They can hear us think, you know

Here’s the real scenario:

Last fall, Matt, our farrier, came to shoe and trim two horses: Raven, and Laddie.

You know who Raven is, and he is always well behaved when anyone does anything to him, be it farrier work, floating, etc. 

Laddie is the newest horse in the barn. He is an immense, 17.2 hand Thoroughbred. I believe he’s about 16 years old and is/was an eventer.

O, Laddie’s owner, had seen Matt work on Raven in the past and decided she wanted him to do Laddie. 

Matt –who, like me, is beginning to feel his age and is trying to cut down his workload-asked her how she came to contract him to shoe Laddie. She said Barnlord had told her about his work. I admit, Matt is probably the best farrier I’ve ever been lucky to have.  

Laddie began to act up almost immediately. Tossing his head, flicking the tools out of Matt’s hands, tried to back up, etc.  He has white line disease in his hind feet and acted as if the methylene blue (that purple stuff that has a staining radius of fifty feet) hurt. 

As the process wore on, Laddie got worse and worse. He literally yanked his feet out of Matt’s hands, reared, kicked and tried to bolt. What should have taken no more than half an hour took twice that.

Matt later told me that afterward, he felt as if he’d been hit by a pair of linebackers..and Matt is a big, bear of a man, a burly cowboy/farrier, tough as nails. 

Yesterday, I walked into the barn. The barnlord’s farrier, Bob, was shoeing and trimming a big bay horse. 

Barnlord was holding his lead rope. The horse had his head down and was half asleep. It took me a couple seconds to realize it was Laddie.

“Holy cow, what did you do, sedate him?”

“No.”

Laddie was acting like any good horse, calm, patient, willing to accept anything Bob did to him.

What was the difference?

No, it wasn’t the farriers. 

It was the owner.

O wasn’t present for the trimming this time. 

O is the 22 year old daughter of some very wealthy, upper crust blue bloods back somewhere in New England (on the US East Coast.)

She drives a Mercedes. She bought a truck and a  horse trailer when she got here.  Her parents are paying her way through college. They paid to ship Laddie out here to the West Coast (something that is NOT cheap). They are paying for her rented HOUSE, and the barnlord sends all bills to the parents, not O.

O has very obviously lived a life of ease. She’s accustomed to “people”...a nice way of saying servants or employees..taking orders from her and doing things that she is too high society to do. 

She demonstrates no sense of responsibility. She is passive-aggressive-sometimes arrogantly insisting she knows everything about horses, and other times, completely ignoring the needs of her horse. Laddie was on the point of foundering and barnlord insisted O call a vet. O refused. He’s done this before, she said, all he needs stall rest. She wrapped some vet wrap around his fore pasterns as if that would fix it. 

Barnlord got pissed, and after O left, she called a vet, who got to the barn in time to prevent any damage. 

She billed O’s parents. She also, later, told O that she is NOT O’s servant, that O needs to accept responsibility for her horse. O...ignored her. 

O doesn’t really like Laddie, by the way. She’s taken him out eventing precisely once since she got to the barn last year. Laddie’s blanket is in tatters. She doesn’t care. She can easily afford a new one, but, she doesn’t care. 

And that’s the point.

We humans project energy without knowing. Horses pick up on it. You can’t lie to a horse. If you have had an argument with your husband, and are still stewing about it, you’re mentally broadcasting it to every living being in the  barn. 

 I think we humans are immune to it. We have to be, we’d go insane if we heard every other humans thoughts. But animals aren’t immune. They HAVE to hear in order to survive. Most dogs easily prove it. How many times have you experienced or  heard "my dog knows when I'm coming home."?  I think dogs are smart enough to know you’re not pissed at them, but horses aren’t. All they ‘hear’ is that you are angry, aggressive, and scary.

As well, if you don’t particularly like the horse, he’s going to pick up on that, too. He’s had prior experiences with unfriendly humans broadcasting their non-physical aggression, and he knows, now, that some humans are things to be feared.

It’s not just horses that ‘hear’ our thoughts. Wild animals are especially sensitive. 

We feed the wild birds. The deer have learned that there’s free food under the feeders. We have a group of six or seven black-tailed deer (depending on how many fawns the does produced last spring) that live on my property. If I walk out to the feeders and look hard at the deer, as if sizing them up for an attack, they bolt. If I merely glance at them, AND allow the damned earworm in my head to play or...if I mentally do my times tables (“2 times 3 is 6, 2 times 7 is 14”), they not only are unafraid, they come closer, waiting for me to dump the feed so they can feast.

