Like money in the bank.

Anyone who keeps their own horses knows that having hay in the barn feels like having money in the bank. Today we received a semi-load of hay from southern California that we are sharing with a neighbor and it felt like winning the lottery.

You might wonder why we bring in hay from California instead of buying local hay and the answer is simple...one of our horses has Insulin Resistance (IR) and three others have the potential of developing it. Insulin resistance is similar to type two diabetes in humans. The main difference is with horses, the pancreas still produces insulin, the cells just no longer receive it. That means the only way to manage it is through a low sugar diet. Mustangs are particularly susceptible to IR because their survival has depended on being able to live on little or poor quality feeds. Grasses and hays grown in high altitude, cool climates like we have are very high in their sugar content. To protect the health of our horses, we buy hay that has been analyzed to be low in sugar from other parts of the country.

In anticipation of this load of hay coming in, we bought this wonderful new heavy duty flatbed trailer to haul our hay home.

And I have to brag a bit here, with Mike stuck on a job I had to handle this hay transaction without him. I was pleased to discover I haven't lost my touch...I backed right under that hitch on the first go! It's a Zen thing I tell you...'Let the Force guide you, Luke.'

The hay had become a bit unstable on the truck and the crew decided it would be best to back the trailer right under it in case it toppled.

And there it goes!

I have to say these young men were a great crew. It was hot, dusty, everyone was breathing hay chaff and those hay bales weigh over 100 pounds each. In spite of all that, they worked hard, never complained and kept us all smiling with their joking. Thanks again guys!

It ain't Friday but you're getting photos anyway!

The next five weeks will be hell for me. Instead of having my usual twelve weeks to prepare inventory for our big trip to Delaware, thanks to a broken wrist I am down to five. So when I post, there probably won't be much thought or substance to it other than I can't seem to stand not taking photos. The exceptionally grand news for both me and Mike is that my nephew is coming out from Texas to both house/animal sit AND start Mike's horse, Llego, under saddle. Obviously I've known Boyd since he was a baby, and I have been continuously proud of the fine horseman he was as a kid and still is as an adult. We had planned that I would start Llego this winter but breaking my wrist overturned that apple cart as well. We didn't want to send Llego away from his herd and home and there was no one else we trusted. So even though Boyd doesn't have a computer to read this, here is another HUGE heartfelt 'Thank you!' for taking time away from your own horse training business to indulge your aunt and work your magic with Llego.

Look who's snacking on the Italian parsley...

The early morning glories.

I loooove myself!

Mountain Chickadee

No roses this year but the deck is still our sanctuary.

Certainly worth all those trips carrying water each day.

Another water hole story...

This has been our hottest day this year, 94 degrees. We have a high sitting right on top of New Mexico that is holding the heat down and keeping us from getting any rain. The horses got a bit innovative in their bid for a cool down...

Llego perfected his splashing technique while Corazon waited patiently...

And waited not quite so patiently...

Move out of the way and let someone else get a drink!

Corazon finally gave up and decided to get dirty instead while Llego continued to splash.

Oops. Missed a side.

What are you looking at mister!

Hmmmm. Dirty looks pretty good!

May I please get a drink now?

Mike's lucky. His horse came dirt colored.

MeMe for EllieEllie

Butch tagged Ellie and the greypoops for a meme so they get three each of 'things you don't know about me'...

Ellie...


1. I was a super model until I got caught in that motel room with a chipmunk. Britney made me do it.

2. When I'm really happy my tail goes around in circles so fast it looks like my butt is going to take off!

3. Anytime one of the humans falls asleep on the couch I come up real quiet and...lick em on the lips!

Vannie...


1. I'm almost thirteen and I only have one canine left but I can still chomp chipmunks with it.

2. When I'm really happy I chase my tail!

3. I like to stick my nose under the humans' arms and flip them up when they're drinking coffee.

Duffy...


1. What's a chipmunk?

2. When I'm happy I spin in circles till I'm dizzy!

3. I howl in my sleep... ERRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An alternative way to connect and communicate with your horse...part 5

Griton and Corazon playing together in the water trough like two happy kids.

