Pray to What Earth

Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong,
Which asks no duties and no conscience?
The moon goes up by leaps, her cheerful path
In some far summer stratum of the sky,
While stars with their cold shine bedot her way.
The fields gleam mildly back upon the sky,
And far and near upon the leafless shrubs
The snow dust still emits a silver light.
Under the hedge, where drift banks are their screen,
The titmice now pursue their downy dreams,
As often in the sweltering summer nights
The bee doth drop asleep in the flower cup,
When evening overtakes him with his load.
By the brooksides, in the still, genial night,
The more adventurous wanderer may hear
The crystals shoot and form, and winter slow
Increase his rule by gentlest summer means.

By Henry David Thoreau.

We hope each and every one of you has a peaceful, beautiful, Earth-loving day.  Please visit the Earth Day website for A Billion Acts of Green.  Try one!  You might like it!

The Achilles Heel.  This phrase often refers to something that leads to a downfall.  Over the past year, I’ve often questioned whether my horse affliction has become my Achilles Heel.   What?!  I know, I know… Let me explain.  As you know, I have been obsessed with horses from the time I could talk.  Many of the best times in my life have been those that involved horses.  In fact horses gave me my life, in a sense.  When I was young, I was invisible.  Shy, awkward…I had no particular talent and shied away from being seen.  When I first fell in love with Starfinder, my parents (wisely) decided her purchase would be conditional upon me entering the show arena with her.  My intoxication with that horse overcame my fears and that moment was when my life changed.  I learned so much about myself and I came out of my shell.  And I actually was GOOD at something, for the first time in my life.  Competing with horses defined ME for a long time. 

Fast forward 10 years.  I made a decision to give up showing to go back to school.  I had a great job that afforded me the luxury of owning a horse - I gave that up too.  I moved off of the farm and into the city.  I had a plan and a goal, and my goal was to become educated, self-sufficient, and able to return to the life that I loved on my own terms without being dependent on my family for financial support.  Thus far that dream hasn’t come to fruition.  The economy tanked and now I’m stuck in a job that does not afford me the luxury of owning a horse, let alone showing one.  I’m stuck in a house that is barely amenable to having active dogs, let alone fields of grass with munching horses.  And I’m still clinging desperately to the one horse that I’ve managed to keep in my life.  

I’ve been accused many times of not knowing when to quit.  I’ve watched countless people come and go from the horse world.  I’ve seen a few stick around – but those are the people that make a living at it or are incredibly wealthy.  Neither of those describe me.  I’m just a horse loving girl that has kept hanging on for all these years.  But at what expense?  I’m constantly running at a financial deficit and can’t plan for the future because of Tiny.  I look at her and I see her talent wasting away as she ages before my eyes.  And I’m not even “living the dream” – I’m living some B-rated version of it where Tiny lives miles away and can’t remember what grass looks like.  Is there a time when you raise the white flag and surrender?  Am I holding on to hope or holding on to the past?  I can’t tell, but I know it breaks my heart every time I look at her.  Because I know that she’s not getting any younger, and unless something dramatically changes, every day that passes is one day closer to the end of my dream. 

 I might sound spoiled and ungrateful (at least I HAVE a horse, right?) and that’s not how I mean to sound.  I don’t regret holding on to Tiny for a second.  But I wonder if it was the “right” thing to do.   Would I be closer to my dream if I had let her go 8 years ago?  Would she be winning National titles and being loved on by a little girl that gives her carrots every day?  Would I be freer to find a job if I weren’t so bogged down with responsibilities?  And would I be less stressed and happier if I weren’t under the constant strain of financial burden?  Maybe by holding on to the past, I have forfeited my future.  Over the past year of tumult, I have asked myself these questions over and over.  And as I contemplated them again recently, it hit me.  What if this is it?  What if I never have those things that I dream of?  It’s time for me to begin living the life I have NOW, not living for the future that might never come.  Because, after all, what I’ve got isn’t really so bad….

Hey! How about you stop the pity party and hit the trails with me?

