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.

Ketchup

This is the best Moon picture I've ever taken with my Sony camera. I used the action setting and it came out pretty good. We've been sitting outside in the evenings, in the shade of the eucalyptus tree, watching ants move their colonies into my raised vegetable beds. Like geese flying south, or dogs shedding their summer undercoats, ants moving eggs is a sure sign that autumn is nearby.

This evening sitting time cuts into blogging time, and as a result, I haven't had many entries over the past couple months. I'll make up for that with some mightily-compressed paragraphs, bringing readers and myself up to date.

We rented a truck and bought a cord of almond wood. The suspension on the Chevy Prism (2000, and 281,000 miles) is really getting rough, and without an income, replacing the Vibe (2003) isn't an option, so we opted out of ferrying the wood in the cars' trunks and spent a few Andy Jacksons and got the wood. It's stacked now, after one of the most pleasant stacking experiences I've ever had; the weather in the mornings has been wonderfully cool (it was only over 100 degrees when we picked up the wood) and I could take as much time as I needed to bring it in and find niches for each piece. I swear every other year we got wood coincided with a hellish heat wave. Also, possibly because Dink is off pasture and in a paddock, I may have better upper-body condition from shoveling horseshit cleaning up after him.

Ah, Dink. The old man is in fine fettle at 23 years of age, still good under saddle so that I can ride him out alone if need be. He's feeling quite feisty for his years, and I've had to really ride like I know what I'm doing as he prances and postures, like liquid, like wind-blown clouds, surging forward, lofting side to side, as we prepare to ride out into the orchards. I rode today, too; although he was an asshole prior to the ride, he was perfect on it. Good horse.

Joan (also called JoMa) is in a phase of vocabulary-building known as the Screaming Meemies. Can't figure out what she wants? She will pierce your eardrums for you until you do with a scream that is incredibly high-pitched and pure mind-blasting sound. I can't wait for her to grow through this one. She's also taking a few steps, but can still travel faster quadrupedally.

Lillian started school at the Historic Durham Ferry campus of Venture Academy. Already we can see a difference in her homework assignments: she's expected to learn practical English and math! After six years of schlock and stupidity, (no wait, her fourth-grade teacher was really good) it looks like she will finally learn something that might actually stand her in good stead.

Bernie has expanded his culinary skills to include tempura and a kickass key lime pie.

I tackled a new cooking skill, too. Mine had to do with buying whole squid, and learning to clean and cut them up. But that's a whole blog post of its own, and I hope you'll check back for "Dancing with the Squid" in days to come.

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.

Adventure Day!

I had Bernie walk ahead a ways, so that a viewer could get a nice representation of the degree of slope on this hill, as well as the width of the trail.

That would be VERY steep, and NOT VERY wide.

We had set off this morning after I exercised the horse and cleaned the paddock, with the intention of scoping out Del Valle Regional Park outside of Livermore, which purports to have equestrian trails, then heading deeper into the Bay Area to look at a park and trail in Fremont.

We found the day-use equestrian area and the nearby trail, and since it didn't appear to be busy, we decided to walk a ways on the trail. I'm so glad we did. Now, if some misguided lackwit suggests we ride Del Valle, I can informedly tell them to go to hell.

The trail was not too steep, at least as far as we went, but the hillside on which the trail ran was. I'm talking damn-near-riding-on-the-edge-of-a-cliff steep. This picture is along one of the less steep dropoffs.

Now sometime around middle age, I lost my head for heights. Above six feet off the ground, the head falls off and bounces away. This has only grown worse as the years have rolled by. And on this trail, glancing down that slope was giving me a powerful case of vertigo, making me feel like I was gravitationally drawn to fall over. Sweating and shaking, my legs trembling, I kept my eyes on the path and Bernie's legs ahead of me. Not a pleasant walk.

I kept thinking of riding along that path: what if you meet another horse going the opposite way? What if there's a big old snake on the trail -- turning even a small horse on some parts of the track could be dangerous. And what if a jackrabbit or quail explodes out of the brush on the up-side of the path? Could you guarantee your horse would not spook off the edge?

With my eyes averted from the slope, I could see some other things lacking on the dirt: horse dung and hoofprints. Yes, there were some old dried-up meadow muffins, but the droppings were few and far between, and no semi-circular digs from recent hoofprints.

