Week in review

Wednesday

What a week.  Monday was decent but chilly, Tuesday was cold and windy.  Wednesday snowed and spit, Thursday blew all day, and Friday was mild by evening.  I think the only season we didn't have was Summer.

The ponies stayed home Wednesday and Thursday, ate hay and sheltered in and behind the barn.  Friday walking them up in the pre-work dimmness, I was very happy to have parental assistance - yay! company :)  They were eager to get to the green, but the road was frosty frozen at 24', and everybody was stepping very carefully.  Once we turned them loose, they wasted no time in heading for the far end of the pasture.

It was a tired bunch that walked we walked home yesterday evening, me among them.  The new job is really interesting, extremely complex (lots of little bitty details that could come back to bite me later) and I think I'll really like it once I have the day to day routine nailed down.

On the positive side of things, the sun is out this morning, it's supposed to be a nice weekend, Rufus's coat is coming back in, and Sunny seems to be moving more easily so I think the joint supplement is helping.  Now if it actually gets as warm as they say it might tomorrow, we'll see what they think about baths...

~Happy to be out~

Itchy spots, tiny snakes, and winter returns

The horses are shedding, and three of them are doing it normally.  Rufus, however, has several spots where he's losing his winter coat but doesn't have new coat underneath???  The spots don't seem to be particularly itchy or swollen.  Aren't cracked, scaly, red, bumpy, weepy or otherwise irritated.  He's just sort of... bald here and there.  A couple hand-sized patches on his chest, smaller spots on his back legs, around his sheath, and over his cheek bones.  I don't remember him shedding out like this previously, so something's definitely weird.  

Checked the vet books with thoughts of mange, worms, allergies, etc., thinking he might have picked something up from the cows or eaten something, but it doesn't really look like anything in there.  The closest possibility is ringworm, but he doesn't have the red circle or the itchies.  So.... I wormed them yesterday on schedule which should take care of it if it's worms.  Smeared the patches with povidine ointment, which can't hurt, and once it warms up I'm thinking a bath with tea tree shampoo and some betadine solution on those spots...

Didn't think to take pictures until I'd already smeared him with goop, unfortunately.

Yesterday was also baby snake day.  This little guy was parked right in front of the front door.  I almost stepped on him, and might have had it not been for the bright orange ring catching my eye.

As you can see, not very big.  And he wasn't very healthy, either.  I'm pretty sure after looking him up that he's a baby ringneck snake of the southern variety.

Orange spotted belly, so go with his ring neck band....  I scooped him up carefully on a stick since I wasn't sure at that point if he was the venomous type or not, and deposited him off in the grass.  But given how lethargic and unresponsive he was, I'm guessing he didn't make it.

The second baby snake was way down at the end of the driveway when I walked out to get the mail. 

The same size as snake no. 1, only 5-6" long, but no ring neck on this one and not round like a garter snake, either.  I couldn't see a rattle button, the eyes were roundish, but the head was sort of shovel-shaped... Unlike the poor little guy by the front door, this one was very lively, and I wasn't getting my hands anywhere near him just in case he was actually a rattlesnake.  Since I'd already brought the horses home, wasn't going to be driving anywhere, and he wasn't close to the house I gave him the benefit of the the doubt and left him alone, and by the time I got back with the mail he was gone. 

So the spring babies have started arriving, but they could have picked a better time for it.  It's 41' and dropping fast.  We have grey heavy clouds and a stiff north wind, and it's damp.  The ponies are staying at home today, much to their chagrin.  But it's supposed to get colder and stormier the later the day gets, so... they'll have to make do with the creekbed pasture and hay until spring comes back, or at least until the wind stops trying to take the tops out of the trees.  Weather guy says tonight it snows.

In other news from yesterday, my interview went okay.  I'm pretty sure I can handle the duties as described and the learning curve, and the atmosphere was positive and friendly.  The position has some growing room and seems like it would be interesting and challenging.  I think I have a decent shot, but you never know.  I should find out one way or the other by the end of the week.

