One could wonder what adds 500kWh to your power bill...

...or, in my case, the suspense and thrill of seeing that extra $150 or more bucks has been lost. After replacing some ailing appliances our power consumption was beginning to follow a nice, smooth sine wave through the seasons, with an ever dropping trend. The curve has been sweeping up the winter climb until ::bang:: it jumped up several hundred kWh before continuing on its way.

There are only 3 normal (and I assume legal) things that consume that much energy in American homes: Heating/AC, hot water heaters, and well pumps. Your computer doesn't rate next to those, the list of criminal power hogs after our cars.

The gigantic, upward hitch is a classic hot water heater with one of two dead heating elements. You still get hot water, but the remaining heating element runs constantly to keep up the temperature. We know we need a new one but it will be a significant plumbing operation, not something to look forward to, especially in the winter.

After two months the utility bill arrives and another several hundred kWh jump. Given that there is still hot water available from the shower tap, a hot water tank failure is not the answer. Other than blowing an element, they more or less work or they don't. Baseboard heating is not a likely cause. The first jump along would require that the heat be on all day and night. They don't have moving parts to fail like a furnace and there are more than one. This leaves the well pump which is highly energy efficient and new.

Okaaaaay...I had a sinking feeling about our soaking early winter and fast frost that turned saturated soils into frozen stone. Water expands when it freezes, one of the only things that does, which is what gives us all so many problems with frozen pipes. The power of water to move, lift, or break nearly anything in its way as it freezes cannot be underestimated. The new cracks in the living room ceiling very much appear to be from soggy ground lifting and dropping a section of foundation added to the house decades ago. The not fully compressed soil dropped a section of the house, opening cracks plastered over more times than I can imagine. This happened sufficiently coincidentally with the first jump in power use to send a warning flare over the realm of my personal mind cartoons, the landscape my mind retreats to while trying to appear interested in conference room conversations.

I looked at the bill, paid it, and looked at it some more. The flares are starting again and more than one this time, remembering the labored water pressure in the early winter, the crushing ice from within and without. Darn, a broken pipe. A leak somewhere outside and suddenly getting worse again. Outside because that much water seems as though it would be noticeable.

Our household mobilizes and we compare power and water usage estimates against normal performance for pumps and appliances. The water pressure is measured with various main valves shut off, isolating a 2 psi drop over ~5 minutes between the house and the well. first grade math applied against normal use estimates says we are burning nearly 300 gallons of water a day, 3 to 5 times what should be typical for our diminutive farm house with its modernly conservative appliances. The power usage for a pump like ours compared to what we would be running to drag that much water from the earth comes out to 3-5 times normal consumption, an amount similar to my missing hundreds of kWh.

The good news generally is that we have no water or sewage utility bills and they function as efficiently as we can afford to make them. The bad news is we are the utility.

Past experience has left us with contacts and friends to call for this sort of thing. On Monday, I'll ask a sympathetic co-worker for the local number to a small water utility we both know who will send out staff to perform work for an hourly rate. They have the tools, the experience, the time. The soft soil near Old Man Black Walnut gives a guess where the digging may begin. I hope very much it does not harm him, I wanted that tree, he was quite costly and came with a house. Sometimes, it's all about The Trees.

The inefficient, cheap, dishwasher is growling away at this evening's dishes. Evidence suggests it is what begins to smell bad in the kitchen if it is not run once daily. It's annoying and inefficient, I keep hoping to replace it. Our homes and appliances whisper together in the darkest hours while the people within sleep, conspiring and planning for which critical device will be the next to fail in some interesting way when the bank accounts of the alleged owners are at their lowest. A wax ring of a toilet will fail, filling the lower floor with cascades of water, taking the ceiling with it. Or the water from the bath tap will turn cold and black while cleaning up after a puppy with Dire Rear, at the beginning of the clean-up. The dishwasher will jam shut with dishes inside the day before Thanksgiving, only to be opened with crow bars, the dishes prized from within for the guests who will be helping clean up by hand. The credit cards will have no available funds, the company Amex will cover it, I hope we can pay that off before the statement clears. The snake that shorted the hot-tub circuits, burning everything inside the power box to a rank charcoal is not included in the, "vermin exclusion" clause of the homeowner's policy but his damage is still under the deduct able.

We raise our voices and purse our lips and come to accept that no amount of frustration will change things. I will make the phone call to hire help and the stinking dishwasher will grind away for uncountable nights yet to come. Yeti snores through a perfectly normal evening for The Dogs.

If I could only remember the name of that dog, would he smell just as...ah, never mind

Here it is Saturday and all I've managed to do is 1) piss-off my boss 2) wash dog spit off a few windows in preparation for holidays guests 3) wash one chair slip-cover 4) cancel my riding lessons and 5) complete my employee self-review form (something I'd poke my eyes out to avoid if it would help...I'd at least consider that option anyway...).

Our household somehow managed to get one of the seemingly zillion viruses out there this year that *are not* the seasonal flu or H1N1. Daddy was watching the first snow fall in London. Mom was missing work with some random Ick, holding a little kid with the same plus ear infections, project and performance goal writing deadlines crashing around me. Anyone who has taken care of a sick child while being miserably ill themselves knows how exactly unfun that is. Daddy is home now, child is becoming itchy and spotted as a likely reaction to antibiotics, and I am going to bed. Daddy is heading to the 24-7 clinic near us for a visit, already past small people bedtime.

