52 Photos Project: Someone You Love

I am sure when 52 Photos Project chose Someone You Love for this week, the expectation was mostly people.  Maybe a few dogs.  This is Becca.  She was not my first horse; we still have three others.  She died today.  It was not unexpected; I planned it. 

Becca is....was a cribber.  But she had come up with an alternate method long before I ever got her.  She would rub her throat against the top board of the fence, repeatedly.  For hours & hours every day.  We tried everything to discourage her, but not much helped.  We could limit it, with collars & distractions, but we could not make her stop completely. 

Earlier this year, she gave herself a hematoma.  & while it was not an infection in itself, she continued to rub that swelling against the fence until she created a groove in it.  Recently that raw, torn flesh has become infected.  I have done my best with the small wounds, pulling splinters out & keeping the area clean, but last week I saw that the groove had become so deep it was forming a pocket & that is the end.  There is nothing I can do to make her stop, there is nothing I can do to treat the wound that she doesn't undo.  She is an old horse, & she has been peacefully retired for years.  This afternoon, we put her to sleep.

Tufted titmouse builds his house

For a while now we have been pampering Becca.  Yes, I know she looks like a decrepit bag of bones & she mostly is a decrepit bag of bones but she is OUR decrepit bag of bones.  A couple years ago she had EPM which was quite a party for us all.  Then last last year she was diagnosed with Cushings.   Plenty of people have asked me if maybe it isn't "time" & someday it will be.  but my feeling is that as long as she is still eating (& she is slow, but steady) & as long as she has a role to play....

About that role.  Many herds of horses have a boss mare.  By & large horses are matriarchal in their communities, with rogue stallions popping in & out.  This has probably not a little to do with how we keep them, specifically a stallion is a pain in the ass & we like to keep them apart or they fight, bite & generally act like teenage punks.   Our boss mare is Becca & she has been a good boss.  Well, she is certainly a better boss than Tiki or Coco would be.  This means that no matter what it looks like from the outside, she is still valuable here (like the old chickens that don't lay eggs anymore but work their feather fannies breaking up the horse manure & eating those bugs). 

But that pokey eating has become a problem.  She can take 2 hours to finish & that is too long to leave her in a stall away from the water.  So we have moved her to the back yard for her meals.  She moseys around, eating a bit, snoozing a bit, eating some more.  & over the week, the wildlife have come to think of her as their own.  They don't even seem to mind when she distractedly bumps the bird feeders as she passes by.  They just scatter & return.  Okay, the squirrels curse her name; they cannot keep up with the birds when the seeds are scattered over a larger area.

So Becca spends a few hours most days, strolling around the backyard, eating her fill & actually looking less malnourished.  But her coat still looked like hell, no matter how much I brushed her.

Enter the tufted titmouse.  I am sure any bird will do this to any horse, but this particular titmouse particularly likes Becca.  For starters, she is slow moving, just strolling along as she is eating-no sudden breaking into a gallop.  Becca also does not get down to scratch an itch, rolling over on her back & kicking in the air, unless it is really worth the effort; a little titmouse is not worth the effort.  & lastly there is that weird Cushings-coat, that mix of long & short hair that falls out so easily.  Titmouse gathers up a beakful very quickly, flies off, flies back & begins again.  More than that, his presence is discouraging the horse flies who usually take advantage of her docility.  I hope he lines his nest every day for the rest of her life.

What else

I realized this morning my blog has been quilt block rich with not much else, so here is the rest (the bulk) of my day:

• The bluebirds are back.  They are flitting around the faux starling house on the highest post of the round pen, just like last year.  I don't know if this means they have moved in there or of it is just a good place to catch bugs.  They are welcome either way.

• On the same note, the back yard bird feeders are seeing some action.  We set up a sunflower feeder, a thistle feeder & a wild bird mix feeder (& plan to add a cracked corn feeder) on a four-way thing A got me last year.

• We had no winter to speak of; no hard freeze so far.  This has meant a lot of work re: weeding because they never died back.  On the flip side, the roses are thriving.

• Becca (the horse) was diagnosed with Cushings late last year.  Did I ever say?  I don't remember.  Anyhow, she is on 1 mg of peroglide a day & doing much much better.  Last week, she was RUNNING. 

• Rebecca (the cow) AKA Cowgirl AKA Her Ladyship has become hand trained.  Kinda.  We have a routine in which she gets a treat from me when I walk into the pasture & when I walk out.  This keeps her from crowding me while I am trying to work.  She learned this routine in a SHOCKINGLY brief period of time.  I mean maybe four days.  I can never eat beef again.  It would be like eating dolphin.  Or dog.

