T - less than 24 hours

Court is tomorrow. I feel frozen and out of control. I'm not sure I've done my best. I'm afraid of how it is going to feel. I'm glad Dad will be here for the children. I'm feeling a bit isolated and lonely because I'm scared. I hope for a simple outcome. I feel like an idiot for hoping that, because I know it's a total crap shoot.

All that and my hair is wet.

I suppose the best way to get through stuff like this is by continuing to do the next thing. Right now, thank God, that's dry my hair.

Blah Blog

T - 1.5 days.

This morning dawns a bright & beautiful day, happy children because their Easter baskets had been hidden for them (Easter came late this year for reasons I don't want to go into). Got them each on film. Characteristic, each of them.

So here's me, tea in hand, book in other hand, feeling happy & content & like the world is a good place. Sitting across from Dad on the comfy sofa, sometimes silent, sometimes talking. Finally rousing myself to go out to the barn and do the feeding.

But wait...

Before that came yesterday, going out to do feeding in the evening after being gone for a few days. I went first to see the horses in the ring: Dante, Grace, & Vegas. Only Grace & Vegas were out in the yard (I have no idea how they did that), so only Dante was in the ring. His foot still looked pretty bad, but he took one look at me and began to gallivant (yes, that is the perfect word) around the ring. He didn't run and kick up his heals, or rear, or just plain act like an idiot, because his hoof hurt too much, but honest to god he tried. He almost kicked up his heals, and reared, and he definitely tossed his head and nearly knocked me down giving me friendly nudges. There was no mistaking it: that horse was simply glad to see me.

He did the same thing last time I came home from a trip, and I thought it might be indigestion. But now I really do believe that he is so happy to see me after a few days that he runs around celebrating! Wow. I had no idea.

Anyway, back to today. Out to the barn to do the chores, happy time as usual, and back inside, check online to see if my friend is awake (he's not) and then to work a little. Suddenly, at 10:07 I remember that I am supposed to be 2 miles away on horseback at 10:00.

High gear: layers on, riding pants on, gloves, hat, boots, & off to the paddock to bridle Bella.

...who is so tired of being in the paddock she almost bites the bit out of my hands. Good girl, Bella. No saddle for the pregnant lady, she's getting along a bit and I bet it doesn't feel too good to wear one any more.

So off we go up the driveway, gentle trot, the Bella walk (she has a lovely eager walk), and alternate walk, jog, walk, jog, down the road to the Hinsdale place to meet Molly and Ben.

Ben is the new horse for our farm. We had arranged to bring him over by walking him on a trail ride.

I sat on Bella while the two horses sniffed each other, and unfortunately was not prepared for Ben suddenly to turn his rump to Bella and kick out hard. She saw it coming, though, and lurched sideways to avoid the kick, which landed only grazingly on my leg.

Oddly, though, my leg didn't hurt. My shoulder did.

Sigh. I have so little time for things like sore shoulders. I had to sit there on Bella and wait for the pain to subside enough for me to move my arm, and then I asked, sweetly, "Mind if I ride Ben?"

See, if a horse is a kicker, I'd much rather be on his back than pretty much anywhere. Never seen a horse kick his own back, or even his own sides. It's a very safe place to be. Much safter than anywhere near him when he's being ridden by somebody who's skill level you don't know.

So Molly and I switched and off we went for home.

Ben was a good horse, just likes to get carried away. He would have himself in a dead gallop for everyplace he needs to go. I only wished I could oblige him, but not today. Bella is pregnant; so it was gently jog & walk back home again, me resting my right arm on the pommel of the saddle.

By the time we got home my arm was pretty much set in one place. So I got down off Ben, handed him off to Molly & took Bella back to the paddock. Then I made for the house.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Sling time again. So on goes the sling, down goes the Aleve for pain, and back I go to the barn, really embarrassed that both arms aren't available to help get the new horse settled.

But settled he became regardless, in the paddock with Dante, Grace, and Vegas--and what a sweet herd it is. They all like each other so much that they like to scratch each other with their teeth. It's interesting to watch.

And later that afternoon Donna arrived to look at Cocoa Fox. Donna was judiciously cautious with the Fox, but he opened his eyes wide and paid a lot of attention to her. She led him around a bit and really seemed to understand the kind of athleticism and intelligence he has as his birthright. It's not his fault that nobody trained him. So the only question is--can she train him? She talked about her plans for his next two years, and it sounds like he would be on a good path to go with her. And they seemed to like each other. He got all peaceful and relaxed when she scratched him behind the ears.

But Terry is coming tomorrow and then the final decision will be made about where he goes.