The house smells like Wet Dog, the snoozing lumps of fur occasionally snoring, growling, or running in their sleep. Our super duper pinky-purple commercial carpet circa 1983 has recently been freed from roaming clumps of dog fur, a condition which is likely to last another 15 minutes or so now that the dogs are in for the night.


Yeti is limping again on his right front foot where he hyper-extended his knee wrestling giant dog style with his girlfriend, half his age. He's a old man of 7 now with one more point to go to win his Champion [fancy pants] show dog title. He's done well now that he is slow and dignified in stead of the goof-ball teenager he was in his youth, puppy yo yo on a leash for the judge in the breed ring. So much for the regal, reserved Great Pyrenees. Yeti says, "Hey! Pet The Dog! Whoohoo!" He's missing most of his teeth, some shattered and extracted when a neighbor dog attacked him, Yeti trying to protect me. He got a canine root canal that time rather than extract a tooth that sinks more than in inch up into his skull. Dentistry for dogs costs as much as it does for people but he got to keep half his tooth and it saved us and him the pain and grief of caring for that kind of extraction which was only a little cheaper. It was one of those VISA Moments. The rest he's worn down to nubbins chewing on sticks (firewood logs he's stolen from our wood pile to be more accurate).


Still, Yeti is a beauty, a once in a lifetime dog, a Good Dog of the highest magnitude. He charisma shines everywhere he goes. Despite all the incredibly dogs our friend who bred him put up in the fanciest of shows or those that were on animal shows on television, the one everyone remembers is Yeti, her show dog too silly to finish.


We never wanted a show dog, or I should say my husband had no clue what he'd be getting into and I wanted to run the other way and quickly. It started with us living in an area where the sheriff is 20 minutes on a good day, assuming the 911 dispatcher actually thinks you have an emergency. Gun shots in the city warrant a response. In the country, not so much.


I knew a time would likely come when I would be alone at home during the day with no one near by to hear a gun shot, certainly not a scream. I also know that although I'm a good shot, I did not want to count on a gun looking after me. No one is going to take my dog away and use him against me. His job is to save my life by giving his if it came to that and I believe he would do so willingly, not matter how much it might break my heart. I also knew that the time to bring a puppy into our lives would absolutely not be when we decided to have a human child. Heck no, you could not pay me enough to raise the two from babies together, at the same time.


A series of strange incidents one month got the ball rolling, so to speak. We found out through our extensive area email network that a home had been badly burglarized to the south of us. We knew we were a vunerable community so we were all on the lookout. We didn't have to wait long, the bad boys pulled up to a neighbor's house to take a look around, not realizing there was someone home recuperating from a surgery of some sort. She quietly wrote down all the particulars before easing a back door open to release their formidable, large black dog to say hello to the new arrivals. The gentlemen departed hastily and were arrested not long after. End of incident #1.


Incident #2 is hard for me to know exactly what happened so I'll share the pieces such assembled from various alleged sources. I know there is an aspect of truth to the story but the accuracy of my version is certainly in question. Apparently, some gentleman was having an argument with his girlfriend riding shotgun while driving her Jeep Cherokee down the freeway high on Meth and her baby in the back. He did the sensible thing at this point which was to take a small-town-looking exit and begin driving out of town where they could have a more proper knock-down, drag-out fight, or something...


What people don't understand is in much of the coastal PNW, the rural areas are such by virtue of zoning only. There are no truly uninhabited, unwatched, unguarded areas per say, especially those zoned RA-some number which means Rural *Residential* followed by the number of acres allowed as a minimum lot size. Hello, people live here! Mister Boyfriend is driving along this (RA5) winding road now, beating his girlfriend while navigating up the mountain with baby on board. He finds a wide enough spot in the road to pull off, the entrance to our tiny neighborhood. The noise awoke a near-by homeowner who, did not wish to be named at the time, who found Boyfriend trying to strangle Girlfriend in front of his house. The story is the came to an end only when the neighbor wielded an axe, threatening to cause serious harm if Boyfriend didn't stop (knowing the possible selection of neighbors, I believe this part is true and I don't blame them one bit). Boyfriend abandons second degree murder attempt and speeds off in Cherokee with Baby still on board. Sheriff dispatcher deems the dumped, half-strangled, childless Girlfriend an actual emergency and police arrive to sort it all out with the axe defending neighbor. I was told the baby was deposited with Girlfriend's mother and Boyfriend was on the loose for some time before being picked up, fortunately without further harm to anyone.


OKaaaay, I say. I'm not terribly excited about wack-job city people thinking my yard is The Country where they can head out to visit and commit their crimes, or whatever, in our yards. F-ing lovely.


Incident #3 occurs shortly after all this while everyone is still jumpy. Yet another neighbor gal is home alone with young children and hears mean talking loudly, stomping around in their back yard which generally appears to be a forest to the uninformed. She goes outside to find out what these men are doing in her yard to find them somewhat confrontational and holding large bladed weapons (also know as machetes), demanding to know where, "the vacant lot is" that they'd like to develop. I have no idea how this situation was resolved but our poor neighbor was quite upset over the idea of large man swinging huge knives while stomping though her yard.


Time to consider A Very Large Dog.


A spent a significant amount of my youth with a family who had obedience champion Rottweilers. I am not at all a Dog Person but I love those dogs dearly and I treasure the time I spent with the people who were more family than my own. I knew what questions to ask and where to look and how big a deal it was for us to choose a dog that would be appropriate for our needs and it was not going to be an insane ball of happy, tail-wagging energy that powers a lab until mere moments before they drop dead. I wanted large, mellow, thoughtful, gentle, and well, lazy but with a little scary thrown in. We looked at English Mastiffs, Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs. The breeders were people who fell into my, "uncomfortably strange" category and I wanted nothing of the dogs they chose to breed. We sort-of slacked off on our search, not really knowing where or what to look for next. I loved Rotts but they could be a little edgy with small children for my taste and for us to start off with. Newfoundlands were incredibly hairy with lots of spit and little on the scary front beyond size. We scratched our heads some.