Hopefully by now you are beginning to see that this really isn’t about training our horses tricks or turning them into circus horses. It’s all about communication and trust which is the foundation of all of the work we are doing here. Instead of always telling our horses what to do, we make requests and in turn we listen to their requests. Sometimes we lead them and sometimes they lead us. It’s a balance.

Llego up on the mountain, just a few thousand feet away from 500,000 acres of very wild and rugged National Forest.

We live in a place where there are black bear and mountain lions and we trust our horses’ senses far more than our own. If Corazon or one of the others goes on alert, we pay attention. I will stand next to Corazon, just behind his shoulder, and touch him softly on the neck or shoulder in the way another horse would touch him with their muzzle. This says ‘I’m here too and I’m paying attention’. If he determines there is no danger, he will drop his head, touch me with his muzzle to acknowledge me, then go on about his business. If he spins and bolts, I seriously consider the need to do the same! We have yet to actually see a bear or mountain lion here but that could just be our less than adequate human senses. I’ll never forget the time in California when Star went on alert and when I looked where he was looking, I saw a full grown mountain lion sunning on the rocks above us.

Mike and Cuervo on top of the bluff.

After Mike saw the changes in Corazon when we started doing clicker work, he ran with it and brought it home to Cuervo. Cuervo was already deeply bonded to Mike so for them, it was highly entertaining play with Cuervo constantly looking for new challenges. I’ll never forget the afternoon I heard Mike calling me and when I stepped outside, there he and Cuervo were on top of the granite bluff above the yurt. Mike had been teaching Cuervo to move just one foot at a time on his cue and the two of them had climbed a bluff people said horses couldn’t go up. Llego is exactly like Cuervo and I expect to see him and Mike up on the same bluff one of these days.

Beautiful Besol, happy and healthy in his new world.

Much like with Corazon, bridge communication has given Besol confidence and a voice. He gets constant feedback that he is doing what we want, and always rewards instead of punishment. He is highly motivated with a strong work ethic and all in the world he needed was to find out that he was a partner, not a slave. And he needed to be shown what was expected of him, instead of having demands made that he didn’t understand.

You can tell by his expression that Griton does not like flywipe or spray at all. Still, he is willing to trust that I will do nothing to harm him. He could leave at any time but holds his ground because I have asked him to. There is no force about it, only trust and cooperation.

Griton has been one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever worked with. He is a horse who was truly taught to believe humans are predators and all he felt he could do to survive was keep his head down and avoid. Because any kind of interacting was scarey for him, it was difficult to get him to reach out in our direction. In his case I have had to really stretch myself to communicate on his terms and in his language. I didn’t realize how much I had done that until recently when I started thinking about writing this series. Because Mike and I don’t believe ‘it’s our way or no way’, we unconsciously adapt ourselves to the horses when that is what is needed. Until we took Griton and Besol to have dental work done this spring, I also didn’t realize how his trust and willingness to interact didn’t extend much beyond Mike and me. Griton absolutely did not want me out of his sight and could only stay relaxed and calm if he had me there ‘interpreting’.

Valeroso alone as usual and by his own choice.

We have done the least amount of work with Valeroso and a lot of that is due to who he is. He is not an interactive horse even with other horses and is often up the mountain completely by himself. Like Griton, Valeroso was taught that humans are predators out to kill him. He was harassed by people on ATVs until he was permanently crippled. With the exception of some kind people who watched out for him and got him into a good rescue, Valeroso’s experiences with humans have given him no reason to believe we are safe to interact with. We allow him to keep his distance in hopes that eventually he will accept that this particular group of humans means him no harm. When we had the forest fire this last spring, he proved he could cooperate when he needed to and that is enough for us.

Reaching out to Mike in a rare moment of interaction.

And there you have it…one wild horse and a chance encounter with a clicker training clinic sent us all down a path that is still going and still leading us to new discoveries. Our goal these days is to continue to find ways to communicate with our horses on their terms and to allow and respect their need for community and their own culture. Our lives have been greatly enriched by this and rather than having uncooperative or challenging, unsafe horses, we have a herd that respects us and desires our company as much as we do theirs. The only rule about all of this is that there are no rules - trust your hearts, trust your instincts and above all, trust your horses to guide you.