• The kittens are still here, three of them anyhow.  They are just barely kittens now as they are coming up on 1 year old, but they are so much younger than the other two cats I suspect they will be The Kittens for the rest of their lives.  One of them has taken to killing snakes-more on this in another post.

• I am not yet running like I want to.  I am walking.  I am walking a lot.  I usually bring one of the dogs because since the kittens arrived, the big dogs don't get the backyard time they used.

• I  am feeling mostly better.  I still have a catch-cough, but that is likely to linger for quite some time.  The DR gave me an inhaler but it makes me feel weird, so I have never used it.  If I have never used it, how do I know how it makes me feel?  It is the portable version of what she gave me in the office to stop my coughing long enough to do an X-ray, among other reasons.   I liked not coughing, but the other side effects were yucky.  It was like being hyper-paranoid but without the paranoia.  I really don't know how else to describe it.

It doesn't sound like much, but it all takes a shocking amount of time.  It doesn't help that I am hardly a ball of fire these days.

The other life

The final exam for A's physics class was Saturday afternoon so bright & early Sunday morning he got to work.


Coco is always scratching her big horse rump against something.  After she did this, she moved down the fence line to the corner post & started rubbing on that.  As the fence sawed back & forth, this particular piece wold flex open & closed like an elbow.

& I am not sure who did it but someone kicked a chicken-sized hole in the back of the hen house early Friday morning.  I went out & found one small bird in the opening looking out.  By the time I got the materials for a temporary repair, the biggest fattest birds were trying to force themselves en masse through the opening. 

The donkey entertains himself on cold winter nights pulling down fence boards; this winter being what it was entire stretches of pole & board were just hanging off of their neighbors or gone entirely. But by lunchtime yesterday the fence looked like this:

Martin of Tours

The patron of soldiers (& horses & more) was, no shocker here, a military man (just in time for Veteran's Day).  What did catch me up was the one particular story of Martin of Tours:  he refused to take communion with bishops who had ordered the slaughter of heretics.  When he did finally take communion with the leader of the military action, it was because there was a threat to give the same treatment (torture, execution) to supporters of the former emperor.

Let me repeat this in plain words, the current leader slaughtered people who differed with his religion.  When embarrassed about this he threatened to slaughter people who SHARED his religious beliefs but differed from him politically.  Only a PR event on the part Martin of Tours prevented that slaughter.  That is: a man of the SAME religion & SAME politics, calling himself a man of g*d intervened.  When I think of the category "christian" this used to be the kind of person I thought of.  Now, I associate it more with the emperor.

An interesting choice for a man who was conscripted as a child (well, fifteenish).  He was already expressing a desire to be a christian monk, neither of which made any sense at all to his non-christian military family.  Lucky for them, it was the law of the land that sons of veterans spend some time in the army themselves.  According to his biographer, he was lead away in chains to take his oath & serve this country.   It came as no surprise to me (although same biographer said it was fortunate) that he was assigned to a largely ceremonial cavalry unit & saw little in the way of armed conflict.  After all, what else can you do with a soldier who does not want to be a soldier & keeps talking about pacifism except keep him as far from the rank & file as possible.

There are quite a few stories of him making a show of washing the feet of socially lesser men, giving away parts of his uniform to shivering paupers, etc.  I am guessing when his contract was up they were probably just as happy to watch him go.


The links have slews more stories, more or less on the same lines, including an explanation why this particular early saint is so well documented. 

As I said, he is the patron of horses & soldiers, cavalry specifically & is invoked against alcoholism more broadly.   As you would expect, vintners, innkeepers, & France also fall under his umbrella.  As do geese (go figure) & the Swiss Guard.  Martin was the first non-martyr made saint. 

A better horse

Not quite six months ago, my appaloosa was diagnosed with EPM & has been undergoing treatment, which from my side consists of 2 hours no-food supervision before she gets a tube of paste shot down her throat.  Earlier in the process I decided I was not going to jam things at her, yank her around, etc.  Time is a luxury I DO have & so if it takes another 20 minutes to get her to let me inject the paste, so be it.  Also, I was hoping she would "get it" & learn to accept it.

She did learn & fast.  My riding instructor (who is halflingers all-the-way when it comes to her own preference) said of another student who could not stand the appaloosa he had been working with that the problem with appies & riders is the one that thinks he has all the brains really doesn't.  To my stupification, same guy agreed saying that the appie was just too stubborn.  I looked at M*******, she looked at me & I knew she wasn't talking about the horse.

