A long day - NLR (Not leather related)

RollingThunder · May 12, 2009, 08:42:32 PM

Well, the last 3 days have been a nightmare. I've had about 8 hours of sleep since waking up Sunday morning. We went and got Rudy, the new weanling and Thunder's full brother (and twin) on Sunday, and here's the whole story.

So we get over to Kim's and Rudy needs to be loaded. We brought Jimmy along just in case we needed some help coercing Rudy into the trailer. Time became a problem, so that's pretty much what we did. We walked Jimmy back into the trailer after Rudy getting to know him, and Rudy followed. We put Jimmy in the front 1/3, and Rudy loose in the back third with the dividers for that section out.

So, when we got Rudy home, I had an interesting dilemma. Rudy was in the trailer, and hadn't been haltered. Jimmy was in the trailer and was an angel patiently waiting for me to halter-break Rudy. Took me a bit, but I got him haltered and out of the trailer we went.

Where we learned that Rudy can put you on the outside like a bucking bull, and he spun me off hard and fast. So we weren't quite leading well, as you can imagine.

Lesson 1: Don't halter break your foal in a horse trailer.

So it took me a total of an hour and a half to get him halter broke and leading with float, and lots of it. He's a quick little study. So we walked him and Jimmy down to the day pasture, which is about 3 and a half acres. Well, things were going well up until the point that Jimmy decided that he really didn't like his role of equine concierge with horses that are younger and smaller than he is. And he proceeded to chase him all over the place. And because Rudy was unfamiliar with the pasture layout, which Jimmy was supposed to show him, he went right through the hotwire that separated the pastures. Just breezed right through it. Had a couple little scratches but no worse for wear.

Lesson #2: Jimmy is only a good concierge with horses who can hold their own.

So then, the big problems started. Jimmy was still chasing him, and now he was in with the rest of the herd. And Thunder decided he was going to get in on it too. So he chased his little brother all over the place to the back corner of the pasture, where he left him be. So Rudy ended up mostly hiding behind a mulberry bush. I say mostly, because his butt was out in plain sight, but he was hiding his neck and head in the bushes like an ostrich.

Lesson #3: It's not just humans who are buttheads to their little brothers.

So I went back, and got him haltered. And when Thunder came charging up to attack again, I hollered, "WHOA!" and he stopped dead in his tracks and backed up, realizing that Rudy was on the end of my lead rope.

At this point, Rudy realized that it was the best idea to keep me between him and his big brother Thunder. And Thunder used to do the same thing when he was in with Cowboy.

So, I got Rudy back up to the front pasture, and we pulled him out and tried to figure out what to do. DJ went down and fixed the hotwire that Rudy had barreled through at a full-tilt boogie, and we put him and Jimmy back in the front pasture.

Remember that part. It's important later.

Now, we suddenly noticed that the Patriot sensor for the hotwire was flashing, signaling we had some problem or another with the wire. While we were trying to fix it, Rudy went through it again, this time he was out of the pasture, and in the open. So he headed back to try to find the herd in the back pasture.

Took us a frozen age to walk him down, and eventually, we lured him back to the backyard by getting the herd to come up to the front. Then he got really close to the gate for the dogs' fenced in run. So Cari opened it up and in he went. It was about 8:30 or 9 by then and we had to figure out something. The hotwire was still down. We had a horse we obviously couldn't keep in a pasture or safe place. So I called Kim, and couldn't get a hold of her. So we were really stuck.

So Cari had a brain storm and we took a couple of T-Posts and pounded them in, and cut the run in half and put Rudy in there. By the time we were done, we had a big huge paddock for him, lots of grass in there, and a 5' fence around him. We thought we had it licked. We could fix the hotwire in the daytime tomorrow, get the herd acclimated to him, and turn him out back in the day pasture with whoever we figured wouldn't reject him much.

We really, really thought we had it licked.

We were SOOOOOO wrong.

Rudy was really wanting that companionship, so we left the outdoor lights on, and our back bedroom window, and hollered out to him when he hollered out. We figured as he hollered out less, that he was mellowing out. He had food and water and someone was close.