I'm going to take a break from horse writing for a bit but I am working on another series to dispute the currently taught belief that horses see humans as predators and can only see us as predators. In our experience, horses only see us as predators when we teach them to.

An alternative way to connect and communicate with your horse... part 4

Corazon trotting through a late spring snow to meet me.

I was completely new to this clicker training idea and so was Corazon so we explored it together. I needed Corazon to understand some simple requests and more than anything else, I needed him to trust me when I asked him to do them. That was the most important thing for Corazon as well, to know that he could trust me. Everything was done in small easy steps and never with pressure.

At home on the mountain with the balance in his life restored.

I started with one of the most basic cues, ‘touch’. When I would point at an object and say ‘touch’, Corazon was expected to touch his nose to it. Besides teaching a foundation tool, this cue is excellent for letting a horse know that a new object is safe. With trust established between us, I could introduce Corazon to new objects, ask him to ‘touch’ them, and what I was essentially saying to him was, ‘because I am asking you to touch this, you can trust me that this new thing is safe’. If he was wary or uncertain, I didn’t push him. Instead I would fall back on things he had already become familiar with and then go back to the new object. If he was still uncomfortable, we might do something entirely different that I knew he enjoyed until he was ready for the new move.

It's hard for me to believe that this November will be Corazon's fourth anniversary with us. Of all the things in my life I am proud of, not 'breaking' this wild horse is at the top of the list.

Teaching with a clicker is a lot like the ‘hot and cold’ game we all played as kids. Corazon knew I was waiting for a response so he would try different things. When he would do something in the right direction, he would get a ‘that’s right’ click and reward and we would build the correct response from there. Corazon quickly learned a number of basic verbal and hand signal cues that I thought would be helpful. I showed him hand signals as well as verbal cues because I wanted to be able to signal him from a distance if I needed to. He learned ‘stand’ (hand up, palm facing him) to say, ‘don’t move your feet’. He learned ‘step up’ (palm towards me, fingers beckoning) meaning ‘move your feet towards me’. And ‘over’ (both palms facing him with a pushing movement) to mean ‘move your body away from me’. We still teach all of our horses these basic cues that in many ways mimic their own body language.

Two very dirty but happy horses at play.

At this point Corazon was moving faster than I was and I started feeling challenged to give him more advanced lessons. Because he got very tense and frightened by things like high winds or flocks of birds flying over, flashbacks from being gathered with helicopters I think, I taught him to lower his head and relax when I stroked his neck. With that signal I was able to let him know that something distant from us was not to be feared. When the roof of his shelter collapsed after a late and very wet snowstorm, both the ‘stand’ and ‘relax’ cues were essential to keep him calm while Mike removed the dangerous debris from his pen.

Corazon offering his hoof, just in case it might get him an extra treat.

Long before he knew how to lead with a halter and lead rope, Corazon learned to follow me with just my fingers touching the edge of his jaw, and to pick up his feet to allow me to clean out his hooves with a touch on his leg and a ‘pick up’ request. I could take him through an entire obstacle course of objects I had set up as practice, without a halter or any restraints. All of these things were practice for the day we would lead him across a paved road and up the long road through the woods to his new home. If he couldn’t trust me without a halter on, wearing one wouldn’t have made much difference.

Corazon had to learn that it was safe for him to step through the gate and leave the pen that had become his place of safety.

After Corazon graduated to wearing a halter and lead rope, we started leaving his fenced pen to take walks around the property. Mike began bringing Cuervo down the mountain for them to get acquainted with each other, and to give Corazon confidence about leaving the pen that had become his security. Because Corazon had been afraid of walking on tarps or boards, I was very concerned about how he would manage walking across the paved road. One afternoon while Mike was down with Cuervo, we decided to see how Corazon would react to the pavement. When he followed me onto it with no hesitation, we spontaneously decided it was the day for our boy to come home. With Mike and Cuervo leading the way, Corazon followed us across the road and up into the woods. There were many times that he needed to stop, relax, and take in his surroundings, then each time he would continue on, trusting his new human herd.

One of my favorite photos of Corazon, taken this summer. He has become a mature and confident horse, relaxed in a world that makes sense to him and willing to share his life with a few humans.

