Haven't posted lately because, well, nothing too much is happening. This unfortunately doesn't translate into a stress-free life because I am still searching for a job and the machinations of purchasing our first house are proceeding slooooooowly.
So what am I going to talk about? How about the horses? That's original! More specifically: about horse bedding! Whoo-hoo! Party down!
The man had the temerity to wake me up at 10 a.m. this morning so we could go out to the barn. (The NERVE! He will PAY!) I've been taking care of mucking out and feeding during the week and I've finally got a good maintenance system* that enables me to clean up Doru's box in about 30-40 minutes, rather than the hour or more it was taking. The problem is that Doru is an extremely messy horse and we now have him on sawdust bedding because he was eating his straw bedding.
The bedding we're using is
Natures Best. (And yes, they've left out the apostrophe in their name.) Imported from Canada, it's sawdust compressed into pellets; you then add water and it plumps back up. One of the other owners at our barn found it when she was looking for an alternative to shavings (expensive) and straw (which her horse eats) and it proved so effective that she's become the authorized distributor in our county and several surrounding ones.
This bedding is absolutely fabulous for Pintea, who is a fairly clean horse. You just go in and take out the poops and the wet bits where he pees, sift through the rest for any stray bits and to fluff it up, spread it out, and you're done. Pintea is so clean that I literally only have to put a new bag of bedding in every 10 days or so (which even surprises our friend the distributor).
Doru is of course another story. He's big and barge-y and doesn't do anything small, neat, or tidy (not unlike the man who owns him). We've worked with the distributor over a period of a couple weeks to figure out the best method to keep up with the sheer volume of poo and pee that comes out of this animal. She even mucked him out for several days so she would have first hand experience to use with her other customers and Doru now has the distinction of being THE messiest horse that is using this bedding.
Today, we needed to clean under the rubber mats that cover the floor of Doru's box. Wetness tends to build up there and that works against the bedding, which is highly absorbent and will dry out if left to air. It's a two person job, hence me actually pulling my lazy ass out of bed on a Saturday to go to the barn.
Once we'd cleaned under the mats, I finished up while the man got Doru saddled for a ride. I was putting things away and getting ready to go up to do Pintea's box when I noticed that the barn manager's cat, Oggy, was walking up the center aisle. He's a beautiful cat and relatively friendly, but I'd never seen him actually in the barn before. I went to get my camera from the truck and when I came back, he had disappeared. My husband said he hadn't passed him and gone out the back door. I'd noticed he was stopping in front of the boxes and looking up, as if he might jump up through the opening in the door and go inside. I walked down to Doru's box, where I had left the door open, and there was Oggy. He was pawing at the bedding, looking for the right place to do his business. And he was surprisingly un-shy in the face of the flashbulbs! (I thought I'd refrain from posting the photo of him in the act.)
My husband had told me that this bedding could also be used for cats and dogs (how much you want to bet he's already done comparison pricing against standard kitty litter?). Now we have Oggy's endorsement!
I also took this photo of Doru in his hoof boots. Since Doru's hooves are still growing out and adjusting to not having iron shoes on them, my husband puts boots on his front hooves when he rides to help him get around better. I told Doru that his shoes were terribly last season and he should consider updating his look, but I doubt he'll heed my advice.
The man and Doru went off and I tackled the task of giving my not-so-white horse a bath. Turned out he was a lot cleaner than he had been few days before, but he still needed some washing. Of course, horses don't necessarily like being sprayed with cold water. Pintea is a very well-behaved horse, but he always dances around when I bathe him. I've gotten pretty good at handling him even while dancing, but since another owner who is on full livery was having her horse bathed, the three young ladies working at the barn today were helping her and one of them gave me a bit of a hand holding him and drying him off.
[Here's a photo: Look how clean he is! (You can't see the grass stains where he's already rubbed and rolled.) And his mane and tail are so beautifully groomed. That ought to last until tomorrow.]
It was such a glorious day and so warm, that I put Pintea out in Doru's field to dry in the sun while I finished up the chores. When I went to get him, the two kids who live in the house next to the horse fields came to their gate to see Pintea. I took him over and the five-year-old girl stroked his face. Her three-year-old brother was a bit more apprehensive because Pintea kept jerking his head, more interested in the grass than the attention at that particular moment. The kids and I then talked about the various things that horses eat, the girl sounding extremely knowledgeable when she said things like "horses really like to eat carrots; those are their favorites." Her brother was a little chatterbox and would interrupt saying "excuse me, but...". He wondered if horses liked to eat tomatoes and his sister explained that they have very hard teeth and like to eat hard, crunchy things. Eventually their mom came out to give them a snack and she admired Pintea's beauty and talked about how much the kids like to see the horses. I should have told her how polite and lovely her children were, but I was caught up in the conversation.
My last major task for the day was to acquire a quantity of cider for my husband on the way home. He regularly frequents the Upton Cider stand in Upton village and is heartbroken that this is the proprietor's final weekend of the season. No more cider until April. Tragedy! Although there is a pub in the area that carries it for a time. I've promised to take him there. Anyway, I splurged a bit on my honey and when he gets home, he'll find three gallons of very dry, very alcoholic cider chilling in the fridge.
* The system, for anyone interested, is that the fresh bedding is banked against the back wall and we add a new bag of bedding every 3-4 days, with an occasional extra added to further bulk it up. I use a shavings fork to clean out the middle portion of the box, sifting out the poo and wet bits and leaving the drier, still usable bedding in a pile. In addition, there are two banks of bedding on either side of the box. Each day I use one of those banks to re-cover the middle portion of the box. Depending on how damp the bedding from the bank is (you can tell by how dark it is), I mix in a few forkfuls of the fresh bedding; this helps it dry out and increases absorbency. The used bedding I've just cleared from the middle replaces the bank I've used. I then use my fork to toss and aerate the opposite bank to help it dry. By alternating the bank used to cover the middle portion, the bedding gets about two days to dry before being used again.
