My good horse

So, over the weekend, whilst I was on the old homestead helping (or, actually, attempting to help) Farmmom and Farmdad move the cattle, I had to have someone taking care of Bubbah.

I asked E to do it, and he agreed. Upon my arrival back, during our Horse Production class this morning, I asked E how he was. The response?

"That horse is psycho."

"My horse is not psycho."

"He's spooky, he pulled back when I went to untie him, he twitched every time I touched him..."

"When he spooked, did he try to run away?"

"No, he just jumped a little."

"I see. Did he pull on the lead when he jumped?"

"Nooo....."

"And when he was pulling back, was he fighting? Or was he just moving back a little when you came to his head?"

"Well no he wasn't fighting..."

"And when you touched him.. he didn't freak out, did he? He just twitched his skin a little?"

"Yeah."

"You know, when I bought that horse he had about the same amount of rides on him that the colts do when they leave the program here. It was also the first time he'd ever been to town. He's been handled, to my knowledge, by a total of four people.. five, with you. This is the first time he's been handled by anyone but me, and for a few minutes, Miss C over there when I was hosing his legs down, since he came here."

"Oh."

"So, he's not psycho. He's young, he's inexperienced, and considering all of the facts I think he did pretty danged good with a brand new, never met him before handler, don't you?"

"Well, yeah, but you need to get lots of different people to handle him!"

"I know. But too many people are scared of him."

*Sigh* He's an excellent boy, he's doing as well as any of the other, supposedly "well broke" horses in the program these days, and better than a couple of them.

We did have one moment in class today where I wondered if he was going to listen.. and if he hadn't it would have been a Very Bad Thing.

See... over the weekend, E had tied Bubbah out at the hitching rail to clean his stall. Z proceeded to bring his horse out and tie him right next to Bubbah.

Z's horse has a reputation for kicking for no apparent reason.

Yep. Bubbah got kicked.

He's fine, no swelling or heat anywhere, so it didn't even bruise him, but he didn't like it.

Well, today in class we had all been gathered up to listen to instructions, and as I was letting the horses on either side of Bubbah peel away, up comes Z on his horse, right in front of us. And he's letting his horse push into Bubbah's personal space bubble.

Bubbah reared up a little, and held himself there for a few seconds, while I just tightened the reins a little, tried to keep him from striking out, and said in a calm, reasonable, soothing tone...

"Get that kickey piece of shit away from my horse before he starts a fight."

I can't blame Bubbah for challenging that flea bitten gray (no, really, that's what color he is) after he'd been kicked, and the gray did get into his space, so Bubbah didn't get reprimanded too hard.

But.. once he reared up, he'd started to strike, until I collected him. Once my hands were in contact with his mouth, he stopped. He didn't drop back to all fours until the gray was moving away from him, but he didn't strike out with his forelegs.

He ignored his instincts, which where screaming at him to use a measure of force to push this horse out of his space, this horse that had already kicked him when he was tied up and tried to assert its' dominance over him, and listened to me.

He's a good boy, and he's learning things nearly as fast as I can teach him.

But I couldn't ask for better manners, already.

You Know It's a Slow Day In Blog Land When...

You can get into AD's Blogs I Read Every Day list, and a mention on the front page, and not have a humongous increase in traffic:



What? I'm easily amused....

Bubbah

In honor of my weekend off, I thought I'd work up and post a couple of the pictures that I got of Bubbah.

I thought about making them black and white but when I looked at them that way, they just didn't look right without his gorgeous color.

Here they is.

Bribes...

I'm in the process of trying to bribe kids from the college to come help with the moving of the cows tomorrow.

We tried today... our help didn't show up. The portable corrals that we borrowed from the conservation service are in a bad way. Things just didn't work.

So, on the theory that more hands are better, I'm attempting to bribe people to come help us tomorrow after class.

For two of them the bribe is "Want an adventure?"

I'm waiting on a call back from them.

For E... I'm using the rabbit in the freezer, as well as possibly the venison roast, and videotaping his rodeo practices. Along with the damsel in distress routine.

I'm waiting on a call back from him, too. His message was "E, it's Farmgirl. I need help, and not just the crazy chick psychological kind... "

Crossed fingers, I really don't want to repeat today tomorrow.

