A Psychology Experiment

Henk writes:

One of Lil’s favourite commercials advertises an SUV that was “raised by a family of sports cars,” which is, I guess, a mechanical version of the “nature versus nurture” argument: Which is more influential? Genetics or environment? Did its upbringing make the SUV more fun to drive? Don’t know. Lil didn’t love the commercial THAT much. She didn’t buy the car.

But she’s decided to run her own version of the experiment by giving us Friesians a baby Thoroughbred to raise. No kidding. Charlee, Wilby, Mila and I now have our very own skinny-legged weanling to take care of. Mila hates him at the moment. His “cute factor,” and the fact he was headed to a bad place after losing his future job when our government gutted the racing industry, has deflected some of the attention that’s rightfully hers. She’ll get over it. Being the only kids here is bound to make them friends eventually. She’ll succumb to his charms.

For my part, I’m pretty excited. Of course I got to meet him first. Being the good-will ambassador for the rest of the equines on the place, I get to meet everybody first. Because I never try to kill or maim them. The same can’t be said for everybody else here. Some of my fellow equines seem to think it’s important to terrorize every newcomer and put him in his place. Personally, I’m over that whole hierarchy and class thing. Accept that I am the best looking, most talented creature in the barn, and I don’t care where I fit in the pecking-order. I’ll share my space and my hay with anyone. After I approve the newbie, the rest of the gang generally accepts him, too.

Being a Thoroughbred, Beau is bound to be a little twitchy. Like a Ferrari. All about speed and excitement, but a little scary when pushed to the edge of the envelope. We Friesians, on the other hand, are more like Bentleys. Too classy to scare the wits out of our humans, even at speed (which, admittedly, isn’t much).

So far, Beau has proved to be surprisingly brave, but I guess you have to be if you're expected to go flat out on a track with 10 others trying to bump you out of the way and beat you to the finish line. He’s two days younger than Mila (not quite 7 months), and his first night in a strange barn full of horses he’s never met before he was relaxed and calm, and hardly called for the friends he’d left behind at all.

When he and I were introduced in the arena the next day, he walked right over, and when I gave him a once-over with my nose, the cheeky little devil threatened to kick me! Three hundred and fifty pounds to thirteen hundred – wonder who’d win that one? But he wasn’t going to let me push him around, and I have to respect that. Wilby was far less understanding when Beau tried the same thing with him, and chased him around a bit with his ears pinned, but only to let the kid know who’s in charge. They’re good now, and the girls have accepted him, too. So now we’re all one strange little herd – 4 Friesians and a Thoroughbred. I hear Thoroughbreds are pretty smart, so I’ll try to teach Beau what I can.  Who knows? Maybe Lil will end up with a skinny-legged who thinks like one of us?

Tres Beau

In my next life, please don't let me come back as...

… a Tennessee Walking Horse.

Don’t get me wrong – they’re very nice horses. Or at least the one that Lil brought home a few weeks ago is very nice. I’ve never met any others. Neither had Lil. They’re not exactly common around here, and if people do have them it’s for trail riding, which isn’t really what Lil is into. So when Memphis was offered to her for the therapeutic riding program, she was hesitant. Until she met him. Not only is he black – the requisite colour for all the very BEST horses – but he’s relatively short (about 15’1 hh), built like a tank (ideal for therapeutic, since shorter horses are easier for volunteers to work with but a solid frame makes the horse able to carry larger riders), and a truly sweet-natured soul. He’s kind, well-mannered, and nothing upsets him. He’s now in training for therapeutic work, and hasn’t put a hoof wrong yet. Decidedly a keeper.

Here’s a picture of Memphis with three of our volunteers. Note his relaxed posture and kind eye.

Now look at this Google picture of a wild-eyed Walker doing something that – trust me – is NOT natural. No horse picks up his feet that high or steps that far under himself (look at the left hind) and crouches his butt down like that of his own accord. The best trained dressage horses that flex their hocks and lift their forehands don’t begin to approach this kind of angle. And the caption says this horse is two. Can you say “ruined by the age of 8?” Note the lovely bracelet and manicure on that foreleg. These are your clues to how he got this way.