Becca came here when her people were getting divorced.  But that was not the whole story.  Husband wanted to sell Becca but wife refused to hand over her papers making her all but worthless, market-wise.  Husband beat the wife & sent her to the hospital (not necessarily cause & effect, this is just a timeline, well I'm sure she went to the hospital because of the beating but I don't know if he beat her because she wouldn't help him sell the horse).  While wife was in hospital, husband stalled Becca & neglected to feed her; we did not know if she would make the trip from Deland to our place & when she did I was feeding her 1/4 cups of grain 5-6 times a day so as not to overwhelm her system & throw it into shock.

She arrived here with two things:  her name was Rebel & a blanket patterned like a Confederate flag was over her to hide just how bad things were.  The blanket went in the trash, without ceremony & her name slowly migrated from REB to REBECCA.  A change had to be made anyway as we were already shifting a RED to REDBUD & we could not have a REB & a RED.  On our place, horses come when they are called.  I don't mean this in a my-way-or-the-highway way, it just is that sooner or later they catch on "hey she means me & when I get there, I get a treat".

The last canister of paste has been opened; it is almost 1/2 gone.  Every morning, after her confinement, I glide a full tube along her cheek, turn at the jaw & rotate the open end into her open mouth.  We do this without a lead rope, halter or restraint of any kind.  Becca has put some weight back on, although she does seem to still have trouble swallowing.  Maybe four days into the treatment, I was confident no one was going to bump her & knock her over, as she seemed to be keeping her balance better. At six weeks into the process she started holding her head up & nickering when she was moved onto pasture away from the others.  Last month, she started running to the barn at feeding time again.  She is more herself every week & I am quite sure she wants more time out on the green, green grass. 

Where does the time go

If it has looked like my more recent posts are anchored to a day rather than than a task, that is correct.  Aside from all the stuff everyone deals with this time of year:  taxes, school; faux-farmers: lots & lots of yard work; Floridians: gotta clean that pool, clear those gutters, sweep the roof etc., we have also been dealing with a great big extra, so let me catch you up:

Becca the appie was ultimately diagnosed with EPM.  This is not great but so far it looks like it can be treated & managed.  Unfortunately for anything else that might have been on the horizon, the treatment is hands-on & the management is frequent.  This has meant canceling all trips away from the farm for more than a few hours for the next six months.  Not that there were so many in the offing, but now it is official - no vacay-away for us this summer, no weekends visiting friends, nada.

This also means I have shorter-than-before stretches of time for projects.  I am not biotching, I know I have disposable time the way Paris Hilton has disposable income.  Just that once allocated, no matter how frivolously, that time is gone for me just like it is for anyone else.  & I do not think time spent caring for an animal that has taken good care of me is all that frivolous, even if the best case scenario is she will live out her abbreviated days doing nothing but eating, pooping & dozing in the sun.

Horse people have the reputation of passing the buck when it comes to equine-retirement & from what I have seen, they mostly deserve it.  To be fair, for many a horse is a tool, a vehicle that can travel across terrain otherwise impassable, gathering in livestock, repairing fences & other outlying equipment. To keep a truck around once the block is cracked would just be silly.  The funny thing I have seen though is it is NOT these people who are likely to neglect a sick horse.  They might euthanize rather then treat, but they do not generally leave an injured animal in pasture, circling or limping or coughing to let "nature take its course".

Serious recreational horse people are also, in my experience, unlikely to neglect.  Not to say they are the norm- serious recreational horse people generally have the income to maintain an animal that is not working.  besides, even if the animal never works again, often they are worth the feed if only to maintain the family environment for the others that are performing.  I have never met an avid hunter-jumper who was harder on his horses than he was on himself.

For the record, I do not consider thoroughbred racing stables in the "serious recreational" category; they are akin to the coaches of GDR women's olympic teams & are more than prepared to sacrifice the future health of the competitors for a short-term, sport-specific gain.

The real slackers I have met are the ones who talk the biggest game about how they would never sell so&so a horse because she would only mistreat it.   There is a gaggle of them nearby who are trying to convince each other to call animal control on another of their number, but no one wants to do it.  I think in their hearts they know they could not withstand the same scrutiny themselves.

& so is it really such a surprise I would rather spend my time & money with an old mare who had rather a raw deal, then came here & trail road for a while.  Now she needs a little extra help to get through a little less time on the planet.

Mr. Moses

I have had this post queued for a very long time.  It is not possible to be in the animal rescue business & not have someone like Mr. Moses in your emergency contact list.  As of now Becca is looking better, if still a bit tippy, (we did a spinal tap, we are waiting for results) & I thought this lull might be a good time to get this up there.
 
Unlike the man of song, our Mr. Moses is not so much a merchant as a knackerman.  For anyone who has never read any of the All Creatures books, first: shame on you & second: the knackerman comes to take the body away & make it into....fertilizer...I'm guessing.

