Sunday Stills

Tony (Rip in the background)

Nemo and Murphy

Lighty and Blu 

Dolly and Maisie

Norman and Cuffie

Hesse and Remmy

Levendi

Homer and Trigger

Thomas and Ritchie

Miss Lyle pointing to a spot on the bushhog that Jason forgot to grease

Miss Lyle looking for more spots Jason might have missed; she's nothing if not thorough.

Mina says she will find a way to get into the feed can, tying the top on won't work.

Rip

Rocky (flat out on his side) and Largo (getting up from his nap) were having a lazy day. Johnny and Toledo were grazing nearby.

Donneur and Faune 

Lost and Found

You might recall reading about Jason's lost wallet on New Year's Eve. He ripped the pocket off a pair of jeans when he was getting off the blue tractor. He didn't realize until too late what had happened. Unfortunately he was not only down a pocket, he was also down a wallet as well. 

When he told me what happened I started rattling off places to look. Did you look on the tractor? Did you look under the seat of the tractor? Did you look in the pasture? Did you look by the fence? 

We spent hours walking through the pasture he had been in on the tractor looking for his wallet. Of course he had driven all the way from the back of the farm to the front of the farm, and then back again, on the tractor. I hiked the mile long driveway more than once looking for Jason's wallet. We knew the wallet was on the farm because he hadn't left the farm that day.  Despite all of our efforts to find the missing wallet it stubbornly refused to be found. 

It refused to be found until today that is. Over six months later when he wasn't even looking for his wallet, when he had long ago forgotten about the wallet and the hassle of replacing everything in the wallet, Jason found his wallet. 

Do you want to know where he found it? 

If you revisit the list of places I told him to look above, place #1 was on the tractor and place #2 was under the seat of the tractor. Unknown to Jason he has spent the last 6+ months driving around on the blue tractor with his wallet under the seat. Since it had been well protected from the elements his wallet was perfectly intact, as were all of the contents. Not that it mattered much since, aside from the cash, the contents had been replaced.

As I walked up to the back barn this afternoon Jason excitedly told me he found his wallet. When I asked where he found it he pointed at the tractor. "It was under the seat of the tractor. And it was in perfect condition!" 

I'm not exactly sure what facial expression I was conveying as I listened to this since I had a lot of things going through my mind that I mostly chose not to say. The one comment I couldn't hold back was "you mean your wallet was exactly where I told you to look all along? Exactly where you said you looked? We spent hours and hours and hours walking through the fields and the driveways and it was in the very first place I told you to look all along?"

At this point Jason started getting a little less excited and a little defensive. "It was in a place I could never, ever see it without looking."  My reply was "that was kind of the point, right? That you needed to LOOK?" 

According to Jason the seat of the tractor suddenly felt lose and tilted today so he wedged himself up under the seat trying to find the loose bolt that must be causing the problem. Instead he found his wallet. Better late than never I guess.

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Lotus, Silver and Cocomo being wild before breakfast

Cocomo and Asterik

Alex, Sebastian and Lighty

Renny and Murphy waiting for breakfast

MyLight

Donneur and Lofty

Bruno and Duesy

Gibson and Flyer

Walden and Fabrizzio 

Not Just Horses

For the most part I consider myself  a pretty independent person and generally view myself as a person who can handle whatever happens to present itself each day.  From time to time I like the pass the buck to Jason. A couple of days ago I was working my way through morning chores when I heard very suspicious noises in the back barn as I was scooping out feed. I walked to the middle of the barn which is a large hay storage area, and tried to identify what I was hearing. However whatever was making the noise had itself well hidden at the very back of the barn behind the hay. I wasn't about to walk back there and investigate when I could dump that task on Jason.

I have good reasons for being cautious. A few years ago I heard noises coming from the tack room when I was in the barn one evening. I opened the tack room door to find a very large raccoon eating the cat food. He was most displeased by my appearance and immediately picked up my nearby riding helmet and threw it at me. Thankfully I have quick reflexes and slammed the door shut so the helmet bounced off the door instead of me. 

I immediately pulled out my phone and called Jason. "You need to come to the barn and deal with a raccoon in the tack room."  Jason was less than enthusiastic about doing this but I kept pestering him until he grudgingly said "ok, I'm coming."  A few minutes later a grumpy Jason walks in the barn. He opens the tack room door to have a look with me looking on over his shoulder. 

The raccoon had finished the cat food and was angry that we had the nerve to not have an unlimited supply of cat food available. He picked up the heavy metal bowl that had held the cat food and proceeded to throw it overhand, with amazing force and accuracy, right at Jason's head. Like me Jason also had quick reflexes and managed to slam the door shut and barely miss getting beamed in the head. The bowl hit the door and then hit the concrete floor with a deafening clang. 