That quarter mile walk wasn’t far in physical distance, yet it represented so much in the life of a wild mustang from Nevada and the humans who adopted him. With the things we have learned after acquiring three more mustangs, I believe if we could have brought Corazon straight home and turned him loose, he would have adapted and accepted us very quickly. The BLM rules are there to protect the horses though and must be respected. And I have no regrets, the things Corazon taught us in his journey up the mountain have benefited every single horse who has come to live with us since.

This may sound like the end of the story, but I still need to tell how our experiences with Corazon grew and changed and evolved and continue to evolve into real communication with our horses. So stay tuned for Part 5!

An alternative way to connect and communicate with your horse... part 3

To ease Corazon through his fear of ropes, his first 'halter' was two large quick release dog collars snapped together.

I understand now how completely Corazon’s world had been turned upside down. For the first time in his life he was separated from contact with other horses. Nothing smelled right, looked right or sounded right. What is amazing is that he handled it as well as he did. Some wild horses handle it better than others and a lot of that depends on genetics. Llego comes from a herd with a lot of draft blood where military harness horses were turned out. He takes everything in calm stride and embraces dometic life. Corazon came from a herd that tests high for Spanish blood, making him more sensitive and volatile.

Llego calmly meeting Mike for the first time during his first week at Star's Rest.

In spite of all of his fear, Corazon still seemed to want to connect with me; I just needed to figure out how I could cross our language barrier. The answer came at a clinic I happened to watch that spring at the New Mexico Horse Fair where I was introduced to the idea of clicker training with horses for the first time. I asked many questions of the clinician, Shawna Karrasch, and went home feeling that I might finally have a way of connecting with Corazon.

Getting to know Mike, his other new herdmate.

By this time Corazon would allow me to stand next to him, and he would stand comfortably over me while I read a book. Touching him was still more than he could manage though. I know there are some people reading this who are wondering why I didn’t just push him through this stage. I could have worked him in a round pen to teach him to ‘join up’ or used a cane pole to rub him at a distance to make him accept touch. I am not criticizing those approaches and the list of natural horsemanship training tools could go on for quite a while. The answer is that by then I wanted to find a new way and I wanted him to connect to me on his terms, not because I gave him no other option. I had come to have a great sense of respect, even awe for this wild horse who had found himself in such a strange and foreign place, and who was trying his best to just survive. I wanted to give him back choices since his had all been taken away. And most importantly, I began to see that from him I could learn a whole new world of how horses communicate with each other. I wanted to learn with him, not cram him into a mold so he would look like every other domestic horse in the world.

Corazon, the wild horse, showing off his very first halter.

Armed with a metal clicker and a waist pouch filled with fresh spring grass, I went into Corazon’s pen and offered him a handful. As he took it, I clicked the clicker and he jumped about five feet away. I stood there calmly waiting as he ‘thought’ about it and realized he hadn’t been hurt, then I offered him another handful. Again, I clicked when he took it and he jumped, but not far. It took no more than three tries before he understood the click would not harm him and was actually connected to his taking grass from my hand.

The next step was to show Corazon that he could do something that would cause the click and offer of grass. I stood quietly waiting until he reached his nose towards the bag of grass on my waist, then clicked and gave him a handful. The ‘Ah ha!’ expression on his face was priceless and he became intensely interested. He understood immediately that we were beginning our very first dialogue that made sense and he wanted more and he wanted it now!

Corazon's old BLM necktag still hanging in the studio.

I had become very concerned about the BLM neck rope he wore because it was getting very tight as he continued to grow. Things were going well and he was still intensely interested so I decided to forge ahead to see if I could work through to a point of taking it off. I advanced to holding my hand near his neck and when he didn’t move or look away, clicking and rewarding. That led to my first touch on his neck and tears were running down my face when he not only accepted it, he looked for more. By the end of that very first day, I had not only touched my wild brother horse for the first time, I had cut off his BLM neckrope and his tag, number 2022, which is still hanging in the studio.

To be continued…

An alternative way to connect and communicate with your horse...part 2

Or, how Corazon brought enlightenment to Star’s Rest.

Corazon on his first day in New Mexico, away from his herd and the range in Nevada that had been his home.

