanted to be rich and famous when I was a kid. My honest answer was that I hadn't. By the time I was eight, I'd already had it up to the eyebrows with childhood snobbery ("My daddy makes more money than yours does!") and anyway, if I was rich, I wouldn't be spending so many hours playing in the creek ("crick") or around the town's landfill, which was across the street from our house, and I wouldn't have given those adventures up for the world.

What I did want when I was older/grown-up was to have a horse and to ride as long as I could as often as I could.

And here I am, riding my little horse into the lake, splashing and getting my shoes and pants and chaps wet, playing with good friends who are almost always up for a ride.

I've had a great life, thanks to Bernie, who never minded that I didn't want to be rich and famous, or powerful and privileged. The other thing I wanted in my life came to me when I was about sixteen, and was a junior counselor at a 4-H camp. I was in charge of a cabin of nine-year-old girls and helped with all the youngsters with songs and crafts and hikes. A very sweet little boy decided I was his favorite counselor, and I fell in love with taking care of him. From then on, what I wanted to be was a wife and mother. A home-maker. I've had the delight of doing that with Bernie, and though it sounds a bit unreal, I savor ironing clothes, and folding laundry, and love love love being able to sit under the shady tree in the front yard with my husband and watch the world go about its business while I rejoice in mine.

I'm riding that horse into the lake again tomorrow, too!

P.S. Photo by Aggie Smith, taken from aboard her beautiful mare, Sis.

The Next Ride

Yes. We went to Camanche Reservoir the next day, and the weather was pretty much perfect, in the high sixties with a bit of breeze: that means we were warm and needed no coats in the sun, and didn't sweat too much due to the breeze.

The China Gulch Trail at Camanche winds through cattle pasturage, and the bridle path is wide enough for three horses to go side by side (mostly). That's the good news, along with the beautiful views.

The bad news is that the trail is all gravel and stones, which the horses do not care for underfoot, and all uphill and downhill, which the horses and their aging riders did not especially care for. The stones and gravel bruise the horses' feet at times, in spite of horseshoes, and make the footing going downhill a bit tricky. And the up- and down-hill ...

I can't say how Cathy the Mad Horsewoman and Jerry the Alabama Cowboy felt while riding. They have heavy Western saddles, which may provide them with a bit more support than I have with my lightweight English Wintec -- I definitely have to ride with my legs engaged to maintain balance side to side and back to front. Perhaps I should ask them about that next time. On my part, by the time we were done, my flabby old legs were shaking and screaming at the exertion.

(Now that may sound horrible, but for a life-long horsey junkie like me, it is exactly what your legs long for, and a feeling that fills one's heart with happy-cooties, even while causing one to drag, zombie-like, to set out the picnic lunch afterward.)

The scenery was gorgeous, with weathered stone bluffs in the distance, and the lake glinting improbably blue in the distance (the photos don't do it justice), and the joy of watching our horses' expressions -- it was a wonderful ride. But for me, the best part of the strenuous day was arguing with Dink at every hill, when he wanted to charge ahead in a forging trot, and feeling him eager to keep going on and on to see what else there was to see.

The last time we were at Camanche, I was afraid he was dying.  But he did great this time; in fact he was a bit of an ass, but that's Duquesne all the way. He remembered the gate into the park, and positioned himself flawlessly for me to open it from his back. Only after the gate was closed and his mental "work" was done did he begin prancing and puffing to get on with the ride.

We saw a million woodpeckers, heard meadowlarks, watched buzzards and hawks sail through the sky; three mule deer spooked when they heard us come over a ridge, and big grazing cattle watched us warily. We saw a calf chase a gaggle of geese just for fun.

It's bedtime now, and I am still tired from that ride, my legs and arms still threatening to go on strike or something, even with 24+ hours of rest.

Love it.

The Childhood Dream

Well, if you were riding with me, and decided to take a picture during the ride, naturally you'd get my back and Dink's roany rear end.

Dink's had a rough winter, but is on the mend, or at least as much of a mend as a horse who will be 23 this year can have. He's put on some weight, and regained his need to be The Horse, out in front, leading everyone else.

Eddie, on the right, carrying Cathy the Mad Horsewoman, has learned from walking beside Dink that it's better to lag a little behind; when he gets up too close to the side of Dink, Dink will occasionally flatten his ears at Eddie, which is Horse language for "Push your luck and I will knock the shit right out of you." Eddie is too smart to push his luck.

We rode Woodward Reservoir yesterday, reveling in the lack of campers and dog trainers and goose hunters. The dirt roads are getting grassy with winter, the hills green with new grass. The reservoir itself has been half-drained, exposing sandy beaches. The resultant green land, clean yellow beaches, and brilliantly blue water makes me think of an exotic beach location, maybe a lush island, maybe the Riviera. Maybe Madagascar.

We rode on the roads on the way out, but on the way back, I led the way onto the exposed sandy expanses. At times it was like riding through a desert, with the soil/sand cracked and dried by the sun; but then, as we neared our camp, it was like riding on the beach, with the sandstone and sand challenging our horses, the wind blasting us and raising whitecaps on the remnants of the lake.