Because Lil is a curious sort, she decided to find out more about Walkers once Memphis came to live at our farm. That’s how she found the picture of the fire-breathing dragon here. So how does a mellow dude like Memphis go from doing the super-comfy running walk (a very fast and ultra-smooth version of a normal walk) he was bred for to the painful-looking strut in the picture? Well, fashion has a lot to do with it. In the ‘sixties it became cool for show Walkers to go around with this exaggerated action in the front, which came to be known as “the big lick.” Training had something to do with it, too. But so did pain. ‘Cause the big lick not only looks painful for the horse to do (guaranteed no Walker could sustain it all day while carrying his owner around his big Tennessee plantation which is what the breed was developed for), but pain often has a lot to do with the way it’s accomplished, too.

If you want your horse to snatch his feet up off the ground high and fast, you simply make it painful for him to keep them on the ground. This can be done by having your farrier trim him extra-short, until the soles of his feet bleed and develop bruises. If that’s not enough, you can add tacks between the stacked pads, shoes and hoof, that dig into the white line. And if that still doesn’t give you enough flashy action, you can put a caustic chemical like mustard oil, diesel fuel or kerosene on his pasterns to blister his skin. Then you hang chains around those sore pasterns and watch him dance. Of course your horse may shut down after all this, lie down and refuse to put any weight on those sore feet at all. Then you’ll just need a cattle prod to get him up. If you think I’m making this stuff up, watch the Humane Society video or read the EQUUS Magazine article I’ve linked to below. Just don’t watch the video if you have a twitchy stomach.

As with all abuse, it’s a small percentage of trainers who subject their horses to this kind of torture, but your chances of having a human cause you unspeakable pain – on purpose, repeatedly, and for no justifiable reason – are far better if you’re a Tennessee Walking Horse than most other breeds. Memphis was lucky, his humans weren't into competition. Humans who belong to The National Walking Horse Association or Friends of Sound Horses have committed to zero tolerance for soring. But not everyone else has. Competitions where federal inspectors show up to check for soring often see an exodus as trainers pack up their horses and go home rather than take the chance of being caught.

Sometimes, people just make me sick.

Aren’t we horses lovely enough to look at without trying to make us into something we’re not?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxVlxT_x-f0

http://www.equisearch.com/news/soring_030706/5/

Of Horses and Trailers

Henk writes:

Being the most magnificent horses on the farm, we Friesians of course get the best paddock - the one with the nicest grass and a commanding view of the barn, the house, the driveway - all the areas that matter. So we were the first to spot the horse trailer arriving the other day. Now, a horse trailer can mean several things: 1) someone's leaving, 2) someone new is arriving, 3) someone's going on a road-trip to a show, the vet, a trail ride.... You get the idea. My favourite is someone new arriving. I'm a very social horse, and new company is always fun. Thinking this might be the case, my paddock buddies and I started doing our "look at me, I am magnificent" trot up and down the fence-line. In case you're not familiar with this move, it goes like this:
- hold your head really, really high, with your ears pricked sharp forward and your nostrils distended
- breathe fire through said distended nostrils; the more noise you can make when you exhale, the better
- lift your tail slightly if you're a Friesian (we're not allowed to stick our tails up in the air like Arabs, and besides our massive tails are too heavy for such nonsense) or WAY up if you're not
- do the kind of extended trot your owner would give her right arm to experience when she has you under saddle
- repeat up and down the fence-line until you get tired or no one is watching any longer
Wilby, Charlee and I do this really, really well. Even baby Mila (almost six months old now) is getting the hang of it, although it must be said her fire-breathing needs some work.

Then the truck and trailer stopped, Lil hopped out, opened the gate to our paddock, and Robert drove the truck and trailer inside. OK, we realized, there was no one new inside. We dropped our "magnificent" act and gathered in the centre of the paddock to snort warnings at the intruder. When Lil opened up the back of the trailer, threw in a pile of hay and left, I jogged over, hopped inside, and started filling my face. I knew this routine. It was time to teach Charlee and Mila about trailers. That they're good and safe and a great source of food. You see Charlee had only been on a trailer once - when she came to live at our farm - and apparently it was a horrible experience. Mila, of course, didn't even know that trailers existed until this very day. Clearly Wilby and I were to teach the girls that trailers were ok. As long as there was hay involved, I was cool with it.

