A battle brews behind the barn

George does the Hula

 

Saturday encore ~ Translating ear-speak

Awhile back, reader Onhazier asked, "Can you demystify the ear language employed by equines? I understand 

the body languages of cats and dogs but feel like I’m missing out on half of the conversations your photos document."

Ears are just one component of a donkey's body language, albeit the most obvious given their size.

Donkeys also speak with their their tails, their legs, their voices, even their nostrils. 

I'll attempt to translate the pictures below based mostly on ear-speak.

This picture tells me that Lucy is relaxed but alert, George is half asleep, and Alan is a little agitated. 

Look at Lucy's ears: she is multi-tasking, listening to something off to the side with her right ear and to me with her left ear. 

George ears aren't as perky; he can relax because Lucy and Alan are paying attention for him. 

Alan's ears are pointed at me, but look at those flared nostrils! I think that means he's agitated about something ... 

probably Lucy, because she's standing closer to me and would have first dibs on a cookie were I to offer one.

A noise! Everybody turns toward the sound, which was a vehicle pulling an empty stock trailer over a cattle guard 

about a mile away. If I could identify it with my puny ears, it must have sounded like a sonic boom to the donkeys. 

Alan's keeping an ear out for something happening in the barn (the "something" being Hank, 

who might emerge from the doorway and run over him at any moment).

Lucy is still listening to the vehicle on the road with one ear and to me with the other. 

George's ears are playfully back, as opposed to angrily back (context is everything when trying to translate). 

Alan's look tells me he's concerned; he is listening to the vehicle and to Hank in the barn, 

plus he's got George on his back wanting to play, but he's trapped on all sides.

Alan can't handle the pressure and walks into the barn. George gets miffed because Alan has turned down 

his invitation to play. And Lucy is half annoyed at both of them for being disruptive. 

If she were really annoyed, she would have pinned both ears.

This is why I don't get lonely out here – the animals never shut up!

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, with the possible exception of rattlesnakes

This comment came in from reader Maggy: I consider you fearless, since you're living on your own

in the middle of nowhere! As another single female (who's not nearly as fearless as you), 

how do you manage in times of trouble? (Illness, power outage, pet emergency, yada yada ...)

The short answer is: as best I can. Mercifully, there haven't been too many "times of trouble" 

while living here. Power outages are easy – I have a backup generator. With one notable exception, 

I never get sick, but when I did, reinforcements arrived from near and far to help me. 

The pet emergencies are tough, but each one gets a little easier – experience is a great teacher.

If there's one thing I've learned from a decade of living alone in the middle of nowhere it's that

worrying and being fearful are big wastes of energy. Whatever is going to happen will happen 

no matter what I do, so it's best to just figure out a way to deal with it and move on.

And it's also helpful to always be mindful of one's surroundings. 

See my footprints at the bottom of the picture? I was walking across an area 

where some industrious critters had burrowed tunnels in the ground. 

I've watched all sorts of creatures disappear into these tunnels: turtles, bunny rabbits, 

jack rabbits, kangaroo rats, squirrels...there's an entire community down there.

One of its members climbed out of his hole to catch a little sun. 

See him up there in the top left? 

Let me zoom in for you:

Lesson learned: steer clear of the soft dirt in the springtime when rattlesnakes

are waking up from their winter hibernation.

Because you asked ~ Lucy's Tack

Last Saturday's encore post elicited a new bunch of questions from your inquiring minds, 

and a few of you wanted to know about Lucy's tack. I love me some tack talk, 

so I took my camera with me when I got Lucy ready for our Sunday ride.

I tack up Lucy on the back porch, also known as the "horse porch." 

The horse porch adjoins the garage, where I store my tack to keep it relatively dust-free.

Alan always follows Lucy and I as we leave the corral 

and makes me feel guilty for not taking him with us.

Anyway, this is Lucy's halter. It's a Brad Cameron mule halter and was part of her trousseau.

It's basically a rope halter, but it has a metal clip where you would normally tie a knot,

the idea being that mules/donkeys can be headstrong and might pull back so hard 

that you'd never be able to untie the knot. Lucy, of course, would never dream of such bad behavior. 

The clip does make it easier for neophyte ranchsitters to use it.

 This is Lucy's saddlepad. It is cut to conform to the mule saddle she wears.

It is made by Reinsman, and I love love love it.

 The backing is whatever this stuff is called. Ticky tack? Tacky tick? Something like that.

All I know is it stays in place like velcro.

Here is Lucy wearing her Steve Edwards "Cowboy" model mule saddle. It fits her perfectly.

Saddle-fitting a donkey can be very tricky. I got lucky when I was saddle-shopping for Lucy

and was able to try this one before I bought it. (Here's a link with that whole story.) 

It has many useful D rings, to which I've attached lots of saddle strings

(for tying on all the bones and other crap we bring home).

Now that Lucy's all dressed and ready to ride, it's time for me to put on my gear...

These are my beloved chinks. I do not leave home without them. They protect my legs

from all the cactus we rub up against and keep me from sliding around in the saddle.