We checked out the other side of the lake, and saw some horse trails along the road, with access up into pasture land; maybe in winter it would be an interesting ride through green grasses, but the signs we saw that warned about ticks and rattlesnakes and mountain lions rather put me off.

Yes, mountain lions.

No, not riding there.

I was done for the day. Fremont Adventure Day will have to wait.

Hindsight

The Trail Boss was supposed to be an experienced rider, and I don't doubt that she is. She was also supposed to know the trail.

Well, she didn't.

A small section of the trail road was submerged at Camanche South Shore, and she led us up to the water.

"How deep is it?" someone called from behind.

"Oh, maybe up to the horse's girth," she answered over her shoulder. Dink was right on her horse's tail, and he was definitely in to his girth.

At that point, all hell broke loose with a big palomino horse plunging forward on our left, leaping and violently trying to run through water that was over his shoulder. He'd gone off the gravel road and into a drop-off, and as he crashed, he threw his rider over his right shoulder into the water. But before she went off, he'd managed, in his bucking, to knock his head into hers.

I know I'm going to have nightmares about this one.

When someone else is leading a trail ride, you're supposed to trust them, rely on them. A trail boss is supposed to know the way, and keep the riders in line -- not really being bossy with them, per se, but making sure they know what it is that they should be doing: Don't leave the trail, you might run onto a rattlesnake; don't dismount and sit in the grass, Lyme disease from ticks is a danger; don't run your horse over pastureland, ground squirrels are everywhere and your horse could break a leg in a burrow.

Time went into a dream-like molasses as the bucked-off rider lay in the water, floating and moaning. Her horse splashed back to the bank we'd left and headed for the trail back. The Trail Boss sat stunned on her horse, then ordered us all back to the side. After we were all back, she got off her horse and waded into the water up to her knees and called to the victim, "Are you all right?"

In the meantime, the victim of the crash had managed to come around enough to half-lean, half-sit up, but was still moaning incoherently. Trail Boss called to her, coaxing her to come back across the water.

And this is where I started to be freaked out: why didn't she wade over and pull that woman out of the water?

I still have no idea why she didn't.

I still have no idea why I didn't jump down from my horse, shove that stupid cow out of the way, and pull my trail-mate out of the water myself. I just don't know. For twenty years, when there's a trail boss calling the shots, you obey the trail boss. I was frozen by convention.

Thank God the crash victim didn't inhale a lungful of water. Indeed, she was able to walk beside her horse back to the trailhead, not staggering at all, but plainly out of her mind, asking every twenty seconds or so, "Why am I wet?" and "What happened?" and "Why do I have water in my boots?"

Her jaw hurt a lot where the horse's head had connected with a haymaker, and she has chipped teeth, at least one of them loose. But she ambled back, able to lead her horse (or lean on him) for the partial mile we'd been riding.

She was too dippy to put back on that POS dog-food candidate, or even on any of the other horses -- if she passed out, a fall from even a gentle horse would be worse than slumping in her tracks. Back at the trail-head, we got her into a dry top at least, and into a folding chair ...

Why didn't her companion load up and take her to a doctor? Her companion the Trail Boss is a veterinarian, shouldn't she at least know some emergency protocol?

Looking back, we should have questioned the Trail Boss: How deep is that water? Ride over and then come back and get the rest.

Looking back, why didn't the Trail Boss use her cell phone and call the rangers at the park gate to tell them there had been a wreck? I know cell phones are iffy up there in the foothills, but she could have tried ...

I feel guilty that I didn't take charge, that I didn't do the things I would automatically do if I was leading a ride.

And again, thank God, at this present time, I've had a message that the crash victim is okay, still feeling a headache, but is okay.


I swear that I would shoot that horse and cut him up by hand for coyote feed, and I really don't want Miz Today's Trail Boss to lead me anywhere in the future.

Pardee, the Four-Hour Ride

The lady on the paint horse in the distance is Janine, who served as our guide when we rode the Coast to Crest Trail at Pardee Reservoir yesterday.

Pardee is off to the left and a hundred and some feet abruptly down from that track, which is why Janine rode on ahead and only stopped when she was by that tree ahead of her and she could no longer see the steepness of the drop.