Over the next few days, the truck and trailer shared our paddock and became a great source of food and entertainment. Wilby and I got LOTS of extra munchies, and all we had to do was go inside the trailer to get them. Eventually this convinced the girls that the trailer was not a horse-eating monster, and that it was in fact possible to go inside and then come out again, no worse for wear. Lil actually got Charlee to walk into the trailer. Once. But even that was a big step, as the poor mare had clearly been terrified before. Mila hopped in and out a few times, and began to relax around the rig. But if the aim had been to get Charlee and Mila onto the trailer TOGETHER, then that failed. I gather the plan had been to take the girls to the Keuring (inspection), but Lil decided that a mare that's scared to death of trailering and an unweaned baby would be a bad combination in a trailer going more than 3 hours away from home, and decided to wait until Mila is a year old and trailer-trained. And since Charlee isn't pregnant this year, she can have some serious training put into her as well. She needs it. Her behaviour is so rude and pushy sometimes that it's downright un-Friesian. So I expect we'll be seeing that trailer in our paddock again soon, for some more de-sensitizing as the humans like to call. I just call it a moveable feast!

Of course I've never been afraid of trailers myself. The only time I refused to get on one was after a trail ride at the local public forest, and that had less to do with the trailer than with the very rude mare I had to share it with. She lived at our farm, but we were never turned out together, so I had no idea how unpleasant this horse could be. I walked onto the trailer unsuspecting, only to be snarled and snapped at the entire way to our destination. And when we got there, the beige-coloured beast insisted on speed-walking like there was a prize for finishing in the shortest possible time, while I of course prefer graceful sauntering over speed, and I like to enjoy the scenery. So it really ticked me off when I had to keep jogging to catch up, her tail swishing impertinently as if she were trying to hurry me along. By the time we were finished I'd developed a strong dislike for that mare, and had no intention of getting back on the trailer with her. I tried to make this very obvious to Lil and her fellow human, but they thought I was just being stubborn for no reason. Only after they took the mare off the trailer an hour or so into the exercise and tied her to a tree did I walk back onto the rig. Because of course the trailer was never the thing I had a objected to, and now that they were prepared to leave the darned mare tied to that tree where she belonged and take me home, I was quite happy to co-operate. But can you believe it? Once I was trapped inside that trailer they went and got that mare and put her right back on the trailer beside me again. Lil's lucky I don't hold a grudge, or she'd never get me on another trailer again!

Top 5 Things Horse Newbies Need to Know

Henk writes:

I watch my human, Lil, trying to train lots of horse-newbies how to behave in a barn. Sadly, so many of them just don't listen. The worst ones are those that pretend they "know all about horses," but in truth can't tell a fetlock from a forelock and won't admit they can't. Some samples:

1) Horses are individuals, just like people are (although horse personalities are of course much more varied and interesting!). You can't treat us all the same. For example, our Canadian horse, Louis, hates having his face messed with and will bite you if you persist. Lil says: "Please don't touch his face. Pat him on the shoulder or neck. That's where horses 'groom' each other, that's what feels good to them. Please leave his face alone." And what do people do? Time and time again they go in for that face hug, invading poor Louis' space until he's ready to lose his mind. And if he takes a nip at the fool who's got him in a headlock? He's being a bad horse. Good grief.

2) Horses are flight animals. We've survived all these thousands of years by running away from critters that are trying to eat us. Even now when we live in stables and paddocks where mountain lions are relatively rare, our first instinct when something scares us is to run. Notice I said "instinct" and not "thought." When we panic, we're not thinking. But we are running. Don't get in our way.

3) Corollary to above: we weigh ten times what you weigh. If we're running from something scary, throwing yourself in our path isn't likely to stop us.

4) Corollary to corollary: we can't see directly in front of us. If we're running from something scary and you're standing in our blind spot, you will get laid-out flat.

5) We need carrots and apples to live. Seriously. I read it on the Internet. The Internet is never wrong. I prefer a nice Paula Red, thank you. At least once a day.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Henk writes

Wow. It’s almost September, and I haven’t written a blog post since Mila was born at the end of April! I blame it all on Lil, of course. She’s been too self-absorbed and busy doing who-knows-what to tend to my literary career, and despite my other impressive talents, I just can’t work a keyboard. She still seems to find time to ride me, though… Doesn’t seem quite fair. Like perfecting my collected trot is more important than getting me a book contract!

