Patience is a Virtue (for Others)
Ro’s world has been turned upside down and backwards.
At a recent roping evening, I could feel Ro was getting tired and they needed someone to work the chute. The obvious solution: I hopped off, tied Ro to the fence, and prepared to work the chute.
Ro was confused. Then offended. Then she went beyond confused and offended into some other emotional territory that defies description.
She was tied up. Stuff was happening. She was not part of it. No one was petting her, no one was holding her and whispering soothing words in her fuzzy ears, no one was holding her hoof and telling her It Was OK.
Ro spent most of the evening calling out and trying to dig a hole to China, but since she wasn’t freaking out I left her to it. I rescued her once, when she went beyond impatient and started to look anxious, but once she settled I tied her back up again.
Last night, we repeated the lesson—I’ve been kicked off steer pushing duty because one of the ropers is teaching his young kid, well, the ropes, and, um, as shameful as it is to say it, said four/five year old is better at pushing steers than Ro and I. So we’ve been fired. We still hang out with the ropers, but I’ve more or less been demoted to chute duty if I’m not on Ro’s back.
So after we had amused ourselves quietly in the corner for a while and Ro had had her nightly “horses can too hang out in groups without kicking each other” lesson, I tied her to the fence again and went to work chute duty. Where, um, the four/five year old once again proved better at moving the steers around than I am.
Look, the steers and I are great, until they decide they want to go somewhere I don’t want them to go. Or don’t want to go where I want them to go. And I did not get the Boss Steers Around gene, so I stare at them in confusion. And then the four/five year old rescues me.
It turns out I am not a cowgirl, ok? There, I admit it. I am not a cowgirl. I’m a city slicker of the worst sort.
And Ro cannot comprehend why she gets tied to fences and left to cope. This does not happen in her world. In her world, she’s ridden and then she’s put away. Baths are optional, a chance to graze is preferred. But nowhere in her contract is she required to stand quietly while her human is off playing with steers (badly!) and other people are doing other things that do not involve her as the center of attention.
She was better last night than the first night—she called out some, but not incessantly, and she did not dig holes nearly as deep as the night before.
Unfortunately for Ro, I absolutely think horses need to learn to stand tied—quietly—while their people are off doing other things. It is not something I want to do routinely, but I want to know she’s capable of it. All the better if there is lots of other stuff going on at the same time. There may come a time when she needs to stand quietly on a trailer while I run into the show office, and there may be a line. Or she may need to stand tied while I run to the port-a-potty. Or whatever. I don’t really care why—she needs to learn that she can stand tied and unattended without dying.
But Ro is not thrilled, no, not at all. She’s coping, but she is absolutely certain she has enough virtues and Patience is for… well, everyone else. She’s above such things. She’s certain. Just ask her.
Marketing: You’re Doing it Wrong
Dear Stallion Owner Whose Horse Appears to be Engaged in Tug-of-War with Invisible Aliens and Whose Fence Floats in Midair,
If I look at the pictures of your $$$ stud and the first thing I think is “Wow. That is a truly awful Photoshopping job,” there is something wrong with your marketing.
Signed,
If Real Invisible Aliens Were Involved and the Foals Will Come With Their Own, Get Back to Me. That’s Kind of Awesome.
Ro is in Love
Ro, I’m sorry to say, is the barn hussy.
When she’s in season, she’ll throw herself at any gelding on the place—and even some of the mares (she’s a modern, open-minded hussy).
But this is merely lust.
Over the past couple months, Ro has discovered love.
The barn manager got a weanling filly. Last month, we got quite a bit of rain (relatively speaking), and there were stretches where the paddocks were too wet to turn out in. As often as possible, I kicked Ro out on the property for an hour or two to at least let her stretch and wander around some.
More often than not, she disdained the grass (it was wet) and tried to wander back in the barn.
For a while, I thought it was coincidence that she was at the filly’s stall every time I caught her.
Then it became clear that she wasn’t stopping by to say hi to the filly, she was stopping by to do the horsey version of “Ooooooh… wook at de pwecious baaaay-beee! Whoooza cootie pie, den?” (Sorry… I don’t do googly baby talk. They all look like Winston Churchill to me. But you get the gist of it.)
When I would go to kick her back outside, she’d balk—something she never does normally when I kick her out—and look back to the filly.
Ro is fascinated. Entranced. In love.