The first time I called Mr. Moses I actually got his wife & mother.  Let me say, Mr. Moses is not a young man.  If he is less than 60, I am something I am not.  On this day we had euthanized an old thoroughbred who had arrived here years earlier without a name; they called her the other red mare.  I decided that was unacceptable, renamed her RedBud for my favorite tree & then went on to discover what complete asshats the operators of the rescue that fostered her were (for example, RedBud was '"unleadable".  It took me less than a week to realize she had an abscess behind her ear, right where the halter pressed. Once treated, she led just fine).

In her last months, summer months, she lost weight almost before our eyes.  She was old & broken & I did not think putting her through a winter (even here it gets below freezing) was the best way to end her days.  I made an appointment with S***** & we put her down in the early fall, the air was already cool until the sun was well up.  She had many carrots while the shots were put together & she went over slowly & died peacefully.

Unfortunately, although I had called Mr. Moses ahead of time & made an appointment, something bad happened to a good part of a herd of cattle & he left to go deal with that. Around dusk, his wife & mother came with the back up truck, winched the body in & drove away. 

I have called him since then, although I have not seen anyone but him since that first time.  he is a hands-on kind of person & does the work efficiently & not unkindly.  There is no other knackerman in our area & we are lucky to have him.

//& happy Saint Pat's.  Like so many he was almost certainly more than one person.  His cult has grown well-beyond the church, although he remains invoked by the faithful to heal snake bites, to calm sufferers of ophidiophobia (who may very well be victims of snake bites, hence the fear), as well as being patron of engineers & excluded people.

Better living through chemistry

The past few hours & much of the last two days have been given over to Becca (horse).  We thought she was having a garden variety belly-ache: she was showing signs of early colic, trying to lie down etc.  But she was pooping & peeing, albeit in small quantities & after walking her about for much of the morning we called our large animal vet.  While I was leaving the voicemail message , Becca started spinning like a drunk who had been spun in circles & then told to walk a straight line.  In the course of that voicemail message I went from "when you get this, call me & I'll come pick-up some banamine" to "Oh my G*d, please call, please please please.  As soon as you can, please".

S**** did call & she came right out & she confirmed with a nod what we both had begun to suspect.  This was not colic, this was neurological.  We spent some time yesterday getting antibiotics into Becca, some banamine & tubing her to deliver DMSO straight to her belly.  We don't know yet how things are going to go for Becca.  Although she is looking better, this treatment is not something she can live on, long-term. In some ways we could not live with it long-term either; the smell of DMSO as it does its things is so overwhelmingly bad that I have to walk away & gag every few minutes I am with her.

This made me think about Janet Finch's acclaimed book White Oleander.  I read this book before my own DMSO experiences (yes, I have had more than one) & so I missed a critical flaw in the crime that starts the whole adventure.  The short version is a man is poisoned with oleander, the absorption of which is enhanced by DMSO.  It is the presence of the DMSO that is the difference in differnt degrees of guilt & premeditation.  When I read the book., this did not raise any flag at all.  Now, of course, I wonder how completely smell & taste impaired a person would have to be to ingest DMSO unknowingly. 

On another the other hand, one of A's collaborators is here now (they are preparing for a meeting later in the week) & he swears he cannot smell a thing.  He's an organic chemist.  I honestly do not remember what the murder victim did for a living.

An old story about a (then) new donkey

I suppose that before I tell even an old story about the donkey, I should tell you more about the donkey. His name is Bert. It is short for someone else's last name. That last name is shared by a favorite late-night-show host. Together they are the triple crown of Assdom: the natural-born ass, the entertainment ass & the beloved former co-worker.

People told me that horses were smarter than donkeys. This is a crock. I have met the occasional clever horse but never even heard of one that could out-shine the average donkey. People think donkeys are stoopid because donkeys do not care what people think.

I was also told that donkeys are stubborn. This is absolutely correct. If you have never had to negotiate with a donkey you do not know what stubborn is. On the other hand, more than once when faced with a particularly belligerent/spoiled/obtuse individual I have had the realization that I have dealt with a much bigger ass already that morning. It is more empowering then EST. I should probably start a self-help program. Our slogan could be "your biggest ass is behind you". Maybe not.

