Moving Forward

Things are still very raw for me after the loss of Buffy this weekend. Some times things feel ok and normal for awhile, but often I simply feel like I am putting one foot in front of the other one and just getting through things. An absolutely bucolic scene reduced me to near tears and full blown panic this morning. As I was walking down the hill early this morning to go to the shed to prepare breakfast I saw Levendi and Chance down taking naps. That in itself isn't unusual, as you will see in many of the following pictures I see plenty of relaxed napping horses every day. As I prepare feed each morning I'm always looking out in the pastures to see what everyone is doing, make sure I've been spotted so everyone will come to the gates, and just generally assess things.

I saw Levendi stand up after a few minutes but Chance stayed down. I then started reading way too much into that. Why didn't Chance get up as well?? Then Chance went down on his side into dead horse position. That got the internal dialogue really charged up. "Why is he on his side? Is he ok? Is he really just napping hard? Please let Chance be fine, I am not capable of dealing with another hard situation now. Oh please, please, please do not make me deal with this again, I think I will lose it . . . " Like I said, I had myself on the verge of tears and in definite panic mode.

Thankfully as I made my way to their pasture Chance popped up and came trotting over for breakfast. All was well, and my rational side knew this, but my emotional, irrational side has been in charge the last couple of days. It would be so much easier if they could all live forever.

This pastoral scene was the cause of my breakdown this morning. Levendi and Chance are the nappers, with Hemi standing in the back and Elfin grazing by the fence.

Cuff Links and Harmony enjoying their daily snooze

Lightening and Teddy

Alex and B-Rad

Ogie came over to graze near Alex

Norman stood near by while Bonnie napped

Chili

Sebastian and Faune

This picture is from Hemi's first day meeting the boys; L-R Tony, Dustin, Hemi, Leo, Levendi

Thomas and Hemi trotting through the field together

Bella the dog watching over Lexi, Bonnie, Traveller, Norman, Cinnamon and Sky

In Memory of Buffy

This weekend served as an unwelcome reminder that life is precious and things can change in the blink of an eye. Jason noticed that Buffy was NQR (not quite right) on Saturday morning. At first it didn't seem to be cause for much concern. She was a bit lethargic but not anything dramatic. I say this not to make us look good but simply as a statement of fact, but if she had been in the all too typical retirement/pasture board situation where the horses are eyeballed but not really handled daily, no one would have realized there was anything amiss as her behavior changes were so mild. Thankfully we know Buffy and her typical behavior patterns very well so Jason knew just from watching her that something was not right with Buffy. We brought her into the barn and observed her for a bit. All of her vital signs (pulse rate, temperature, respiratory rate, capillary refill) were normal and we were thinking she might be having a mild gas colic and administered banamine.

I took this picture on Buffy's 2nd day with us in fall 2007

The banamine did not seem to have any effect on her one way or another. She stood quietly in the stall with some pacing and an occasional call to her pasture mates. Typically Buffy would be screaming her head off to her friends and pacing in the stall relentlessly. At that point we knew a veterinary exam was in order. Buffy continued to act the same, not getting better nor getting worse. When the vet arrived she also checked vital signs and all were normal. When she listened to her gut sounds unfortunately she did not hear much. However a rectal exam found nothing major amiss although a few things were noted. A gastro-nasal tube was passed and unfortunately did remove a lot of reflux from her stomach, a sign that things were not passing through.

I took this picture on Buffy's third day with us. She became hysterically bonded to the goats after meeting them, and would refuse to eat after being put back in her stall. She would just stand in the barn and call to the goats. She was so happy to have friends that separation from them (be it goats or horses) was traumatic and painful for her.

Since her clinical signs were not pointing us in any definite direction, just indicating that something was not right, the vet recommended we take her to the clinic for further diagnostics and observation. I was a little worried about how Buffy would feel about getting on the trailer but she hopped right on after a minute of hesitation. An ultrasound showed a pretty distended small intestine that was not very active but also not completely inactive either. Her bloodwork was normal. Buffy stayed at the clinic for further observation and was started on IV fluids.

