Photo by Joan Fry
Text Free Tuesday
05 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Text-Free Tuesday
A Day in the Life of a Backyard Horse Owner: Day #1
01 Friday Mar 2013
I’ve kept horses in my backyard for almost 40 years, but I still I hate days like this. If I were a normal person I’d be inside, along with all the other sane people, doing sane-people things. But I have two backyard horses, and they need to be fed twice a day and cleaned up after twice a day too, even though it’s cold as a witch’s curse outside, with a wind blowing down the canyon so hard all our neighbor’s trash is now on our property.
Trail dog in the snow—when the wind’s not blowing
Text Free Tuesday
26 Tuesday Feb 2013
Posted in Text-Free Tuesday
Photo by Charles Hood
Back to the Basics: Feed
22 Friday Feb 2013
Posted in Feeding
In the wild, horses forage, which means they eat grasses—including some that form seed-heads, like oats—as well as the tender young sprouts of plants, bushes, and occasionally trees. Sometime after humans domesticated horses, they realized they had to do something for the lean seasons, when the grass was covered with snow or otherwise unavailable. Eventually they figured out how to cut it, dry it, and bale it—round bales, rectangular bales, big bales, little bales. Grass hay remains the staple horse feed to this day. Almost everything about the horse, from his teeth to his fear of wind, evolved because he eats grass.
In climates with plenty of rainfall, like parts of Germany, horses can and do live on pasture grass—at least during the summer.
Text Free Tuesday
19 Tuesday Feb 2013
Strange Behaviors
15 Friday Feb 2013
Posted in Behavior
As Tuesday’s photo illustrated, horses can do things that look very strange—even frightening—to their two-legged owners.
The horse in the photo was yawning, but some owners will never see it happen. That’s because most horses very seldom yawn. The first time you see the behavior, you might mistake it for a seizure of some kind. The horse’s eyes roll back, his ears flop, and he opens his mouth wide enough to let his tongue hang out. The first time I saw a horse do that I was poised to run to the house and scream at my husband to “call the veterinarian!” Luckily the horse closed his mouth, chewed a little, and wandered off.
Gunsmoke exhibiting a flehmen response.
Text Free Tuesday
12 Tuesday Feb 2013
Posted in Text-Free Tuesday
Bronze statue of the Five-Gaited World’s Grand Champion Imperator by Douwe Blumberg.
Horsekeepers and Their Stuff
09 Saturday Feb 2013
Posted in General
A lot of people keep stuff (any old stuff) around the house because they think “it might come in handy someday.” It probably won’t. That’s why women of my mother’s generation believed so fervently in that ritual known as spring cleaning, when they took a good, hard look at all the stuff they had accumulated since the previous spring, and trashed 99% of it.
My tackroom hasn’t looked this neat since I photographed it for my Backyard Horsekeeping book.
Free Advice
07 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in General
Is this horse yawning or choking? Before you call the vet, check your horse’s vital signs. (He’s yawning.)
An old saying offers this gem of insight: “You get what you pay for.” Here’s another, even better (or worse) example: “A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree/ The more you beat them the better they’ll be.” Sometimes old sayings can have more in common with costume jewelry than real gemstones.
A couple of nights ago, horse owners in the small town where John and I live, in addition to horse owners in a nearby town, all congregated at our library to hear a local veterinarian discuss “Emergency Health Care,” otherwise known as, “What can I do to help my horse until the vet arrives?” The room was too small. The librarian had set out 75 chairs, and somebody was sitting in all of them. Others sat on the floor with their backs to the wall. Total number in the audience: 83 people. It’s one of the biggest turnouts the library has ever seen—and it was free.
Text-Free Tuesday
05 Tuesday Feb 2013
Backyard Horsekeeping 