But I won’t bore you with my problems. Here’s a re-cap.

Marvelous Mila

Charlee’s filly is the coolest horse to hit the ground since… well… moi. I knew it as soon as she was born, and couldn’t wait for a chance to hang out with her. They live in the stall next to mine, so we could chat, but for the first couple of weeks after Mila was born, Lil insisted on putting Mom and baby out by themselves. Then, FINALLY she brought me out on a lead rope to meet them nose-to-nose. Mila came right over to say “Hi,” which prompted Charlee to spin around a kick me. Really! I was offended, but then figured out she was just making a point and I couldn’t entirely blame her. If Mila was mine, I’d do the same thing, I suppose. After that it was ok, and now Mila spends more time with Wilby and me (he got added a couple of days later and I was floored when Charlee booted him, too) than she does with her Mom. We canter around, groom each other, find the tastiest grass to eat. Charlee trusts us completely with her baby, and we’d lay our lives on the line for that kid.

Chicken Massacre

Lil got the bright idea somewhere that she should get a flock of chickens. Imagine my profound shock when I found out that the purpose behind this bizarre move was to collect the unborn offspring of these birds and.. can you imagine?... eat them! I’ll never look at a human the same way again! I think the chickens find this knowledge too unbearable to live with, because they’ve been systematically committing suicide all summer. One took a nap under a parked car. Four or five have voluntarily crawled through the fence into the dog run and martyred themselves by way of the Great Dane (who always seems so disappointed when they stop playing and flapping and… die!). And then they got help from the resident raccoon who pried open the door to their coop every other night for a week and chewed the head off one chicken each night. Wow. And people think we horses are hard to take care of!

The Return of Pretty-Boy, And Its Aftermath

Soberbio, the Andalusian stallion whose children stayed with us for a while last year spent a few months here and completely messed up our relationship with Lil. He does tricks (like half-pass , Piaffe and Passage), and she got to try some of these things out. She liked it! Worse than that, Soberbio’s owner rode Wilby and me and told Lil there’s no reason we couldn’t learn some of those tricks, too. That after we’d worked so hard to convince Lil that we’d pretty much maxed out our natural talents. Now there’s no more putzing around in the arena. We have to work again! But the news isn’t all bad, really, because all the extra flexing and collecting has built up my neck to a thing of beauty, and I’m told my butt is awesome. Here’s a picture of the pretty boy.

Horse Rescue

Lil and Robert picked up the first “re and re” (retrain and re-home) candidate this weekend. He’s a 10-year-old Standardbred that’s retired from racing and looking for a new job. A group of women from the local women’s shelter has been coming to the farm for the past few months to learn about horses, and now they’ll be working with the new guy (his name’s Targui) to teach him how to be a riding horse. Lil tells me the idea is to have people helping horses, and horses helping people. I guess the women have had some lousy things happen in their lives, and being around us equines helps them feel better. She’s calling the new program Horseplay Sanctuary.  

Well, that’s summer in a nutshell. I promise to keep Lil’s nose to the grindstone (or fingers to the keyboard) more regularly from now on.



A Frieslet

The most wonderful thing happened in our barn the other day: Lil came out to feed us at 5:30 as usual (if she lounges in bed any later than this I begin trying to kick my door down – this tends to bring her running, since she can hear it in the house) – and feedtime is a wonderful thing in itself. But. After she gave all us stabled horses our breakfast and headed out to the back paddock to feed the outdoor gang, Charlee, our pretty young Friesian mare who lives next door to me, stopped eating half-way through her breakfast and lay down for a while. I was kind of busy with my head in the feed bucket, but the next time I looked up, there were two Friesians in her stall – although the second one was so tiny I think it could be called a Frieslet.

Now when Lil came back in from outside, she opened the door to Charlee’s stall, halter in hand, ready to take the young lady outside to her paddock, but when that stall door slid open the Frieslet kind of tumbled out into the aisle at her feet. I truly wish you could have seen Lil’s face. I’m still laughing.