(Excuse me while I boast...I no longer need to do that. They are accustomed to us trudging through the rain and snow with a pair of feed buckets that they barely wait for us to spread the feed before they’re in it. )

When Matt was there to shoe Laddie, O was supposed to handle her horse. While she did so, he began to act up. She slapped at Laddie, cussed him out, shrieked at him, and literally drove him crazy. He kept pulling his feet out of Matt's hands, making it almost impossible to nail a shoe on.

When a 17.2 horse rears and waves his size 3 hooves around your ears, it turns into a dangerous situation. 

Matt, being the conscientious man he is, carried on, but when he was finished he told her straight up, “don’t call me again. I’m never touching this horse again.”

O got pissed. She didn’t say anything but later, Barnlord said O complained to her about Matt being “incompetent’. 

I had left by then so I didn’t hear it. Which is okay, because Matt would rather she think him incompetent than risk getting hurt by her horse. 

When Bob came out to shoe Laddie, O...who had promised to be there but then decided to skip it, there was just me, Barnlord and Bob.  No one slapped Laddie. No one shrieked at him. Barnlord held the lead and expected Laddie to mind his manners like the good horse he is. She and the farrier had a long conversation about something other than the horse in front of them, and Laddie dropped his head and half slept,  as ho hum as Raven always is. 

They hear us and react. Keep a rein on your emotions.

Paying it forward

     I know there are people out there who abhor the idea of 'boarding' their horse, or using a livery, or leaving their horse in the care of other people. Usually it's a matter of economics. Boarding isn't cheap.

    I've kept horses here on my own property. I don't have a barn. I don't have cross fencing. I don't have the most wonderful thing of all, a covered arena. When I did keep my horses here, I had hot wire separating my five acres (2 ha) into three pastures with a sacrifice paddock,  a 'run in shed' and a water trough. It was a lot of work constantly picking the manure up, no matter the weather; keeping the wire in shape, and it wasn't much fun to go trudging across mud to get to a wet horse (despite their blankets). Tacking up in the rain, subjecting my Very Expensive Saddle to mud/water/snow..........it really got to be a pain in the ass. It wasn't conducive to riding. I didn't do much riding because of it.

   Yes, boarding is expensive. Sue is paying ~$450 US for the privilege of having Raven's bed made up daily, his breakfast and dinner supplied, daily turnout with a buddy,  and the utter luxury of a covered arena. Thus much of our work is taken care of. We're lucky in that the barn lord is a good one. She gets on my nerves, but it's a small price to pay for peace of mind.

   Which paid off in an unexpected way. 

   There are (counting on my fingers) ten women boarding at our barn. Three of them pay off part of their board by mucking out stalls. They're all experienced horsemen.

   Two days ago, Gretchen was mucking stalls. She owns two horses, a mustang mare and an Arabian gelding. She is the nicest person, a German woman married to a now retired Air Force sergeant.

   She noticed something amiss with Raven. I was only made aware of the situation after it was all over, but I'm betting it's the same thing that tipped me off two years ago.
Please see the post I made about it when I was blogging on my wordpress blog, Through The Bridle Lightly:


 https://throughthebridlelightly.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/when-manure-matters/

    Briefly, I was mucking Raven's stall, back in March 2013, when I realized that he hadn't pooped much. This is a horse who produces a great deal of manure, and there wasn't but a few scanty droppings. Alarms went off in my head. Ultimately, the vet was called and she found Raven in the first stages of colic. He was 'all blocked up'.

   I think Gretchen twigged to the fact that something was amiss by not finding much manure when she cleaned his stall. She notified the barnlord who called Sue.

    I wasn't made aware of it until yesterday morning, when a tired sounding Sue called me. She'd been up till almost midnight, walking Raven, with the barnlords' help. Raven had colicked. The vet (not ours, but still, a good one) had responded within minutes and between the two women and the vet, they pulled Raven through. 

Sue was at work, would I be so kind as to stop by the feed store and pick up some electrolytes?

 "Why didn't you CALL ME??" I begged, feeling a maelstrom of emotions..Raven. Colic. Resentful because she didn't trust me enough to call me? No, that can't be right, no, she knows I don't walk very well due to a war injury, ...."ah, of COURSE I will pick up as many tubes as you want."  But why didn't she call me anyway? Am I being shut out? Have I transgressed in some way? But I don't know what, if anything, and she's always quick to rein me in when I have done in the past.