How Did They Survive?

"I brought my camera so you can pull off the pictures of the bull riding, and I got a few of Bubbah, too."

"Really? Gimme!"

I pulled the card out of my camera and handed it to Farmmom, who petted it like Gollum and started muttering "my precious."

"Well? Where's the card reader?"

"Let me get it"

*Rummage Rummage*

"Well crap, looks like I left mine at home."

"You left it at home??? Why would you do that? You know I wanted to see these!"

"Well I had it set aside to pack with my laptop but I must have missed grabbing it."

She gave me that disappointed, my child is a moron look.

"I have a mini USB cord, we'll just hook the camera up."

"Um, it won't work."

"Why not?"

"There isn't a mini USB plug on my camera, its a specialized cord, which is sitting in the box for the camera at my apartment."

"Oh. Well we'll put the card in my camera, which does have a mini USB plug, and pull them off that way." She eyed me sideways like it was my fault that Samsung is anti-mini USB.

"If that'll work, if I remember right that camera has issues with that. Remember I had that one first."

"It'll work!" Farmmom's voice had taken on the same tone I remembered from my childhood when I wanted brand name sneakers and she wouldn't let me get them. Memories of a terrified shoe store clerk who had tried to cajole her into the more expensive shoes for the commission floated through my head and I shut up.

"It's not working."

"Well you have a card reader, don't you? We had one that had a cord on it."

"No, I don't."

"Let me look."

Twenty minutes of searching later, I've turned up no card reader, and Farmmom is looking dejected.

"I'll go up to Mamaw's and get hers."

"I think she took it to Oklahoma with her."

"She left it the last time...."

"Well, go check."

No card reader at Mamaw's.

To heck with this, Farmmom and Farmdad take pictures with digital cameras too, they need their own card reader.

To Alco*!

After a suitably long search in the minuscule computer accessories department I've spotted four different kinds of cards, six different kinds of travel mice, two different keyboards, and a set of metric crescent wrenches, but no SD card reader. Finally, my eye catches something that looks like a USB hub, but on closer inspection turns out to be a reader for every kind of memory card in existence. Thats gonna be higher than I really wanted to pay, I can tell. Even though the price sticker on the hangar has been removed.

Well, it'll read the SD cards.

Get to the checkout and the clerk rings it up, exclaiming over what a nice reader it is, she's got forty seven different readers and she doesn't have that one, blah blah blah, great, lady, come on, if I don't get back soon I'll have to use the card reader as a shield when I walk through the door.

Ten forty something. Not as bad as I expected, pretty danged good, actually.

When I got back to the house I entered the door and immediately bowed to Farmmom, holding the card reader above my head in an offering pose, and she whipped out her razor knife, leaving me wondering if she was planning to give a blood sacrifice (me) to the technology gods to give thanks for the bounty of digital pictures, but she held it out to me to open the plastic packaging.

I breathed a sigh of relief and quickly stripped the packaging from the reader, plugging the card into it before I offer it to her again.

"Very good, First Daughter."

"I'm your only daughter, mom."

"As much of a disappointment as you are to me today, can you blame me for not having another one? Leaving the card reader at home..." she sniffed and trailed off into a mutter as the pictures copied from the card to her computer.

Looks like I get to live for another day....

*Alco is a cheesy little chain department store. Used to be Duckwall's, but then they got rid of the smell and had to change the name. Anyone who has been in a Duckwall's knows the smell I'm talking about. You could always tell when someone forgot your birthday and just hit Duckwall's to get something cheap and quick, because of the smell.

Headed Home...

... for the weekend. Gotta help move cows, plus it's a couple of days off for me.

Which I think I deserve.

While I'm home I'll be picking up some cold weather gear, Farmmom's duster (which she doesn't wear anymore and volunteered to loan me... good for keeping warm and dry on horseback) and spending lots of time with my pup and my cats. I miss the little fuzzies, it still doesn't feel right not to have them with me in the apartment.

I'll also be picking up an old hair brush to use on Bubbah's tail. I've got a mane and tail comb, but a brush will do a better job faster on his tail, since he's got a bad case of pasture tail. He's got tendrils that are wound into spirals, not dreadlocks but the beginnings of them. I may also pick up some detangler, and I need to hit Big R for bands so that I can braid and band his mane, to retrain it to lay all on one side. He's got pretty good hair, there's just one place up by his head that it likes to lay over on the other side. It'll stay for a while when I comb it over, but it's not well enough trained to stay there. Braiding it and banding it will fix that problem, retraining that bit of mane to lay properly.