A ‘training tool’ is just that, a tool. Any tool can be used with sensitivity and discretion, or over used to the point of turning a positive experience into a negative one. Whenever rules are applied to the world of relating to horses, they should be questioned, bent, broken or evaluated according to the natures of horse, human, environment and circumstance. The more we think we know, the more dangerous we become.

At the long term holding facility in Carson City, Nevada just before Corazon was loaded on our trailer.

When we adopted Corazon, I was pretty confident about my ability to gentle a completely wild horse. After all, I had run with horses since I was a small child. I was a successful trainer and instructor. And, I had watched a lot of clinics where people were able to take wild horses into a round pen and quickly have them haltered and leading. Granted, on an intuitive level I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw of those round pen processes, or how frightened those horses seemed even though they were doing what was asked of them. Still, I felt I had the tools to manage the situation. What’s that old phrase about ‘pride goeth before a fall’? Fortunately within a few days of meeting Corazon, I realized I knew next to nothing before either of us fell.

Learning to accept my presence in his pen, but still not accepting contact. The cord around his neck holds a tag with his BLM number, 2022.

Corazon was afraid and he had good reason to be. His experiences with humans included being gathered from his home range in Nevada with helicopters, then run into a truck and taken to a holding facility. There he was run into a squeeze chute to be vetted, vaccinated, freeze branded and gelded. Once he had recovered from that he was loaded on a truck three different times to be taken to three different adoptions before he was finally warehoused at a long term holding facility in Carson City. That was where we found and adopted him in November 2003.

Spring, still in the same pen but after Corazon had finally allowed me to remove his BLM neck rope and tag.

I realized fairly quickly that this wasn’t going to be easy. Corazon was so afraid that the typical pressure and release process taught in most natural horsemanship training was too much for him. As my sensitive husband put it…’There is no release for Corazon. It’s all pressure.’ So we threw that particular tool out the gate. I know how to move around horses and Corazon very quickly accepted me as a passive occupant of his pen, as long as I remained passive. He began to nicker when he saw me and I could even sit in the middle of his hay and he would eat around me and pull hay out from under my body. He was beginning to accept me as a safe and familiar presence and it didn’t take long before he would take food from my hand; but his fear of anything rope-like was profound.

Corazon on his first day home on the mountain.

For the safety of the horses, the BLM has strict requirements about how ungentled horses can be kept. Corazon was living in a borrowed pen that met BLM requirements until we could get him halter trained and led up the mountain to what would become his permanent home, and to join his own bachelor band. Because he was living on someone else's land, there was a sense of time pressure about all of this. Corazon and I both needed a solution and it meant thinking outside of the box.

To be continued...

An alternative way to begin to connect and communicate with your horse...part 1

Mike with Griton, Corazon and Llego, all wild-raised mustangs who have crossed communication barriers to accept us as part of their herd.

Since I mentioned clicker training at the Voice of the Horse Conference, I have received several emails asking what that looks like for us and how we use the clicker. It seemed the easiest way to respond was by writing a blog entry about it. The funny thing is, while it is generally called 'clicker' training, we only use an actual clicker in the very beginning of introducing a horse to the process. And we also do little 'training' as other people think of it.

Not much more than a year ago, Llego was still running wild in northwestern Colorado. Now he has embraced his semi-domestic life as if it were his destiny.

Operant Conditioning is the more scientific term and most people are familiar with it as it is used for training dolphins and orcas at Sea World and other public aquariums. The process in its most basic form is to first connect a sound with a reward, and then begin to require simple behaviors for the reward with the sound given to indicate a correct response. The sound becomes a way of saying, 'yes, that's right' and the reward helps keep the motivation going.

Corazon is still very much a wild horse in many ways, and yet he trusts me to apply flywipe to his sensitive and vulnerable belly. In turn, I trust him not to harm me.

The usual names of 'clicker training' and 'operant conditioning' really don't describe our own process and goals with our horses and have led to some confusion when others are expecting something familiar. I have been searching for a new name with a better fit and as I began writing this entry, the phrase 'bridge communication' came to mind. I'm going to try it on during this post to see if it really fits. We see using a clicker type process as a first step in 'bridging' the communication expanse between human and horse. Like the finding of the Rosetta Stone allowed scientists to finally decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, bridge communication can be the breakthrough that starts the process of creating language between a person and their horse.