So after Donna left then I got a bit of a chance to crash. I had just fallen asleep when I heard somebody arrive. It was Molly.

"I missed him," she said about Ben. I laughed and kissed her cheek, she was so cute missing her horse and being half embarrassed about it. We sat around talking some more about all the good times we'll have, and about Ben's strong points and the things he has to learn, then I made some dinner. Then Molly took off and Danny & Mikey and I had dinner. Then the three of us went to the barn and did the chores. My arm still wasn't much good, so they had to do a lot of hay lugging and Danny even carried the water to the ponies in the ring.

Back inside, then, for everybody to enjoy themselves doing stuff like reading, talking, and playing with computers.

Then the kids finally gave up and went to sleep.

I checked for messages, was a bit surprised to find none, and a little depressed. We get used to stuff, I guess.

Took another bath to try to make my arm stop aching.

Watched some tv.

Feeling a little blah.

Funny how you can have such a wonderful day full of so many interesting things, and still end up feeling blah. Guess I'm missing my friend.

Well, that and I hate it when my shoulder aches.

Court Monday. T - 1.5 days. Should focus, really.

The Best Training Aid of All

Now comes the hard part: treatment. Mom, this is where you cover your eyes.

It is necessary to get this 17hh tall horse's back hoof into a bucket of warm salt water, even though it stings. How is this done? There is only one word to describe the method for accomplishing this tricky maneuver: trust.

Notice that Dante isn't even wearing a halter, yet he stands still. It is a simple fact that if I were to try to get his rear foot into a bucket of hot, salty, stinging water without his cooperation I would end up with the bucket over my head before I even knew it was happening. There are some things we can't do with horses unless we drug them or unless they help us.

So, tips, if you ever have to do this at home:

1) Never, ever yell at the horse while he has his rear foot cocked and ready.

2) Give him something else to think about, as here Dante had his hay.

3) Give him instant positive feedback when he moves his foot even an inch in the direction you want it to go.

4) This may seem counter-intuitive, but I recommend working alone. It simplifies things. Horses are tuned into relationships. Give a horse just one relationship to think about--his with you. Someone helping you distracts him, because if he senses anything other than absolute trust and harmony between you and a helper, his stress level will go up and that will diminish your effectiveness. And as many of us know, these horses read relationships far better than humans do, for many reasons--not least because they are herd animals and survive through their relationships.

More of the same.

Again, please tell me your methods, if they are different from mine. So many different horses out there--we need lots of ways to do things!

Don't Look, Mom

Dante has an abscess and needs treatment. Rachelle, I'm posting this in part for you because you're going to have to do this for the next three days. Good luck, girl!

Click on these pictures to enlarge them and get a closer view of the abscess. (If you want to... it's a bit icky.)

Okay, a bit about abscesses: they can be hard to spot. Look how Dante is standing--he might be relaxing if you didn't know that he was standing only this way for a few days. Usually they rest their feet one at a time. Which brings up an issue with lameness--the extra stress on the other legs from never getting a chance to rest. And abscesses are especially tricky, because you can have a horse limping around for weeks, even months, and not know that it's an abscess causing the problem. In this instance we were lucky: the abscess formed and drained within a very short time.

See that flap hanging off the right corner of his hoof? That's where the hoof is peeling away to let the abscess drain. Don't ask yourself how much it must have hurt before the hoof peeled and cracked (unless, indeed, it worked the other way: it peeled and cracked for some other reason and infection formed under it).

Same abscess, different angle. You can see the drainage under the hoof that's hanging off. Because the flap is so large, unless he gets very comfortable over the next few days on his own, we'll have to have the farrier come out and cut off this flap. It hurts him whenever it bumps against anything, kind of a like a hangnail, only multiply the discomfort by about a hundred thousand.

You can see that flap hanging off the side from above.

If you know more about abscesses than I do (likely) or more about their care and treatment, please leave me a comment. I love learning from people!

Dante... again

Sigh. He has an abscess on his right rear foot now. It's below the crown and has pushed away a flap of hoof. Eline, if you're reading this, is it possible that the ice tore part of his hoof and he got an infection under the tear? Any other reason he might have abscessed like that after being completely sound a week or two ago? Another possibility--he got a cut on his ankle above the abscess about a week ago--does infection migrate down the leg and then cook under the hoof like that?

Anyway, it's the salt water bath for him. 20 minutes at least once a day and two times if possible.

Thoroughbreds... !

Gallop!

I agree with what Mikey said some months ago: "I'm the happiest person I know right now!"