But apparently not someone he felt he wanted to be close to. I fell asleep about midnight, and woke up at about 1:30 with him whinnying again. I vaguely remember looking up and looking out the window, which looks down the line of the fence to see little Rudy press down the horse-panel fence, and jump it.

We threw on clothes and off we went again. We got Sweetie out eventually this time, and lured him back to the paddock, and for a moment thought perhaps Sweetie was gonna be good with him. Well, no such luck. So having no other recourse, as we tried again, but couldn't get Kim on the phone, we had no other choice. We had no place that was safe on this property to keep Rudy.

Except in the horse trailer. Our horse trailer is a 3-horse slant load, and we had only to remove one divider panel to give him a full length of the trailer. Hate it as we did, it was now 4:30 AM, and we'd tailed him through the farm fields enough as it was. We had no barn stalls to put him in, and no shelters we could close off to keep him in either, because it was too dark to see what we were doing. Our only recourse was to sequester him in the trailer.

So we figured that as small as he was, he could turn around easily enough, and we figured we'd have him in a safe enough spot, get a couple hours sleep, and trailer him back to Kim's until we could arrange for better confinement here.

The only problem was, he'd never been actually halter-led into a trailer before, and like I said, it was 4:30 already when we got him caught and haltered again. So this time, we brought out little Cloud, and we decided if we were gonna teach one horse to trailer load at 4:30 in the morning, why not two?

Cloud walked right on in, nice as you please. I was very proud of her. Rudy, not so much. It took him a bit, but I eventually found his rhythm. His rhythm is to ask with persistence, feel for his slightest shift in weight and release. You can count to ten and on ten, each time, he took a full set of steps forward. It took three of those, and he was in the trailer. I hung a water bucket in there, and we tore a copious amount of hay off the round bale still in the pasture, put it in with him, and called it a night. He ate, and was relatively quiet.

So now he's not only trailer-loading broke, he's halter broke, and broke to lead. He also is broke to dogs now, because they came out to visit him on the other side of the divided run before we went to bed the first time. And not at all in a conventional manner. But what we had been told would be a really easy time of it, well, really was anything but.

So the sun came up, and Cari and I got up. I headed off to work, and Cari drove Rudy back to his old home. I called Kim and explained things to her, and she offered her 6' tall, 60' portable steel round pen. (Priefert, with safety edges - Primo stuff!). So we're gonna go this weekend, pick up the round pen, as she needed to redo her arena footing anyway, and bring it back here, set it up, and then the weekend after that we have a whole new game plan. Rudy in the round pen, bring Cloud in, and watch them closely, and see how they like each other. Then, we put Breezy and Cloud in with Rudy. If Rudy can get "in" with Breezy and especially with Cloud, he's got it made. Breezy is the herd matriarch. Although Thunder services every mare there, they are buddied up, and Breezy gets her way through him.

So if all that goes well, and Breezy takes to him well enough, we'll put the trio down in the day pasture and try it again, and then slowly introduce the herd's mares to him after he gets his other cajone to drop and get snipped.

So yesterday, after having only a couple of hours sleep total, we went out and tested the fence. Big time. We never could find where it was shorting out at. So, I figured for some reason or another, there might have been too many splices or something. And I had several spare spools of hot wire on hand. So I broke one out and we decided to re-run the main strand, as it appeared that it was that one that was suspect. So we ran the top strand in it's entirety.

No dice. Frustrating. So we decided that the best thing to do was to go back to what happened when it STOPPED working.

Remember the part about DJ fixing the hot wire? Well, one of his fixes was to take the hot wire and wrap it around the T-Post.

Yep, you heard right. The problems we had the whole night before with not being able to put Rudy in the day pasture were due entirely to a simple oversight in standard electrical engineering. Hot wire does not work when you ground it out by wrapping it about 20 times around a T-Post.

I coulda shot him.

And then both Cari and I stood there and laughed our arses off.

We fixed it all up, got it all squared away, and then came in and I watched my Blackhawks win Game 6 to make it to the Western Conference Finals in the Stanley Cup playoffs!

And now I'm gonna get a shower and get to bed. Night all!