The first Great Pyrenees I met was sitting outside a cafe near the water waiting for his Person. He was huge and white and regal, breathtaking. I asked his Person if it was a white Newfoundland, a question I have come to restrain an eye-roll over. No, he politely said, and told me what he was. I asked to pet his incredibly dog who felt and acted like a white version of Aslan of Narnia, so gentle and royal. I thought, "Now THAT is a dog." I tried very hard to hold the name in my mind but it had slipped away, the memory space over-written by calculus homework and designing consumer electronics factories.

My husband and I were walking a more newly made friend to her car after a community meeting over a challenging and contentious political battle among our tiny rural communities and the bureaucracies of large cities and the federal government. This woman was quiet and a little awkward, thoughtful and brilliant. She was at the top in her field and knew the shape of our community problem well. Her name was one public and private citizens spoke with noticeable awe. We sought her out for her help, having heard her name as someone willing to do battle to save our small communities, our carefully preserved private landscapes.

She was saying she would not be able to attend the meeting Sunday, could we go? She had a dog show she couldn't miss. Absent mindedly, but not without interest, I asked her what kind of dog she showed and there was that name, dropped into my hand like a shiny coin, the one I'd forgotten. The royal white dogs who watched their People with dozing eyes while strangers slid fingers through their deep coat offering only a simple swish of tail in return. I grabbed my husband to ask did he know what they were? Hadn't he heard of them? I was so surprised I would ever find any. And, here they were.

Running in Tall Heels

Saturday afternoon and I have a few hours at best to groom the weather from 4 horses. Wind twists their hair into ropes tight and thick enough to anchor ships, wind or witch knots they're called. It's clear and cold, our first true winter day after 50F of must and matted leaves. I start with Pete, a pig to be sure. He and Bella have been turned out together all week and have become an average color of grey-brown. Pete's had a grand time of rolling, smashing grime into his wind knots, black dreadlocks. Thanks buddy, I love picking through filthy, detangler greased ropes with freezing fingers. I begin by pulling his blanket and rubbing his coat down, freeing his legs, belly, face, and neck from mats of dirt. Then, I start in on what Pete's mane a week ago. I sigh, looking around at the other 3 horses I know I'll never get to today, eyeing Cinderella's set of witch woven braids and wondering if another week will leave them much worse.

Wind knots really are spun together like ropes. Soaked in detangler, you can slowly pull them apart with you fingers, unwinding and untangling. It's a tedious task but a long mane takes years to grow. I keep the Haflinger's double-coated hair braided during the winter or I pay for my lack of attention by performing this sticky, grimy ritual.

Untwisting Pete's first rope goes as expected, pulling strand under strand until the bunch unravels and I rake a brush through the lengths. Shifting my weight in preparation for concentrating on the next knot reminds me of how cold feet become standing still on frozen ground. I sigh again, Pete rolling his eyes at my white breath floating past. The next is far more stubborn and caked with ground in mud. I'm not sure I can get this one out but past experience says they look worse than they really are. At some point, I pause and look around, noticing our neighbor leaning on the far fence rail watching, I don't know for how long. They also have horses and even those who don't notice that many of our large guests come and go over time. I figure he's wondering about the dainty, black horse and the pile of rounds and dieing needles that was recently a Frasier Fir. My husband is moving about behind me, pulling branches deemed too small to be useful as firewood into a burn pile. I wave our neighbor.

Our neighbor, we'll call him Michael, and his wife life in an equally odd house next door to us with a driveway in between. They have a younger teenage son and two horses, a mare-ish deep dun Spanish Mustang and a tall, young black and white Paint. Michael and his son enjoy Scouts together and Michael rides mounted SCA events, among others. They prefer to keep their horses barefoot, something I generally support and prefer but have not always been able to manage in a practical sense. I don't feel strongly enough about the benefits to the exclusion of alternatives, like say, horse shoes, so I often resort to steel when bare feet aren't enough. Michael knows how to keep his own horses trimmed, saving great hassle and expensive I am sure, avoiding the every 6 to 9 week horse foot ritual, finished when I hand a well-earned check over to our Farrier.

Michael likes Pete, petting his neck gentle, blowing softly into his nose in horse greeting. I tell the story of Pete and the Fir tree, one starting a new life with us, the other at the end, decaying under wavy bunches of moss and splotchy lichen. We arrange with my husband to have Michael's son come over and help split the monstrous rounds into sections manageable with the hydraulic splitter I've promised to buy.

I ramble on and make my way back to Pete's life to date. Michael looks him over, smoothing his hands over joints and coat until Pete's feet bring him pause. There is something for all of us to dislike or despise about the people in Pete's story. For my sister, it was knowing he had never been a horse, watching him suck sweet fall leaves into his mouth for the first time made her cry. For me, it's the terrible lack of of interest or understanding regarding the behavior of young mammals that resulted in Pete being beaten. A day came when my sister watched him hide in the corner of his stall and shake in fear, having given way the entirety of even his 12' x 12' universe to avoid pain when a human opened his stall door. Michael said little while attending to my monologue, untwisting wind knots, until he started handling Pete's feet.