At this point in the ride, we were two hours in, and still hadn't reached a spot where we could stop and eat sandwiches. I was already really tired, which is why I'm kind of slumped there, just glad to be resting.

Near my red shoes, there is a bulging saddlebag, stuffed full of ice-packed sandwiches and a couple oranges. On the other side of the horse, the companion saddlebag held semi-frozen bottles of water, and more water, and some chips and vinaigretted lettuce for on the sandwiches. Not to mention some serving utensils and napkins.

When we reached a shaded place with forage for the horses and a flat area for us to stand around gobbling food like we were starving, we'd traveled four miles over gentle hills and one slightly steep hairpin descent. Ideally, we'd have had a place to sit down and linger over a delicious gourmet sandwich (Bernie had baked the rolls from scratch that morning.) But it was not to be. We were too tired, and wanted only to refresh ourselves and get back, knowing we had to retrace the trail all the way home.

Also, the hills around Pardee being prime cattle-grazing land, the dried-up cow patty I stepped on turned out to be only dry about 1/4 inch in, and thus while I ate my sandwich and chips, I was dragging my lovely red sneaker through the grass, keeping moving to avoid the worst of the flies, which were truly grateful to me for breaking through that tough cowpie crust.

Dink was as good as gold all the way, except when we were going uphill, at which times he forgot he's a 23-year-old horse and decided he was Pegasus. I fought him on the way out, but on the way back, was just too tired. I gave in and let him trot, figuring he'd tire himself out. (He never did, which I guess is good, as it shows that he's mended after his very rough winter.)

There were gorgeous late wildflowers up there in the foothills; I recognized monkeyflowers and lupines, but there were many more that I have to research. That I enjoyed immensely. We saw mule deer, and huge wild turkeys. Coolness!

Cathy the Mad Horsewoman took these photos, by the way. This one is me on Dink, pausing on a side cowpath. We'd all just watered our horses and were glad we had only about an hour to go before we got back to the horse staging area. I refused to drop my veil, thinking Cathy would take the hint and NOT take a picture of me.

The veil is worn not out of modesty, but because on one insane outing last summer with Cathy the Mad, we were out longer than we expected to be, and my lips sunburned so badly they blistered. Now I wear a mask when I ride in the sun. Lillian thinks I look like a ninja; Bernie warned me I might be arrested as a potential terrorist. I certainly was a desperado -- desperate to get off that horse and take a cool shower.

Pardee was a great ride, and I would gladly go again ... in the Spring, at the height of wildflowers, or in the Fall, after the first rains. I would not, and will not, make this ride again when it's hot. The forecast for our home was 92 degrees, with a 10 mph breeze. Nice. Up at Pardee, in among the hills, there was no breeze, and I guarantee it was well over 92.

Dink and I are ready for Woodward Reservoir, a lowland ride during which we can actually get in the water and splash.

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.

Just Say No

Wednesday was Horseshoeing Day.

I'd taken the shoer's call the day before (he has us on an 8-week schedule) and planned on being out there an hour before he was to arrive, so as to clean out Dink's paddock (a necessary job) and let Dink blow off some steam if he wanted to. My plan was to be the first out there, my horse ready, get my horse shod and get the hell home. Two hours, tops, maybe less, because Rodger Gordon the shoer doesn't piss around.

I had moved only a few horse patties when one of the other two folks who were having their horses shod showed up. "We have to have the mare done first, because her owner isn't going to be here, and he wants me to hold her, and I have to leave for an appointment in not too long."

In other words, "We both have shit to do, and know that you don't, so you won't mind wrapping things up, right?"

In point of fact, I didn't have pressing things to do, if you don't count working on the Piker Press (haha, funny, yes?) or cooking the midday meal in time to avoid the Heartburn Train that rolls in early these days. Or laundry, or dog-walking (which is more important than it sounds), or writing, or painting ...

The request wasn't unreasonable, and so I just cleaned up Dink's paddock, clipped a lead line to the mare's halter after luring her to her gate ("Oh, you're doing that already?") and when the shoer pulled in, handed off the mare. We got the gelding tied up and started as well, and I went and got Dink, and brought him out to the yard and tied him. The shoeing of all three horses went well, but I made a decision, having spent more than two hours more time than I intended at the ranch.

Time to say NO.