Buffy was a gorgeous Thoroughbred mare

Buffy continued to confuse us throughout the weekend. She would start showing stronger signs of distress, then she would rebound. A conversation with the vet in the middle of the night Saturday night did not leave me hopeful. She said Buffy was starting to act more and more painful when the sedatives would wear off. It was decided that an abdominal centesis was in order to test the protein levels in her abdominal fluid. We were expecting the numbers to come back high but they came back normal. The better/worse cycle continued.

One of my favorite pictures of Buffy simply because it captures her curious, intense expression that was so typical of her.

In the neighboring stall at the clinic there was a miniature donkey and her week old baby. Buffy loved that baby mini donkey. Every time they would lead mama and baby past her stall Buffy would instantly go from droopy to alert and rush to her stall door to nicker at the baby donkey. None of the other patients at the clinic had this effect on her, just the baby donkey. I was not surprised by this at all. Most who have read this blog regularly will know that Buffy loves all things small and claimed Missy as "her" pony. Buffy adored Missy and was extremely possessive of her pony.

The miniature donkey foal at the clinic that Buffy loved so much

She seemed to be holding steady when we visited her on Sunday morning after having a fitful night so we were hopeful. When we were back visiting her in the afternoon things were starting to go downhill steadily. She was not responding as well to the pain meds and each time a tube was passed several liters of reflux were removed from her stomach so things still were not passing through. When she laid down and had no interest in standing up this afternoon we knew decision time was coming. I sat in the stall with Buffy and she rested her head on my shoulder while she laid there. Her eyes had lost their sparkle and she seemed to be telling me it was time, and that it was ok.

Buffy standing over Missy while she napped

Buffy and Missy

We briefly thought about surgery but decided against it. The surgeon had no idea what he would find when he opened her up, and strictly from a mental health standpoint Buffy was not a candidate for a long recovery. With some horses you know they could handle a convalescence with no problems but Buffy would have been miserable. Having lived most of her life with no turnout at all she had grown to really hate being separated from her friends and her freedom and she did not like stalls. Knowing it was a good possibility that euthanasia might be recommended even after attempting surgery it just didn't seem like a wise option with her. Her clinical signs began to steadily deteriorate. We got her up and took her outside for a short walk and a few last bites of grass. She wasn't interested in grazing. A few minutes later we let her go and she passed peacefully. Buffy's amazing owner was wonderful through all of this. A hard situation was made easier as Buffy's team of her mom, us and the vets were always on the same page.

Buffy hanging out with her good friend MyLight. Buffy thought she had died and gone to heaven when she had the chance to live outside of stall, graze 24/7, and have friends. Buffy was a social butterfly and in addition to her pony Missy she loved all of the horses she lived with.

Another picture of Buffy and MyLight

Buffy had several jobs through the course of her career. First she was a race horse and actually managed to win a few races. Then she was a hunter, and mixed in with that princess Buffy had the opportunity to be a supermodel as well. Anyone who knows Buffy knows that supermodel would have been her absolute favorite job! A torn tendon spelled the end of Buffy's riding career and she made the trip from Los Angeles, California to Tennessee for retirement. Buffy's mom wanted her to have the best retirement possible and she knew that it would be hard to find what she wanted for Buffy in California.

Pictures from a fashion shoot that Buffy participated in; I have no doubt she loved every minute of this photo shoot.

On Friday evening Buffy was the picture of health. Her weight was perfect, her coat had a gorgeous shine to it and she was full of energy and life. It is hard to believe as I type this on Sunday evening that she is gone. I won't be putting her pink plaid halter, which suited her so perfectly, on her anymore. She won't be hanging out with her friends or commandeering her pony Missy. From the minute Buffy arrived she loved everything about her life here. She loved the goats. She loved being able to be turned out. She loved to graze. Most of all she loved having friends and being part of a group. I am very grateful to her owner that we were able to give all of that to Buffy.