Michael stood up abruptly and asked if he could come trim Pete's feet in the morning, and his son would come with splitting maul to earn funds for a trip he wanted to take with classmates later in the school year. Pete had shoes on in front, why I did not know since he clearly would not need protection from rough ground in a stall. I acknowledged that his feet were indeed long and I was concerned about that along with their odd shape, happy to have the help shortening them with our farrier scheduled still more than a week out. Michael's intensity an insistence left me feeling a little uncomfortable but I have never known our neighbors to be anything less than good, kind people and I was grateful for the help.

I watched Michael turn down our driveway toward my husband to make arrangements for the rounds, the winter sun slanting at a shallow angle with the ground. My hands were stiff, the witches work and Pete's mud-rolling got the better of me, I was loosing light and the temperature was dropping by the minute. I crossed the yard with a stiff walk, returning to an anxious Pete tied to the fence. I raked the knots as close to the ends of his hair as I could and unceremoniously cut them free, leaving a chunk of mane gone. He'd given up his flag of tail trailing behind in that imagined show that would never come. Now, it'd also take until next year for him to grow back the hack I'd take from his mane. I rebraided him and tied them off with un-matching, white Haflinger rubber bands. "Well Mister," I thought, "that's what you get for all that rolling." Pete tossed his head, trying to free himself from the new braids.

The next morning, Michael and his son arrived promptly as planned. I dressed in layers awaiting the cold morning air. I read once that grooming a horse burns as many calories as a brisk tennis match. I have no idea if this is true but I can say that, generally speaking, equestrian activities tend to keep you warmed up after the first few minutes, unless you're holding horses for the vet or farrier. During those times, the cold soaks up through the soles of your boots and into your toes no matter how fancy the socks are. The chill creeps up your legs and into all your bones. It's hard to keep warm, standing still for hours at a time in the Pacific NW, outside of July through September, and even then, only if it isn't raining.

Michael had arrived with his gear and was ready to get to work. Pete was not at all comfortable having a stranger and a man handle his feet. Michael had prepared by eating sweet-smelling oatmeal for breakfast for Pete to notice when exchanging breath in greeting. They walked together while Michael stroked Pete's rumpled and dusty coat on his neck, speaking softly to the horse all the while. Pete settled but was still not happy about allowing his feet to be handled. All together, it took us 3 hours or so to get through trimming all four feet. Pete tried nipping, leaning, pulling, hopping, and finally rearing but he was never able to escape the inevitable clutch that trapped his foot. And yet, no one hit him. At first, he seemed to anticipate being hit, and then he tried to see if he could get us to. Later, the fear left him and then it was about control of his body and his space. Pete did not win and still, he had not been hurt. He had many tricks but only so much fight in him. Standing in a stall for 6 years did little to build strength and athleticism, especially while standing on three legs.

First, Pete's front shoes came off, one at a time. Then, Michael cut away excess hoof carefully until we could see the anatomy of what has going on underneath. As Michael had been unpacking his tools and sharpening his trimming knife, he was explaining what he had seen in Pete's feet the day before that had brought him back on a Sunday morning in the cold to trim feet for his neighbor's horse. Pete's feet were indeed long, but they were also very upright. The angles were such that all of the outside of his hoof was nearly straight up and down, as much so as a hoof can really be. The angle of the hoof should support the cannon bone (or pedal bone, used to move the hoof and shaped much like a small hoof inside the tough fingernail-like exterior) parallel to the ground. The tissue around the cannon bone is delicate and requires blood-flow to keep alive. Without that, the tissue and bone die quickly causing the cannon bone to eventually fall through the sole of the hoof, a disease referred to as, "founder" or laminitis. And, so the saying goes, if you loose the hoof, you loose the horse and you do. Pete's feet were so straight upright and his heels so tall that extreme pressure was being applied to his toes, crushing that delicate tissue and undoubtedly causing pain, if Pete could still feel his toes at all. Michael was anxious to bring relief to Pete and as soon as possible. Michael's uncomfortably strong drive to return as soon as he could and the intensity he had radiated to the point of uncomfortable for me the day before was now understandable. The part of Pete's story Michael instantly came to hate was his feet and his mood in this respect did not improve as we progressed through the history of Pete's neglect or, perhaps, the ignorance of his people who let him down.

Michael's trimming revealed a hoof with infectious, bruise-colored purple infection in large oblong welts around each nail hole caused by poor overall health, standing in a stall without air or movement or unsanitary conditions or some combination of factors. The external layer of his hoof wall was separated from the sole of his hoof, the initiation of laminitis. Where the hoof was still connected layers below the initial material, a wide stripe of stretched hoof wall was present, also a visible indicator of a hoof beginning to fail. Pete is young and he is exactly where he needs to be, turned out on uneven, soft ground with other horses and a quality diet. Michael was able to remove a good portion of the over-grown hoof and restore the exterior angles to the extent that the laminitis process would be less likely to continue. Taking his hoof back to a normal position in one go would have been very hard on Pete's legs and feet. With another 10 days or so before our farrier arrived, Pete should have the time he needed to recover and then go through the entire process again to bring him back to a healthy stance. Pete should be able to recover and maybe even fully after another two or three trimmings. If he had continued as he had, he may have been irretrievably lame in the same amount of time.