Back to the donkey. What I was not prepared for was not just cleverness, not just stubbornness but actual intellect-driven behavior. & to show you what I mean, I will tell you an old story:

Long ago in the mists of time....our donkey yanked so hard on the chain that winds around the fence post & the gate that he broke the clip that fastened the two ends together (believe it or not dear reader, there is actually ANOTHER story about the same donkey that begins this exact same way, but I will save it for another time). It was a fluke almost that I even caught him before he had run out the opened gate; I heard way-too-much rattling & went to investigate. I pulled the two ends of the chain back together, looped them through each other & fastened them with an inferior clasp. Bert went to work on this 'new' closure immediately & I sat down to think. It was late at night & even if I had time to get to the hardware store (I did not) it would not be open. A was out of town & there was really no one I could call who could be there in time to help, even if I knew what form that help could take; I had maybe ten minutes tops & then the donkey would be out.

One interesting thing about this gate: although the gate itself was hung to open either inward or outward, the slope of the land is such that outward from the pasture is the ideal way. You can pull it inward, up the slope, but it takes some heaving-while-lifting & really only works if the grass is closely cropped.

While the donkey worked on the chain, the horses had moved in closer to see what he was up to. They did not yet know Bert's stunts often resulted in extra food, some adventure, but for them it was still something new to watch.

As the donkey unlooped the almost-last loop, I pulled my car up so the bumper pressed against just the what-would-swing-open end of the gate. My thinking was that once the donkey got it unlooped & tried to push it open, he would meet resistance he could do nothing about & go find some other mischief. I was wrong.

Bert did not need to try to push the gate open to know the car would keep it from opening; he stopped unwinding the chain immediately. & then I saw his first full-blown temper tantrum. He he-hawed, he kicked the air, he yanked on the gate itself making a fruitless rattle. In short, he stopped working & started complaining. He paced back & forth in front of the gate (still barely held closed by the chain) snorting & stomping & shaking his head. The horses were fascinated. Then Bert just stopped & stalked off.

The next morning, A came home from his trip or I called someone to go to the hardware store or whatever & I got a new chain with a new clasp. What I do remember is that when I backed the car up so I could remove the bent & broken chain, open the gate, & refasten with the new one all the horses came to watch. Bert grazed at the back of the pasture & I never even saw him turn to look.

//for the record I have never had EST training, nor do I have a complete understanding of what it entails. What I did have (circa 1984) was a very hazy idea that the guy I had been assigned to work with on a project was trying to manipulate me into doing the yucky bits by claiming he was better qualified to do the fun stuff. My response: "All the EST training in the world will not bend my brain into thinking you are even 1/2 the genius you already know you are not. Knock it off." It turns out I had 1) made the correct assessment & 2) hit upon the exact magic words designed to deflate a seminar-puffed bully.

Equine cargo cult

I am a gynormous fan of the writer Nevil Shute. Not just On The Beach or A Town Like Alice; my favorite is definitely Round The Bend. I just love all those lists of airplane parts (oh fixed asset inventory, how I adore you). & I find cargo cults (& mummies) irresistible.

Cargo cults, for those who do not know are yet another example of man's interpreting as divine what he cannot explain through his experience. Specifically, when native (technologically immature) people were slammed right up against modern (technologically dependent) people, the natives saw the results of technology as miraculous. The most common example is the Pacific islanders of WWII. After seeing US troops clear drop sites & landing strips & line them with burning torches so supplies could be delivered with some accuracy, the natives would make similar clearings of their own & wait for manna.

What I did not realize until I took up Useless Ranching was that cargo cults are not limited to human beings. This is an excellent argument for the 'animals have souls' crowd & I would have clued them in earlier if I actually believed in souls, which I do not.

Our donkey, as I believe I have mentioned, is a clever bastard. Equal emphasis on clever & bastard. People go on about the nobility of horses. With very few exceptions, horses are idiots (so nobility just might be the right word). Donkeys are quite intelligent & not the least noble.

Bert (the donkey) likes puzzles. No really. He likes watching you do things & then he likes to undo them. This can be anything from the knot in your shoe laces to the latch keeping the gate closed. He is fascinated by the all things mechanical. He has stolen power drills, cell phones, all kinds of things of that ilk. He has never stolen the scoop I use to give him his food. He has tried to bump it out of my hands, spilling feed every where (he is a glutton, have I mentioned this? Well, he is), but the scoop itself holds not interest for him.

Not so the horses. If I pick up a bucket & put it down, they will kill each other trying to get their heads into what the donkey knows is an empty bucket. The donkey waits until I come out of the feed room with the full scoop. Then & only then does he behave as though it were dinner time. This usually means trying to muscle me around before I can pour the feed into a bucket that will be claimed by a horse, who may or may not be in a sharing mood. Pound for pound the donkey is stronger & pounds aside more clever by far, but he is always, above all things, lazy. He has no interest in expending energy fighting with a horse when he can steal from the barrel itself.