Until he was two, Griton ran wild in Wyoming. In spite of some early bad treatment by his first adopters, he trusts me to apply flywipe to his broad forehead, one of the few blindspots in a horse's vision.

We see the clicker process more as a way of empowering the horse rather than training them to do something. We often turn what is usually thought of as clicker training upside down by using it as a tool that allows the horses to get us to do something that they want, instead of our making demands on them. For working with a wild one, it can be a powerful first step in developing a common language, as well as making it clear to the horse that we are attempting to bridge the enormous gulf between their language and ours. With a very frightened horse, it can give them back confidence and control in their environment because finally, something makes sense to them in a very clear black and white way. This encourages them to begin to trust and reach back across the expanse that exists between horse and human.

To be continued...

This is a rather long and sensitive subject so I am going to break it up into several posts over the next few days. For anyone who is interested in reading it, hopefully it will give you another tool for making a deeper connection with your horse.

Ellie the Cover Girl!


I just found out that our own Ellie will be on the cover of the 2008 Greyhound Companions of New Mexico calendar! Ellie and Duffy were both adopted through GCNM and they also gave Vannie a ride down to New Mexico from the rescue in Colorado where she was relinquised by her previous adopters. We have a lot to be grateful for from GCNM and now our Ellie will be their cover girl...looking far more elegant than in this photo! This one is more like 'Cover Girl Gone Bad'.


Fionna is murder on hummingbirds, literally. She brought in two within twenty minutes the other day. Consequently they have become quite wary and it isn't often I can snap a photo of one on the deck. I think next year I will put most of the flowering plants in hanging baskets.


There haven't been many rose photos this year because I accidently killed most of them by unknowingly spreading a fungus that came with a new bush. I've had to start over with all but one of the deck roses. Fortunately I found a source for 'own root' roses that allowed me to get most of my favorites as non-grafted versions and guaranteed virus free. Next year I should have a beautiful deck rose garden again. In the meantime, I can always count on Joseph's Coat.


No matter how hard I try to train the moonflower vines to grow along the deck railing, they seem to have a destination of their own in mind. Somewhere out in the forest it appears.


I wouldn't be surprised to see the entire pot lift off one morning.

We have a brand new washer and dryer...that is if you don't count the years they have been waiting to be hooked up and used for the first time. We bought them during a good sale before the yurt was up and being lived in. Now they are waiting for a laundry room to be built and wiring set up to handle them. There always seems to be other priorities and truly, a functioning washer and dryer are pretty low on the list. There are three laundromats in a thirty mile radius of us and when we tried to get laundry done yesterday for Mike to head back out on a job, all three were closed. Today we manage to get everything washed, but the dryers at the small local laundromat were all in use so we brought everything home to use our highly efficient 'solar dryer'. Can't argue with the smell of line dried clothes anyway.


And one last look at our incredible New Mexico sky at the end of the day.

It's Fun Foto Friday!

This skull was found up on the mountian. We assume it once belonged to either a fox or coyote.

Can you see me???

Morning glories on the deck railing. Definitely a good experiment.

Even Llego can have a bad morning. Get that camera out of my face! Darned paparazzi!

We had a bad thunderstorm and Nicodemus the Invisible Cat decided he might be an indoor cat...at least for one night.

Everyone was glad to have Mike home again.

Even Valeroso.

I knew this cow wasn't Hers!

Ellie, totally unaware her cow was being rustled.

Yet another photo story...

I bet you think all I do is wander around with my camera all day taking photos. Let's see...yesterday started with feeding the horses, then feeding the dogs, then feeding the humans. Followed by teaching a riding class, followed by getting orders ready to go to the post office and driving the ten miles to the post office. Then I helped Mike mark trees to be cut down, then we fed the horses, then we fed the dogs, then we fed the humans. After that I did bookkeeping and paid bills and after that we went to bed. Somewhere in all that, I managed to take photos! Or maybe that was the day before...who knows at this point? So here's the latest story - this one is called 'It's mine!'