There was also the time that our dearly departed schipperke, Bear, tangled with a raccoon. Bear had a penchant for picking fights that left him pretty beat up, and the raccoon encounter was no exception. One trip to the emergency vet later he had another round of stitches, staples and drain tubes to show for his experience.

Needless to say, after we both narrowly missed getting a smack down put on us by that raccoon (along with other unpleasant wildlife run-ins), we're pretty cautious when dealing with wildlife we can't even see. Thus when I heard what sounded like a wounded, rabid, or just plain unhappy animal hiding in the shadows behind the hay, I decided to let this be Jason's job. 

I texted him, "bring a rifle when you come to the back barn."  Apparently this text message got Jason's attention as he appeared at the back barn about five seconds later with a rifle in tow. He jumped out of the car yelling, "what's going on??" I'm sure he was thinking there was some dire emergency of sorts. 

Me: There's an animal at the back of the barn behind the hay making noise.

Jason: Where is it?

Me: I don't know, back there somewhere. (I point in a general direction.)

Jason: Have you seen it?

Me: No. 

Jason: Have you looked for it?

Me:  Not really. 

Jason: Do you know what it is? Is something wrong with it?

Me: No and I don't know.

Jason:  Do you know anything?

Me:  I know there's an animal in there that at times is making odd sounding and loud noises.

Jason: So what do you want me to do?

Me: I want you to deal with it. I'm going to keep feeding.

Jason cautiously peered into the barn, and then walked to the hay and climbed on top of a bale. He looked around, rifle in hand. He then announced it was too dark to see anything back there. Then something scurried through the shadows. Jason made the dreaded announcement, "I think it's a 

raccoon." 

And you thought running a retirement farm was all about dealing with horses . . . 

Bear after his raccoon encounter. Bear was no stranger to stitches, staples and drain tubes. Jo the goat is checking him out and saying "you look different."

The story pretty much ends there because although we could hear something from time to time, we were never able to really see it. And neither one of us was willing to chance a raccoon encounter when we were squeezed in between hay bales in the shadows where we couldn't see well. So Jason fired off a couple of rounds to hopefully scare our visitor off. We never heard it again so we're hoping it escaped out the back of the barn and left.

I always laugh, sometimes only in my mind and other times out loud, when people make some comment along the lines of "oh, you get to play with horses all day."  I understand why someone would make this assumption, and of course there is a lot of horse time, but that is a pretty romanticized notion of running a retirement farm. People who make these comments are always genuinely surprised as I start rattling of countless examples of farm life that have absolutely nothing to do with horses (or cows, or crops, or whatever a particular farm revolves around).

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Griselle and Sparky

Kennedy and Donovan

Merlin and Bruno

Johnny

Miss Lyle and Mina

Jo

Tony, Ritchie, Leo and Chance

a better view of Leo and Chance

Homer and Moe

Blu and Nemo

Hesse and Walden

Cocomo and Flyer waiting for breakfast

Dutch and Renny

Sunday Stills

Clayton and Kennedy

Largo and River thought I was interesting . . .  

 . . . but only briefly 

Dolly

Hemi and Thomas

Toledo and Walon

Oskar and Donovan

Traveller and Lily

Dolly, Cinnamon, Calimba and MyLight

Rip, Elfin, Grand and Ritchie

Meet Mick

Mick and his mom met each other when his mom was fourteen years old. Mick's mom had gone to a dealer's barn with her family with two horses in mind to look at for her. She was determined to have a horse of her own and that day her dream was about to come true. 

Mick and his mom

Her parents had bought her sister a mare and technically the mare was supposed to be the "family horse," but as his mom said she was really her sister's horse. Mick's mom really wanted her own horse but at that time only one horse was in the family budget. So Mick's mom would and her sister would take turns trail ride on her sister's horse. One day Mick's mom went to get on the mare, and before she could pick up the reins the mare bolted. The mare ran for a long time before Mick's mom finally blacked out and fell off. Luckily she was not physically injured by the incident. However she was terrified of riding her sister's horse after that and became more determined than ever to have her own horse. 

Mick and his mom about a year after she bought him

Mick and his mom on a snow day

Thus the family found their way to the dealer where Mick lived. They were there to look at two specific horses, neither of which worked out. The first one was too green and not a good match for a nervous young rider that was scared of anything faster than a trot. The second horse was very sour when ridden and would refuse to go forward. Mick's mom was hoping for something between the two horses, something sane with a little bit of spunk. 

When the first two horses didn't work out the family went into the pasture with all of the horses. Most of the horses wanted nothing to do with them and backed away. Then, from the side one horse came up out of the group as if he was saying "you're going to take me home." That horse was Mick. His mom rode him at the dealer's and Mick had the perfect combination of sane and spunk so her parents bought him for her. As his mom said, she didn't choose Mick, he chose her.

