It’s too hot to ride…

Well, not really.   I am too lazy to ride because to ride in this hot weather, I’d have to get up at around 5am.  So, it isn’t too hot too ride, it is just too hot to ride during my convenient times to ride.

Anyway, I’m not riding or doing anything strenuous outside for most of the day lately.  So, a ‘day in the life’ right now is fairly boring.  I’m working while the horses are sweating outside waiting for me to turn on the sprinklers.

Yawn.

But, since many of you think that I’m some wonderwriter who has an incredible dual existence where I miraculously tend to all of my horses daily, ride and groom them all plus work and take care of my family… well…  (fingers crossed behind my back…) Yeah, I do that!  Every day!

Not.

I present to you, honestly,  what I did today.

7AM

Norma brayed at exactly 7am.  She does this every morning at exactly 7am.

If I get out there sooner then 7am (which I try to do because I like my neighbors), I can hear her intake of air as she prepares to greet me.  I’ve learned that if I interrupt her, she ceases her bray mid-breath.  So, that’s what I do.  I walk out of the house.  I hear the donkeyintake and my first words are, “Hi Norma!”

The “Hi Norma” excites everyone.  The mares snake their necks and bite each other as they buckykick migrate from watching the front door as if it was a ticking bomb, to moving to the back of the barn where they can watch me organize ‘the morning feed’.

All the mares plus Wrigley were at the back of the barn watching me rapt as if I was about to announce the winner of AMERICAN IDOL.

7:15AM

All the horses have been fed.  The ponies and Norma are quietly eating in the same eating formation they’ve had for the past 17 years.  Finn and BG are eating quietly next to each other.

And then there are the mares…

The mares are now pushing each other away from their piles in a ridiculous dance of power.

If you can believe this, the mares don’t have a leader.  Unbelievable.  They haven’t worked it out.  You see, Tess was the herd leader for years.  Then, I put Remi in with them and it all went kaflooey.

I swear, they circle-eat.

Remi is the boss of Tess, Tess is the boss of Sam, Sam is the boss of Remi, Remi is the boss of Gwen, Gwen is the boss of Sam.

Oy.  They circle all the piles, pushing each other away until somehow they finally settle.  It is ridiculous but I kinda like to watch it so I’m leaving it this way for now.

8AM

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho…

NOON

At noon, I give the horses their supplements.  But, today I decided to give them the natural supplement of grass and weeds.  Yup, I let them out.

Usually, I only let out a few at a time.  But today my resistance was down because they all gave me ‘that look’ – so I let them all out.

To be clear, I’m not completely daft.  I did not let the ponies/Norma out.  Instead, I attached Norma’s grazing muzzle to her resigned face and let the shorty trio into the empty pasture next door.  They covet their nextdoor pasture and stare at it longingly (which makes no sense because they used to live in that pasture which they now covet – and when they lived there, they used to look longingly into the pasture they now have…).

1PM

Gwen will always sneak up to the apple tree for a good harvest.  She is quite skilled and can fleece a tree of all of its fruit in a matter or moments.  I always have to watch her or there will be NO apples left within my picking range.

As expected, Gwen meandered consciously to the apple tree while trying to appear innocent.  I knew it and went outside just as she had about 10 little applets in her mouth.

I yelled, she gulped and ran (I have to be careful to yell after she has most of it swallowed).

I’ve gotta hand it to her.  Gwen has the apple fishing thing down.  She is the queen.  No one can touch her.

While Gwen smacks her lips, Remi, Wrigley, Sam and herself munched on the back lawn.

Tess had the front lawn all to her grand dam self.  Figures.  She is the smart one.  But, she’s also the witchy one and no one else really wants to graze with her.

2PM

I heard the apple tree shaking again so I ran downstairs to shooo Gwen away.

Alas, to my surprise, it was merely stumblebums Finn and BG.  I don’t worry too much about them robbing the apple tree.

Finn is totally inept at apple fishing.  He knows this about  himself and basically just hoovers the ground for remnants of Gwen’s hoard.  On the other hand, BG knows that apple harvesting has something to do with putting her nose into the branches.  But, after that, she’s pretty well lost.  They cannot do much damage before they lose interest so I let them be.

4PM

I go outside to prepare for Leslie to come by and work with Wrigley.  If I feed everyone early, they are happy and content and I don’t have to run interference with company around.

So, I walked outside just in time to see all of them ripping apart the hay bale pile I had covered and hidden – or so I thought.

