Category Ranch Life

Almost Christmas

Lynn Scott Leave a comment

Ours is a big family. I believe all are coming to Christmas Dinner and that means 30+ people. That is unless a cousin or two, or some neighbour that we find out doesn’t have anyone to have dinner with, wants to join.

I’m done shopping. Well, at least for the grandchildren and great grandchildren. Our own kids have been a bit difficult to give the “family treasures” and “things I don’t want to throw out” to. The only way I have found to get these things out of my care is to give them to them as “Christmas Presents”.

It is fun hearing the “Oh Mom” reaction when I hand them out but… I know them fairly well and in the end the “junk” I give them is at very least somewhat interesting or useful or worth a laugh.

Our Christmas Party is always full of laughter and I am so very grateful that all of my family treat each other with love and respect. Doubly important to me as I didn’t see that as a child.

The horses are out on winter pasture. The pasture is very good and some are becoming obese. In a couple of days the weather is going to be in the -20s in the daytime. They need to be fat and furry and have good shelter and feed when the Alberta weather is in an Arctic blast. Having watched horses in the natural winter pastures for many years, it never ceases to amaze me how well they can handle cold if given the right environment.

I still need to paint some Christmas cards. I’ll don’t even aspire to be a great painter, LOL, I just like doing it. In fact, lately I think I may be getting worse at it. LOL

Busy time. That is good and I am just grateful to still be able to be busy.

Lynn
“Though he’d be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly”

Dabbler

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Dabbler according to Google AI:

A “dabbler” is a person who takes a casual, non-serious interest in a subject or activity, or a person who tries something for a short time without serious commitment. The term can sometimes have negative connotations, implying a lack of persistence or depth, but it can also describe someone who simply enjoys learning for the sake of enjoyment and doesn’t feel the need to become an expert. 

I may be a dabbler. I need to try a lot of things, enjoy them for awhile and then something else catches my eye and mind.

Well, except for a few things like family, work and horses.

Horses because that has been so since I can remember. I was born loving them. Work because I come from a time when it was a source of pride and accomplishment. And family because I may have the best darned family in the world!

Dabbler – my new label for myself. LOL

From Sphinx To Lola

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Sphinx the black cat disappeared. I was pretty much done searching and calling and crying when who should drag herself up on the deck but Sphinx. We are still not sure what happened to her but she was terribly stressed and a back leg was obviously broken.

Luckily we have a son and daughter in law who are veterinarians. So they got a call at 5:30 Friday afternoon to please stay at the clinic – Friday is usually son Todd’s day off but he had had a busy day, was still at work late and got the bad news that his mother was bringing her cat up in 2.5 hours.

A surgery and 4 weeks later we got a call that we could come and pick HIM up.

I promptly put on my “smart-ass” cap and texted back that we didn’t ask for a sex change.

I was promptly advised that he definitely has a penis.

So she who had been Sphinx for 10 years is now Lola. Although I can’t say I really understand all the pronoun discussion lately it just isn’t going to be easy to change to calling her him. So Lola it is.

Lola has to be confined for a couple more weeks. We can’t have her in the house as she sprays on the furniture. She usually lives on the deck or in the barn but that isn’t really a safe place for her to continue to heal that leg. So… we went in search of a nice pen to put her in on the deck. We found a really good one.

Suppose I am going to have to get a couple of hens when this is all over.

Emotional Rollercoaster

Lynn Scott Leave a comment

May 5, 2023. Cinco de Mayo.

Early Morning.

As I walked out to check on the mares I saw Maggie staring at me from around the corner of the big shed. The red flag in my brain popped up right away. Maggie is probably in labor. She is due and ready.

As I approached the gate to the back paddocks, Rio comes on the gallop. She isn’t due to foal for a couple more weeks. I have been feeding some oats and she usually comes pretty promptly but it was pretty easy to see she was more excited than usual.

Maggie’s daughter Pricilla was the giveaway. She was at the other side of the shed. She would look at me and then look over to where Maggie was behind the shed. Then look back at me and then back again to Maggie. I knew I had missed the foaling. Now to hope all went well.

As I rounded the corner, Maggie comes to meet me. “Nothing here to see but perhaps you brought oats,” was her attitude. But… her belly was not the giant barrel she has been packing around the last few weeks. The moment she saw that I saw what was standing just a few feet behind her, she gave up the guise and we both went to see the new baby, a very colored, big dun and white colt with the cutest head. He needs a bit of “unfolding” (it can take a few days to stretch out those tendons after being all curled up in what was becoming a pretty cramped space) but he is quite beautiful and healthy.