Overslept Sunday morning in spite of the cats dancing impatiently across my head.  Woke up to T's phone call - 10+" of snow predicted for Minneapolis, and he might not get in as scheduled after all. The cats just were pleased I was finally up, since their usual 5:30 breakfast was over an hour late.

Contrary to my prediction of cold by morning, it actually warmed up overnight.  Slightly.  It was a brisk 31', with a stiff northwest wind when I turned the horses out, but by full daylight it dropped back to hover in the mid-20's with lots of wind.  The sun hid until after noon; morning was overcast, the sky a flat dirty grey.  I crossed my fingers for precipitation - rain, snow, I don't really care. Rather than stand in the barn out of the wind, the horses were all tucked in the lee of the barn.  Still out of the wind, and since it's dry, probably just as warm.  I'm curious to see if any of them will actually use the barn when it finally does decide to rain. When they cleared the gate and took off down to the far end of the pasture for a brief surveying circle, dust puffed up with every thudding hoof-fall.  The perfect Christmas gift?  A wet winter.

I suppose I should have listened to the weather, but I finally got my mp3 player to play nice with my laptop.  Maybe later.  Weather happens regardless, right? 

Only the thinnest scrim of ice in the water tank, and no packrats to fish out.  Not sure if that's because I filled the tank to brimming the night  before and none fell in, or if my makeshift rat ramp worked.  I've been using half a steel post to break the ice/fish out rats, and it occurred to me that I could lean it kitty-corner in the tank to give them something to climb up if they fall in. I hooked it to the fence with a piece of wire so the horses can't knock it over.  Rats, it's up to you.  Field test away.

Coffee on and the first load of laundry in the washer, I tackled unpacking and sorting one of the "sort" boxes.  The first boxes all arrived with contents notes, but toward the end there were those random odds and ends that when lumped together, kind of defied description.  I'm down to the last three of them though, so the end (of those, at least) is in sight.

Mixed up a batch of cookies - I decided on good old classic chocolate chip - pausing now and then to watch Amyra's attempts to persuade the boys to play with her.  She'd swing her neck, bounce a little, trot around and bump her shoulder off a one of them, immediately poised to race off.  None of them wanted to cooperate, but finally they got into the mood and raced up and down, tails flagged, swapping ends, sliding to a stop, snorting and caroming off of one another like four-legged bumper cars. Even Sunny got into the spirit of it, kicking his heels in the air and generally acting like a two-year-old.  Yep, seeing them out the window isn't going to get old anytime soon! :)

The blustery days one of them is perpetually on watch. And even on calm days they're still pretty alert for anything that might be sneaking up on them.  They're still learning what all the normal noises here are.  Grazing or napping they tend to line up three abreast, with the fourth horse turned to face into the wind, butt toward the other three.

Periodically a random gust will slap something against a metal shed side, or a cow will barge through a thick patch of dead brush and one of them will startle.  The other three heads will pop up and they'll stare toward wherever the noise originated.  T's brother stopped out yesterday morning to sight in a rifle.  He stopped up at the house first for a cup of coffee - he wanted to make sure I knew he was here.  T'd told him the horses shouldn't mind him shooting - three of them grew up next to a pheasant hunting lodge where fall always meant the sound of shotguns, and the fourth one's been hunted off.  Still, it was nice of A to check again that he wasn't going to scare them silly. 

I couldn't hear it in the house when the rifle cracked the first time - foot and a half-thick stone walls make excellent buffers - but I could tell he'd fired.  Heads popped up, and the ones that weren't already facing A's direction spun around.  They moved a bit closer to the fence on that side, and nobody went back to eating until he'd finished, but none of them ran. 

Nu-nu does her best dead cat imitation

That's a wrap!

The weather here has been freakishly warm the last few days.  There are crocuses popping their heads up in the back yard.  Think I'm kidding?

The first two appeared Thursday, and I now have a whole line of them, along with what I think might be snowdrops.  Or maybe they're not crocuses or snowdrops.  Short, purple and white flowers of some variety, at any rate.  And it's March.