I asked Michael if there was a deliberate reason someone might choose to have a horses feet trimmed in that way. He had seen this done only with gaited horses such as Tennessee Walkers. The tall heels would throw the horse forward and require greater lift in the front legs to recover balance in their forward movement, exaggerating the appearance of their gait. Pete was from a family of Arabians expected to move in such an extreme way, a random genetic trait that Pete was not born with no matter what names appeared in his pedigree. His feet were trimmed for a show career he would never have. Pete was a cull but no one wanted to believe it and they carried on as though it was not true. Pete is a lovely horse who will make a nice mount for a smaller adult or young rider. He has what dressage riders like to see but he does not have the elastic, tall movement that can only be built of genetics, years of conditioning and training, or short-cuts to create the look of what the horse does not have naturally. The idea that someone had, out of ignorance or intent, created the shape of Pete's feet for him to flounder in tall heels, crept like the cold from the frozen turf into Michael. It seemed as though I could feel him grind his teeth from 3 ft away.

I watch Pete run across the turn-out pasture where I left everyone for the weekend while the rain has left us. Tomorrow, our farrier arrives and I will stand in the cold holding horses for hours and hope I make it to work in time for our staff meeting. There is something for all of us to hate about Pete's past but there is also something for each of us to love about his future, even if it is only watch enjoy being a horse for a while. The horses are happy to be out in the winter sun like the rest of us and Cinderella runs bucking across the pasture, shaggy like a golden yak. Pete slows and circles to look at me with his tail held high in his new winter blanket, nostrils flared and snorting into the air, breath like a frozen dragon.

A New Life

It's not raining for the first time in 10 days. We've had some breaks of sun through the grey and the horses are dozing in the rays, steaming or grooming one another. Their blankets are off for the first time since a week ago Sat when the sun last made it to the ground and Pete arrived in his new home. Under his blanket, he's thin, a body score of like 4 out of 10 and not the healthy, athletic 4. His ribs are too close to the touch under the flesh of his sides and the points of his hips are not rounded. His belly is bloaty but better than it was, likely the result of no exercise and parasites. He's eating quite a lot but he has to use those calories to power moving around, building basic muscles he's never had, growing a winter coat he's never needed, and keeping himself warm. It's a lot to ask and we were worried about all this bring him here, into the winter Cascade foothills, this late in the year. It was the only chance he had, the only one where he would not end up in another barn or with someone who would continue to allow his care to degrade or land on the wrong truck after a terrifying journey through the auction house. This was it, cold, wet, and roughing it. This is where he gets to be a horse with other horses. He's cold and thin but chances are, he'll survive. By spring, I have no doubt he will be looking healthy. I think we have the routine down to where we could put fat on a rock if we had to.

Pete Part III
Our Haflinger, Princess Cinderella, is a benevolent dictator. Her thick 13'3 hh furry self keeps everyone in line, makes sure everyone gets part of the meal and does not tolerate herd members beating up on one another. She likes things tidy and her herd polite. She does not roll in the mud, she prefers to be clean and treated with respect. She is an outstanding Head Mare for rehabilitation of troubled horses. She teaches them that people are worth tolerating, if nothing else.

Cinderella is a lovely mare and came to us after having several babies. She is very well trained but she does not appreciate the rough hands of beginners. Haflingers are also their own type of horse with a typical temperament all their own. It seems compassed somewhere among draft, pony, and Arabian which is sort of what they are. If a rider treats Cinderella with less than quiet respect or generally forces her to do something she does not want, she is powerful enough to rip the reins from your hands or your arms out of their sockets if you decide to hang on. Then, she will ignore you and do as she pleases. I love Haflingers but they are not generally a horse for truly new riders. I had intended Cinderella to be our guest/husband horse but the truth is that she is not a match for that job. She is terribly out of shape and needs conditioning to return her to a proper post-pregnancy state. I have felt horribly guilty about not being able to offer her disciplined daily exercise needed for that and not having a purpose for her, a job. I put her up for sale and received the typical strange responses, "hi i'm looking for a pony for my four year old do u think she will mind her?" Um, no. A few days after Pete arrived, I deleted her ads, she has a job. As long as good horse with no where to go end up in our pasture, she is their guide and she does her job incredibly, shockingly well.

On Pete's first day turned out with the mares, I fed everyone more than enough for dinner, spreading piles along the fence line so that they could spread out and be less likely to squabble over food. I had to blanket them for the weather and the last thing I needed was someone getting tangled in someone else's blanket.

Pete kept wandering away from his meal, sucking up leaves, exploring, and not realizing he needed to make his way back to the hay. He had been greeted by each of the mares and then checked out the terrifying new aberration of a spotted thing that smells like a horse but is the size of a dog, our pony Naught Dotty. After a while, she didn't eat him so after some chasing and a good sniff, she was deemed inedible and therefore uninteresting.

The mares ignored Pete, aligning themselves with Cinderella's behavior. In the early evening, I called my sister to tell her how Pete was doing. The mares had finished their dinner with quite a bit left on the ground. I was watching the small herd outside the window and was surprised to see Cinderella slowly moseying toward Pete. Cinderella edged toward Pete and then turned her head away a little and started grazing as soon as he became nervous. I began narrating what I was seeing to my sister, enjoying watching the copper-penny red mare with Barbie-blond hair make her way politely over to the new horse. She was able to creep up on him and eventually share breath in greeting and then pretended to graze again while Pete carefully checked her over, satisfying his curiosity. He had never been close to a mare, had been turned out with other horses all together only a handful of times.