Meeting new baby horses is always a thrill for me. I love them. I also have a strong sense of responsibility as I also know that I cannot keep them. I am old. If I choose to raise babies, I must find them good homes. They will probably outlive me. For a horse, not getting to a “good” home can mean not getting the care and training required to become a trusting and valued partner to a caring human. A scroll down most social media sites that have horses for sale will confirm this observation. Educating a young horse requires some skill and a lot of experience. Our little fantasies about them becoming well trained in spite of our inexperience but love for them can be a death sentence for them just as being trained by someone who doesn’t feel a bond with them can eliminate a good future for them too.

I like to encourage young people to love horses and learn to ride. The young lady who was scheduled to come and ride this afternoon arrived and, of course, we went to see the baby and then noticed that the old mare Josie who, along with Twenty can go up the pasture didn’t come home with Twenty.

We saddled Eddie and Karl and after checking that my young riding partner wasn’t going to be traumatized with what we might be coming upon when looking for a 28 year old mare who didn’t come home with the herd, we headed up the pasture. The further we rode without seeing her, the more convinced I became that this wasn’t going to end well and once again offered my young friend an option to go back home. She assured me she was up to what we might find. I am actually quite prepared for and ok with old horses spending their last hours on their pasture. One thing ranch life teaches you is that where there is life, there is death.

As we approached the last draw where her body could be hiding, up over the hill comes Josie, all alert and her mane blowing back in the wind, ears pricked forward towards us, whinnying a greeting. She loped over to us.

She is the grandmother of the baby who was born that morning. I was happy that she got to come home and greet her new grandson.

There were a lot of emotional highs and lows this Cinco de Mayo for me, for the whole herd here at the ranch and for my young friend.

Ed, Hawk and Marco

The Herd Has Opinions

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Beautiful day this December 18. It is not always that way here in central Alberta so I decided to go on one of my fairly rare winter rides. Eddie is living in the corrals as he is quite convinced that he is the “great leader”. And he isn’t good at it.

Some history.

Dreamweaver wasn’t getting much riding and he is way too nice a horse to be just left in the field so we lent him to some folks for their girl to learn to ride. He was gone for a couple of years. When he returned we had just bought a new horse, Rio, a mare. We put the two of them in together away from the other horses for a couple of weeks just to make sure we weren’t bringing in some virus our herd wasn’t immune to.

We didn’t quite realize that Eddie was fuming mad about the new mare being with Dreamweaver.

One day my old brain forgot to tie the gate correctly and Ed got out with Dreamweaver and Rio and beat up Dreamweaver. Bad. We were shocked. None of our horses have acted like that. Not even the stallions.

The upside of this is that Eddie being in the corrals is pretty handy for going for a ride. The herd is living out on the half section.

Saddled him up. Got on. Eddie really wanted to go out on the pasture where the herd was so off we headed. Beautiful day. The ravens came to check us out. We passed Rio by the waterer. No big deal. Eddie loves her and certainly would have liked to stop for a visit but he continued on when I asked him to.

The horses were west of the bedding pile so we went the other way down to the end of the silage pit. Suddenly I heard a horse galloping up behind us. Hawk. The youngest gelding who is way below Ed in the pecking order.

We stop to visit Hawk and every time Ed turns to head towards the herd over the hill, Hawk stands in front of him and challenges him. I’m confused. Hawk doesn’t challenge Ed. He is usually very cautious around Ed. Next thing I look and Rio who is the all-time meekest horse in the herd is 10 feet away approaching with her ears pinned back.

Ed isn’t really concerned. Would have happily pushed past both of them and headed over the hill. By now the yearling filly has joined us and is bucking and kicking and playing around us. I decided to lower my risk of getting kicked by heading out to the pasture.

We can head out to the big pasture but there are 2 very out of character horses making sure we don’t head up over the bedding pile.

In the end I can think of no answer for this strange behavior other than the herd has decided that Ed is not welcome. I’m sure given his freedom Ed would be over the hill and enforcing his rules but it was really interesting.

They are pretty brave when they know I have control over Ed. And they certainly know he is a danger to some of the herd members. And… it appears that my young Hawk horse is working his way up the herd of broodmares and old geldings. Hope he is a better leader than Eddie.