This week’s challenge was a hard one to come back to after my break!  Anyone who knows me KNOWS the kitchen is not a safe place for me to be.  And recipes?  Hmph.  But as I recovered from my initial panic then procrastination, I thought maybe it was time to make some of  Tiny’s favorite peppermint cookies.  So here goes!  Be gentle, I haven’t done this for awhile.  =)

Peppermint Horse Cookies

2 cups flour

1 cup oats

1/4 cup molasses

10 crushed peppermint candies

1 tsp peppermint oil

3/4 cup water

Mix oats and flour together, then add molasses.  Add peppermint oil then add water slowly until mixture becomes a sticky dough.  Fold in peppermint crumbles and add more water if necessary to achieve doughy consistency.  Bake at 350 for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

As always, Tiny loooooves her cookies.  She gently takes the first cookie…

….Then she quickly becomes the Cookie Monster!

Things on the horse front have been pretty quiet.  I opted to move Tiny from Emma’s place in December, for a number of reasons.  After I moved in August, it became a lot more inconvenient to go ride as she was now more than 30 minutes away from my house.  Plus, going to visit your horse that lives 3 houses down from the ex-boyfriend that you’re trying to get over isn’t very conducive to healing.  Combine all that with Emma’s new life – which doesn’t really involve a lot of horsing around – and you get a lonely Michelle that doesn’t see her horse enough.  Soooo… I opted to move her.  I’m lucky enough to live on the East side of Orlando, near where there is about as much green space as you can hope to find in a city.  I felt that I’d have lots of options to choose from that would put Tiny closer to me and allow us to resume the fun we used to have – plus maybe I could meet some new horse friends.  HA!  I learned lots of things during my barn hunting, among them:

• *Apparently barbed wire fencing is considered “horse safe fencing” in a number of facilities in Orlando.  Um…do these people even LOOK at their horses after bringing them in, or are they just the luckiest collection of horse managers in the world?  Don’t know, don’t want to find out.
• *Barrel horses (and apparently mares in general, at least according to one barn owner) are discriminated against here.  As in banned.  Actually, unless you have a hunter or a dressage horse, you pretty much experience some level of discrimination at many places.  Ok, I guess these barn owners must be independently wealthy if they can turn away any boarders in this economy.
• *The term “full board” doesn’t necessarily include lots of things.  Like supplements, or blanketing, or cleaning water buckets, or fly spraying, or even feeding/turnout at one ridiculous place that somehow managed to con people into thinking they were getting a great deal even though they were paying way more than most real full care barns. 
• *Speaking of full board, I had several quotes from barns that were greater than $750 for full board NOT including training.  And these were not Roberts Quarter Horses type barns.  They were acceptable, at best.  And yes, they had a number of clueless doofuses that happily shelled out the equivalent of a second mortgage to keep their horse in an overpriced, grassless desert.  Um, hello?  You can BUY a property for that price and keep your own horse, and hey, maybe even charge some OTHER doofus ridiculous fees to keep their horse there too.  See?  Win-win.  Maybe I should consult these morons and charge them exhorbitant fees for my services because they are apparently going home from the barn and rolling around in their boatloads of money.
• *Grass is at a premium.  Like, if you want grass you gotta sell your soul to get it.  And you pay.  Lots. 
• *And those people that HAVE grass in their turnouts?  Oh, they’ll do ANYTHING to keep it.  Including telling you that horses don’t need to be turned out every day.  Or that 2 or 3 hours is sufficient.  Ok, I had show horses for years.  I know a lot of people don’t believe in turnout or a lot of it.  I don’t agree with that philosophy, but AT LEAST those horses are on a strict riding and training regimen NOT standing in their stalls for the remaining 22 hours per day. 
• *I had one brilliant barn owner try to convince me that horses don’t even need grass.  Lady, I spent five years doing a Master’s degree in herbivore nutrition.  Uh, yes.  They do.  Or at the very least, lots and lots of high quality hay.  They are GRAZERS!!! …Sigh.

Consensus is that I was really lucky (no, make that REALLY lucky) to find Emma six years ago.

So after visiting all these charming little places, I finally settled on a place that was very close to my house (5 minutes drive!) and seemed relatively safe.  Nice barn, well kept, kind of in my price range, lots of activity.  The downside?  No grass.  Not even a blade of it.  They do provide high quality hay though, so that was the compromise I settled for.  I can take Tiny next door to a large field and hand graze her, which I often do.   She doesn’t like it though.  I can tell she doesn’t get the attention she got from Emma, even with all the kids around.  She looks for me and when I come to see her she is excited.  Gotta say that’s good for the ego, but it pains me.  She couldn’t have cared less about me when she was at Em’s place.  And she misses her friend Abby.  She’s gone through two buddies in her time there and they both beat her up.  She despises being put out alone and does nothing but pace the fence all day long, especially since there’s no grass to distract her. 