I miss Buffy and her pink plaid halter. Her name and her halter could not have been more tailor-made for Buffy. I will always think of Buffy with her pink plaid halter, they just went together.

The biggest and only downfall to having a retirement farm is experiencing the circle of life, and unfortunately at some point you have to go through it with every horse. It only gets harder, never easier. I dread the emotional aftermath and the memories that will consume me this week. Especially that pink plaid halter.

Breaking Ground

We officially broke ground at our new farm this week. Our fence contractor started round one of fence installation on Tuesday. After 11" of rain at our new farm it only took 24 hours for the ground to be dry enough for them to bring in their heavy equipment. They are in the process of installing 6,000 feet of 4-board wood fence. This will essentially give us a 40 acre pasture once the fence is complete. By the time we have the entire farm perimeter fenced and cross fenced we anticipate we will have 30,000 feet of fence so this 6,000 feet is just a good start.

Other projects we are thinking about as we work towards being able to use the property are building the first of many run-in sheds and also we need to run water and electrical lines. A driveway would be a nice touch as well. There is something of a driveway for about 100' off the road, essentially a culvert with gravel over it so that vehicles can turn onto the property but that is it.

After living with the lovely but not very trailer friendly driveway that we have at our current location we have put a lot of thought into our new driveway. The fence contractor is curving the fence in at the entrance and bringing it back to a set of gates 75' away from the road. In addition the gated entrance will be 24' feet wide and we are going to double the size of the culvert at the road to make it easy to turn trailers into the driveway. Having the gates set back from the road by 75' will make it very easy for semi-sized horse trailers to turn into our driveway and have room to completely pull in and off the road even if the gates happen to be shut.

We're very excited about our first project being underway. I still need to get around to buying that lottery ticket because the mega millions would come in very handy right now. Instead of building things in phases we could do it all at once. Surely I would be lucky enough to pick the winning numbers with my first and only lottery ticket!

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

New posts set and waiting for boards

Digging post holes; all of the posts are leveled and then set in concrete. They are setting 860 posts for this round of fencing - which means they will be using 860 bags of concrete!!

This was taken looking toward the road. You can see the little bit of driveway that is there in this picture. Since you can see fence posts where the driveway is you probably don't need me to tell you that we are going to be re-directing the driveway.

The Don; he may be a one rooster hit squad towards other chickens but he is certainly handsome.

Homer and Ivan

Hemi meeting Thomas over the fence

Teddy, Lightening, Snappy and Lucky

Clay

Teddy

Bella

Traveller and Cinnamon

Norman and Cinnamon

Sparky and Lexi

Thoughts on Flooding

Having driven around middle Tennessee the past few days for various work assignments that involved significant local travel, I think it would be impossible to overplay the size of the area that was impacted with last weekends’ substantial rainfalls. Much of eastern Arkansas, North Mississippi, North Alabama, Western and Central Kentucky as well as all of West and Middle Tennessee were affected to some extent by our record setting wet weather. Your continued thoughts and prayers for the many misfortunate souls that were affected this weekend are most welcome.

As Melissa posted previously, other than having to broil rather than grill our steaks we suffered no negative impacts this weekend at all. None of our buildings suffered any damage. Our driveway and roads are fully intact. With the exception of about an acre down at the road on the farm where we currently live, there is no flood plain on either of our farms. Water won’t (and indeed can’t) accumulate on any sort of significant slope. The entirety of this farm AND the entirety of the one we just purchased sits either atop a hill or on the side of a hill with plenty of slope to drain water. Frankly it could have rained twice as much as it did and there still wouldn’t have been any flooding danger.

Given the extent of the news coverage this weekend, we can sure appreciate why some of our clients were worried about us and their horses. I'd like to leave you with some pictures that I took in each of our pastures today (which include short explanations of what you are looking at) that may help show why flooding will never be of serious concern here.

I took all of these photos from the cab of a 7610 Ford tractor. Including the front end loader, this tractor weighs 11,500 lbs. Unbelievably, I did not sink in enough to leave muddy tire tracks anywhere on this farm.