Yesterday morning, I got up, fed the dogs, said my morning prayers, and picked up the phone. "No, I am not going for a trail ride today. I'm tired, and I'm going to go back to bed." Saying no to eight hours of prep, saddle, and waiting around for other people to get their horses ready gave me a whole day to do some really necessary shopping, almost all the laundry, the cooking of a complicated and luscious midday meal, and some Press work, too. And when that was done, I had the sweet pleasure of sitting in the sunset light with my husband and admiring the blossoms on the eucalyptus tree, and how the sunbeams hit them just so ... had I gone on the trail ride, I'd be just dragging in, exhausted by the exertion and the stress of knowing there was so much at home that needed to be done.

I also said NO to continuing the writing challenge. Some days I'm just too tired, and some days I spend more time on art work, or nitpicky culinary feats. When I write, I rarely write for only 15 minutes, and when I don't want to write ... I really DON'T want to write.

In addition, I've firmed up my decision to say NO to letting this lady's kid ride my horse. He thinks Dink is wonderful, and that's cool. When I gave the lad a ride early last year, I wasn't riding 20 hours a week, and didn't have a new grandbaby in the house to spend time with. Also the kid's mom thinks she can get away with something. If the boy is horse-crazy, she needs to get him some lessons with a competent instructor. I told her that. "I'm sure he'd much rather have you teach him," was her reply. What do they call that, a passive-aggressive response? If she did her homework, she'd know that a good instructor charges $50/hr. Yes, I'm also sure that she would rather have her kid taught to ride by someone who would obviously do such out of the goodness of her heart rather than for money.

Anyway, I have no idea how many days Dink has in his horsey heart, and I don't want to spend them on some kid hauling on him, and I'll add to that by saying if Dink gets fed up with a stranger hauling on him, I don't honestly know what Dink will do. He might just stop and stand; he might bite the shit out of the kid, and then where am I?

No. No. No. No. No.

Oh, yeah, I also said no to Cathy the Mad Horsewoman, who wanted a trail ride at the reservoir tomorrow. "No," I told her, "I want to do some arena work with Dink." Arena work will be about 40 minutes, and then I can send him back to his breakfast, and me to the next issue of the Press.

Will I walk with Howie tomorrow?

Yes.

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 Old Horse

My horse, Dink, is 23 years old this year. That's old.

We got him when he was two; a friend of ours had been called out to deal with him -- a breeder of Appaloosa cutting horses said to our friend, "If you can get him out of that paddock and off my property, you can have him -- just don't tell anyone he came from here."

Now why would anyone give up a purebred Appaloosa? Why, because he was smallish, and meaner than pig-tracks. Our friend thought he'd use the colt to breed his mares, and get some quality bloodlines into their offspring, but his wife nixed the idea when she saw the colt, saying, "Not with that little dink, you won't."

In turn, our friend offered Alex the colt, saying if she would get him cut, (castrated) she could have him.

And she did. With a nod to our friend's wife, we called him Little Dink informally, but named him Lord Duquesne. Names matter, they really do. We gave him dignity, and bravery, naming him after an 18th Century fort in Pennsylvania. (And maybe a little double-entendre for fun, as there was a beer called Duquesne back in the day, also.)

Alex gentled that mean colt with skill and intuition; he never bucked, accepting a saddle and rider with willingness and intelligence. We've rarely had to explain anything to Dink twice. Alex finished growing up and got married, and had no time for riding, what with a full-time job and all sorts of adventures that are her province for the telling, and Dink came to me. I did some finessing with rein and heel and leg cues; he brought to the partnership a willingness to carry me and respect for my leadership.

Twenty-one years with this horse.

Since this past summer, he's lost seven inches of girth -- that's the measurement around his chest just behind his legs. I've been ranting about it to the ranch manager since last July, but she kept saying, "Oh, you've been riding more, or maybe it's worms ..."

Last week I went to the pasture to get Dink for a trail ride. His pasture-mate, "Larry" was standing over their hay, and Dink was having to pick for bits underneath the much bigger (and fatter) horse. On the trail ride, up at Lake Camanche, at one point, Dink just ... stopped. Dink doesn't stop. Dink is the intrepid one who will keep on going eagerly into new places -- sometimes too eagerly. He just doesn't stop and stand, resting, unwilling to go forward.

