Hap was twenty-four years old in May, and is still one of the most handsome horses that I know. Not that I am biased, or anything.
Archive for the “Horses” Category
When we moved here, there was a small pen with privacy fencing for the previous owner’s dog, and a few strands of barb wire around what we now call the horse field. We had a larger dog pen built the first month we were here in December 1992. We didn’t get around to building the barn until the summer of 1996, and fenced a little over two acres for the horse field in October 1996. In September of 2000, we fenced another two acres for what we still call the new field, and also fenced an adjacent area to replace our previous dog run. The dog run shared a fence line with the new field. About five minutes are the dog run and new field were finished, I realized we should have put a gate between the new field and the dog run, but could never convince Jack that it was a good idea. When I learned that Lily and Lightning were coming to live with us, I told Jack I wanted to put a gate in so I could take the dogs out to the new field to play fetch without having to put dogs on leads to get them there safely. On our way to the restaurant Sunday, Jack spotted a place that sells Preifert gates. Preifert gates are lightweight and recommended for use around horses. Yesterday morning I called and asked the owner if he had anyone who could install a gate for me. The young man he recommended came by a few hours later to check things out, and then came back this morning and installed our new gate. I am very pleased. It only took nine years. (The four-foot gate to the horse field is to the left in this photo, and the new gate is the one on the right.)
My Little Zombie Pony is just WRONG! (via Craftzine.com blog : My Little Zombie Ponies)
Full Size 1200×798 I just got a call from our neighbor to the west telling me she had seen one of our horses out of our field. I didn’t immediately panic because where one horse goes, the others would follow, and I could see Rags calmly grazing from the window. Even if Hap had jumped out of the field, which Rags couldn’t do, Rags wouldn’t have been so calm about what he would have viewed as abandonment. However, as I expected, I counted three heads almost immediately when I got out to the horse field. I also saw a rider walking near our fence line. I shouted to make sure she was okay and she said she had dismounted voluntarily but let go of the reins. The horse, evidently a dark horse like Hap, had headed home for his barn. So I turned the horses out in the new field for two hours. We’ve had enough precipitation recently there is actually something resembling grass out there.
Every night, Hap is shut in his stall while he finishes his ration of horse chow. Then I go to the barn and let him out to join the others to eat hay at the hay feeders. I’ve been leaving Orion, with some difficulty, at the gate while I do so. Rion has been doing his best to get through the gate with me since he doesn’t feel I should go anywhere without him. This evening, I had let Hap out out of his stall and turned out the barn lights when I saw this small dark shape streaking toward me. I had barely identified it as Rion when he turned and dashed in front of Hap, who was joining the others at the feeder. Hap put his head down almost to the ground, and carefully placed his feet so he wouldn’t squash Rion. I called Rion who changed course again and dashed back to me. Rion seemed very proud of his success in joining me, presumably having found a place a very small dog could go under the mesh fence the separates the dog run from the horse field. Hap has always been quite tolerant of dogs, and I am extremely grateful that he extended his tolerance to Rion tonight. I felt as though my life flashed before my eyes when I saw eight pound Rion on an apparent collision course with an eleven hundred pound horse. The high today was 10F. Days like this make me even more grateful for having electricity (to heat the stock tank) and a cold water hydrant in our small barn. It was brutal taking care of horses without either during the blizzards of 1997-1998. We installed electricity to the barn a year or so later, and kept running hoses out to fill the stock tank in the barn for another winter or so. That changed the day I went to water horses one morning when it was significantly below freezing, and I discovered that Jack had not drained the hose properly when he topped off the spa. (It took several hoses to get to the barn from the house hydrant.) Since we had discussed The Proper Draining of Hoses on several previous occasions, I told him I felt it was only fair that he water the horses until such time as we had water to the barn. I think he found the plumbing contractor within a week, and we had water to the barn within two weeks. On days like this, it helps a lot. Keeping stock watered properly during extended cold snaps is brutal without running water and stock tank heaters. Go to Jack’s weblog to see some photos he took of the horses during the the nightly feeding. Despite the difficulty of taking photos of dark (mainly) horses in the dark, you can determine that we don’t have the usual problem of keeping weight on elderly horses. (I obsess a bit on the subject: our first boarder was an elderly, very thin, Thoroughbred gelding named Dugan. I felt like hanging a sign on him: “This horse gets as much food as is safe for him to eat.”)
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