Ten Wolves Fiveshooter · May 12, 2009, 11:35:13 PM

RT Sounds like you had quit a time there

TW

JD Alan · May 13, 2009, 09:39:34 AM

Ah, horses. Shovel money in one end, well you know the rest. Some of the best times I've ever had involved horses. I grew up with them, but sold the last one, with our trailer when our daughter was born. We sold the horses to pay for the adoption. We were getting ready to move to the city, so it was inevitable.

You sure had a time there, pard. Thanks for the story.

Gun Butcher · May 13, 2009, 09:34:37 PM

Learning your place in the herd can be a tough proposition sometimes. Sounds like he did real good considering all the things that got thrown at him and it sounds like you all handled it very well. You have earned a good Rest.

Dalton Masterson · May 14, 2009, 08:54:40 AM

So you didnt get NO leather work done?

I have had a few of those days. We used to have to back my Arabian into the trailer, picking up his hind feet to get him to start in.
He also like to stomp on deer. One morning mom heard commotion, went out and Windy had herded some deer into a bit of woven wire fence. Deer got stuck, and he was stompin the heck out of em.
After that, anytime I was riding and we saw deer, he wanted to chase them.

Glad things are better for ya now.
DM

Jamie · May 14, 2009, 09:18:30 AM

Just goes to show who really owns who in the human-horse relationship!

I had a mare that was a great horse in some respects, really smart, but stubborn as a only a pony can be - she was the product of a pony mare, and an Arab stud, and when she came into heat, she wanted to be with ponies. She came pregnant, and had a beautiful pinto filly, and we also had an old Standardbred gelding, and they were company enough most of the time, but as I said, she liked to be with ponies when she was in heat. Unfortunately, we had neighbors who had ponies pastured about a quarter mile away, and the separating distance was simply an open field. One day I watched her walk up to a nice tight 3 strand barbed wire fence, and lean into it with her chest. She had been carrying on something fierce - neighing and whickering, etc. She went back up the hill about 30 feet and ran full bore through the fence, blew all three strands. Aside from a cut in her chest, she was fine. I've seen her jump a fence, blow through it, and push it down. Fun comes in many forms, but few are as multifaceted as a horse...

Jamie

RollingThunder · May 14, 2009, 01:33:53 PM

He's a fugly little cuss, but here's his picture.

Jamie · May 15, 2009, 09:21:24 AM

Love the color - if he stays that way, he's going to be what I think of as a "Remington" I swear, most of Fredrick Remington's horses were various duns (reds, grey/grulla, tan) with darker heads. He's a fair bit better looking than Fred's however which were usually jug-headed (or hammer-headed), and scrawny - always looking hip sprung even under a gallop! At any rate, he looks to become an honest to goodness picture-pony and if he has the classy build of his brother (if I understood correctly, and the picture on your messages is his brother) he's gonna be gorgeous in the end.
Butterflies may be free, but good horse-flesh is a lot of work.
Jamie

RollingThunder · May 18, 2009, 04:25:29 PM

Actually, the picture in my avatar is my quarter horse Rio.

This is Thunder.

Ten Wolves Fiveshooter · May 18, 2009, 07:17:06 PM

Beautiful,animal RT, You can be proud to own a horse like this. Thanks for the look see.

tEN wOLVES

Johnny Dingus · May 18, 2009, 09:56:28 PM

Beautiful mane and tail nice angle to the shoulder, good hip. Wow I take it that this is your stallion? Do you always ride in a austrailian saddle? I can relate to your long day. Had a few horses abour 15 years ago. Would team pen, do reining and the daughter tried showing a little. Different chapter in my book but look back on it foundly. Horses are a lot of work but worth it.

Johnny Dingus

RollingThunder · May 18, 2009, 10:11:05 PM

Hey Johnny. On little trail hacks, I ride in my Aussie, yes. I have two Aussie's ... one synthetic, and one traditional. Normally I ride Thunder in my old SIMCO. Rio I ride in my Aussie stocks, because he's a little smaller, and this makes it a bit easier on him, because the SIMCO is about 45 lbs. The Aussies are 12 and 18 each.

And Thunder is gelded.

Although, he still covers the mares. After all, you can only eat so much and sleep so much, you know?

I have been asked if he was a Hancock-bred horse, but he's actually half TW and half Belgian draft. He's a good pony, and really good when I go in with unruly horses. He's very intimidating and does his best to keep me safe.