   "I didn't want to bother you. Three people were plenty and it was late." That didn't make me feel any better but, it is what it is. No use arguing.

     Gretchen, bless her, had caught Raven's colic early. In time. Again.

   When I got to the barn with tubes of electrolytes, I met up with the barnlord and while I don't care for her (she treats me as if I were a moron), I thanked her for helping Sue. She blew it off, saying, "Thank Gretchen, she caught it".

   Lucky for me, Gretchen was there, mucking out a stall. I gave her the biggest hug I could (she may not have felt it..it was 19 degrees at the time, so we're all bundled up like polar bears) but it was heartfelt, and she knew it. I didn't have to say much. She Knows. 

  I then went out to the paddock with a tube of electrolyte. Raven came to me, head down and a bit slower than usual. His eye was...tired. I haltered him. He seemed a bit lethargic. Understandably.

  "Raven, what are you doing, scaring me like that!"

  Like what?

  "Don't you go getting sick like that,you need to drink more. You scared me. Colic!"

  I'm just a bit tired. Mom kept me up all last night.

  "I've brought you some electrolytes."

   I know a wormer tube when I see one. No.

   "It's not wormer. It tastes like apple. It will make you feel better."

   He tried raising his head out of my reach (and he's already tall), but I stepped on the lead rope and he didn't try too hard to fight it. He's a smart horse, but was obviously still feeling the effects of the night's medical treatments.

   With an experienced hand, I put it in his mouth, and he began to try and spit it out before I even depressed the plunger. I gave him the whole tube and he spit out just a bit...and then stopped. 

   That's tasty.

   I then removed the halter. He stood there for several moments, then, inexplicably, walked away. I followed, wondering. What the heck? Oh. He, like so many geldings (and stallions) has a certain spot on which to poop. He raised his tail...and a fresh, steaming pile of NORMAL manure was deposited at my feet. Lots of green, moist, steaming, beautiful manure. He then turned and came to me, just like always. I love that horse. 


   Ride?

   "Not today, my beauty. You've had a rough night. Mom will be here tomorrow. Maybe then. Right now I want you to drink more water and I'll see you. Be good, big horse. I love you."

   I left the paddock. 

   Sue called me that night from work. My worries about being shut out were needless. She can't call me while she's working and I refuse to call her there unless it's a flat horse emergency. But she called me as soon as she legally could. 

   Later, she called me from her home. We discussed a Probable Future.

   Raven will be 22 in March. We cannot realistically expect him to live forever, and I am probably not being overly pessimistic by thinking that we might be going through this more often in the future. Horses-big ones, like Raven-don't live as long as ponies. Sue said, he might go tomorrow, or he might be around for another ten years. 

   I don't want him to go, no one does. But it happens.

   Fortunately, because we are a member of a horseman's village..one peopled by women who know horses, and are willing to Say Something when they See Something wrong with a horse not their own, Raven is going to be okay. We are lucky to be in a barn that supports that sort of atmosphere. There's not the usual gossip, not the conceit of a few  drama queens/ divas lording it over the less experienced. No, not this time. 

   Keeping one's horse at home has its emotional advantages: seeing him from your kitchen window, having him right at hand at all times, is a wonderful feeling. But one has to leave the homestead for many reasons, and then who is keeping an eye on him? It is exhausting to never have a day off from mucking, feeding, breaking the ice on water troughs or putting on a fly mask. Having many eyes on your horse makes it far easier to keep tabs on him.

   I will never look at another person's horse again the same way. I will always do it with The Horseman's Eye...is this horse okay? I will Pay Gretchen's action Forward. 

  
 

You have to see "Unbranded"

     Horse movies are notoriously unreliable. (I know, an oxymoron). They're too weepy, too syrupy, too unbelievable, just TOO. Sometimes, as in the case of "Secretariat" or "Seabiscuit", the horse is distinctly a side character, merely the base for what was, in reality, a chick flick with horsehair. Up until now, the only horse movie I truly liked was "War Horse". While it had some stretches of incredulity, in general it was probably the best horse movie I'd ever seen.

   Now I've seen another.

   Last night I watched "Unbranded". This isn't a movie. It's a documentary. Produced by a wildcat bunch under the moniker "Fin &Fur Productions", "Unbranded" was funded by Kickstarter!

    "Unbranded" documents the efforts of four Texas A& M graduates to train and ride 10 mustangs across the U.S., from the Mexican border to the Canadian. 