I hope everybody is getting ready for a great Wednesday !

A pretty photo of the pond taken from the large 40 acre field where the big boys live. Their entire field drains into and slopes toward the pond.

A picture of the field with Clay standing beside the hay feeder (this field is adjacent to the big boys' field). Note the slope which continues through the mare's field (across the alley) toward the road. We are standing 1500 feet away from the road and we are situated at least 50 feet higher than the elevation at which the road passes the front of the farm. This gives us a 3 % slope...more than enough to ensure water will drain.

This photo is taken looking toward the pond from the top of one of the hills in the big boys 40 acre pasture. No problem with drainage here ! :) Dustin is acting as our supermodel today.

Another nice shot of the pond from the hill in the big boys field. Note the slope on the field behind and to the left of the pond. Some of these slopes are very gentle but they still allow water to drain.

Another shot of Clay's field (also shown in the 2nd picture) showing the drainage channel in the middle of the field and the hill at the rear.

This is taken from the roadside in the mares field looking toward the woods and hill at the rear which is in Clay's field. Note the difference in elevation between where I'm standing and the hay feeder. A very gentle slope but it still drains water.

This is the valley above the pond and between two sets of hills in the big boys 40 acre field. Note how dry this looks two days after receiving a foot of rain. Like all the rest of these photos, I took this shot from the cab of a Ford 7610 tractor which weighs 11,500 lbs. I had just driven up this valley. Note that there are no tire tracks visible in this photo.

The only place there was any flooding at all was right at the road. You'll notice how the road acts like a dike for the land that flooded to the left of it in the photo. This is by far the lowest point on the farm. With the exception of the flooded area in the photo, I'm standing at the lowest level in the remainder of this field. Melissa keeps her horses in this field.

This is a shot of the "ring field" as we call it. Because of the hill contained within this field there is no chance of flooding here, except for a half acre area immediately behind Melissa's ring which collects runoff from the rest of this field.

Record Rainfall

After having incredibly dry weather for most of April the last two days have certainly made up for that! As many of you have probably seen on the news we've had massive amounts of rain throughout middle Tennessee (and west Tennessee as well). We were pretty lucky here at our farm. After receiving about 8 inches of rain yesterday we then missed all of the overnight rain and in fact did not get anymore rain until lunchtime today (Sunday). The storm thankfully kept tracking north of us. On top of that some people had bad thunderstorms and tornadoes. We missed all of that as well.

One of the two areas of flooding on our farm. This is our mailbox and you should see our driveway next to it. The driveway right at the road is under water. Our fence line starts at the tree line on the left (there is a large grass area between the fence and the road). Down in the corner of the picture there are about 8 sections of the fence where the first board, and in a couple of sections the first two boards, of the 4-board fence is underwater. Looks bad but that is a teeny, tiny portion of this pasture and the horses were not affected at all. This water receded and was pretty well gone within about 2 hours of the rain stopping.

Amazingly the only time I got wet this weekend was when Jason and I went to the grocery store this afternoon. By paying attention to the weather radar yesterday we managed to stay perfectly dry at chore times. Our rain today was mid-day to late afternoon so chore times were not affected. According to the radar it looks like our farm is pretty much done with the rain for good outside of a shower or two. In total we received about 12"-13" inches of rain at the farm. Other parts of our county fared much worse, getting 20" of rain over the last two days. To put that in perspective this area normally gets around 40"-50" of rain per YEAR.

On the other hand the property directly across the street didn't do as well. The front half of it is flood plain (100 year flood plain) and as you can see it is completely under water. This entire picture should be an open pasture. ( No people or animals live there, it just gets mowed.) Again within a couple of hours of the rain stopping most of this water was gone.

The other area of standing water on our farm was this area behind my arena. There was a very angry duck that was quacking very loudly floating around in it. I think he was a bit disoriented. I've seen standing water here several times before, it is a low area and collects run-off. It always drains quickly after the rain stops. Again the horses in this pasture were unaffected as they had 14 other acres that did not look like this.