That's my cow!

It's mine!


Mine!

Mine!

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

You put your right foot in. You put your right foot out...

Llego does the fir tree, hootchy koo butt scratch.

Ohhhhh!
Ahhhh!
Ohhhh!
Ahhhh!
Ohhhh!

That poor little fir tree will never be the same...

It's healed! (Warning! Graphic post-surgery photos below!)

Can't you just hear the Hallelujah Chorus right now?

We just came back from my final set of x-rays and doctor appointment and my wrist bone is officially healed. For the post-surgery photo fascinated, here is what it looks like exactly two months after surgery -


Remember this awful photo taken when the stitches came out?

This is Mike's arm after he took a fall on mud-coated, metal steps on the rig. Fortunately he didn't break it.

Life is calling and summer is not yet over for the two-handed!

Skirmish at the water hole.

I decided to add some thoughts to this because I realized not everyone would understand this was peaceful play, in spite of Griton's wide open mouth. A whole lot of 'horseplay' among males is mock fighting and it starts when they are really young. Weanlings and yearlings learn how to fight for future mares by practicing at play. When they reach early sexual maturity, young males are driven or wander away from their bands of birth and form what are called 'bachelor' bands. These young males form a strong community that gives them both protection and the socialization they need until they are mature enough to fight for their own band of mares. Our boys are all gelded, leaving them as permanent bachelors. They are a closeknit group and even though their play can look rough, having teeth or hooves meet flesh hardly ever happens.

The horses don't usually all go to get a drink at the same time and that might be why Griton decided to exercise his rights as 'The Big Butthead' by chasing Llego. Llego in turn passed it down by chasing Valeroso. Besol did his best to mind his own business.

That was so much fun that Griton, Mr. Butthead to you, decided to see if he could make Corazon move too.



Well look at that! I got everybody going and all I had to do was open my enormous mouth!

And that was the whole point. Griton wanted a romp with his buddies and made sure everyone joined him even though all they wanted was a drink of water. This is why he is affectionately known as, The Big Butthead.

Community and Communication

The people who make movies and television programs would like you to believe that horses babble all of the time like giggling first graders. Well for the most part, they don't. I get really tired of every scene with a horse in it being punctuated by squeals and nickers that just don't happen in real life. Horses do have a vocal language, the soft whickering of a mare to her foal, the happy nicker greeting to a band mate or to a human member bringing breakfast, the shrill call to a stranger, and the trumpeting challenge of an aggressor. But mostly, horses depend on the rich and silent communication of body language.

Among our own horses, we have had two who were very vocal, Star and Cuervo. Those boys would nicker at the briefest glimpse of one of their human herd members and mealtimes were a chorus of excited talk. With those two no longer with us, Corazon and Llego are the next most talkative and they save it for urging us to get their food to them quickly. Griton, whose name is a nickname for someone who shouts a lot, is mostly silent. I always feel a bit blessed when I catch one of his soft, deep nickers to me. Valeroso is sometimes referred to as 'Goat Boy' for his low bleating nicker in the mornings at breakfast time. And Besol reserves his voice for squealing in response to aggression. I sometimes think Llego harasses him just to hear his high pitched 'Eeeeeeee!', like a dog biting a squeaky toy to hear it squeak.

Yesterday I was cleaning up the hay pallets in preparation for moving more bales up this afternoon. I always rake up the loose hay that has fallen from opened bales, put it in the hay cart and dump it in several piles for the horses to pick through and clean up. I knew the band had headed up the mountain that morning and none were in sight except for Corazon, standing below the bluff and surveying his world.

He watched me loading the hay up and when I headed towards the gate, he turned to face up slope and began calling to his boys in the plaintive 'Where are you? I'm by myself...please come to me!' nicker. One by one, each of the band answered him with an 'I'm here!' and soon faces appeared from behind boulders and through trees. Corazon waited for them to all come down from the mountain and then led them to the unexpected lunch buffet.