This brings us to equine cargo cults. The horses are not complete idiots, they know the feed is kept in the feedroom. They have seen me chuck out hay & refill the scoop from that magic den. But they accepted they cannot get into the feed room; the feed must come to them. Until the day the donkey opened the door latch.

Donkeys have a prehensile lip. You would be amazed how strong & limber it is (keep it clean, people). One day, Bert opened the feedroom door with it. This means he flipped a loop of metal from flush against the plate to 90degrees from the plate, leaned his weight on the door & pulled towards himself, sliding the locking pin back & opening the door. Then he went in & made a total pig of himself.

Captain, being a big Big horse could not have fit in there while the donkey was in there, but still managed to pull several bails of hay out & they had a grand time. Bert did this more than once (I thought I was forgetting to latch the door properly before I actually saw him do it). A has since made an addition to the locking mechanism: a latch that prevent the loop from moving up to that 90degree position, unless you can unclip it & lift it out, something a prehensile lip cannot do.

As soon as he saw this, Bert gave up. He knows what he cannot do. He then went on to accomplish other assinine feats, but I will save them for another day. Captain on the other hand could not be deterred. On any given day, he would stand at the feedroom for hours, hours & hours licking....wait for it....the hinges. He had seen Bert do this trick & open that door & dammit he was going to do it, too. It never worked but he never really gave up. You can argue that maybe the hinges had some quality he liked, a mineral taste maybe.Except he never licked the hinges before this & he never licked any of the other hinges, including those on the doors of the adjacent stalls.

As far as I am concerned that meets the definition of Cargo Cult. & I do not just mean Captain's behavior. The donkey is the modern person in this little tale & he is too close for my comfort: he would rather steal than work, he would rather work than wait & he would rather give up than pretend he could ever make it work again.

In rereading this, I realized I may have given the impression there are mummies in the Shute books. There are not, that I can recall. If you want mummies, let me recommend the works of H. H. Ryder (that's right, the King Solomon's Mines guy) or even better The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, which does for mummies what The Historian did for vampires. Well worth the pages.

The petit percheron & her massive ass

For most people who see her for the first time, Coco looks like a big girl. Well, she is not. Yes, she is the biggest girl (or boy) on the place, but for a draft, she is small & for a Percheron she is petite. Which is not surprising as she is almost certainly not a Percheron, or at least not all Percheron.

Coco was born & will therefore always be classified a PMU foal. She was bought by a friend who realized that she did not have the time to train a foal that had not been born & weaned in a barn family; this wild-&-untamed thing was going to take more time than that. Coco came here while still smaller than the donkey & they have been in love ever since. Now they look like the Kissingers, but equines do not care about that kind of thing. Picture Nancy Kissinger with a long horsey face & a white blaze on her forehead. Henry & the donkey look more or less alike.

Before Coco came here, she lived on pasture with a band of other PMU foals. The closest human society I can think of would be Fagin's band of pickpockets. But here life was different. Captain was still alive, slow moving, gentle, enormous. He enjoyed the company of women & welcomed almost everyone. I miss him every day.

I honestly do not remember Coco's first day here. I do remember that she was called Celeste, but as she never answered to anything any human ever said, the change to Coco was easy (we already have a Celeste. She works in the Tech Services Department at the library; she is not a horse).

What I do remember is the extreme ease with which she bonded with the donkey. Let me be clear-the donkey is a trouble-maker. He opens doors, works latches, pulls down fence boards. The other horses look down on him. I am not joking; they treated him with as much respect as they give a goat. That is to say: none. In their defense, they were themselves a battered & damaged band that arrived here after starvation, abuse, untreated injury or some combination of the above. They did not have any interest in an energetic jack-ass. Still there did seem to be some strange racial divide. Mostly he was lonely. & then his dream girl arrived.

On winter nights, I often move the three mares, Coco included, to the pasture next door. I leave the donkey at our place. Have I mentioned he is destructive? Well, he is. It is one thing when he pulls down our fence boards (or kicks out the bottom of our barn door or yanks our fences post out of the ground, to open the whole back fence like a door) but to do it on W*****'s place is asking too much from her. I was prepared for & unsurprised by the long donkey moans of despair. The loud crashing & pulling of the barn doors against their latches, the chasing of the unhappy goats. Very unhappy goats. Very very unhappy goats.

Although we had reached an accord, I have been unable to make as regular use of W*****'s pasture as I would like. A happy donkey is trouble enough, a love-sick donkey cannot be borne. & so the ladies hang their heads over our common gate will himself tears down boards, bangs the barn doors until they fall off their hinges & generally makes an ass of himself. I am wondering if there is cuisine that serves donkey; perhaps we need to read a book from there for bookclub...