(for my European readers, Texas A&M is an 'agricultural college" in Texas. Students are known as "Aggies". For the life of me, I cannot find what the M stands for unless it's Machinery. I don't know. But I do know that the college is primarily one for students of the land: farmers and ranchers. They have a veterinary college, I think) (The Aggies, too, have an undeserved reputation for being louts and clods. One of the many Aggie jokes is: Why does Aggie football stadium have synthetic turf? To keep the cheerleaders from grazing during half time.)

   The leader of the group, Ben Masters, has a dream...to adopt ten mustangs right off the range, break and train them to ride and pack, and then ride them from one border to the other. He recruits three other graduates. The horses are chosen from bands rounded up by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), trained for 90 days by professionals to accept saddle and bridle, and then off they go.

   They set off from somewhere in Arizona. This is the shakedown part of their so called 'cruise. They stick mostly to game trails and Forest Service roads. Indeed, almost all of their journey is in the backcountry (although I'm certain in some spots they had to be on pavement). As they progress north, you can see the men changing, maturing from college punks to men. As well, the horses change, too. They stop being green broke mustangs and turn into reliable saddle horses. Of course, being that they're riding, you see some incredibly beautiful scenery. You also see some hair raising terrain. You honestly wonder how in the hell did the horses make it across that part. 

    If nothing else, the movie demonstrates the incredible durability, the settled minds, the very essence of what makes a mustang a mustang. Your typical Quarter Horse in the barn would never have made the trip. These horses are TOUGH.  They have good minds. They don't scare at much (except helicopters, dirt bikes and quads...machines used to chase them into captivity.). They're in incredible physical condition and almost all of them made the 3000 mile trip without problems.

   As it's a documentary rather than a scripted movie, much of what's going on in the men's heads is left to the viewer. Still, it's so well produced it feels scripted.
Master's dream was for the same ten horses to go from border to border, with the same four men. You and I, being horsemen, know that Things Happen when horses are involved, and they do. I will tell you that while they ended the trip with ten mustangs, it wasn't with the same ten they began with. One had to be dropped because one of the young men failed to heed Wise Horseman's rule of never turning a horse out wearing a halter. 

 The movie is seamless, carries the plot from start to end, and is at once entertaining, informative and very, very good.  

"Unbranded". See it.

The ethics of horse selling, or "Caveat Emptor"

     "Caveat Emptor" is not just a phrase in Latin, it is the foundation of many transactions in the US. It means, "let the buyer beware".  It means, the seller of something is under no obligation to disclose certain things about the thing you are buying. In most cases it applies to used cars. Used (or these days, the phrase '''pre-owned'') car dealers are notorious for being shysters. They will lie to you in a newyorkminute and it is on you, the seller, to check the condition of the vehicle. Again, these days, this means taking the car you're looking at to a reputable car mechanic and having him check it over. 
   Even then, it's no guarantee that the thing isn't going to leave you stranded five miles from the lot.

    The same applies to horses, but even more so, as horses are living creatures. It's pretty difficult to open the hood on a horse and do a compression check. Every horse has a history, sometimes one that affects him for the rest of his life. I have heard too many horror stories about folks buying a horse on the spot, without so much as a vet check, only to learn later on that the horse has Issues. Sometimes they're game changers.
It's one of the reasons I will never, ever buy a horse at auction (although my Jordan was purchased from one, by the last owner, and I am so grateful she did.) There are too many instances of a horse being drugged on the auction ground, sold on a bid based on watching the horse walk or trot around a tiny pen, only to be found to be a nut job the next day, after the sedative and/or pain killers have worn off. 

   We've all been in the situation where we want to get rid of a horse, for any number of reasons: we can no longer afford him, he's no longer or never was suitable, he has taken you as far as he can. The latter will never be an issue with stuck-in-intermediate-riding-abilities me. I'm old. I understand my capacities. I'm happy being a perennial Advanced Beginner and don't plan on being anything more than the 'happy to be on the back of a good horse' level of rider. However, Raven is trained to second level and Sue is working for that, and I will support her as much as I can.
    There's no crime in selling a horse. We do it every day. We buy them and we sell them. We swap them, we barter, we lease. 

   So what do you do when you know a horse has some sort of medical or physical condition that is so bad that it makes the horse virtually useless...and the owner isn't telling when she puts up the Sale ad for him?