After the ride, I grew a spine, and told the ranch owner I wanted Dink out of pasture and in a paddock until I could see he was all right. He agreed, as there were a couple paddocks open. I bunged Dink into one and gave him some "senior feed."

The next day I went to see him around noon. The ranchers had brought "Larry" up out of pasture into the next paddock (Larry screams and screams if Dink isn't nearby) and I saw that Larry had eaten all his hay -- but Dink was still grazing at his. Duuhhhhhh. Dink is old and not eating fast, and Larry had been chowing down most of their feed.

It's not been a full week yet, but Dink is already looking better. I rode him on an easy trail ride, and in the arena a few days later, and his energy level is already much improved. The ranch manager has agreed with me that Dink should be given extra rations until he fattens up again.

Maybe he will, and maybe he won't. I hope he does, but he is, as I said, 23 years old, which is quite a venerable age for a horse.

I love seeing his head lift quickly, with ears pricked, when he hears me whistle for him and shout, "Duquesne!"

Out of the Ordinary

Nothing today was out of the ordinary ... well, yes, there was one thing, but you'll have to wait to the end of this post to see what it was.

I led a ride out through the orchards -- nice, the almond harvest is done, no heavy scary machinery about to spook the horses -- and it was good. The air was cool, the sun warm. No explosive horse things.

Bernie and I occupied the kitchen after I came home, him making chicken fritters (you'll have to wait for him to blog for that recipe) and I using up some leftover ground beef to make meatballs. (For which I have no recipe, making them by eyeball and texture and smell.) We had fun, trashed the kitchen, cleaned up together, glommed on our respective culinary creations, especially junking out on his homemade pasta.

We sat outside in ideal weather until football came on ...

And then Tampa Bay beat the Vikings.

Now that was out of the ordinary.

R.I.P. Rusty

I've posted this picture in this blog long ago, but it bears revisiting.

From left to right, there's my horse's butt, me, Dink, Rusty, and Cathy the Mad Horsewoman.

That day we made a ride from the ranch where we boarded our horses all the way to my house in town, where we made Bernie bring us icewater, and let the horses graze on the front lawn.

The horse Rusty died yesterday morning, quite unexpectedly, at the age of 13, which is nothing for a horse. (Dink is currently 22.) No one knows why. He just staggered suddenly and fell; then he got up, had a bit of breakfast -- and fell again, and died within minutes.

Cathy the Mad is devastated, as any rider can understand. Long hours in the saddle make a horse far more than a beast of burden; horse and rider become partners on their travels.

My favorite memory of Rusty is how he felt compelled to stick his head into trash bins and dumpsters to see what was in them. He never took anything out of them, but they were an endless source of fascination for him.

Good night, Rusty.

Topsoil in the Wind

I dodged a bullet today with minutes to spare.

The morning was rather cloudy, not bad at all, and I was scheduled to give a horsey lesson at ten. As Providence would have it, the mom called and said they couldn't be out there until noon. No way am I going to blunder around a hot and dusty arena in full heat, so I told her I'd catch up with them next week.

Then I zoomed to the ranch, dusted off the horse, flung the saddle on, and off we went for a short ride around one block of orchard. He was his usual perfect self (even when we inspected a new ditch dug to repair a leaky irrigation pump) and I was on my way home by 11 am.

How fortunate for me! The wind began to rise before I was even out of the shower and was a dirt-laden roaring hell. Lots of plowing being done; lots of dust being hurled.

Just going from the movie theater to the car got me coughing; the mountains are invisible, and you can feel the dirt on your skin in a matter of seconds. A very good day today for seeing The Avengers for the second time.

Hope the wind calms in time for us to open up the house tonight.

It was only about 40 degrees this morning when I got up, so I gulped some breakfast, read the news, and took off for the ranch to ride Dink out in the orchards before the bees were active. There are about thirty blossoms in the local orchards, and about a hundred bazillion bees in their bee boxes, so the little ladies are fair-to-middlin' angry when they go outside and find there isn't anything worth their while. I didn't want to get stung again.

Having scouted a riding route by car, (checking for bee boxes) I called Dink away from his breakfast and off we went. He was quite entertained by the change from the usual roads, and there has been enough work on irrigation systems that what we saw was different from the last time we'd taken those roads. A workout was good for him and good for me; we even did some trotting. He did the trotting, I did the balancing, and though his legs were moving more than mine, I was puffing more than he after the trot-work. Riding properly is exercise.