I'm sitting here in a tank top and shorts with the windows cracked, sweating.  I'd have them open wide, but the house might take flight! A high in the low 80's with winds gusting to upwards of 45 mph... it's hopefully blowing us in some rain tomorrow.  And let me tell you, we can use it.

I didn't ride - between the wind and the boys' coats and more importantly, they both need their feet trimmed....  But since my polo wrapping technique needs practice and neither of the boys have ever worn wraps, I figured that was a nice stationary activity we could all benefit from.  After a good brushing to get rid of some more loose winter fuzz, I started with Sunny.

He's never had wraps on, but he has worn bell boots, so he got the basic concept of leaving his feet planted while I monkeyed with them.  The front feet were easy. 

First Attempt

Please excuse the long toes - 

I have a call in to the farrier.  

Hopefully her schedule will be open this week.

Well, easy in the sense that Sunny didn't make my job harder by moving around.  I still need more practice getting them to come out even and without lumps.  Once I had all four wrapped I lead him around a bit so he could get the feel of them.  He didn't seem fazed.

I wrapped and unwrapped Sunny three or four times.  He went to sleep.  Then I moved on to Thunder. 

He's never worn anything on his legs, period, so first I had to convince him no, I really didn't want him to pick his feet up.  After that, the fronts went fairly smoothly.  The backs... he wasn't quite as thrilled about, and he kept wanting to stand with his legs tight together which made it a bit tough to roll the wrap around. 

But ultimately he had all four on and we went for a walk.  He might have picked his feet up a little higher than normal for the first few steps, but beyond that the wraps didn't seem to bother him.  Of course, he had tried to stand with his back feet tucked together again when I unwrapped him...

Here's hoping the forecast is right,

the rain comes, and so does the farrier,

the fire danger goes down, 

and the temps go back to normal!

Still winter and counting

Every winter about this time, I'm ready for mud season.

The roads are starting to look like this.

The ponies are back to wearing white overcoats.

And I'm ready for spring.

It's not that I'm complaining, really. At this point, 20's are feeling downright warm when the wind dies. If I don't catch T's flu I'm going to try riding on Friday - lucky me, the forecast says it will be 24' and sunny.

- The high for the week, imagine that. - LOL!

Saturday's forecast says 17' and snow, and Sunday it's back into the depths with a high of 8'.

Sunday I'm joining Mabel.

I'm now going to go catch up on my reading...
Hooray for vicarious thrills
from parts warmer
and/or bloggers hardier than I!

Hooray for January thaws!

I fed this afternoon without my down vest, wearing one pair of leather gloves and with no long underwear on - just jeans, sweatshirt, scarf & my winter coat. No hat, either. It was actually in the low 30's. A heat wave :)

The mystery of the down fence was solved - G tapped it with the tractor when he was putting a bale out Thursday night. At nearly -20, it didn't take much to have things going "ping" and not in a good way. The ponies just took advantage of the opportunity.

They weathered the sub-zero temps with no apparent ill effects. They're really woolly this year, for which I'm profoundly grateful. But they seemed pleased to have it be warmer, too.

Yesterday we did a better patch job on the fence and broke a trail through the drifts out to the north pasture for them. As of today, none of them had used the path, but the deer have been, so the horses probably will before too long.

The weather forecast for this week is great - 30's and partly cloudy. Can't beat that this time of year, not in this neck of the woods!

Short feet!

All the ponies have new manicures, and all of them were good. This farrier is great - very careful, excellent with the horses. On time.

I'm not sure exactly why J didn't keep using her except that she's always so busy. But if I can keep her coming, I'll be thrilled. She's promised to put us on the calendar for 6 weeks from now, so I'm crossing my fingers.

And, she trims up north too. She gave me the name of someone up there that I can contact if I decide to take Sunny up with me. :) :) :)

We were going to ride tonight, but it's looking really nasty, weather-wise, so I think we'll raincheck until morning. It will also give the boys a chance to get accustomed to their new feet. But we'll go back in a bit and put some more ointment on Rufus. Turns out the scrape on his back leg is forming proud flesh, so we now have some bright blue stuff that goes on the spot once a day. It gets wiped off and reapplied once a day with Vaseline around it to keep the salve off the surrounding skin.