It’s kind of cute, until I imagine her bringing up baby… “Oh, no, sweetie. We don’t go out in the mud and the rain. Mud and rain are for common ponies, and servants like Lady Who Feeds. Let’s go down the barn aisle and clean up any hay or grain offerings from the other ponies. They know it’s their duty to tithe to us…”
Hazmat Suit, Check. Shovel, Check. Housecleaning in 3, 2, 1…
These past couple months have been… well…
Around Christmas, I walked into my apartment and stared at a big white box. My first thought was to wonder who sent me a present. My second thought was to wonder how it ended up in my apartment, since I didn’t put it there. A couple minutes later, I looked at it again and realized it wasn’t a box or a present at all. It was the package of toilet paper I’d bought the night before and hadn’t put away yet.
That is what the past few months have been like for me.
So today, since I had a bit of a breather from things, I decided to put away all the things I hadn’t put away yet.
First the toilet paper. Then the brand new box of kitty litter that was hiding behind it. Then the stack of saddle pads one of the guys at the barn gave me—they finally made it over to the washing machine. Then I put away another brand-new box of kitty litter. Then I piled up the pile of papers I need to go through sometime, since they had fallen off the table. Then there was another brand-new box of kitty litter.
This explains one thing, at least: I’d thought I’d been going through the kitty litter awfully quickly. It turns out I just kept forgetting where I put the boxes after I bought them.
On the plus side, I found almost $100. People who know me know I never carry cash, so that’s a small miracle in and of itself.
I also found my stall guard. I’m kind of glad and a little annoyed—I just ordered a new one, since this one was AWOL. Turns out in my last cleaning spree, I got clever and put it in my bridle bag. Who puts stall guards in bridle bags, anyway? This is why I hate cleaning. You can never find anything later.
As long as I was being productive, I brought in my old saddle rack from the truck, where it has been sitting for the last week or so. With my extra saddles sitting on that, I now have a tub I can use for other stuff—good timing, since I have saddle pads coming out my ears and need someplace to put them.
And so on and so forth, all day long, much to the cats’ amusement. I found all their toys, too, and they decided this was a game: drag the toys out so I could put them back again.
But I think I am just about done. There are a couple loads of laundry to finish up, and next weekend I need to do a thorough spring cleaning, but at least my apartment no longer looks like a small and very localized tornado struck it. I even waved a dust rag around and shamed some books back into their dust jackets.
My life may just be getting back to something approaching normal. Finally.
And I won’t have to buy kitty litter for months.
Goodbye and Good Riddance, 2011
2011 went out with a bang.
With fireworks, to be precise. A whole week of them.
And thanks to the neighbors and their exuberant pyrotechnics, it also went out with two colic episodes.
Fortunately both were pretty mild and, given her history with fireworks (not good), I was at the barn keeping an eye on her anyway. So I caught them very early, and sedatives and Banamine resolved them both pretty quickly. She bounced back like nothing happened, but this only confirms (as if I needed confirmation) how much I hate fireworks.
Now on to the good news.
Over the Black Friday sales, I picked up a mid-range H/J saddle for a steal. The price was good enough that I knew I could resell for a profit if needed, but it’s a surprisingly good fit for a leap of faith buy. Ro likes it well enough; I’m trying to figure out if *I* like it, but I think it’ll do just fine to get us going.
The only real problem with the saddle is that my tack box had no room to keep two saddles in it. The saddle rack I was using took up half the box and was so tall I could only fit one saddle on it before hitting the roof of the box.
Enter one of the awesome ropers—we talked for a few minutes, he made some measurements (using baling twine, natch), and the next day showed up with a fabulous new stand for me. It’s welded pipe, very simple—V-shaped base, post at the back, two arms. It’s actually smaller than my other stand but will let me keep both saddles in my box. I just need to cap the pipe ends so I don’t accidentally scratch my saddles on them.
This also solves my other saddle problem—I have two saddles at home that Ro outgrew (narrow and medium trees). They’ve been sitting on the floor of my closet, so now I can bring my old rack home and store them on that. I ought to sell those saddles, but you know what they say—as soon as you sell a saddle, you buy a horse that it would have fit.
And, finally, I’m starting to leg Ro up in earnest. We are both horribly out of shape after two months with no real work (walking around behind the steers doesn’t count), but I am thrilled to say we did not backslide as much as I expected. In particular, Ro came right back into work with a horse trot. We’re both suffering from a lack of strength and we both need to relax and unlock our bodies again, but we haven’t gone all the way back to pony trot territory, so I’m very happy about that.
So on to 2012 we go. No resolutions—trying to plan for the future was a total failure last year, so we’re just going to take things a day at a time and see where we go.
Ok, one resolution: I’ve been a lazy slug the past couple months, and I need to fix that. After I eat this last bag of M&Ms.