        Above is the listing on Dream Horse for the very first horse I ever leased. I was getting back into horses after a eight year dry spell of being horseless. I wanted to ride again. I wasn't sure, though, if I wanted to own again. So I looked around and found Hank.

     Hank was owned by a young lady (NOT the one in the above picture, or the one who is selling him). The girl...well, I'll call her D. D was no longer interested in horses. She'd been given Hank, along with many lessons with a trainer whom I've written of before, in the hopes that the horse would steer her away from the bad crowd she'd taken up with.

    It didn't work. D showed Hank for a while, then lost interest in him.Daddy kept the horse, why I don't know, but Hank was available for leasing when I wanted one. 

   I should have known early on that there were problems. D wasn't interested at ALL in the horse, not a lick. She had her saddle (a heavy silver encrusted western show saddle) at the barn that I could use. She came out to the barn where Hank lived, ONCE, to show me his paces. She was rude, and hard on Hank. Threw the saddle on his back without bothering to make sure the blanket was smooth and wrinkle free, and yanked the cinch home with one mighty tug. Hank took it all without a whimper. Then she rode him in the arena. He was 'spur stop' trained in Western Equitation, she said, and had won many ribbons in WE. She put him into a "jog" (a trot so slow I could have kept up with him at a walk) and then a "lope", a canter, again so slow that I could have kept up with him at a trot. She rode with her arms stretched straight out in front of her, like they were wood, and had no contact whatsoever with the bit. Oh, by the way, he has navicular. She then handed me the reins to her horse, said See ya, got in her car, and left.
    I never saw her again. I could have done anything to that horse, up to and including killed it, and she wouldn't have turned a hair. 
    Drugs like meth will do that to you, I'm told. If you know what I mean, but since I don't have proof all I can do is conjecture. 

    Hank was gentle as a lamb. He was uncomplaining, one could do anything with him. Up to a point.

   I don't know how to ride Western Equitation the way it is. That meaning, a horse forced to move so slowly, with it's head hanging below it's knees, it's paces so mincing and short you wonder how in the world it manages to move at all. WE people want their horses dead quiet and will go to a lot of lengths to get that. 
    I've ridden in western saddles and am never quite sure what to do. I can't feel anything. While they're comfortable, to me, they seem to encourage a bit of laziness on the rider's part. I honestly feel a bit embarassed to be seen in one, but I have to admit that horn is a nice thing to have when one is trail riding on a frisky horse. 

   So instead of using a bit on him, I put him in a hackamore (English hackamore, which is basically a heavy duty cavesson). And I never rode in D's saddle. I rode him bareback. I ride every horse bareback. I prefer it.
I could never get Hank to move any faster than that slow, slow jog. I could have slept on his back while he was 'jogging'. Canter? I got him to canter, once. That didn't last more than three steps, then he went back to a walk. A dead slow and quiet walk, head down. It was unnerving, his head down so far. It was like being on a barrel without a head. There's a horse here? Really? Later on, when he realized he didn't need to carry it so low, he did raised it up, a bit. But never UP, where I could see it. He never got his head higher than my knees. 

   I'd leased him for about a month when he came up lame. I called Daddy (not mine, D's Daddy, the man who wrote the paycheck.) Will he pay for the vet if I call him out? Sure. But it's probably because he's run out of meds. 
What meds? 
This was the first time I learned he was on pain killers. Strong ones. 
The vet came out and the first words out of his mouth were "Who in the hell is the farrier."
I told him who. "Why in the eff are you using that man, he's a butcher. Look at these feet." I said, I'm not the owner, I'm leasing the horse. "I get more business from that man than anyone else in the entire county." he said.
Well, Hank had been trimmed two days before and had been 'scalped'...his soles pared down so much that you could see pink. 

   But he was also out of meds. I had to call Daddy again,  who said, oh, yeah, I'll get them. 
In a week they showed up, but in the meantime I was unable to ride my leased horse. And I was very bothered by the fact that I'd not been told about the need for medications. 

   When he stopped being lame, started back on his meds, and his soles had thickened, I started riding again.
   But this time, something was wrong. Hank was so very well mannered, so very quiet. But he began to develop a bad habit-that of moving away from me as I was mounting from the block.

   This is a bad habit for a horse. I want him to stand like a statue while I'm mounting and even after I'm on his back, I sit there for a while. I do NOT want a horse to bolt from the block. It's a good way to get hurt. 