Slowly Cinderella moved away, asking Pete to follow. When he hesitated, she continued to the hay along the fence line before looking back to where Pete stood, head held high with anxiety in the middle of the pasture. Cinderella nosed the hay around and then slowly, calmly turned around and repeated her sneaking up on the new horse routine. Pete also repeated his part from the prior scene but this time followed her all the way back to the hay. Cinderella had brought him into her herd, making sure he ate. She stayed near him, nibbling hay but mostly keeping Pete company and keeping the other mares away so he could finish his first meal outdoors in peace.

It was surprising how concretely caring and obvious her body language was. I knew she cared for her herd, treating rescue ponies like her babies. Her wrath when our Quarter Horse mare, Bella, went after Cinderella's ponies on arrival. Bella still doesn't care for ponies but she stays away from them and will show the marks of Cinderella's schooling on her sides until her new coat comes in this spring.

My husband came in the room where I was watching the adoption event in the pasture, narrating for my sister. He commented, "You've been on the phone with your sister talking about a horse for more than an hour?" I said just wait, you'll see, Cinderella is adopting him. It was like a little National Geographic drama right outside the window! We haven't owned a TV in almost 12 years. There was never a time when the content on television and the joy and work and stress in our own lives were so oppositional, I can't imagine bringing one into our lives. We don't have time or space if we wanted to and so much is so awful, I don't wish the invasion in any case.

Cinderella doesn't treat Pete like a baby, but she does treat him like a young horse who needs to be taught how to properly be a horse. He is nearly 7 but looks and acts 3. Cinderella treats him in this way, based on what he is. The next day, Pete was not standing in his costly hay pile, tossing grass everywhere, he was carefully standing at the edge of the pile careful not to spread it around where it would be lost or ground into the mud. He was still eating like he was starving but he was eating politely and under Cinderella's protection. She taught him to drink water from the seasonal pond, his place in the herd, to turn his back to the weather, and sleep under the trees. With her protection, Pete eats first and gets all his grain, he needs it, he's almost starving and Cinderella knows. Pete watches the mares carefully, imitating their body language and posture, learning how to rest on one hip while standing so he isn't so tired. He gallops up to the fence when I whistle bring hay or blankets. The Food Lady Provides, she brings us good things and offers scratches in places we can't reach.

Pete explored everything he could find, I watched him appear to attack a spiky Hemlock, thrashing around in the branches, trying to decide if it was good for eating or rubbing his itchy body on. It took a thrashing to decide it was nasty-tasting and useless. Pete popped out from the trees all spooky and full of himself. He licked rocks, rolled in the grass, and learned to use a tall maple stump as a scratching post by watching Bella. Everything went into his mouth, exploring in the only way a young horse knows. He never offers to bite any more, he has too much else to explore, he already knows what people are.

Offering stale grapes was deemed Poisoning The Horse until Pete watched the mares suck them from my fingers with alacrity. He nuzzled his grain bowl so I threw in a grape, where food belongs. He sniffed and rolled and nuzzled the grape and finally tried eating it. His head popped up, he did not hesitate to take the next offered from my hand. I'm sure he would have climbed that fence to strip every last grape from me, I was fully mugged for every treat I had. There was nothing so wonderful as a grape! Pete has never had treats.

We've had Pete with us since the last day there was a break in the rain. Today it was time to begin the process of separating off members of The Herd and putting them in sacrifice paddocks to keep our turn-out pasture from ruin. It has taken more wear and tear than I'd like keeping the horses together while Pete gets used to things but Pete needs to learn how to be a horse and it was the best I solution I could offer. He's now in his paddock with Bella, our other rehab project and family member. They need more hay than the fat ponies. I've left Cinderella turned out where he can see her for the night. Tomorrow, I will move the rest to their smaller paddock where they will return to a less generous diet! Pete will not be able to see the rest of the herd other than his companion, Bella. It's Thanksgiving day and we'll be home to monitor how he does. I hope our neighbors are not too disturbed by the horse yelling and screaming for one another that may come and that the drama does not continue long. Best to move them at breakfast, it's hard to holler for long with a mouth full of hay.

I am thankful we gave Pete a place to go, that my sister, our kind-hearted husbands, and I gave in and brought him home. The longer I've had to consider him, the more it's clear that he has just what he needs, a herd that will treat him well and guide him and enough space to be a horse. I'm also seeing an active, curious mind with bright eyes that want to spend more time learning than keeping the worried look he arrived with. He's a good horse. It amazes me that he could be treated so poorly and cast off his past so completely and readily, eager for a different life. I keep waiting for the day he may act out from his past, we've seen this before. I don't know that he will, I don't know that he won't.

We all have something to be thankful for.

Living In A Cloud

Or rather, "clouds." It's a Seattle fall/winter day where there isn't really any rain or fog, we're really sitting in a cloud-bank that has descended all the way to the ground. Driving through this stuff requires variable-setting, intermittent wipers. I was very excited to buy my first car in the era when this became a standard feature, more so even than A/C.

It's been raining, drizzling, showering, pouring, misting for more than a week. Wind and rain pounding their way through the mountains at night has kept everyone awake through most of this time. Our urchin keeps waking up screaming, the noise outside being mistaken for Monsters, cougars and bears in particular Under The Bed. Mom says "But Honey, you have a trundle bed, the space under your bed is full. What kind of Monster do you think could possibly fit under there?" The Answer: "A Flat Monster." Duh. The conversation degenerated into talking about, "Pancake Bears" or monsters that are flat until they're let out from Under The Bed and then they fill up like balloons. I apparently lack imagination at this stage of my life. Stephen King just *had* to have spent time with kids.

