March 2008
One minute the horses accept me as a part of the scenery and ignore me, the next they run away. Pat refers to me as the "exploding red coat". She says it's because I move too quickly: apparently cats and dogs are programmed to us humans making rapid movements & changes of direction but horses get spooked - even if I raise my hand to scratch my head! They see rapid movement as predatory. Kitty Lauman, a horse trainer whose videos we watch, says horses are geared to rythmic patterns of repetition so I am trying to walk slowly, deliberately and with no rapid movements of any parts of my body...and I'm in agony if my nose itches or if I feel I am about to sneeze!
I stand in the middle of the paddock with my shoulders relaxed & my head bowed (as I learned from the training camp in Kelowna last summer) & Cisco comes up behind me & puts his head on my shoulder! That feels quite wonderful. He's definitely one of my favourites! He's very gentle but quite skittish, has always been afraid of ropes. Now if only the rest of them would regard me in the same way.
The weather has been simply awful since I arrived, freezing cold & snowy, with ice underfoot. The snow could be said to be beautiful as it falls in large flakes and it does decorate the sides of the mesas, but I cannot get beyond the cold! I am so grateful for the thermal underwear from MEC, I'd be a frozen lump in the far paddock without it, lost till the Spring thaw.
We have been slogging through the snow for days now to feed the horses. The water lines to the main kitchen, dining room & bathrooms froze about a week ago; the pipes are down 3 feet so not sure how long it will be before the ground thaws to that depth. The water lines to the barn & paddocks have been out for about a month now, so every morning & night we break the ice in the water troughs & fill them by the bucketful from the main greenhouse (which, thankfully, has a separate water supply). Carrying buckets of hot water through snow & ice has it's challenges, especially in the frosty early mornings!
The horses all have white whiskers where ice has formed, the ice also cakes on the bottoms of their hooves and the snow blankets their backs. But they are all healthy, we give them extra rations of hot bran and they have the new barn for shelter. Less fortunate are the wild mustangs on Forest Service land, they are not getting enough to eat with the heavy snowfalls and although every talks about it, there doesn't seem to be anyone willing to drive up there to leave feed for them.
The newest member of Pat's menagerie appeared about a month ago, a little black cat who was promptly named Raven. Raven mixes very well with the dogs here but is antagonistic with the 2 other black cats who live here. When I arrived, she had a raw area on her shoulder where the others had attacked her, it was not healing so I started isolating her at night in a travel carrier. She's been doing better ever since, she actually does not mind being locked up at night & being restricted to the house. Perhaps it's because she finally feels safe, I can only imagine what she has been through in her short life.
Vancouver: The 3 day drive up from New Mexico went very well, Raven & Chica (Pat's Jack Russell terrier) were excellent traveling comapnions. They slept most of the way in the back of the cab & were perfectly behaved. Raven tended to come up front to my lap several times but never when I was driving.
Pat & I took quite a scenic route, dropping in to Spokane to visit the White Boot company. Pat has been buying her riding & work boots from White's for over 20 years but has never visited them...always mailed her boots back for refurbishing when needed. We had a tour of the factory & learned how leather boots are made, it was great!
We also chose to drive thru Steven's Pass on Highway 2 out of Spokane rather than to take the freeway option. It was a beautiful drive without much traffic and we finally arived at Wayne's late Wednesday night. Crossing the border with the two animals was no problem (after we had paid for rabies shots and health certificates) as the border officials were more concerned with the mud on the truck than what or who we may be bringing into Canada! No questions re liquor or what I bought but concern that we had been off-road...I told them that Pat lived off-road but they couldn't seem to understand why we didn't have the truck washed on the trip! It just reinforces Pat's conviction that we Canadians are a strange breed.