Many horse 'experts' would be surprised by, or not even recognize, this generosity of leadership and community. Those are the people who don't understand the rich and complex social structure of the horse herd. We have watched our horses mourn deeply over the loss of herd members, standing or lying on their graves for days. At the Voice of the Horse Conference, Ginger Kathrens of The Cloud Foundation told me of an old band stallion she had observed for years. He was in his mid to late twenties and had only one old and barren mare left who had been with him for many years. One spring the mare was no longer with him and Ginger said even though the old stallion appeared to be in good health, he died a few months later. She felt he had died from grief and loneliness.

I know that for many people keeping horses the way we do is not a possibility. That knowledge still doesn't stop my grief for the horses living in stalls, isolated from the community they were designed for and crave. Horses are expected to be our silent servants, living their lives in obedience and at our bidding. I also grieve for the humans who have no idea what they are missing.

It's fun foto Friday!

Evening storm.

This little cloud looked like it might ignite any moment.

Guess how many spots I have and win a kiss!

Double flagpole pose.

It doesn't get any more beautiful than this.

This year I planted pots of morning glories and moon flowers to grow up along the deck railing. I think it was a very successful experiment.

My only domestic sunflower that has, so far, bloomed.

A thing of beauty.

When we first looked at this land, just a little over six years ago, the road up to our piece was hardly a trace through the woods. You inched your way over boulders, praying you didn't knock a hole in your oil pan, splashed through water crossings and slipped in the mud during the rainy season, and slid into trees when there was deep snow on the ground. We lived with that for three years, partly due to lack of funds to put in a road, but also because most of our easement wound through the five acres below us that was for sale. Each person who seriously looked at that piece of land told us they would move the road so it made no sense to invest any money in it.

Two years ago the 'road' had become impossible to deal with so I phoned the owners to get permission to have some grade work done. Mike and I knew this piece of land had been for sale for a long time, mostly due to its being heavily burdened by our easement running through the middle of it. As we had agreed, while on the phone I suggested to the owners that we would love to buy it and would pay their full asking price if they would do a complete owner finance. They jumped on the opportunity to sell to motivated buyers and we quickly cleared trees and had a basic road cut in.

We still couldn't afford culverts or road base though so last winter's heavy and late snows really took a toll on the road, leaving it deeply rutted. Well this year, thanks to Mike, we are finally getting a real, all weather road. The first water crossing already has its culvert in and also the first section of road base. I'll miss the beautiful engineering of the upper, big arroyo crossing created with timbers and boulders, but it too will be going soon, replaced by a lovely metal culvert and deep road base that will keep our trucks from being stuck in mud and melting snow. It's a thing of beauty I tell you.

More of the Star's Rest band.

I've been thinking about why the words in my mind have gotten so calm this summer. When I started this blog, it seemed I was filled with thoughts and stories and they all wanted out at once. Now I wonder where they all went. I'm beginning to understand that it was stress relief. Writing in this blog was a mental vacation from the unending worry about income and how we would pay each month's bills. Now that our debts are disappearing and each month gets a little easier, the need for escape has eased as well. That doesn't mean I've quit writing though...this idea of writing a book about our relationship with our horses keeps growing. There is even a publisher who has expressed interest. I have a feeling that is where all of my words are collecting these days. How could anyone not be inspired when every day you are surrounded by so much beauty and grace?

Just look at this beautiful horse! Corazon de la Tierra, our benevolent leader whose eyes shine with intelligence and kindness. He glows with health and well being. His entire body is covered with lovely dapples and there is an old belief that a dappled coat indicates the height of good health. It's a nice belief but dapples are actually a genetic color modifier.

Spotted! No matter where I am, Griton will find me and I melt under his white-fringed, brown-eyed gaze. I know he's a boisterous bully to the rest of the band; but I also know inside he is a big marshmallow. Where I once referred to him as 'the pencil necked geek' he has now become my glorious swan.

Llego's color is called 'grullo' which is black modified by the dun genetic factor. Notice how beautifully he blends in with his surroundings, right down to the barring on his legs matching the patterns on the granite.

Little Valeroso, the scrapper who has no concept of size. Even tough guys get an itch now and then.

And Besol the newcomer, who has made himself a home and given Valeroso a friend. He is doing a good job as shrub trimmer here which will keep us safe from ground fires. Everywhere the horses go, their feet break up the pine thatch and with their manure added to it, one day we will even have dirt.