Life on an Arabian breeding farm in Capitan, NM.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

An Interesting Day


I woke to a blistering –10 degrees this morning. It’s never been that cold here. I let the dogs out, but the little ones couldn’t go out back because the snow was too deep for them, so I let them out on the front porch, and they went out front. Izzi’s back foot was frozen when she came in, so I warmed it up with my hand. We have three little dogs Izzi (a miniature Poodle/Maltese a friend couldn’t keep), Skye (a Skye Terrier from the pound), and Benji, (a Bichon from Rudy’s mother who died last year). We found Skye at the Humane Society. He was about 10 months old, and terribly frightened. Rudy said he was in the very back of the cage. Poor thing was so terrified he wouldn’t come to anyone. When Rudy brought him home he was so scared of everything, he wouldn’t even go through the front door to go outside. He finally played with Izzi, and slowly but surely became somewhat normal. He’s still neurotic, but not as bad as he was. He’s also much braver. We enclosed the back yard, and he found a way out. I was feeding the horses one day, and here comes Skye. I was never so surprised. The barn is quite a ways from the house, and yet he figured out where to go. He was so proud of himself for finding me. I continued feeding, and took him along in the gator. You’ve never seen such a proud little puppy dog. Eventually I found all the places he skinnyed through, and he was not pleased.

After I talked to Rudy, I piled on the clothes (three layers), put on my boots, and let the chickens out. Well I opened the door for them, but they had no intention of coming out of the hen house. The gator was a little hard to start, but patience won out, and off to the barn I went. I knew I would have to break the ice on Marina’s, and Lance’s water buckets, but the tanks at least were still unfrozen. I fed the first barn row, and when I came to Lizzy she could barely walk. The snow had balled up, and frozen on her feet in a way that she was trying to walk on pointed feet. I fed her, and got the hoof pick. No way was that going to work. I got the hatchet and chiseled off the ice so at least her feet were flat. I fed the rest in the barn, and went to look at Marina’s feet, same thing. It took a while but I got all the mares except for Jazzy, and the little ones. The little ones weren’t as bad so I wasn’t as worried about them. Jazzy was so freaked that she wouldn’t let me near her, so I didn’t push it.


I got hay for the rest of the horses packed in the gator. Both stallions were very well behaved, and I was able to get them on level feet fairly soon. I didn’t even try to chisel Stormy’s feet. I haven’t worked on his feet.  He like the other youngsters didn’t have as much ice so I let him eat, and enjoy. The pasture horses, well forget it. They enjoy their freedom too much. Since they do more walking than the stalled horses, I hoped that what buildup they might have would breakdown.

It had taken longer than usual to feed, so instead of trying to break the ice in the pasture tank, I opted to feed the dogs first. I had one other issue. I had to go to get more hay. I gave the last of it to the pasture horses. Bree, and Pena were shivering. I had to get Pena in the house, and feed the rest of the dogs so I could then let Bree in the house. Boxers are not made for this kind of weather.

I talked to Rudy again and told him about the horses. He suggested that I call Sherry since she came from IL. He was having just as wonderful a morning as I was. He’s at a truck stop outside of Dallas/Ft Worth, and he was supposed to deliver a load in Plainville today. Well the truck stop was now a solid parking lot. People were everywhere. He watched guys trying to get out and lets say it was very interesting. He didn’t need a movie for entertainment, all he had to do was look out the window. He on the other hand, wasn’t going anywhere. He had three flat tires. That took about 4 hours to fix, and he ended up having to buy two new tires at double the price Chuck could have gotten for him. He had called in, and told dispatch he wasn’t going to be able to deliver his load today. There were a few small problems like the highway still being closed, and three flat tires that kept him where he was. He had a spare so he only had to buy two tires (thank you Lord for that). Such fun this is. All I could do was laugh, and tell him it was all his fault. You see, he was going to surprise me for our anniversary, and come home. I told him every time he comes home something bad happens. God willing, and weather permitting, he will be here Friday.

After feeding the first thing I wanted to do was go get hay. Now I’ve never driven the truck in the snow, soooo the plan was to drive the jeep into town to see how bad the roads were. The Jeep wouldn’t start, naturally. Rudy thinks it has a bad injector, whatever. I got out the battery charger (I’m now an expert at this), hooked it up, and went to the truck. I guess I was going to have to learn the hard way how it handles in the snow. Now the starter has been going out on the truck for quite sometime, and in the cold weather it’s very hard to turn the key. Still and all, I haven’t had it not work for me. Well, guess what? It wouldn’t budge no matter how much I told it that it could start. It just wouldn’t listen to me. Ok, let go of your pride, and go and get the pliers. Rudy told me that that’s what he’s had to do in the past during the winter. Well it worked, not the way I wanted, but it did work. I got the key to turn, and turn, and turn, and turn. It completely stripped out. Not only that, but it was on, and I couldn’t turn it off. The radio was working, and it not supposed to happen. More shame, I called Rudy to find out how to disconnect it so I wouldn’t drain the battery. I knew it wasn’t good for it to remain on. Rudy told me what to do, and was going to have Geronimo come to help me start the Jeep.

I got the truck disconnected without much problem. I’m getting pretty good at this mechanic thing. I also tried to start the Jeep. It was doing the same thing it did one night when I went down to Renee, and George’s for dinner. Even with his big Jeep, and jumper cables it wouldn’t start. It can be stubborn that way sometimes. I called Rudy back and told him to tell Geronimo not to come because it wasn’t going to start even with jumper cables. That was actually a good thing because Geronimo had to go rescue his daughter whose car was frozen.  See there is rhyme, and reason to all this.