Soooo….we move again.  Sigh.   I’ll keep you posted.

Once again, it’s time for Thankful Thursday! I hope this post inspires you to consider the things in your life that you are grateful for. If you have a blog, consider posting about it there and link back here. If you don’t have a blog, please feel welcome to comment here on what you are grateful for in your own life. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing, then just take a few moments to reflect on all that you have. If you’d like to tag other bloggers that participate, feel free to do that.

A lot can change in a year.  And the time can fly by in a whirlwind that sucks you down and out and before you know it you’re off the track you were once on.  It’s been 296 days since my last post.  Since the last time I even logged on to this beloved website (or that of SlobberDog).  And since the last time I opened my Outlook folder to check my blog subscriptions, address comments, or generally attend to this adventure I undertook a couple of years ago.  This hellish year has included (but is not limited to) the near loss of my love-cat, Milo; a terrifying health scare for me and another for my dad;  a relocation followed by 2 months of internet shortage; Tiny’s relocation to a place neither of us is satisfied with; a job transfer that fell through, thereby exponentially increasing my financial stresses; the final fracture in a relationship I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in; and most recently a computer virus that has rendered my trusty old dinosaur of a computer nearly inoperable.  I can only hope that some (or maybe most!) of my loyal readers will welcome me back to the world of blogging.  The barrage of events that have unfolded over the past year of my life have drained my creative energy, but it’s trickling back and I’m going to try to get back on track with this.  I have missed this blog, and all of you, more than I realized.

So here goes!  Thank you so much to each of you that is reading this post.  Thank you for supporting me and coming back after my extended absence.  I hope that you will not be disappointed.

As some of you may know, my cousin Jenn moved to Vermont a few months ago.  I was so surprised to get a package from her for Tiny a few weeks later!  Apparently she ran into this adorable 10 year old entrepreneur – Emma –  at a local feed store, and the treats she was selling looked so good that Jenn was inspired to pick some up for Tiny.  These delightful treats came bagged with a cute tag and a note describing Emma’s venture.  This little girl is a true animal lover!  Her goal is to get a lap top so she can expand Emma’s Sweet Nibblets beyond her local market.

For the record, Tiny (and I) gave these treats two thumbs up!  They were chewy, tasty, and healthy.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a photo of Tiny devouring them because they were gone in the blink of an eye.  But they were definitely well liked!  I hope that Emma succeeds in her venture and is able to get a laptop and expand her business.  I’m always appreciative (and amazed by) kids that are so talented and show so much initiative!  If you’d like to contact Emma about her treats or her business, please let me know and I can give you her email address.

Whew!  This week was a challenge…I had a clear idea of what I wanted to photograph, but between prior commitments and bad weather it never materialized.  My “cheat” was to abandon my self imposed horse requirement and pull from the archives, but even that has proven difficult due to some memory glitches with my computer, who is not presently very happy with me…  Hope you appreciate what I was able to pull out 11th hour…

This photo was taken on a trip to Alaska several years ago.

This photo of the South African flag was taken at the jail on Robbin Island, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was housed for many years.

Check out Sunday Stills for other entries, as well as Laughing Orca Ranch, The Skoog Farm Journal, All Horse Stuff, and Baba Yaga’s Mirror,  all of whom frequently participate in the challenge.

Thankful Thursday is going on hiatus for a little while, but will be back soon! Stay Thankful!

I was wandering through the displays at the Equine Affaire in April, when a large poster caught my eye. Of course, being a spot lovin’ Appaloosa girl, the photo of a striking blue roan horse with a distinctly patterned coat attracted me to the booth. However, this was no Appaloosa group – it was the Nokota Horse Conservancy. I’d never heard of the Nokota horse before and was intrigued, becoming even more so as I read about this fascinating breed.  Nokotas originated in North Dakota and have survived for more than 100 years in the Little Missouri River Badlands, dodging government sanctioned roundups and culls.   Eventually several bands of Nokotas were accidentally trapped in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park during its creation, and thus the unusual breed has been preserved.