Gorgeous.

After being raked, hoed, and pounded by the wind, sitting down to eat our sandwiches and chips and drinks felt like true luxury, even though the wind was so cold we couldn't take our coats off, and had to sit on saddle blankets at the cement picnic table to keep from freezing our butts off.

Being The Chuck Wagon as well as being the Woman on the Horse that Has To Be Out in Front, I made the grub. Sandwiches were semi-subs of seasoned turkey, bologna, salami, and cheese, or chicken with stuffing-seasoned mayonnaise. There were potato chips, and oranges, and bottled water or diet soda. (I brought wine for myself, a cheap but tasty pinot grigio decanted into an empty plastic water bottle. Classy, no?)

That's Dink on the left, tied to the trailer behind Cathy the Mad's glitzy new truck, and Eddie on the right, both of them watching us eat sandwiches with envy. Don't pity them -- we let them graze on the reservoir's land's rich green grass before we ever sat down.

If I had seen this adventure when I was seven, I would have said, "Yes! That's what I want to do when I grow up! I could never have enough of that!" I tried to remember that feeling as I oozed up the home sidewalk afterward, every muscle feeling like worn-out jelly.

We had a wonderful ride, and I hope the horses are rested because tomorrow, Thursday, we're riding out again at Camanche Reservoir.

Our friend Nikki took these pictures; I'm hoping tomorrow that I can take a few of my own.

Fun Is Hard Work

Today began with a 7am wake-up. I really didn't want to get up that early, but I had a trail-ride scheduled, and that meant I had 2 hours to come up with a cover image for the Piker Press.

And to eat breakfast, get dressed, and make lunch for three riders.

I had a couple reference photos to work from, and chose to use pastels on black paper. Six colors only. The result was simplistic but worked. I photographed it, loaded it to my computer, and darkened the background, correcting the glare of the light on the paper.

I like the pants the best, and the shoes weren't too bad.

Then it was off to the kitchen to make sandwiches on french rolls (cheese, salami, bologna, turkey) and vinaigretted lettuce to add later; I packed chips and oranges and soft drinks into my cooler-on-wheels, and off I went for the ride.

Which was exotically beautiful, because Woodward Reservoir has been partially drained, exposing yards and yards of sandy beach. The grasses are green (green is our winter color) but the weeds were brown, and beyond the golden beach, the water was bright blue, and crested with little whitecaps on the waves. Sunshine kept us warm enough.

Whitecaps? On a reservoir?

Yezzz, the wind was up, about 15 mph, stirring the water. And right out of the north, so we needed the sun to keep us warm enough.

When we had our sandwiches after the ride, I watched the waves on the reservoir, just drinking in the gold and blue and green, glad to be done with the saddle, looking forward to a hot shower at home. Dink, after a week of good food, had been a handful -- he can't wait to get out on a new trail, and always starts out like he's on fire. That's good, that meant he's improving, health-wise, but wow, it also meant I had to ride like I knew what I was doing, not slog along like a sack in the saddle.

Good sketch, good ride, good day.

The Jawbone of an Ass

"That's definitely an abscessed tooth. You've got to get him to the vet and have it removed," Wonder Woman told me, having appeared unasked at my side as I looked at Dink, who had been brought in from his pasture to a little paddock.

"He's got food stuck in his cheek," I said. "This has happened before."

The ranch manager had called me again on Friday, her voice sounding panicky. Dink's face has a big swelling on his jaw, get out here as soon as you can.  We'd just got back from the movies, but I swung my purse over my shoulder again and headed out, fairly confident that I knew what it was. About a year ago, I'd found Dink in the pasture with a big ugly bulge on his face. Palpating it had caused him no discomfort, so I'd saddled him up and ridden out through the orchard roads. Even if he did have a problem with a tooth, he needed exercised. By the time we got back to the ranch, the swelling had ... disappeared. He'd had a wad of grass stuck in there.

Back to Friday. Wonder Woman, who is a "trainer" shook her head at me. "It's not food. I stuck my hand in there and it's his gums. There's no food in there."

The ranch manager showed up, and Wonder Woman went on again about abscesses and how she had stuck her thumb into Dink's mouth, and knew that he had a bad tooth, and an infection going on. The ranch manager was freaked out, ready to load Dink into the trailer and cart him back to the vet's again. Her apt reading of Dink's demeanor on Wednesday had probably saved his life, but she really didn't want to save him just to lose him a day or so later. Wonder Woman continued to hold forth on why Dink should be taken to a vet right away, her yammering making my innards churn. There was something familiar in the way she was presenting her argument.

Yeah, that was it. I'd heard the method before. She wanted to induce a panic, make her listeners rely on her "expertise."

He won't eat his food because he's in too much pain. He won't drink water because the cold water will hit the rotten tooth and cause too much pain. He'll just colic again and die.