Charlee wasn’t due to foal for another week, and she’d shown no signs of being in labour when Lil fed her. Lil said later that her first thought had been: “what idiot locked a dog in the stall with Charlee?” Quickly followed by: “Oh my god, it’s a foal!!!”

Her name is Mila. She may be tiny for a Friesian, but she’s big for a foal and I can’t figure out where Charlee put her for the past 11 months! She was on her feet within a half hour and doing flying lead changes a couple of days later. She even did a half-pass in the paddock her second day of life, but I suspect that may not have been intentional – it was a breezy day and I think she was just trying to stay upright.

I can’t wait to get out in the paddock with the two of them. I intend to teach Mila everything I know. Mould her in my own image. Present the world another perfect Friesian. OK, I know, Charlee helped. But I shall finish what she started. Happy birth day Mila.

Louis and the Power of Three

Henk writes:

I've noticed that humans have a "thing" for threes:
Three blind mice.
Three wise men.
The holy Trinity (and Trinity in The Matrix, who happens to be really hot, very smart, and dressed all in black like a certain horse I know).
Third time lucky.

You get the idea.

Of course, "good things come in threes" (which would be why Lil shares her life with three fabulous Friesians) and so, apparently, do bad things, as Louis was about to discover.

You'll remember from my last post that our charming Canadian horse had managed to injure himself twice in the space of a week or so -- once by twisting a fetlock in the paddock, and then by trying to challenge Wilby for dominance of the herd. A very bad idea. So now the horse who'd never been sick or lame a day in his life was nursing injuries to both front legs, and just as he was starting to recover, he developed an abscess in his right hind hoof. I was trying to figure out how he'd manage to stand on one leg!

I've never had an abscess. My feet are perfect. Really. Ask my farrier (or, as I prefer to think of him, my personal pedicurist). He tells Lil all the time that if a textbook ever needed a picture of the perfect hoof, mine should be in it. Of course if you've ever seen such a book you'll know the picture usually shows HALF a hoof with all the bones and stuff showing, so I think I'll pass that honour up, thank you very much. Still, it's nice to have your feet appreciated.

So I've never experienced an abscess, but I know horses who have. Evidently it hurts like the devil. Some horses are tough and manage to hobble around in spite of the pain. The less stoic ones pretty much lie down on their backs and wave their feet in the air, desperate for their humans to make the pain go away. This, however, does not tend to be either quick or easy.

When Louis started hopping around on one hind, Lil set out to do all the usual stuff to help heal an abscess -- soak the hoof in warm water with Epsom salts to draw out the infection, wrap the legs for support, and leave the horse in his stall to rest.

Having never needed nursing before, Louis was unfamiliar with these procedures, and quickly decided that they were beneath his tough-guy Canadian-ness. The first day Lil tried to put his foot in a bucket of water I was lucky enough to be in the barn to watch.

Louis stood politely in the cross-ties, right hind leg lifted high to keep the hoof from contacting the ground, waiting to see what was going to happen. When Lil approached carrying a bucket, his ears perked up and he stuck his nose deep inside, looking for food. The look of shock was pretty funny, and he pulled his dripping muzzle away, snorting salty water all over the aisle, and Lil. He twitched his ears and pretended not to care as Lil carried the bucket toward his rear end. Embarrassed but not alarmed. He even let her take hold of the dangling right leg and lift it over the bucket, then gently lower his hoof down. All went well until his foot touched the water, and then he jerked his leg away, and now his eyes bugged out a little. Lil talked to him quietly and pulled the leg toward the bucket again, but this time he yanked it away hard, sending the bucket flying and water spilling everywhere. He hopped away sideways on his good leg and leaned his butt against a wall, looking at the spreading puddle and snorting loudly.

Lil uttered a few unprintable words and headed off to the washroom for more warm water and Epsom salts. Patience is not usually her strong suit, but she can be remarkably persistent with us horses. She didn't even get mad at Louis when he dumped the bucket a second time, and she eventually convinced him that it was OK to stand with his foot in the water, although she had to stay right beside him and stroke his rump for the entire 20 minutes. If she moved even a couple of feet to do something else (like groom him), Louis would pull his leg out of the bucket and start to fuss.