First of all, I never have any hay outside for exactly this reason.  However, this time, my hay stacker ran out of time and just left about 8 bales in front of the hay barn – not in it.

So, I covered the pile with plastic and used my hand weights to hold down the plastic.  I also put pallets around and some shovels on top for good measure.

Silly me.

All 7 horses were standing calmly around the now destroyed stack, munching calmly in their own spots.  The top bales had been bitten like a pack of piranhas had swarmed.

Great.

Here comes me swinging a rope and stomping  my feet.

They all moved over a few feet and kept eating.

Oh!  I was MAD.

They were laughing through their hay grins.

Them:  “Ha Ha!  Look at her wave her little arms and stamp her little feet!  This hay is good, isn’t it?  Much better than the kinds she feeds us.”

ME:  It is EXACTLY THE SAME HAY THAT I FEED YOU!  IT IS JUST OUTSIDE.

Them:  “That isn’t possible.  This hay that we have stolen here is much more sweet!”

Now I was really mad.

Me: (Giving my best Glenn Close impression) You can’t IGNORRRRREEE ME!

Them:  “Sure we can!”

And so it went…  I marched into the barn and got the halter.

Me:  Aha!  I’m not playing around any more!

Them:  “Oh, so you’re serious…”

Me:  YEEESS!

Them:  (mares sauntering back into their paddock)  “OKOK, don’t get so huffy… we’re going…”

I let Finn, BG and Wrig stay out.

5PM

I know Leslie is coming to work with Wrigley soon so I went out to check the lawn trough.

Bone Dry.

Finn saw me at the water trough and he ran over.

Hmmmmm.  Somebody is thirsty, eh?  I say to Finn.

Finn:  “No thanks to you,” as he brushes by me and dunks his whole head into the water.

BG sees Finn running and she runs too and then Wrigley runs – and then I run for cover!  Sheesh.

Anyway, Finn and BG put their noses into the trough and drink the fresh cold well water faster than it can fill.

Poor Wrigley, he just waits.  Made me think of high school…  The cool ones are drinking at the fountain while the ‘not quite in the group’ one orbits on the outside.

6PM

Everyone is fed.  Leslie has taught Wrigley.  I didn’t get as much work done as I was supposed to have gotten done so I continue to work.

While it is cooler, I attach the truck back onto the trailer which makes me even more behind in my work.

7PM

I open the mail.  Wow!  I have two packages!

One is a lovely book about a dog who helped a soldier upon his return from Iraq.  A fellow reader and owner of HOOFPRINTS sent it to me for Hubby since she knew he is an Iraq war veteran.  Very sweet.  You should check out her fun and informative, very unusual horse gifts and books at her website.  (She also has a TON of stuff if you are a farrier.)

I was touched.  I don’t often get surprises in the mail.  Yippee!  Like Christmas!

The other package was my Human 24-day trial supply of Chia.  I got it because Chia is supposed to be so good for humans, too.  Since it worked so well for my older ponies (filled in their topline and they look great!), I thought I’d give it a go.

I ordered the bars, strawberry, raspberry, cranberry and blueberry .  Usually I hate bars because they are too huge, too dense and too sugary.  But, these are thin which is a good start.  The ingredients are:  apple puree, apple concentrate, ‘whichever fruit flavor you order’ concentrate and Chia seeds.  That’s it.

So far so good.  I ate a raspberry flavored bar and I liked it!  I will eat one every day and see if I notice a change in my topline.

Here is the link if you want Chia for you or your horse.

8PM

I wrestle with the idea of that Chia seed bar being my dinner or if I need to cook something.  Sigh. I decided to steam some veggies.

Hubby is out of town so the kitchen is lucky to even see me…

9PM

I finished the laundry, cleaned the kitchen, defrosted some chocolate mousse that my step-daughter made and I’ve snuggled into the soft chair in front of the TV to eat it.  I contemplate opening an individual little bottle of wine but decided against it.  It would have been delightful with the mousse.

I passed my office on the way to bed and I checked to see if there were any Bucket Fund donations… there were.  So, I wrote back my thank-yous and then shut down my computer.

10PM

Two good books and lights out.  I can hear the dogs snoring downstairs.

My life may not be very sexy, but it’s normal, goofy, sometimes difficult, often times funny and generally pretty good…  Probably just like yours.  <smile>

 

HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!

 

 

 

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.