   So I called Tonia, the trainer. I wanted her help, please, (and willing to pay for it) to nip this bad habit in the bud.
After telling me how famous she is, she began to question me on what I was doing. How could he be stepping AWAY from me, when I have my foot in the stirrup? Well, I don't mount from the ground. I mount from a mounting block.
   No way! That's what a western saddle is designed for, he's a Western Equitation horse! You're supposed to mount From The Ground.
Well, I ride him bareback.

   NO. NO. NO. He's trained WESTERN EQUITATION. That means a WESTERN saddle, (you idiot, I could hear under her  breath). You can't ride him bareback. NO. You ride him in a saddle for 60 days and then I'll maybe come out and give you lessons.

    Well, this was odd. I never in my life heard a riding instructor/horse trainer tell me that she DIDN'T want my money. Nor do I want lessons in riding Western. This bimbo had 'trained' Hank and now she didn't want to help fix a problem?
She was hiding something. I could hear it in her voice. She didn't want to address a problem she was much to aware of. So she blamed the victim. Me. 

    Eff you, witch. I don't need you or your arrogance. 

    All this time, I'd known that Hank, while he looked QH through and through, was only 1/4 QH. The rest was Appaloosa. He had no spots, save what I thought was a spot on his left hip. It was white and about 6 inches long, three inches wide.

    I learned later on, too late, really, what it really was.

    I began working on Hank's budding habit of moving away from the mounting block. I would give him a treat once I was aboard and didn't ask for him to move away until a minute or more passed. 

    But he got worse. He wasn't even waiting for me to attempt to mount, he was moving  the moment I stood on the top step of the block.

    One day, he was moving and I got aboard in motion. 

    He stopped. I waited for a while, then asked for a walk...and he exploded.
For what seemed an hour but was probably no more than thirty seconds, I was atop a bucking tornado. He was spinning, backing up and bucking all at once. I fell forward onto his neck and hung on for dear life. I was NOT going to fall off underneath those feet.

   Finally he stopped. Two other women had been in the arena and both came over at once. I 'dismounted' (a nice word for half fell, half jumped) onto the ground. I was shaking like a leaf. Hank didn't run away. "What happened?" one of the women asked, "I don't know. I have no idea. I'd just got aboard and he freaked." (by the way, I don't ever wear spurs). "I"m amazed you stayed on!" "Me too!" "He acts like his back hurts".

   Then it dawned on me. That is exactly what the problem was. Hank's back hurt. Badly.
I'd noticed that when I curried his back, he'd flinch. But he's such a stolid, patient, generous horse. He probably has been hurt many times by unwitting humans and has just come to accept it. But I'm a massage therapist. I should have investigated further. I didn't. 

Ordinarily, when I fall off a horse, I get right back on. But in this case, I knew the woman was right. Hank's back hurt, and I was the cause of it.

   In the barn, Jorge, the barn hand, was alone. It's the only way he could relate to me what Hank's problem was without being fired for gossiping..or in this case, telling the truth.

   A year ago, Tonia the Spur Stop trainer, her butcher of a farrier husband, and D decided to go trail riding in the hills. They trailered their horses and Hank to the trail head.
Hank is NOT a trail horse. NOT NOT NOT. He is an arena horse. Being outside a fence is terrifying to him. I learned this when I wanted to walk him off the property into the woods...hand walk, mind you, and he bolted when a robin flew past his nose. Nope,Hank is NOT a trail horse.

   I don't know how long they rode. What Jorge told me is that Hank panicked, reared up, dumping D, and flipped over backwards....down a steep rocky slope. I remembered hearing about it. I have no idea how they got him out of the predicament. 

   What I do know is that Hank had/has a broken back. NOT the spine, but the vertebral spinous processes, the parts of the spine that stick up. The white spot on his hip isn't a spot, it's a scar. His back may have healed, but with a few broken spines, that back has got to be tender. By riding him bareback I was hurting him. 

    Apparently the combination of a western saddle and a lot of drugs in his system makes him rideable.
    But he's only that way artificially. 

   I vacated the lease shortly thereafter. I called Daddy and told him so (I never, ever lease or do anything without a contract, so there wasn't much he could do). He sounded...nervous when I spoke with him. He was hiding knowledge,  I could tell. I didn't tell him what I knew. I didn't want him to blame ME for Hank's injuries. By the way, did I want to BUY Hank?

  NO. I didn't say why. He KNEW. 