Finally, the first soaking session was over, and Lil dried Louis' leg, tied his tail in a knot to keep it out of the way, and got out the stable bandages. Louis was instantly on the alert again, watching her every move. What on earth was the human up to now?

Lil bandaged the healthy leg first, this being actually the more important leg to support, since Louis was putting all the weight of his substantial rear end on that leg to avoid using the sore foot. He watched her warily but decided to put up with the weird procedure rather than cause himself pain by stepping on that ouchy right leg. It was a different story, though, when Lil moved to the other side and started wrapping the right leg. He wasn't using it to stand on anyway, so using it as a weapon was pretty easy. He let fly time and again, and although it was never clear whether he was actually aiming for Lil or just kicking out in protest, she had to be pretty nimble to stay clear of that flying hoof. Executing a nice, even, supportive stable bandage on a moving target is tricky even when you're not dodging flying feet, but eventually the job was done. Lil was in a sweat. A few more unprintable words had been uttered.

She stroked Louis' neck while calling him some pretty ugly names, unclipped the cross ties and led him into his stall. Louis took a step and panicked a little, kicking out that troublesome right hind again. I guess the bandages felt like something had hold of his legs and his first thought was to fight it off. Lil started to laugh, and that really ticked him off. He put his head down and walked into his stall, hopping on one leg and flailing the other around like he was trying to get clear of thick deep mud. He hobbled to the corner of his stall and stood there sulking, muttering something in French that I couldn't understand.

I was secretly looking forward to a week or so of amusing performances, but darned if that abscess didn't drain right away. I swear he did a Jedi mind trick on it just to avoid any more "nursing." He was better and back outside with us... in just three days!

Meet Louis

Henk writes:

The stall next to me wasn’t empty for long. A day or two after the Spanish horses left for their new home in Nova Scotia (see November 9th post), Louis, our Canadian horse, appeared next door. He likes to live outside in the big pasture, so I hadn’t seen him for a while. He was looking exceptionally grumpy.

“Merde,” I heard him curse under his breath. He was avoiding me, trying to get to the far  side of his stall, but every time he put his left front foot on the ground his leg buckled from pain. I pretended not to notice, and stuck my head in my feed bucket. There’s nothing a tough guy like Louis hates more than letting his vulnerability show.

As I chewed my dinner, I considered – not for the first time – how unfair it was that Louis could swear in a different language. French no less. They’re descended from French horses, the Canadians (although it looks suspiciously like some Friesians managed to dive into the gene pool at some point as well), and they’ve hung onto their language through the centuries. Smart critters. Most of the Friesians I know who were born in North America like me don’t know a lick of Dutch, and those who were born in Holland (like Wilby) don’t take advantage of it much. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve begged him to teach me some Dutch swear-words. But goody-two-shoes won’t do it. Claims he doesn’t know any. Ha! I don’t believe him. But Louis? It’s crisse de calisse this and tabarnak that. I have no idea what it means, but it all just sounds so awesome!

It’s a good thing humans can’t understand him, though, because Louis likes to use those mellifluous cuss words of his, and that could be a problem since he works in Lil’s therapeutic riding lessons. We don’t need any little kids taking interesting new words with them to school the day after their ride!

Louis’s a tough guy. Undisputed boss of the herd he usually lives with, and never mind that all the other horses are a hand or two taller. But he should have remembered there’s one horse he can’t mess with. When Lil put him out with us once his leg got better (she still wanted him in at night until he was 100%), the fool tried to challenge Wilby for some hay first morning out with us, and now he’s limping on his right front, way more than he’d been limping on his left. Lil’s losing her mind. Evidently his macho got the better of his intellect. And he’s back on stall rest, which makes him extra angry. Doesn’t Lil realize he’s meant to live outdoors like his ancestors? The little horses who worked the farm, pulled the family carriage to church on Sunday and even did a little racing, dragged logs out of the bush, and got turned loose in that bush to fend for themselves for months on end when they weren’t needed? Is she trying to make him soft by sticking him in a stall?

But at least he’s starting to talk to me a little after we’ve had our dinner every night. I like his stories. I’ll share some with you. And maybe, just maybe, I can get him to teach me some French.