I made that video on a ride with Rachelle the other day. I wanted to show Van, who is soon to learn what it feels like himself, what a gallop is like. But as Dante opened up and put on some speed, I noticed our shadow at the side, so I tried to film that without dropping the camera.

And yes, it is that magical.

The Lady at the Airport

I'm going to write about this fast to get it out of my head. A crack addict who was talking about just having gotten out of jail started harassing me in the security line today. In the midst of her rantings to her traveling companion on another subject, she suddenly looked at me and said, "You should smile more."

I ignored her. I smile a lot; the fact that I wasn't smiling then was none of her goddamn business, I thought to myself (I hadn't had my tea yet). She repeated her advice. I felt my eyes glaze over as I looked elsewhere. "Did you hear me?" she said. "You should smile more!"

I find this particularly annoying. People never tell men to smile. When men look serious, it's a good thing. But women have to smile whether they want to or not. And (this point can't be emphasized enough) I hadn't had my tea. I looked down at my suitcase and started unzipping it to get the laptop out. I could see the woman's muscular arms, tattooed like a man's. She raised her voice and repeated the admonition. "I'm just giving you advice!" she said. I was a bit surprised. She was escalating the conflict despite the fact that I hadn't engaged with her. Thinking to stop her, I finally said, "It's none of your business."

Mistake.

"Oh!" she said, "Here I am, just giving you advice, and you give me an answer like that!" She advanced on me. I had been taking off my shoes, which was weird while this scary person was breaking my space bubble. I glanced around. No security personnel. How could that be? This was a security line!

"You're a bitch," she said. "Bitch! Look what you done now. Here I was, all ready to be friendly to you, and you act like a bitch! A bitch! An ugly bitch! That's right--you're ugly!" She had raised her voice, and as I looked around again for a security guard I could see a lot of stressed travelers, mostly kind women showing their sympathy with furtive looks. Not a single ex-Navy Seal among them. Unlucky. I was happy for the sympathy but would have preferred to see a man who looked like he'd been through hand-to-hand combat training.

"You know what?" Tattoo-woman went on, unbelievably raising her voice even higher and waving her hands around. "I think I should call you cunt. Cunt! Cunt! How do you like that?" She looked around at all the (faded, pudgy, and otherwise non-heroic type) onlookers. "She's a cunt! An ugly cunt!" she announced. Then she turned her attention back to me, shoeless and with my belongings spread out for security (where are they? I thought), feeling very small. I have stepped between warring stallions without a qualm, without even a pounding heart, but just then I felt myself begin to shake, whether with anger or fear I'm really not sure.

"You are going to be sorry," she went on. "Now you've made an enemy out of me! I hope you get bowel cancer!" I flinched, feeling like I'd been hit with a true curse. In that odd way that sometimes happens right in the middle of the action of life, an instant froze itself and took on new meaning. This woman and I faced each other in a spiritual place, her curses hurling at me as she became more and more vituperative, more and more evil, channeling her energy from a place of utter horror, a place of chaos where darkness and power combine to destroy souls. Her words were black shadows of viscous disease and they were going to obliterate me. Her curses continued, and now she said, "And you know what? You can't get away. I have cursed you with my power—and I am very powerful, don't you think that's not true—and my curses will follow you forever."

I blinked. Ridiculous.

I left my things and walked down the line until I got to the security gate. She couldn't steal anything—too many people were watching. I said to the guard, "A woman back there is harassing me and she is out of control. She doesn't belong on an airplane." The guard looked doubtfully at me. "Back there," I said.

"All right, I'll send an officer right over," she said.

"Do your worst!" I heard Tattoo-woman scream from way back in the line. "You will still die of cancer, and you'll die alone, because I've cursed you!"

Three security guards appeared and moved my stuff ahead so I didn't have to go back near Tattoo-woman. They got me through quickly. A police officer came over on the other side of the gate and asked me what happened—what exactly the woman had said to me. I didn't want to repeat it, but I gave him the high points.

Then a quiet voice said, "I saw the whole thing." It was a faded traveler, one of the nice women. The officer asked her what she had heard, and she confirmed what I had just said and added a few details that I had left out. Then another officer brought Tattoo-woman over. I turned and started packing things. Really, I was thinking. Life is so short to spend it on stupid stuff like this. Life is for things like... like tea.

But by now the officer was telling the woman to apologize to me. "I don't need that," I said quickly. "No—no," the officer said, "She owes you an apology." Tattoo-woman quickly said, "I'm sorry," and the officer faced her. "What you did is against the law," I heard him explain as I walked off. "It's called harassment and you can go to jail for it."