    It's a shame because I doubt the girl in the picture above, the one who's selling him, knew about the accident when she bought him from Daddy. (D, I believe, is already in prison or in rehab, I don't know. Meth will do that to you, so I'm told). I doubt she's ever ridden bareback a day in her life. 
   She is telling the truth about Hank being gentle. She is telling the truth about him needing medications for his navicular.
But she's not saying a word about his back. 

   She wants to get what she paid for out of him. I'm sure she wants to use the money she gets from him to buy something she can ride without meds. 

   Poor Hank. What he needs is to be retired, permanently. It's not right to continue to keep him on drugs solely to win ugly ribbons. It's not right. He should be considered nothing but pasture jewelry. He's not rideable unless he's drugged. 

   Is that right? No. It is unethical, and cruel, but that is the lot of a horse, sometimes. The girl wants to make money on him, without relaying the truth about Hank's back. 

   I am torn. I am not a veterinarian so I didn't X-ray his back, but I"m a massage therapist that didn't pay attention when grooming him. He'd flinch when I'd curry his back. I didn't pay attention. I didn't know.

   But now I do. But what DO I do? Do I post an ad saying this horse has this issue along with navicular?

   That's a good way to get sued. And Daddy knows lawyers. 

   So I am telling you all. If and when you buy a horse, get it vet checked. THOROUGHLY.

   Poor Hank.

   Poor sweet, kind horse. Nothing but a horse. 

  

Jobs For Cats

    Cats normally are professional goldbricks. Give your average housecat the chance to do some honorable work and he’ll vanish, not to be seen or heard from again until dinner time. However, this is not to say that cats are incapable of employment. Just like anybody else, you must look at your cat’s attributes and form the job for the cat. Here are some suggestions for jobs your cat is capable of performing.

Actor: Like it or not, your cat can lie, and convincingly so. They are superb actors. Witness the next time you come home after a longer than normal absence, way past dinner time. The cat will drag himself into the kitchen while you are trying to get things going for yourself and family. The cat will collapse on the kitchen floor. Eyes closed, sides moving imperceptibly, only the faint flick of a tail tip tells you that the animal is still alive, but just barely. It is on the brink of death from starvation.

Alarm clock:  Dependable, audible, and insistent. These are three qualities that we all desire in an alarm clock. There are problems, though. The cat does not come with a snooze alarm. The only ‘off’ button involves getting up out of bed. And the cat doesn’t care that 3 AM is NOT the time you wanted to get up. It’s the time she wants you to get up.

Building Inspector: Open a cupboard, a closet, a crawl space under the house: the cat will be in it in a flash. If you go into the garage, I guarantee the cat will be in the rafters.

God help you if you remove the floor vents in order to vacuum the heating ducts. I’ve never heard of a cat ending up in the furnace, but I’m certain it can be done.

Carpet inspector: By throwing up on your carpet at least four times a week, always in a different spot, the cat insures that you have your carpet steam cleaned at least once every six months.

Chaperone: Your cat insists that you cannot use the toilet or the shower without his presence. If you have the audacity to lock him out while you’re in the bathroom, he will demand to be let in, loudly enough so that everyone in the house knows what you’re doing.

Commentator: Siamese, especially, are known for this capacity, that of voicing their opinion about everything. Just because they don’t speak a known human language doesn’t mean you cannot understand them when they begin talking. And no animal, including us, can swear as convincingly and satisfyingly as a cat.

Critic:  of everything. If you’re reading the newspaper, he will insist on laying on it. If you’re reading a book, she will insist on being on your lap, in such a way that you cannot turn the page without disturbing her. Television invites several different avenues of critique: sitting atop the tv with a tail dangling or perched on your chest so that her head is right in front of your nose are two of them.

Most annoying of all is the cat who must drape herself along the top of your computer monitor, like mine is now. A perfect spot for an animal that is constantly leaking hair, it usually results in your computer soon being jammed with cat hair.

Exterminator: This is the classic cat job, but these days, it has changed, slightly. Most cats will only catch the most foolhardy mouse, one that has gotten into the house by who knows what route. The cat will toy with the mouse and may even kill it. If she eats it, she will leave parts of it strewn around the bathroom so that you, the half awake, barefooted human will step on the cold, squishy pile of entrails at 2 am. The cat will keep the eaten portions of the mouse in her stomach for approximately two days, whereupon she will throw it up, along with all the rest of her stomach contents, in a spot on the carpet that shows stains to their best advantage.