I'm completely disassociated from reality today, not having slept enough last night due to several rounds of screaming night-terrors. Yeti was restless and seemed worried about something. He's been lurking close to me, guarding and/or wanting lots of attention. He's an old man now, I worry about him. His ears and nose were too warm last night.

I've finished what I need to for work today and I'm waiting for my carpool. I want to go home and try to rest. Yesterday, I felt normal after a weekend of sickening antibiotics. Today, I feel like someone's standing on my chest again and my head is as cloudy as the scene outside my office window. Leaning on the window sill, I can look into the non-winter-dead plantings so carefully maintained by the facilities folks. I wish my yard looked as inviting. I can see only 3 buildings again through the mist. Watching the traffic and people walk by the new tower I work from my quiet office leaves me feeling like I'm the same age as our child, trying on Mom or Dad's shoes. It feels over-sized and adult. When was it that I stopped asking Santa for castles for Christmas and started sitting in meetings trying to save a corporate universe, feeling as though I'm pretending to be an adult and know what I'm doing even though I know that's not true.

We'll go home and light a fire and Yeti will come in wet and needing a bath, wanting his human to pet him and telling my by giving my arm a giant, slobbery nose shovel. And, hopefully, I'll sleep.

OMG! What IS that?!

The weather is at it again tonight, roaring away. Things have been bumping and crashing in the night for more than a week, putting people and animals on edge since no one has been sleeping well. I am sick again, more antibiotics.

Pete mugged me for grapes this morning, the last of a few in the fridge, green and the size of bowling balls. OK, they looked like crab apples but their size was unnatural. Pete doesn't know what treats are, he thought I was trying to poison The Horse. I tossed one in his grain bowl so he might recognize it as food. It only took one and then he was not only taking them from my hand but he shoved the others out of the way and would have climbed over the fence to get the rest if he could have. "Holy cow!" he says, "Those are REALLY GOOD!"

Pete Part II
We brought him home last Saturday during some of the only storm-free hours all weekend. This was to be his second time ever being turned out with other horses and never with mares in the almost 7 years of his life. My sister and I talked about this, speculated on what might happen. I mulled over for hours what would be the safest way to introduce him to everyone with minimum yelling and screaming. I didn't want them to have blankets on to get tangled up in if there was a scene. I wondered if I should introduce him to the fence line or if I should allow the dogs to use their passage into the pasture they use to run around and WOOF at Bad Guys.

In the end, we unloaded Pete uneventfully with dogs all heavy panting wagging, sniffing, and rushing around under foot. Pete looked at them, "What are those?" but only using a pricked-ear stare. We turned Pete out alone in our largest, safest pasture. He slowly trotted a few steps out into the green pasture that, to him, must have gone on forever. He scanned his verdant new surroundings with a brief snort, making sure nothing was eminently about to eat him. This tool all of approximately 3 seconds. Then that black velvet nose went strait to the ground and started hoover-ing leaves like M&M's dropped on the starving from heaven. Pete did not panic, he did not look at the other horses, now staring at him from the next paddock, he did not run the fence or try to kill himself in some crazy horse sort of way. He stood a few steps from the gate and stuffed himself. Pete's bright eyes and flicking ears would pop up for brief moments, checking again for imminent death by predator but down the nose went, sweeping across the grass causing leaves to vanish at a shocking rate. So much for the terrified new comer scene.

We brought his new herd over to join him in order of social rank in order to keep the hollering down. Princess Cinderella was first, as is her right. There was sniffing and then running and bucking across the pasture for the delight of being in the sun and free of wet blankets and muddy paddocks for the moment. Pete hardly noticed the others, he was busy eating.

The large bulk of leaves and grass available for Pete to gorge on left us worried about leaving him out in that pasture over night. Instead, we blanketed him and out him in a smaller paddock. He looked at me intently over the fence, still thinking of humans as his Herd. He swished his tail, thinking. Something brushed his ankles. "OMG! What is THAT?" He stamped his foot to shoo the thing that touched him away from his legs. He swished his tail in irritation. "AHHHH! That THING touched me again!" followed by another foot stamp. I watched Pete throw his head, eyes starting to roll every time he swished his tail, tip whacking him on the legs. Pete had spent his life in a stall with his tail bundled and wrapped far above his hocks, protecting it for that Arabian breed show that he never saw. He didn't know the feeling of his own tail hanging about his legs.

As the sky changed from light steel-grey clouds to black, Pete must have realized that no one was bring him in to his stall. The next morning, it was clear he had spent the night pacing the fence line closest to the other horses until he wore himself out and had to rest. The paddock was stamped into a wet brown froth with marks where Pete had thrown himself flat out on his side to rest. One side of him from ears to tail was covered entirely with caked and wet mud. His eyes were rolling and bloodshot, his dinner untouched. I gave him breakfast where he was, without the other horses and stood next to him while he ate so he did not feel alone but none would take his food. When he'd eaten enough, I lead him over to the pasture and turned him out with the mares.

The mares took turns exchanging sniffs and snorts in order of status. The last was little pony Naughty Dotty who preferred to mind her own business of removing grass from the pasture. With the other exchanges completed, Pete turned his attention to Dotty for the first time, her coat a '70's shag carpet of white with black leopard spots. The black heat came up, eyes huge and starting, ears pricked, nostrils flared, snorting. "WTF is THAT?! It smells like a horse but it has spots and it's the size of a dog, it must be a HORSE-EATING DEMON!" Pete was frozen in fearful contemplation of the possibilities, "A posessed dog? A monster wearing a horse skin???" He must have run out of answers and it hadn't eaten him in those first few moments so it was time to investigate. Dotty's quietly contemplative breakfast in the sun was interrupted by that gangly, rude new horse running at her full speed snorting and determined to get a close up look at her. She was having none of that, out running the stabled bound interloper as fast as her stubby little furry legs would move her.