These mares exhibit typical Nokota coloring; Photo courtesy of François Marchal

Nokotas are a variable mix of blood.  Some of these beautiful horses descended from horses owned by Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux Indian chief.  Nokotas have been crossbred over the years to a variety of horse types; including draft, Thoroughbred, and stock horses.  As a result, they vary in size and type.  Colors vary and can include any shade, but blue roans are the most common.  This is also one of the only breeds (the only one I know of) that can include horses with spots (a la Appaloosa patterns) or Paint markings.  This likely results from the interbreeding of the feral horses with Indian ponies back in the 1800′s.

In the 1980′s, the National Park Service began removing the last remaining Nokota horses from the Park and, for the few that remained, introduced several new stallions to the herd in an effort to alter the horses’ type.  At this time, two brothers from the area stepped in.  Frank and Leo Kuntz purchased a large number of horses and created the Nokota Horse Conservancy in an effort to preserve this fascinating breed of horse.  Since that time they have created a breed registry and brought attention to the colorful Nokota history.  Another registry, the Nakota Horse Association, was also developed to recognize the breed.  According to Wikipedia, the last traditional type Nokota was removed from the wild in 2000, so the responsibility of ensuring these horses’ futures lies in the hands of organizations like these.  Perhaps I have a soft spot for these little-known equines because of their historical similarities to my much beloved Appaloosa.  Or maybe it’s because I tend to fight for the underdog.  But either way, horse lovers need to hear about these uncommon gems and spread the word.  The sustainability of their future lies with us.

A few weeks back I heard about a terrible vehicle accident involving a horse trailer in Ohio.  The truck’s front tire failed and caused the vehicle to strike a tree and overturn.  This sort of story is a nightmare for any traveling horse owner.  I used to be the primary driver of our rig for many years and the responsibility of those 11 lives (6 horses, 3 family members, and 2 dogs) is a huge weight to bear.  The fear of crashes like the one I mentioned is a great reminder to keep vehicles in good operating condition and stay on top of preventative maintenance.  We always kept our records in order, vehicle registration and insurance information in a handy spot.  However, one thing we DIDN’T ever do was create ICE (In Case of Emergency) information for any of our animals.  The article that I read about the accident mentioned this topic and it’s a great idea.  We often create ICE for ourselves and our family members – why NOT our horses?  If we are incapacitated or killed in a vehicular accident, what would happen to our animals?  The following are some great tips on creating ICE, taken from the article on TheHorse.com:

• Include each horse’s age, breed, and sex and a current photo of each
• Vaccination records, health information, health certificates, Coggins tests
• Descriptions of health conditions and list of medications used to treat them
• Contact information for horse owners, haulers, and an “at home” contact in case of emergencies
• Power of attorney – this is a big one I’d never thought of.  This legal document allows a third party to make decisions regarding the care of the horse, in the event that the owner is incapacitated in the accident. 

We always kept a zippered 3-ring binder in our horse trailer with a packet for each horse:  original registration papers, Coggins test, health certificate, transfer of ownership all enclosed in a clear plastic protector.   It would have been easy to add the ICE information to each packet.   Make sure the binder is clearly marked so that anyone looking for information could easily find it and it’s best to keep in an easily accessible location. 

No one wants to imagine a worst case scenario with their horses.  However, those of us that have hauled enough miles will usually experience or know of someone who has experienced a tragic accident.  Offhand, I can think of 4 separate incidents of horsemen I know being involved in horrible accidents on their way to or from shows.  It happens.  And it’s a great idea for horse owners to be prepared for that possibility.  Even if you don’t haul your horses, it’s likely that you drive with your dogs in your car and this great idea applies to them too!  You can put ICE in your cell phone – just tag the name ICE horse or dog.  There are forms and more information available to download at us rider.com.

Happy – and safe – travels!

This week’s topic is “Eyes” and if you’re a regular reader, you know how fond of this topic I am!

Tiny's beautiful eye

My cousin John's dog, Kodi, waiting for visitors

This sheep resides in Western Pennsylvania at Round Hill Park.

 Check out Sunday Stills for other entries, as well as Laughing Orca Ranch, The Skoog Farm Journal, All Horse Stuff, and Baba Yaga’s Mirror,  all of whom frequently participate in the challenge.