I'm not good enough to do a fancy french show braid all the way down his neck, and he's too much of a cow pony for it to look good on him anyway.

By the way, Farmmom, Bubbah is a priss. I stood there for thirty minutes grooming him and he danged near went to sleep. He started leaning on me where I was leaning against his hip to work on his tail, and danged near pushed me over.

So yeah, weekend, moving cows, chilling out... I still have to pack some clothes, and make sure my apartment is prepared for me to be gone for a couple of days, overwater the palm, take out the trash, lock all the windows, etc. Then I can head down there, to be ready to start hauling cattle tomorrow.

It's gonna be weird, staying in the guest bedroom. Farmmom has already started turning my old room into a computer room, not that I'd have a bed to sleep in in there anyway.

How Bubbah Came to Us*

It was the last horse sale we went to this summer, Farmmom and I, and we were just seeing if anything spectacular jumped out at us, pretty much.

We had some cash laid by, in case, but not a lot, and we were half looking for a horse for Farmmom, so that we could ride together. I'd already bought my mare, and Mamaw had bought her filly, but the filly wasn't broke so we needed another horse.

We were walking the pens, looking around, watching what was coming in, when we came upon a corner pen, where two bays and a paint were hitched to the fence, and one of the bays was being saddled.

Instantly, Farmmom went "ohhhhhh pretty" at the bay as he stood, head up and looking around, a sheen of red to his coat that made him stand out.

We talked to the owner for a few minutes, watched him take the gelding out to warm him up before going in the ring, and as he performed a few roll backs.

We both chalked him up as going to cost too much for us, sighed a bit, and moved on.

But somehow, we kept wandering back to that pen. I was half in love with the little paint gelding, sweet disposition, but extremely green for all of his calmness. I felt I couldn't afford a horse that green at the time, he only had twenty five rides on him.

The tall, leggy bay had forty five, more workable, and in spite of our misgivings we noted his number so that we could see what he went for.

When he came into the ring, he was beautiful, moving lithely and responding well to his rider, considering it was his first trip to town.

Somehow, though, the bids were staying low. Farmmom elbowed me and muttered "I'll go to six hundred on him, but I can't afford any more."

So, I began bidding. The bid price slowly climbed, and Farmmom was fidgeting in her seat beside me. Something about this horse had captivated her, and I resolved to throw in some of my own cash if I couldn't get him for under the six hundred dollar limit.

Four hundred.

Five hundred.

Five fifty.

I glanced at Farmmom to see her glaring at the guy bidding against me. If looks could have killed, that dude would have been a smoking puddle.

Five fifty, and it's my bid. On a hunch I hesitated, thinking about it. The auctioneer was pointing at me and rattling off his numbers and gibberish, the owner was watching me, the entire sale barn was eyeballing the little skinny chick.

Finally, I raised the hand holding the pen. Five seventy five.

I turned to look at the guy who had been bidding against me, who was now staring at me as well. I cocked one eyebrow, thinking "Go ahead, mister. Make me embarrass you in public. Farmmom wants this horse, and she's gonna get it, if I have to kill you after the sale to do it."

"Going once! Going twice! SOLD!"

Farmmom squealed like a little girl, and did a little happy dance right there in her seat, sticking her tongue out at the other guy, while I sat there calmly and wrote down the price, and collected his papers and the signed transfer of ownership form.

And thus, did Bubbah the Big Bay Wonder Horse come to us. And they all lived horsey-ly ever after.

* The main points of this story are true, we did find Bubbah at the sale, and Farmmom did instantly fall in love with him, we did bring him home for five hundred and seventy five dollars. The rest of it, I might have embellished a bit on. My memory is a little fuzzy on the subject, probably due to the beating I got when Farmmom was talking about "her" horse and I piped up with "Hey! Who's name is on the receipt?? Mine, that's right, my name, my horse! But if you're nice to me I'll let you ride him once in a while."
You'd think, living around me for so long, she'd be able to take a joke better than that.....