Food inspector:  When you put food in his bowl, your cat will walk up to it, sniff it from a safe distance, then decide if it meets his lofty standards before he deigns to touch it. If it meets his standards, he will eat it. If it does not, though, rejection comes in several forms. If the cat at least pretends to like you, he will merely turn away and sit down about five feet from the bowl, very politely telling you that it is loathsome. He understands that, being human, you are stupid, but can learn by many, many repetitions of a simple lesson. He gives you time to realize your mistake and rectify it by putting something in the bowl more to his tastes, preferably Copper River King salmon.  If he does NOT care about your self esteem, he will turn around and pretend to cover it, using the very same motion he does when he’s covering what he’s produced in the litter box.

Exorcist: You’ve seen your cat racing around the house for no reason whatsoever? He’s chasing ghosts.

Interior decorator: Cats understand that we humans are strangely attached to things that serve no purpose, (aka ‘collectibles’ or knickknacks) are expensive, or have a sentimental value to us. We have an annoying habit of displaying them on surfaces that are better suited to giving a cat a place to lay down and stretch out. The cat who moves things around on your tables and dressers is well suited for interior design and consultation. If she actually pushes it off the tabletop, she is telling you in the plainest terms that some stuff, like that Swarovski crystal horse,  just should NOT be allowed in the house, and will you kindly dispose of it now that it’s irreparably broken.

 Lab technician: When you and your significant other are being, shall we say, physically amorous, you will feel a pair of unblinking eyes upon your back. Or front. Look up, and there is your cat, watching. She is wearing the clinical expression of someone in a lab smock and holding a clipboard, annotating every move you make. It wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t flicking a tailtip in a slightly amused manner, as if the sight of two naked apes in rut is the most hilarious thing she’s ever seen, but she’s a professional so she’s not roaring in laughter. She IS smirking, though.

Panhandler:  You cannot enter the kitchen without a cat accompanying you. He knows the only reason you are there is to feed him. He may show you where the cat food is kept.  If you don’t give her something (actually, a LOT of something), you will be given the Guilt Trip. (see Actor). Sometimes he will purposefully trip you, and now that you're on the floor, will you please fill up the bowl. 

Plumber: My cats insist on being in the bathroom with me. They insist on having the water tap turned on. They don’t drink, they just watch the water (wasted) run down the drain. In a similar vein, my cats also want to watch the water in the toilet disappear.

Proximity Alarm:  Cats will strategically place parts of their body (usually the tail) directly underneath your feet. This way, when you step on it, they can screech in pain, and you will feel so guilty you will feed them.

Road block:  if your cat places herself in the very center of the aisle, room, or path to wherever else in the house the majority of traffic traverses, your cat can be a road block.  She will be sitting at parade rest, tail neatly wrapped around her feet, head up, eyes shut, apparently contemplating the Buddha while everyone must detour around her.

Security officer: this cat places herself strategically so that she can see all activities in a few very important spots, i.e., she places herself so that she can see the kitchen as well as the couch in the living room. She thus can simultaneously track any activity in the kitchen as well as see when a comfortable lap opens up in front of the TV.

Sex worker:  Anyone who has procrastinated in having their cat spayed will tell you that a female cat in heat is the must erotic, noisy, and obnoxious animal on the planet. If you have never seen a cat in heat before, check Actor, because she will convince you that she is in agony, when in reality, all she wants is to get some. This will go on for at least a week. You will not get any sleep.

The toms are worse: if you have been so irresponsible as to not have your cat neutered, your house, your furniture, everything you own will soon begin to reek of cat piss. He will spray anything upright, including your legs.  He will come home torn and satisfied, or torn and needing vet work, will yowl all night and sleep all day. He’s out there making more kittens, innocent beings that will end up in the animal shelter (unless you want to become a collector).  Neuter and spay your cats.

Surveyor:  Cats have a tape measure in their heads. Just watch the next time you see your cat contemplating jumping onto your counter top. They look, measure, the tail flicking as she does the computations, and then bip! she’s landed precisely on the only spot she can safely do so, and is now leaving paddypaw prints on your just polished table and sniffing in the sugar bowl.

Wild animal collector: not to be confused with Exterminator. This cat, if allowed outdoors, will bring in animals it has no business catching, i.e., birds, snakes, lizards, and shrews. Larger cats may even bring in baby possums, rabbits and squirrels.  All these creatures will be very much alive and alarmed at one, having been captured by a cat and two, brought into the house; and will make determined and destructive attempts to escape. If the cat were capable of handling a video camera, he would film the hysterical antics of the humans trying to not catch a baby skunk and still getting it out of the house.