I brought everyone more than enough breakfast of grass hay and waited to see the interaction. What would happen introducing a completely isolated gelding into a herd of mares?

I watch Pete eat rudely, stomping hay into the mud, throwing the piles around about. I ground my teeth watching sweet summer hay lost and knowing that every blade was far from free. At times, Pete would be distracted from his meal by a near by leaf which he also ate. And then, he'd find another, and another, and eventually loose his food. I went out and stood by his hay and whistled to him when he wandered too far, calling him back to his pile of hay. Pete was used to being fed in a stall, just enough to live, never enough to thrive until recently. Now The Food Pile went on forever without the near-by boundaries of his stall walls. He lost his way, not realizing there was a pile of hay to return to and then not being able to find it once he figured out that's what he wanted. Eventually he stood with his hay, plowing mouthfuls into his his dainty mouth lined with the marks of lips pursed out of anger and fear.

The mares ignored him.

My sister brought Pete a new blanket that fit him better and would keep him more warm with less danger of tangling himself in it. His coat is so thin, not really enough for the winter we see at our old farm house in the mountains. We didn't want to bring him here into the cold but it was all that he had, the only answer. My sister said, "Well...I guess he'll be cold but he won't die." If he did, it'd still be an ending better than the auction yard with a long ride on the wrong truck.

The Other Side of The Fence

It happens almost every time a new horse comes to stay with us, most of them for a relatively short time. Somehow, some way, they find a new way to to end up on The Other Side of the fence.

It's dark and raining again (still?) when we pulled up to our gate. My husband gets out to unlock and open the gate for me to drive through. He heads out to collect our emptied trash cans. I pull slowly around the curve of our driveway, mindful of our furry, white escorts trotting along up to the house. Headlights plow straight through the rain onto the the generous blanketed bottom of Princess Cinderella, our Haflinger and The Mare In Charge. The others are orbiting around her, wandering the yard, snacking on grass. Everyone is on The Other Side of the fence. It doesn't look like they've been out for long and they haven't yet busted into the hay barn.

I leave the car running, headlights shining on my jail breakers. Needless to say, they want nothing to do with me while they dine away on wonderful fresh grass. If you are a horse, there is nothing in this world you want more than fresh green grass. Other brief interest may past through their furry minds but if you're a horse, in the end, it's all about grass.

Walking through the harassing rain, I consider all the halters I have to go haul out to bring everyone back in, assuming they decide to allow me to catch them. I'm stepping carefully down the puddled gravel drive wearing my work clothes, including silk blouse, heeled shoes, and a designer leather jacket that was an anniversary gift from my husband. I'm not sure was ever intended to get that wet. I'm wondering again how I've ended up hear and how many of my weekday colleagues are doing something similar, i.e. none. The office people go from house to car to indoor parking garage into work and back again. No need to worry much about weather other than to look at the opaque grey that hasn't brought snow in the mountains yet.

I think better of the default plan of haltering and returning one horse at a time and fill a wheelbarrow I use for hauling hay with Dinner. I give The Food Lady Whistle I use every time I approach and begin wheeling toward the pasture. Pete follows eagerly at a trot, stepping ahead and stuffing his long dark face into the pile. This gets everyone's attention. I move ahead and Pete stares and me, torn between the departing meal and The Herd behind him. A handful of hay waved at his nose decides for him and we're off at a bisque pace back toward the gaping pasture gate.

It doesn't take long before I am surrounded by a swirl of running horses and dogs in the dark and wet, my heels sinking into the grass and mud. I can't see them and I hope they can see me as they rush past, nearly brushing me. I have to trust their skill and grace in not running The Food Lady over. Everyone pauses at the pasture gate to see if I'm really offering dinner, piles of hay just a little better and a little less work than all that green grass on The Other Side of the fence. As soon as the flakes hit the ground, the herd comes in and arranges themselves around the piles of sweet grass based on their social ranking.

We examine the gate, it was a poor installation of the chain that broke when a large someone leaned hard on it to scratch their bum or to stretch under for some of that taller green grass. My husband comes out with a new chain and we replace them in a safer manner. I knew we should have fixed that, but it was one of 1,000 things we hadn't gotten to.

During the time I'm standing alone, feeling the rain soaking my hair, I wonder again what I was thinking when I made the zillion choices that brought me here. My lungs are tightening from the cold and the fungus on the huge tree we had to take down that still needs splitting. I breath slowly and try not to allow a breathless coughing fit to to start. I feel myself getting sick again, the sinus infection that never goes away and takes hours and days and weeks away. The leaden exhaustion caused by infection sucks at my body and mind. I'm going back to the doctor tomorrow but I'm also scheduling another visit to the ENT clinic. My symptoms are an allergic fungal infection. I want them to run that test, one of the few they haven't. I'm holding a silvery, soft ball of fear in my belly, the online articles say this can't be permanently cured, it's often not diagnosed.

I watch horse shapes in the rain and ask my husband to hurry, it's hard to getting breath. We fix the gate ad my mind goes back to fixing dinner after changing into my farm clothes. I'm The Food Lady here, it's my job. Inside it's light and warm and my inhaler is waiting for me aling with fish and greenbeans. And, Yeti's completely indifferent Cat thinking his small predatory thoughts.