Friday, February 10, 2006, 20:52
Slip-Sliding Away. . .
I am lucky that I made it back up to the house Thursday night when I went outside to give Isabelle and Kajun more hay and to check on their water.
The predicted snow started around 4:30 p.m. Thursday, and it fell at a steady rate. Driven by a strong south wind, it was really cold and miserable outside for a while. By the time it stopped snowing later in the evening, about three inches had accumulated on the ground.
Just enough snow, I'm sorry to say, to hide the icy patches.
Which is why I feel lucky that I made it back to the house.
I carried hay out to Isabelle's pasture without any problem, and I managed to carry warm water out to her water bucket, too, without any problem.
I am always tense carrying a bucket of water when it is slippery outside because I entertain vivid mental images of my feet slipping out from under me, the bucket flying up in the air, and the water cascading down on top of me.
I dumped the water into Isabelle's bucket, and I was heading back when the problem occurred.
I was almost to the fence when I hit an icy spot. My feet slipped out from beneath me backward and I landed face-down in the snow -- almost right underneath Isabelle's feet.
The filly, to her credit, planted her feet and spun away from me. But as I scrambled up again, I fervently hoped she wouldn't launch a playful kick. Not when I was so close to her feet.
She didn't.
Instead, Isabelle ran a few steps and then turned around and looked at me mistrustfully, as if she expected me to fall down again at any second.
I carefully made my way over to her, and when she saw that I was going to remain upright, she relaxed and went back to eating her hay.
I was very glad that I didn't hit my head when I fell, and I was also glad that Isabelle kept her feet to herself!
I even managed to keep the flashlight in my hand and didn't have to hunt through the snow for it.
This morning, my little black kitty cat, Juliette, fell down in the snow, too. Juliette fell down on purpose, though.
I was shoveling a path to the barn and out to Isabelle's pasture when Juliette decided to jump on the snow shovel.
I must say, out of all the cats around here, Juliette is the only one who loves to play in the snow.
Juliette jumped on the snow shovel just as I was pushing it forward so that I ended up dumping a shovel-full of snow over the top of her. Juliette, undaunted, rolled around happily in the snow for a few seconds before leaping up to run and cavort in the snow some more.
Juliette is extremely joyful about playing in the snow. She likes to chase snowflakes. And she likes to scamper headlong into the snow, pushing her paws in front of her so that little snowballs roll off the front of her feet. She loves to chase the little snowballs that roll off her feet. The other cats tend to want to stay inside on a snowy day. Not Juliette.
It is still snowing here this afternoon on Friday. Big, feathery flakes that make it look as if we are in the middle of a snow globe. I heard on the weather this morning that Boston and points east are expecting 1 to 2 feet of snow this weekend.
How do they rate? I always figure if it's going to be winter, it might as well snow, because then we'll have snowmelt in the spring to recharge the groundwater. I'd rather have the groundwater recharged than to have to think about drilling a deeper well.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Thursday, February 09, 2006, 20:20
Busted!
There I was this morning, raking up horse manure and tossing it over the fence onto the pile, when I heard -- pop, crack, ziiiiiing!
I looked over toward Isabelle's pasture, and the black filly was standing there shaking her head and snorting and shaking her head and snorting and shaking her head and snorting.
I heaved a deep sigh.
"You broke your halter, didn't you," I said.
For one thing, I could see that blue halter was no longer on the filly's head. And for another thing, I could see the halter itself, dangling from the bolt that holds the gate onto the post.
"I hope you didn't hurt yourself," I said, as Isabelle continued shaking her head and snorting. "I hope you are not standing over there dripping blood. I really hope you are fine, because I don't feel like getting the vet out today."
I finished what I was doing and went over to Isabelle's pasture. The filly was still standing by the fence, waiting for me to come over there. I could not see any swelling around her head or any blood dripping anywhere.
"What happened?" I said. "Did the halter pop you in the ears when it broke? Or was it just that the noise bothered you?"
Isabelle, of course, was not going to tell me.
I turned my attention to the halter. It had broken at the spot where I had wired and duct taped it after Isabelle broke it last fall.
"Now I'm going to have to buy you another halter," I said.
Actually, I shouldn't complain. After I fixed this one the first time, it lasted for almost four months.
It will be a while, though, before I can buy another halter for Isabelle. Probably next week. I don't have any plans right now to go where I can buy a halter for her. If I need to hold her for some reason, I can always slip this halter over her head. It's not that I can't use it at all, it's just that if I leave it on her all of the time, the throat latch would dangle and hang down by her nose.
Isabelle has always liked to poke her head through the fence near the gate, practically from the moment that I first put her in that pasture last August. And I have always worried that she would hurt herself on a gate bolt. Perhaps we ought to nail some boards across the brace structure so she can't stick her head through there anymore.
Maybe I worry too much. But after seeing a horse one time that had rolled over onto a drag left in the pasture and had torn her head up so much trying to get off the spikes of the drag that she had huge wounds all over her face, and in fact, the vet said that if one of the punctures in the bone had gone up a fraction of an inch higher, she would have died instantly -- well, you tend to be able to better imagine what might happen. The rule of thumb about horses is -- if there is something they could possibly be able to get hurt on, they will find a way to hurt themselves.
As for the horse who rolled over onto the drag, the vet spent many hours stitching up the wounds on her face. Eventually the wounds healed with, surprisingly enough, minimal scarring.
I will never be able to forget the sight of that horse, though. I discovered her as I went out to help the stable owner feed and water at the stable where I boarded my horses in the southern part of the state. The horse turned her head toward me, and the grisly evidence that she had hurt herself made me feel faint for a moment. But only for a moment. I turned and ran for the barn, yelling as I went that someone needed to call the vet immediately.
Anyway, for the time being, Isabelle is without a halter, unencumbered by any of the things that humans think horses should have to put up with. It's funny to see her without a halter, sort of like looking at a person without his or her glasses.
It is cloudy today, with a raw, damp wind out of the south. The weather forecast says we will get an inch or two of snow. Just enough, I should think, to make the roads sloppy -- not to mention my kitchen floor from Pixie and I coming in the house with snow on our feet.
LeAnn R. Ralph