Mick and his mom warming up at a show

Mick's mom was told that he was a Quarter Horse cross. I'm going to say he is a Quarter Horse/Arabian cross simply from his head and overall look. She was also told that he had been ridden in a hunter/jumper program previously however she doesn't know if this is actually true or not.

Once she got Mick home the perfection of their initial meeting unraveled quickly. Mick was aggressive, possessive and dangerously spooky, and didn't act anything like the horse she thought she was buying. If anything at all scared him he would simply run over his mom. Given that she was already a very timid rider, she thought about selling him often. However she didn't sell him and continued trying to work with Mick. After a few months Mick finally began to trust his mom and things began to turn around in their relationship. 

Mick and his mom started their riding career in the dressage arena. As she said, their lessons consisted of squares instead of circles and Mick being half out of control. However they slowly improved over time. They did a few shows together and always placed well, including winning a few classes. However his mom struggled with her confidence at shows which made them unenjoyable. She was always working to keep Mick's spooks under control and despite their successes in the show ring neither of them really enjoyed their show experiences. 

His mom giving Mick big pats after he passed something that was normally scary to him and he stayed calm.

Mick and his mom schooling at home

After his mom had owned Mick less than a year he began having some issues with intermittent lameness. There were never any obvious reasons for the lameness and a period of stall rest would  make the lameness go away for awhile. Eventually she said it seemed that Mick was lame more often than he was sound. After two years of working with more than one vet to try and pinpoint and then address the cause of the lameness, they took Mick to the vet school at Auburn University for a full work-up.

The news from Auburn was not good. They diagnosed Mick with degenerative joint disease in his left front leg and navicular disease in both front hooves. The vets at Auburn told Mick's mom this wasn't necessarily career ending. However after implementing the recommended treatments, including corrective shoeing and joint injections, Mick still wasn't staying sound. Eventually Mick's mom found a new farrier that did natural trimming and after several months under his care Mick was finally consistently comfortable in the pasture.

Mick looking handsome

Even though their riding career was over Mick and his mom continued to strengthen their relationship. They did a lot of work on ground manners and simply being polite. They worked through all the things that Mick found scary and turned them into positive experiences. As an example Mick used to be terrified of clippers. He acted like any clippers were surely going to kill him. One time he pulled back so hard his lead rope couldn't be untied from the tie ring. Eventually the ring, with the leadrope still attached, had to be removed, and to this day his mom still has that ring. Mick and his mom worked with clippers for months and over time he came to not only accept being clipped but to like it, and sometimes he would even doze off. 

Mick's mom took this picture of him playing in his pasture

Mick's mom said that Mick also spent much of his time with her being an escape artist. She said one day when she was feeding the horses Mick felt she was moving too slow. She was in the hay room to get hay and thought she heard hooves on concrete. She looked out and saw nothing so grabbed some hay and walked to Mick's stall. Mick wasn't in his stall despite the stall guard being done up. Then she realized his stall guard was only clipped on the top (at chest height) and not the bottom, and Mick had done the limbo to get out. From then on if anyone ever snapped only the top part of his stall guard, Mick would duck under the stall guard and leave and take himself for a stroll around the farm.

Mick with his family's herd. His mom and her sister had to do a lot of work to get their three horses living happily together. 

Although Mick actually retired several years before we met him, his mom kept him with her and enjoyed his companionship. He saw her through graduate school and lots of life changes. When she graduated from grad school and knew she would be moving for professional opportunities, she decided she wanted a more stable option for Mick other than always moving him when she moved. Mick found his way to our farm from Georgia last fall.

When Mick walked off the trailer at our farm last fall he did so with a swagger and with his exceptionally large ego on full display. As his mom had spent so many years working not only on his manners with people but also his manners with other horses, he had an easy integration into his new family group. The horse that was initially his nemesis for the first few days he was in his group, Lighty, ended up being his best buddy and we see them playing and having a grand time regularly. Mick is a classic extrovert and loves having a group of horses to play with, groom with, and generally try to bend to his will. 

Mick on one of his first days with us taking a good look and checking things out. He has the alert expression but also the drooping lower lip that says "I've got this."

We have had a great time getting to know Mick over the last few months. We hope you have enjoyed getting to know him as well!

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Mick grazing with Sam and Johnny

Mick and Lighty

Mick 

Lighty and Mick

Mick and Murphy

Renny and Mick

Mick and Africa

Mick and Johnny 

sometimes he takes a break from playing

Lighty and Mick

Dutch and Mick

Murphy, Renny, Taco and Mick; the chestnut club

Lighty and Mick

Sam and Mick 

Lighty and Mick