I walked fast and left them behind, wishing I could stop shaking. What in the world had I done to offer a foothold for her aggression? I wondered. Obviously she was spoiling for a fight. But what made me, out of all the people around her, the target this morning? Whatever it was, it was probably the same thing that another bully in my life draws energy from.

I think it was because I was afraid of her. Like any animal, she sensed it. And despite all the trappings of legal and civic life, the other bully senses it too and attacks in just the same way, feeding on my fear and making himself seemingly stronger by continuing to inflict pain. My aunt, who is in fact a powerful woman, named this dynamic, calling it a spiritual battle that can only be won in the spiritual realm; she said that the details of courts and legal pleadings and witnesses and the law are not the proper realm for this fight. She encouraged me to focus on strengthening my spirit through joy and happiness and laughter and adventure and passion.

She's right.

And now the plane is descending as I write, out of the sun, under the clouds to Burlington and home. Elizabeth will be there, and we will go get Mikey, and then be home in time for Danny, and we will each in our own way ground ourselves and enjoy our time this afternoon and evening. Probably Danny and I will take a short ride on Bella and Dante.

And the power in our connections will obliterate all curses; the happiness and love that I breathe in my everyday life leave no room for them.

Foul Fowl

Caution: contains scatology.

I wonder about chickens, all the time.For example, why would a chicken nightly sit on the stall wall and poop directly into an unlucky horse's food bucket? There are so many other places to roost. But by the time I get out to the barn in the morning there are probably 50 droppings in this one particular favorite bucket.

I bet those chickens are lining up like basketball players trying to score points, like, "Move your big butt over, it's my turn!" or "Too bad--bounced right off the rim!" or "Do you always have to crow like then when you score a point?" "Hey, dude, it's your turn.... what? You're not ready? What you gonna do during the playoffs?" and of course, "Fowl! Foul! Ref--are you blind?!"
And imagine the talk around the water buckets. "Let's see who can make a splash big enough to hit themselves in the tail-feathers, guys!" (Pssst: this is what comments are for. Go ahead--you know you want to.)

And after being stepped on about a dozen times each by the horses, why do all the fowl insist on hanging out in the barn aisle during dinner time? Six horses walk right through the flock, completely heedless of their feathery needs for space on the floor. In fact, feeding time sounds like this: "Nicker, snort, snort, QUAAAACK! clip, clop."

The Ridiculous, Part 1

Every now and then you have one of those moments when you just get the definition of your life. This morning, I had one of mine, and it is Ridiculous.

Most people go outside to get into their cars, and pull away leaving nothing ridiculous behind. I backed up and turned, then put the car into drive, glanced down where I had just been, and observed a dazed chicken squarely between my tire tracks. Apparently he could not understand why the roof of his personal chicken coop had suddenly roared and gone away. I suppose we humans feel that way during hurricanes, but rather than weeping and wailing, he sat there, motionless, and considered his new situation.

What is it like to be him right now? I couldn't help wondering. Then thought, come to think of it, I probably know.

Crazy Sled Ride

The Youtube video (click on the heading) is just a few seconds of my side of the fun. I thought I was videoing the boys--they were sliding along behind Bella in a sled that she pulled--but unfortunately I must have pushed the "record" button twice as I jostled along. It was hard to tell in the bright sunshine whether the camcorder was working. Oh well.

I had the sled hooked onto a harness Bella was wearing. Of course the boys decided to throw snowballs at each other and push each other out of the sled. Bella was ever patient--she just trudged along. We went up the road and then up the Kileys' driveway. At the top I detached the sled so the boys could ride down the hill to the house. And unbelievably enough a Barrack Obama canvaser came up the hill!

It was sunny and beautiful. What a happy day!

Getting Attached

Total freak-out today when I looked out the window and saw Dante kicking at his own gut & swishing his tail & lying down on the ground without rolling.

I love that horse. Today I was struck by how fragile horses' lives are--remembering Sunny and how he was okay one day and dead the next. I love Dante because I have sat by him through so many illnesses and seen his patient, strong spirit last it out. Also because so many people have told me to give up on him and I have countered with, "How can I give up on him if he is not ready to give up on himself?" Also because he is so lovely to ride--he notices my excitement when he starts to go fast and builds on it. But mostly, Dante is a silly, loving clown who wants to do well--and he is the best athlete I have ever met.

His bout of colic passed fast this time. It happened because his diet changed slightly. What a responsibility--this horse needs the exact same meal at the exact same time every day! I just hope that when I travel he doesn't get too mixed up.

He's okay now, though. To my unutterable relief...