Ok, here I sit with no way to go get hay. I call Sherry, and the roads are so bad she can’t help. Not only that, she has conference calls, and meetings as she works at home. I then call my neighbor George. His problem is getting up our hill to get me with no weight on his truck. It’s four-wheel drive, but it’s so light he can’t even get out of his own driveway without backing out. No problem I say, I’ll come to him, and when we come back he’ll have plenty of weight in the back. My gator can go anywhere. I love my gator. If I could drive it on the highway I’d take it to town to get hay. For some strange reason I don’t understand, they don’t like off road vehicles that can’t go the speed limit on the highway.  People can be so unreasonable.


Off I go to Georges. He takes me to the Shell, then to the grocery (no coffee, no creamer, and most important, no TP!), and finally to the Circle A for hay. I only get six bales because I’m determined to have a vehicle by the time I finish those bales. They take me home I unload the hay (George helped), and Renee took pictures to prove he actually hauled hay in his truck. They take me back to their house to get my gator. I have to confess I wasn’t sure it would make it back up the hill. I locked the back axel, and off I go. Ok it wasn’t quite that simple. First I had to convince the gator to start again. It wasn’t quite sure about this whole affair. With just a little difficulty I got turned around, and started up the hill. We did pretty well at first, and then I could feel the gator struggling as we came to the steepest part of the hill.  I talked the gator up the steep part, and it was very grateful when the road flattened out. As George said, “Mission accomplished.”

By this time it’s after three, and I’m exhausted. I sit down for a minute to have my first cup of coffee of the day. Rudy calls, and we talk for a few minutes. By this time I have to go, and feed. I want to start early so I will have plenty of time to do the horse’s feet. It had gotten up to 0, but by the time I started feeding it had already started going down. I took my oil spray to spray on the horse’s feet to keep the snow from sticking, and balling up as it had done the night before. I start with Marina. She had already gotten a layer of snow turned ice on her feet. This time it wasn’t as hard to chisel off, thank you Lord. I sprayed oil on each foot, but it was hard going. It was just too cold for the aerosol can to spray. I have to come up with another idea. Marci (chat group) said I could use any kind of grease or oil. If I take my gloves off though, my hand will freeze. Not a good thought. What else can I use? Then it hits me, WD-40. It keeps the gate slides from getting any ice on them, why wouldn’t it do the same for the horse’s feet. Sometimes I scare myself I’m so smart. WD-40 works on everything.


Next I try Ser-Haat. He was very good the last time I worked with him tied up cleaning his feet, so I play with him a little, and then I get the lunge line. It will be easier that way since I know he won’t give in right away. He finally comes to me, and I get the lunge line connected. I tie him next to his dad the same as before, only on the other side so we don’t have to deal with the slab of cement that the waterier is on. He is a little hesitant at first, but we get the job done, and I spray his feet with WD-40. It sprays much better than the oil spray.

Next it’s the back barn mares, and this time Jazzy lets me do her feet. I proceed to the boys, only Ibn wasn’t as good as this morning, actually he was a little bit of a brat, but I got him done, and sprayed. Now the real challenge, the pasture horses. I can see that their feet are not as bad as the other horses, still they should be cleaned, and sprayed. First after I give them their feed, I go to the tank to try to clear out the ice I know is there. I have my trusty hatchet, and start hacking away at the ice. It’s about four or five inches thick. I get the first chunk out of the middle, and keep hacking away at the edges until I have a pretty good sized drinking hole. I know I can’t possibly get all the ice out as by this time I can barely lift the hatchet. My arms are nearly dead. The girls aren’t that interested which means that they’ve probably been eating snow. There’s no shortage of snow I must say.


Now the fun part. I go to Sadie first, and she actually lets me clean one foot, emphasis on one foot. Ok be that way I’ll go to Angel. She also lets me clean one foot. Fine. Here I am trying to make them more comfortable, and they totally brush me off. I get it, they want to be left alone. I’ll leave them alone. Besides it’s now starting to get dark. I take some of the ice I chopped out of the water tank, and put it in the gator. I can boil it, strain it, and give it to the dogs. They have used up almost all my water, and they always drink from the horse’s troughs anyway, so what’s the difference? I feed the outside dogs, and go to put the chickens away. I wanted to give them some extra feed because it’s so cold, and see that I forgot to buy scratch when I was at the feed store. Oh well such is life. I have enough for tomorrow. I also got two eggs for my efforts, frozen eggs that is. I brought their frozen waterier in so I could defrost it over night. I put it on the wood stove, and fed the inside dogs. I tried taking them outside again but their feet kept sticking to the now frozen snow so I just brought them in.


Finally I get to sit down, and have some coffee. I call Rudy and he’s complaining about everything that has gone wrong the last two days. I remind him that God really is looking out for him. He noticed the broken cable to the trailer while he was at the truck stop, and his tires went flat at another truck stop. If he had been on the road in either instance I would probably be a widow by now. As for all my trials and tribulations, I got through everything, got the horses hay, got their feet cleaned of the ice (which Sherry has never seen all the time she was in IL on unshod horses). On top of that, Chuck is going to come up, and fix the truck, so all is good.



It’s now –10 outside so I guess we might just make the –17 the weather said we are going to have tonight. The good news is tomorrow is supposed to warm up getting warmer day by day. Tomorrow I will try to get the pipes unfrozen. I was going to try today, but there was simply no time. Besides as cold as it’s supposed to get tonight it wouldn’t have done any good. Our high today was only 0 degrees so even if I got the pipes to unfreeze, they would have just frozen up again. God willing Rudy will get his load delivered tomorrow, and we will be able to spend our anniversary together. It will only be one night, but that’s good enough for me. If the WD-40 works I won’t have to chop ice off of the horses feet, and if I can get the Jeep running, I won’t be stuck at home. All in all I think tomorrow will be a wonderful day, or at the very least, it will be a better day than today was. Yes life is good.+





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