During the worst periods of heavy rains we took turns walking or driving around the farm to check on everything. Every single time we did this the horses were just out grazing. My dad felt the need to call me after he had driven around in his gator yesterday to report that all shelters were empty and the horses were just grazing. He was surprised by this. I explained to him that I had also seen the same thing in my farm checks and that I was not surprised. It was a warm rain and in my experience the horses really enjoy that, I think it feels good to them.

We live a short 15-20 minute drive from one of the largest permanent show facilities in the country, Brownland Farm. Brownland hosts 10 AA hunter/jumper shows every year as well as numerous local events, dressage shows and other shows. This weekend was one of Brownland's AA horse shows, and the 700 stall facility was sold out for the show. Competitors had travelled here from multiple states to show. Unfortunately Brownland is bordered on one side by the Harpeth River.

Flood stage on the Harpeth River is 18 feet. The highest ever recorded prior to this weekend was 35.2 feet. It has already surpassed that and they are expecting it to crest somewhere in the area of 40 feet. Finally at 2:30am this morning the management at Brownland started calling all competitors to evacuate their horses if they had not already done so. The show was not cancelled on Saturday and everyone showed in the pouring rain, however a lot of people did decide to pack up and leave at the end of the day on Saturday, but more stayed than left. A friend of mine posted pictures on her facebook account of the Brownland arenas, and all you could see were the very top of some of the 6' jump standards. Some of the rings were literally under 5' - 6' of water.

As you can imagine this became a huge problem. A lot of the trailers were stuck in the grass trailer parking area, especially the big rigs. Tack trunks have literally floated away. A lot of the trailers could not make it down the driveway. Thankfully some people were able to make it with their 4WD dually's and trailers, and a few of the semi rigs were able to navigate the driveway although apparently many could not. Jason refuses to buy a truck without 4WD, and had I been showing this weekend I would have thanked him profusely for that.

I have shown at Brownland hundreds of times over the years and I have never been so thankful to NOT be at a horse show! Most of the horses were evacuated in the wee hours of the morning to the Ag center about 10 miles away. Then the police department would not let anyone else turn in the driveway for several hours before all of the horses were out. Thankfully they let a few rigs attempt to go through again a few hours later.

This was taken at one of the barns at Brownland before things got "bad."

The driveway at Brownland today after the police let some rigs attempt to navigate it again (thus earlier in the day it looked a LOT worse). This was taken out the windshield of a semi operated by HaulinHorses based out of Missouri. They were kind enough to make multiple trips up and down that driveway getting horses out.

Last night as Jason and I were eating dinner I told him I felt guilty. Really the only thing that changed for us was I had planned on doing a nice dinner on the grill. I had New York strip steaks, asparagus and potatoes and the plan was to grill all of it outside. Instead it got broiled in the oven. So I made the comment as we were eating our steak dinner last night that I felt guilty doing that knowing that so many others around us were living a nightmare while we ate dinner. I am very thankful that our only change in plans was no grilling this weekend, so many around us had it so much worse. Thank you storm system for tracking north and west of us a lot of the time! I think what is most amazing to me is we don't even have any mud except for a couple of isolated patches. First the grass just soaked it up and then the water ran off, so a foot of rain later and it isn't even muddy - wow!!

I hope all of my middle Tennessee friends are safe - I've heard from most and so far all is well with everyone. And I hope everyone else had a great weekend - less interesting than ours!

Another part of the pasture that has my arena in it, as you can see the majority of the pasture has no standing water.

Some of the big boys grazing in the rain today

Harmony, MyLight, Buffy and Lily grazing in the rain

Buster and Apple were just hanging out under a tree

This picture was not posed! Jason was holding Bear and looking outside as the rain came down and he looked like a dejected kid. I told him all he needed was a baseball bit in his other hand to complete the look. The truth is we aren't used to being in the house so much and we ate a lot, watched tv, and were bored. It was actually kind of a nice break from the usual routine!