I had them made about 12? years ago. They're buttery-soft elk leather and drape ever so beautifully.

 Lucy is happy to model them for you.

Lucy wears an Amish-made headstall designed especially for longears; it has a clip 

that unbuckles so that I don't have to fold and stuff those 14" ears under the crown.

I ride Lucy in a simple O-ring snaffle bit with a mecate, which is very handy

when I dismount to open gates and pick up bones. She neck reins better than most horses

I've known, and I ride her with a big sloppy rein and little to no contact on the bit.

 

 Lucy: Can we go now please?

Putting the dishes away

Sayonara, DirecTV. You are dead to me. No longer will I pay your obscene and 

ever-increasing monthly bill for 150 channels, only 10 of which I ever watched. 

Take your dish and your crappy customer service and go out of business 

as more of us cut the cord and find other ways to watch TV. 

Whew. I feel so much better already.

I've subscribed to a satellite TV service ever since moving to the ranch. 

Back in 1995, it was the only way to get a signal out here in the middle of nowhere. 

Then DSL came to my house and I discovered the wonders of streaming video from the internet.

 Between Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, I can watch almost everything I'm interested in 

and save a whole bunch of money every month.

I cancelled my service two weeks ago, when the contract finally expired, and haven't looked back. 

DirecTV shipped me a box in which to return all of their equipment except the satellite dish, 

which they didn't want. So I wrangled it off the pole and literally got to cut all the cords. 

I dismantled the internet satellite dish while I was at it, and the only evidence remaining of 

my 10-year affairs with DirecTV and Wildblue are a couple of iron poles cemented in the ground.

I can't imagine trying to dig out the poles. I wonder how I could repurpose them...

the world's shortest clothesline? Maybe I could hang a banner between them...

Wake-up call

I saw a pile of sleeping donkeys out my window, so I grabbed the camera 

and tiptoed outside to take a few pictures.

Alan saw me coming...

...but Lucy and George didn't, not at first anyway.

Then George opened an eye and I must have scared the hell out of him.

Think jack in the box.

George: That was very rude.

George: I may never speak to you again.

As Lucy gathered herself to stand, George prepared to get out of her way.

Those flopping ears of hers can leave a bruise.

It was now obvious to Alan that naptime was over, but Lucy had other concerns.

Lucy: Please photoshop my bed-head before you post this picture.

A trip to the mailbox

Smooch and I drove out to the mailbox Sunday morning. We encountered a few obstacles. 

Saturday encore ~ The lay of the land

A request came in last week for a map of the 7MSN. Diane said, "I would like to have a mind-picture of the layout so that I can follow in your (and the four-footed people's) footsteps as you go about your day."

Well, y'all know how much I love to use my crayons. Let's see if I can take Google's satellite view
and make some sense out of what you see here every day.

Think of the ranch as a great big rectangle. The long sides of the rectangle are a half mile, the short sides are a quarter mile. Divided in half, the rectangle amounts to two 40-acre squares. The dashed green line in the drawing is the fence. I fenced the 40 acres where the house sits first, so I call that the front 40. I fenced the other 40 acres last, and it has since been known as the back 40. A cross fence splits the ranch in half, and there's a gate in the middle, which I usually leave open. The ever-deepening trail that leads from the barn to the back 40 heads right through that gate.

The house faces west, more or less. I found the drawing below in a post about poop from 2011. It might give you a better idea of the inhabited corner of the ranch.

Diane, I hope this helps explain what's where and where's what. Thanks for asking the question. Anybody else have a question? Something about the animals that you'd like to know? Not much has been happening around here lately and I'm running out of things to write about.

The end of Smooch's exhausting day

 It's not often that I'm gone all day, but Smooch is always exhausted by the time I arrive home.

She stays in the house whenever I'm away. 

Maybe I should get a nanny cam to find out what keeps her so busy.

Smooch: Uh-oh. She's going to find out about the parties.

Smooch: Serves her right for leaving me.

Another before and after

This was the main entrance to my house post-sunroom construction. 

Not very welcoming.

All better now...though I'm tempted to photoshop pretty flowers in all the pots.

Please use your imagination until I can plant some geraniums.

Dinner and a movie

I shot this movie Friday evening. The herd's dinner was interrupted by Smooch 

barking at something invisible to me but clearly seen and heard by everybody else.

YouTube tells me that the video is blocked in some countries because of a copyright claim

on the soundtrack. My apologies to readers in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Germany, Kazakhstan, 

Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

The happiest hour of the season

 There is something about the middle of March in New Mexico. 

The weather abruptly turns perfect for a day or two.

Morning chores are done without a coat, afternoon rides are taken in a t shirt,

 and the first official happy hour of the year commences on the porch.

A glass of pinot grigio is a refreshing treat in the heat of the late afternoon.

For a moment, I thought Johnny had developed a taste for wine...

 ...but I suspect he was more interested in the first fly of the season, who was swimming in my glass.

Johnny: I cannot believe you're still going to drink that.