Pictures - they'll be icky, but I'll get some tonight when we go out.

Five reasons

I will be glad to see spring arrive:

1. Mud - or rather absence of mud. It is currently almost knee deep, and especially bad exactly where I have to wade across to close the gate to the upper lot. I almost lost a boot to the suction today, and of course the gate popped off the top hinge again, which required several more wadings through the muck before I had it (temporarily) fixed.
   
2. Weird weather - SD's getting hit by those wacky weather patterns just like the rest of the midwest. Here that means that after the beautiful 60's and calm we had last week, it dropped nearly 40 degrees in less than 12 hours, and we have sleet, snow, and yuck. The horses are pleased the grass is coming in, but blech!
   
   
   Although I have to say,
   SO glad I'm not out there
   in the Black Hills with their
   FEET of new snow!
   
3. Shedding - spring means shiny coats and goodbye to winter scruffies.
4. Grass - When the pastures come in no more moving hay bales and graining every day, which will leave more time for...
5. Riding!

That's my top 5 - what's yours?

More weather

Well, thankfully, the freezing rain seems to have missed us. Other than the few spatters that were hitting my windshield last night on the way to work, that is. And that amount is tolerable.

According to the Weather Channel it's currently 42'. It's drizzly, but not pouring and not freezing, which is not great, but at least better than falling ice if not quite a good as snow, or better yet, nothing falling from the sky.

And I just realized something...
I've become my mother.

Or at least I'm creeping in that direction. She always seems to know what the weather is, was, and will be doing. In all the states in which we have relatives. Calling her is quite often much quicker than waiting for the Weather Channel to cycle around to local. It's kind of cool in a scary sort of way.

Of course, with one weather maven in the family, it's only fair that we also have those who pay little attention beyond acknowledging that weather exists. My father, who worked out sorts of weather for years and years? "Weather's what it's doing outside. When I'm outside, I'll worry about it." His weather forecast tool of choice? The Weather Rock.

But the horses ARE outside in the weather, and I do worry about them.

My husband? "The horses have survived many, many winters outside. They're healthy, well-insulated with fur & fat, and they have plenty of food, water, and a wind-break. They're FINE."

All of which is true.

Today's forecast?
Rain.
High 46F.
Winds SE at 15 to 25 mph.
Chance of rain 80%.
Rainfall around
a quarter of an inch.

Yep. I'm becoming my mother.

Winter approaches...

Not much new to report here the last few days. I'm fully resenting the time change. Daylight at 6:30 a.m. when I have to be at work does me little to NO good. Darkness at 5:30 p.m. when I'm finally home is likewise unhelpful.

Horse contact the last several days has meant scurrying home, throwing on boots & jeans and raising a trail of dust through the dusk to push hay to the whickering horde.

This morning the weather was soft and damp. I ran out in bare feet to pull clothes off the line. The weather forecast is for blizzard conditions in Pierre, with a winter weather watch starting tonight and extending through Friday. Watery sunshine is streaming in my office window (yes, I am procrastinating), and a frisky breeze is gusting fallen leaves.

I want to be outside, preferably somewhere with horses!

Unfortunately, that's not to be. Bleh.... back to work.

Ever have one of those days?

When the sun was out this morning it was beautiful. I was counting down the minutes until I could leave work. We drove out this morning to check on Amyra and counted eight noses head down in the grass. With the dew sparkling in the morning sun, it was very picturesque and pastoral.

By noon the clouds had moved, the temperature was headed down, and the wind was kicking up. Now it's gusting, damp, and chilly. I have a headache and my eyes are itching from something the AC at work was spewing out. It was just a very long day.

I think the ponies are going to get an evening off. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, windy, and mostly sunshine with a few scattered showers late in the afternoon. A much better prospect, if I trust the weather forecaster. I'm going to gamble and hope he's right.

(And as punishment for not doing horse-work, I'm going to end up doing housework. Oh well, at least laundry doesn't care when I grumble at it!)