Horses Are Just Big Noses

I've thought it to myself plenty of times, but today when my mother came over and was in the barn greeting the newest batch of kittens, it was expressed out loud. Horses are just big noses.

Wherever you are standing that's within a neck length, you'll have a horse nose there. On your shoulder, nudging you in the back, breathing hot air on you, nibbling your hair or whatever you have in your hands, sniffing your clothes, and just being generally in your business. In my experience, the younger they are the worse it is but many of the older horses are awfully nosey too.

I don't think they're looking for food, although they do get occasional treats so they may be hoping to get lucky. They absolutely love to be scratched and petted and I know I've found myself absently rubbing a guy who had nosed his way in to what I'm doing. I have also observed how they appreciate burying their noses in the cat's fur and sniffing it in, which is not something the cats usually stand for unless I'm holding them. The horses also enjoy "helping" me clean the stalls by way of mouthing the end of the muck rake as I'm trying to use it and standing as close on top of me as I'm bent over as to be almost piggy-back. They like to think of themselves as lap-dogs.

I know that this can be considered obnoxious behavior and I should put a stop to it. But I appreciate that the little (and not so little) pests are friendly and personable, curious and mild- mannered. I like the fact that I can have friends and family over to pet the heads hanging eagerly over the fence. Whereas some other horses I've known would rather move away from outstretched hands or stand glowering in a corner, ignoring any onlookers.

Manners are in the eye of the beholder, I believe, and I think my horses have good manners. There are lots of worse habits a horse can pick up than becoming a big nosey nose.

My View On Slaughter

That's right I'm going to go there. The horse slaughter question. It's been a bitter debate in the horse industry for decades and there seems to be no end in sight.

I'd like to cite, specifically, the practice of rounding up wild mustangs for sale to slaughter houses. Indeed this is not a new activity. It was once common to round up what could be caught for a quick sale to the slaughter house, after all, wild mustangs are a symbol of the old west. They belong to everyone and no one. That view has not changed much, but it's meaning is different. People now think that the horses are less a commodity or resource and more a national treasure. No one is jumping to take responsibility to care for all of them but we all think somebody should. It is true that there are getting to be way too many horses competing with livestock on the range and the management organizations such as the BLM can only handle so much. Is the easy answer to just cart off the excess animals to the plant?

In my opinion it may be. I love horses and would love every horse in the country to be treated like the pets mine are. However I'm not signing up to house and feed 2 million wild horses for the next 30 years, and I don't see too many other horse lovers doing it either. Not to say it isn't all of our problem. There are just too many horses. I would suggest, if I may, an implimentaion of a spaying and gelding program on a far grander scale than that already in place to help this problem in the future and I applaud the individuals supporting the horse adoption program. But there are still an awful lot of horses to fall through the cracks.

This is where the slaughter question comes in. I know that no one wants to think about it but where else are these animals to go? And what would their quality of life be otherwise? Maybe an end to it for them is the best choice. They are then shipped off to countries where horse-meat is not taboo as it is here, to me that does not sound like the downfall of society as it is made to sound.

So I am for the slaughter of excess horses, at least until there is some other option or no more excess. When horse owners quit dumping horses that are of no more "use" to them and stop breeding animals if they do not intend to give the resulting offspring a home for life or at least take that horse back if new owners don't want to keep it in the future. As for the mustangs I'd perfer that the dangerous, aggressive or diseased animals go first, but then what? It's awful, it's cruel and it's like playing God, which we have no right to do, but at the same time I feel it's a neccisary evil. I hate to see good, sound, usable horses end up that way just because no effort was made to find any better option for them. I also think it's deplorable the way many of these animals are transporteted to the facilities, and treated once they arrive in some cases. This should be a means to end their suffering, not increase it.

The bottom line for me is that slaughter is ugly, we don't want to see it or even think about it but if the plants were closed down, would all the lobbyists then accept the trailerfuls of excess horses? Who would? The problems of excess and disease would increase at rates we can't even imagine, as well as equine suffering and neglect. Maybe if some one doesn't like the idea of slaughter, don't get a job at a plant. And we all need to help by providing good homes to the horses that come under our care.

April Showers Bring More Showers

The May flowers did start to poke thier little heads out up until this past week, where it did nothing but rain for six days straight. The good news is that I have plenty of water in the front pasture, the bad news is that the pasture is one big lake and I have nowhere for all that wet stuff to go.

The horses are walking mud balls and the mud is so sticky I can hardly keep my boots from getting sucked off, forget about horse shoes. We're considering ourselves lucky, though, because this past week's storms produced several funnel clouds nearby and we have no plan in place for what to do with the animals in the event of a tornado. Do you turn them loose? I think I'd rather bring them into the basement with us. We've actually already had a horse in this basement, now that I think about it. My mother in-law's almost seventeen hand gelding wandered in through the downstairs door to hang out one afternoon, but that's a different story.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to summer. The mud will be gone, so will the unpredictable weather, the horses will be clean (well, relatively) and theoretically, I'll have some extra time to ride. Though that may be wishful thinking. I have so much I want to get done, I actually have a training to-do-list for each horse and wall-to-wall mud is just not working for me. I just have to keep chanting to myself:

Rain, rain go away,
my horse and I
have plans today.

Wet And Wild

So I've spent the last two days knee deep in muddy water, shovel in hand, trying to get the flood water in the pasture to spread out somewhat evenly. This is obviously one of the more glamorous aspects of horse ownership. I think I have sucessfuly killed the two ponds that form at the front of the pasture and stay all summer. They serve no purpose other than creating mud, and a lovely mosquito breeding resort.

Meanwhile all the thick green grass that comes with spring showers turns brown, dries up and is dead by June. Who's brilliant idea was flood irrigating anyway? The problem is that it is fully a study in the laws of gravity. I just cannot get the water to flow uphill. So I am left with trying to dig little trenches to try to get little rivlets to carry tiny amounts of water to dry areas. The pasture being pretty much flat, this can get very frustrating after I dig a trench, thereby freeing the water and the ungrateful flow just doesn't flow. The only places that seem to be low-lying are the mosquitoe-mud-ponds.

Horse-keeping on a small acreage has its pitfalls, many of them seasonal, and in the green time of year before summer sets in, the pitfall is the battle for water. Or against water, as the case may be. No matter how smooth and level an area looks, you will be amazed how many desert islands appear once the water works start.