The other reason I keep chickens

To behave 'like a chicken with its head cut off' means to act like a madman, in an unthinking unyielding way. A chicken that still has its head is not all that much calmer. The smallest thing sets them into squawking, blundering balls of feather & claw.

Captain was stoic; I later had reason to learn you could perform a full, uncomfortable (for ALL of us) exam on him untethered & he would not budge (the tether fell off, no one noticed). RedBud was a different story. Her history was murky, but she had likely been 'on the track' which means all manner of things were done to make her go fast; wild, frenzied fear is the favored motivator. She had a second, brief career as a brood mare, but anyone could tell she had never had a live birth. & so this people-fearing, high strung, 1500+ pound animal came to live at our house. Temporarily. Until she died here, years later.

RedBud was afraid of EVERYTHING, but especially people. & the people she feared most were people with ropes. & so I sent her out with the others, thinking that their calm would teach her to be calm (& it did, eventually). She wore a loose rope halter most of her days; the thinking was we could clip a lead rope to her when we needed to bring her in. Once the lead rope was on her though, she would not budge. She shook, she pulled back, her eyes rolled around in her head & there was no moving her.

So instead of a lead rope, I would cup my hand under her chin & just walk in the direction I wanted her to go. Most of the time, she walked along. Nervously, but the idea that she could turn & leave at any time seemed to be enough to make her not panic. She quickly learned that if she allowed herself to be lead this way there would be carrots or apples or whatever when we got where we were going. The learning curve was even faster when she realized that if she did mosey off, everyone else would get apples & carrots & she would not. It took less than two weeks to get her to just follow wherever we needed her to go. In fact, it was hard to get her not to follow even when I did not want her.

& that lead to our biggest problem, because EVERYTHING startled her. The sound of the gate opening could make her break into a gallop. A branch creaking over-head & she jumped around like a loon. Worst of all was the hourly pine cone cone or magnolia bomb falling from a tree & hitting the barn's tin roof, rattling as it rolled all the way down. This fear was not a problem when she was afraid of people, afraid to come to the barn, but when she was not afraid & had her panic-attack next to the barn or next to me, it was a real danger.

Enter the chickens:

When I fed Redbud (in a bucket on a fence in a different pasture than the others), the chickens perched on the fence, waiting for this favorite treat; RedBud was a very messy eater (this business of being hard to rope meant her teeth had not been floated in a long long long time).

Their presence was very hard on Redbud. The chickens did not care if she was having a nervous breakdown overhead; their world begins & ends with the next bit of food they want to cram in their beaks. They made no effort to elude her or even acknowledge her. They ran & flapped & fought along the fence line & next to her head. In the end, though it was not long before she accepted them . She really had no choice as they roosted on the fence next to her, watching for what fell out of her mouth. Being chickens, each was worried her sister would get there first & so, they descended, en masse. & squabbled under Redbud's bucket. She was old, her reflexes were not good so even if she kicked, any contact she made was random luck. I swear, no chickens were injured in this process.

Within a month, she would willingly stick her head into a bucket deep enough to cover her eyes while all manner of chaos (chickens, tractors, barking dogs, etc) took place around her. & so we were finally ready to float her teeth, trim her hooves & treat the abscess behind her ear.

Remember at the beginning of this when I said any pressure with a lead rope made her crazy? Turns out she was not just 'being bad', but had a massive abscess behind her ear. When I could finally get close enough to watch her eat, it was clear as day. Every few weeks I learn again that people who jump to 'bad' as the reason for misbehavior in animals (or even children, frankly) should probably be tied out back & forgotten during a thunderstorm, or left to sit strapped in a highchair wearing only a dirty diaper while the rest of the family makes 'we are having fun' noises in the other room. I have seen both of these stunts in the last 30 days & expect I will see them again soon.

RedBud spent the rest of her life here & was happy even the day she died. I lead her out of the pasture with apples & carrots & she stood peacefully while the vet gave her an injection & then we both sat with her, cupping her eyes & telling her how pretty she was while she died. She was unknown years old but the estimate was 25. Before she came to us she had foundered & recovered, but was never very healthy. In the last weeks she was here, she wasted to half her weight, although her appetite never faltered. The likely culprit was cancer.

Hens & horses & dogs & bugs

As I have already blogged, I have begun to shop for chickens in earnest. My own birds have more or less stopped laying & this is the youngest batch to do that; they are not even two years old.

This does not present huge problems. We do not need all that many eggs for ourselves & eggs are not even the primary reason we keep chickens. Eggs are not even the secondary reason we keep chickens. Big Buff has not laid an egg in almost four years & she runs no risk of being made into chicken pie.