The other reason I was out there early was to avoid Wonder Woman, who spends hours at the ranch on Saturdays, messing with her horses. (Or maybe they're her clients' horses. Don't know, don't care.) All I know is that early in the day, none of the other boarders are around, and that makes for a quiet prep time, and a relaxing horsey visit.

By the time we got back to the ranch, the temperature was up to 56 degrees, and a bee was determined to land on Dink's face as I fed him his pan of Senior Feed. He was not amused, tossing his head and pinning his ears at the insect, who finally figured out that his white blaze on his face was not an almond blossom. Another bee landed on his rump to check out the white parts of his hide; Dink switched his tail and whacked the bee smartly, which caused the bee to zoom back and forth in tight circles, probably shouting threats and challenges.

Until the blossoms of the orchards explode into a sea of pink and white, Dink and I will probably stick to riding in the arena at the ranch. He hates arena work, and I hate convincing him to work in the arena, but it beats getting stung, for sure.

The birds in the picture are Brewer's blackbirds (I think) and they look very silly in the neighbor's trees. They're ready for Spring, too.

Three French Hens

On the third day of Christmas, I went out to see Dink, with a big, juicy apple for the little horse.

One, I needed to administer wormer to the old dude, which he loathes, but tolerates remarkably well, in a most gentlemanly manner, neither rearing nor biting, even though I'm prepared for both. When I give him the squirty paste worm medicine (all horses need this treatment on a regular basis), I always let the lead rope untied, so that if he wants to throw his head up, he can, without feeling trapped. (My son-in-law, years ago, demonstrated an easy and quick way to do this dosing, which, oddly enough, the so-called professional horsewoman through whom I bought my first horse did not know, she being of a mind that it took two people to dose a horse.) Dink was not thrilled to smell the wormer, but after a bit of lip-clamping, he relented and let me squirt the gunk onto the back of his tongue.

Two, the old gent needed some exercise under the saddle. He's such a good horse, and even though it's been almost a month since I rode, he was as steady and calm as if he was ridden every day. The day was cold, the bit of the bridle was icy cold, yet he still put his head down to take the bit in his mouth. I could tell he didn't like the chill, because he drew his lips back, and picked up the bit in his teeth for a moment before taking it into his mouth, but he did it anyway, because he wanted to go out for a jaunt. I've known horses that threw their heads around in refusal to take a bit, horses who had to be tricked with an apple or honey to reach for a bit, horses who had to have special rigs so that the rest of the bridle was attached and the bit attached at the last in order to get it in the horse's mouth. Not Dink. He knows that if we're to go out, a bit is part of the rig.

Our ride was short, just around one orchard block. It was good; we saw a jackrabbit scooting off through the orchards, and Dink showed no hesitation about us setting off by ourselves without any other horsey companions. Not all horses will do that, and so I appreciate Dink all the more.

Three, I needed the exercise on the saddle. It's too easy to become a couch potato, or a woman who exercises only by walking. But the fact is, I love being on a horse, the feel of the movement beneath my Wintec saddle, the sound of the horse's hooves, the smell of the horse's hide. Every movement has a communique; every tug on the reins sends a message. With legs and hands, I let Dink know what is to be expected; with tons of personality and acknowledgement, Dink does what I ask. I can open and close most gates from his back; he responds to leg and rein and heel cues to such a degree that if I am paying attention to what's about us, I need never be scratched by branches above us, or worry about him accidentally smushing me against something. I can, if my hat is blown off by the wind, use my crop to pick it up from the ground without getting out of the saddle.

Good horse.

Also, he's got the cutest red ears on the ranch.

Hola, Coyote!

Yesterday I accompanied Kathy the Mad Horsewoman to her English riding lesson. I listen to her lesson, and the instructor's voice helps me to remember what I learned long ago, and have more or less forgotten over the years.

Dink and I mostly go out alone these days. No one else at the ranch rides when we do, and that's okay. He and I know what we're doing with each other; it's a kind of riding partnership. But after so many years, we're both so comfortable with ambling along in the orchards that both of us are out of shape.

Kathy the Mad's instructor was talking about physical condition, saying that no other exercise exercises all the muscle groups at the same time like riding does. Wow, I thought, she's right.