Fact is, horses' teeth don't have the same kind of nerve system that humans do. That's why, when a vet does a procedure known as "floating," he'll give the horse a dose of drugs to make him dopey and relaxed, and then, with the horse's mouth ratcheted open with a miniature car jack, uses saws and sanders to even out the horse's teeth. The horse's ears might flicker at the noise, but trust me, they don't wince or flinch when their teeth are sawed, sanded, or even yanked out.

And another fact is that you can't stick a thumb all the way back into a horse's cheek unless they're sedated and the mouth jacked open. A horse's teeth, front or back, can cut your fingers off, so that would be a stupid thing to do. Wonder Woman's thumb could not possibly reach the area of swelling.

The ranch manager took Dink's temperature and he was well within normal range. I put a halter on him and walked down the road with him, as much to give the two of us a break from Wonder Woman's hair-on-fire rhetoric as to exercise his roany hide.

We stopped to watch some irrigation system workers installing some kind of solar panel down the road; I let Dink snatch some long green grass recently sprung up from the rain last week. We walked back to the ranch to hear Wonder Woman continuing her "professional" dissertation. "Look at his cheek," I said to the ranch manager.

"There's hardly any swelling there!" she said.

"Same as before," I mentioned. "It's food. It works out."

"No, it's the pressure of the halter on his cheekbone," Wonder Woman stated stridently. "It's pushing the pus out."

"I haven't been hauling on his head," I told her gently. "I don't have to."

"It's the halter right over that spot, breaking the abscess. He has to be on antibiotics and get that tooth removed."

At that point, I pulled out the big guns. She could not accept my assessment of the horse's condition, but there was one thing she could not refute. "Here's the thing," I said to her. "I have NO MONEY LEFT. I could cover this last visit to the vet, but now, I HAVE NO MONEY LEFT. NONE. I can't pay a vet to look at his teeth today."

It was an unheard of argument, I guess. Wonder Woman wandered off to talk to another boarder about why she should or should not exercise her horse in the arena. I told the ranch manager I'd be back on Saturday to check on Dink.

Geeze.

I went back on Saturday with a can of Senior Equine food to tempt Dink's appetite. The ranch manager met me there, still worried, even though Dink had no swelling evident in his face. She'd brought Dink in to feed him in the morning, and dose him with antibiotics, and found that he refused the grassy hay, and the sweet feed with the antibiotics. I groomed the old fuzzy up and rode him out for a ride around the nearest orchard bloc. When we got back, I gave him a bite of an apple, and offered him some feed. He was hungry.

The ranch manager brought the bucket she'd put the antibiotics and feed into. I could tell right away the feed smelled sour -- no wonder Dink didn't want it. Nevertheless, once she went on to deal with other clients -- and no doubt listen to Wonder Woman, who was again on that day holding forth with her wisdom, Dink not only ate all the antibiotics/feed mix as well as my offering of Senior Feed, and in doing so, packed both of his cheeks full like a squirrel.

"Come look at his face," I called to the ranch manager when she passed by.

"Oh my God, what the hell is going on?" she cried, looking at his lumpy face.

"Now look at the other side," I said, pushing his head around. "It's all food."

Wonder Woman, who doesn't share a tack room with the lesser equestrians, just happened to come over to snort in on someone else's horse.

"Look!" the ranch manager cried. "It's all food!"

Wonder Woman had no comment to offer, not a single word.

Today I was out again, and Dink had no swelling of the face at all, and I only offer one comment on Wonder Woman's expertise: the big dappled warmblood horse she trains ... "trains?" ... She can't take him out on the orchard roads because he "doesn't know when to stop."

Long story, this entry. Sorry.

Dink is good.

Look Out, Here He Comes!

At one this afternoon, the ranch manager and I went to pick Dink up at the vet, after a successful treatment for colic. The ranch manager's first tipoff that Dink was sick yesterday was that he was docile, subdued and polite.

And thus it was wonderful to see him today, head up, ears pricked, looking like he was ready to kick the ass of all and sundry.

"Now that's Dink," the ranch manager said fondly.

Long Afternoon

I was doing some cooking for Alex's dinner when the phone rang. Not expecting a call, since my hands were gooey from chopping up the remnants of a leg of lamb for Lamb-and-Bean, I let the answering machine pick up -- only to hear the ranch manager's voice saying that Dink was not right. I grabbed a towel and mopped my hands, answered the phone.

Dink was sick, and so I headed out to the ranch. His breathing was too fast, and he was not his usual feisty self. While the ranch manager called a vet, I walked the horse down the road and back, down and back, stopping to listen to his side.

A horse's belly should be a chorus of gurgles and squeaks; Dink's left side was completely silent.

The ranch manager thought we should pack him off to the vet, and so she brought her trailer around. Dink was definitely not himself, but he was thrilled with the sight of the trailer, and clambered in with no prompting at all. Off we went in the sundown. The vet stayed after his usual hours to examine the horse, who was in the first stages of colic -- a shutdown of the intestines, possibly brought on by the radically changing weather.

Dink is still there, in a clean stall, where the vet will check on him again tonight. He should be okay, but the vet said he would call if our old horse (22) took a turn for the worse.

Tonight I'm listening for the phone, hoping that it doesn't ring.