First, I have chickens because I like to watch them. I like to watch them run in their completely-not aerodynamic way. I like to watch them get off the ground & bumble through the branches of the magnolia. I like to watch them fight over one bug while a dozen other bugs fly away.

Which brings me to the second reason I have chickens: bugs. My first horse, Captain, had terrible hoof problems, as did another, RedBud, who arrived soon after him. Both were in not-great shape when they arrived & the least of their problems was intestinal worms. This is a common, treatable problem in all horses. But to poison the worms, you need to poison the horse & you need to do this either as a low dose daily or a high dose monthly. Usually, this is no big deal; the poison it takes to make the belly inhospitable will hardly bother a healthy horse; these two were already in poor shape.

My solution was chickens. One dose of poison & then turn them on to grass with a flock of chickens. The horses eat the grass & deposit manure. The chickens break up the manure piles looking for.....bugs. They do not care if the bugs arrived with the pile or were attracted later; the upshot is fewer flies in general, much less larvae in the grass & less need to poison the horses. I suspected it would work & I was shortly proved correct.

Chickens & horses together was a win-win right here, before the eggs, & before I discovered the other reason to keep hens with horses (more on that later). What I had not factored in were the other bugs they would deal with.

We, right now, are experiencing the Super Tick. & I do not just mean me & my dogs, I mean you & yours as well. Topical treatments, pills, & house&lawn sprays work well enough, but they can make the dogs sick or the people that live with them sick or kill all your houseplants or the list goes on. When ticks are not attaching themselves to dogs, you know where they like to gather? In old dried leaves, or crevices, like between a patio edge & the lawn. You want to know what chickens like to do? Stir up leaves & scratch at crevices....& peck any specks they find.

So, if you were almost completely grossed out by the chicken beak piercing piles of manure to find bugs, maybe the idea that much of your farm fresh eggs used to be ticks will put you on the road to a cholesterol-free diet. Unless of course you limit yourself to battery-chicken eggs. Do not read up on their lives though, or eating what-used-to-be-ticks-&-manure will start to look pretty tastey.

Saint Roch

Somehow, I do not know how, I missed the feast day of Saint Roch, the patron of dogs & dog lovers. It was August 16.

He is also the man you go to when you have been falsely accused, or have a skin ailment, or the plague. Further, he is the patron of bachelors. Yes, dogs & bachelors.

Finally, he is the patron of dealers in second-hand goods. This works for me, because all my dogs are second-hand. & while A was definitely a bachelor when we met, he was also a dog & therefore, arguably, second-hand himself.

Our first dog is still with us. She came from a shelter in Texas (we lived in Houston at the time). Unlike our subsequent dogs (& horses & goats & emus, oh my!) she had no real baggage; she was a puppy, born at the shelter with no history of abuse. Megan is without question the most disfunctional of all our pets.

Because of Megan's extreme lonliness, we got our second dog. Rather, she got us. Josephine followed us home, submitted to a bath, ate a healthy dinner & slept soundly for what was probably the first time in months. Farley also came from a shelter, Florida this time. He & one litter mate survived a nightmare situation; the rest of the litter & their mother did not.

Becca (horse) & Amy-dog (dog) both came as a result of divorces, Anton & Cleo (emus) because their owners were too old to care even for themselves. The Henriettas (the first batch of Rhode Island Red chickens) were found at a gas station in Georgia; they had fallen out of over-packed crates headed for a factory henhouse.

Golda & Black&tan (goats) were de-facto ours for years before they became ours. They belonged to our neighbor & came through our common fence to join our goats. Once together, they did not want to seperate. G*** had Parkinsons & was less&less able to live the way he wanted. One awful day he shot himself.

Coco (horse) was born at a pregnant mare urine (used to manufacture Premarin) collection facility. She was one of many foals sold for meat & shipped around the world.

Back to Saint Roch: there is some question apparently as to whether or not he is even one person. That is, more than one story seems to have morphed into his. Generally agreed upon is that he was released from prison, contracted the plague, gave away his substantial inheritance, was set-upon by his own relations & went to live in the woods in a hut he made himself, not necessarily in that order. A local nobleman's dog brought him food. The nobleman followed the dog, discovered Saint Roch & the rest is history. Or not, as the case may be.

The last thing you should know about Saint Roch is that he is not a saint. While there are churches in his name from Lebanon to Staten Island & Manila to Minsk, in the late 15oos someone dropped the ball & his official saint-hood was never confirmed.

& so he is, a not-quite saint, for anyone whose first chance does not have to be their last.