Lower legs, thighs, back, abdomen, shoulders, arms -- if you ride properly, all of them are engaged, and you can't just Zen out while doing it -- riding a 1000-pound animal whose brain is the size of a walnut and whose main survival skill is to buck and run, why,  you need to keep your wits about you.

My goal this morning was to ride properly, making use of all those muscle groups, instead of just sitting on the stinky Dink and floating along. We were only a about 50 yards out on the road when we met the first challenge that required that proper ride: three yapping little dogs from a neighboring ranch decided to give chase.

These dogs have been troubling one of the other riders out at the ranch, and you know, seeing other people afraid just makes me crazy. I turned Dink around and started walking back along the road, giving the dogs an added impetus to rush us. When the closest yapper was about to set foot on the road, I sat deep and forward (like if you were riding a crotch-rocket motorcycle) and sent Dink after the dog. He started forward in a lunge, and that damn dog ran back out into the field with his little tail between his legs.

We had to stop -- charging through a planted field is a big no-no.

Back to the ride. We turned off the usual route to see where the other rider had been exiting the orchard road, putting herself in those dogs' reach. In among the trees, I saw another canid shape -- coyote! Once again, I used good rider muscles to urge Dink forward at a faster pace. We caught up, and saw the coyote slink away into the trees. I found where Ms. Rider had made her passage: naughty, naughty, she has been cutting across the corner of the farmer's field.

Back to the ride again, and we spotted our coyote trotting a little ahead of us, to the right about three lanes into the orchard. We followed at a brisk walk.

Then the reward of the day: the coyote stopped and waited between the rows of trees to have a good look at us. I stopped Dink and turned him to face the coyote.

For a long minute, we looked at each other. "Hola, Coyote," I said, and admired his huge ears and richly bushy tail. A few seconds more, and then Coyote went on his way. We followed, and finished our ride.

Tonight, I can feel that I exercised all those muscle groups, and Kathy the Mad's instructor is right -- it is better than going to a gym.

Horse Day

It was a horse day.

After the last two (too) strenuous rides past bee-boxes and stings, I opted to spend some quality time with Lord Duquesne in the arena rather than take him out on the orchard roads.

Before I groomed and saddled him, however, I turned him loose in the arena, so that if he felt like bucking and carrying on like a wild ass of the desert, he could do so without jarring my spine. He trotted back and forth with his tail in the air (a sign that he was feeling full of his senior self) and touched noses with the two little goats who recently arrived at the ranch.

Then I curried and curried and curried and left waffle-shaped wads of hair all over the saddling area. Currying, if you don't know the term, involves running a rubber scrubbing tool over the horse's coat in small circles, trying to keep more or less in the direction of the horse's hair. It loosens a lot of dirt and dandruff and loose hair, bringing it to the surface so that the next step, brushing, can sweep the junk off and leave the horse looking shiny and clean.

Then it was time for the arena, and some basic communication reboots. Turns with a direct rein, turns with a lifted rein, turns with an indirect rein. Left, and then to the right. Walk, stop, walk, stop. Walk, stop, move hindquarters but keep the forequarters still as possible. Turn on the hindquarters, keeping them as still as possible while the forequarters make the circle. Right, left. Back up, try to make that a straight move, not weaving from side to side. Work on walking so close to the fence that the stirrup bonks against it. Walk sideways, right, left. More backing up. More turns, both directions.

"Give me your head." This is a tough one for a high-headed horse like Dink. We stood, and I gently, gently, suggested with the reins and the bit that he tuck his chin in towards his chest. When he did it, I shouted, "Good boy!" and let him stretch his neck down to relax.

After almost thirty minutes, my thighs were tired from all the strong but subtle cues I'd had to give him. This was not about yanking reins and kicking the horse's sides. Ideally, if you were watching from the side of the arena, you wouldn't be able to see the cues, they'd be so unobtrusive.

We're not that good, by any means.

But we're good enough to open gates without me having to dismount; we're good enough that if my hat blows off in the wind, I can lift it up from the ground with my whip (which is NOT EVER for whacking Dink); and we're good enough that when we were all done, and I was brushing his sweaty hide, Dink reached around with his head and gently draped it over my shoulder, a horsey hug. He knew he did well.

Oh, clever horse!