Horsekeeping (36 page)

My reliable Dover catalog sports nearly thirty pages of clothing as a testament not only to the power of marketing, but also that perfect blanket-free weather conditions rarely, if ever, occur. There is a combination of outerwear—light-weight, medium-weight, heavy-weight or “Rambo,”
fly-sheet, “cooler” or rain sheet—that can keep any horse, from the hirsute to the smooth-as-a-baby's-bottom completely body-shaved, temperate day and night in the frigid New England winter. The trick is to figure out what is required each hour of our variable climate. The girls are perpetually sticking their hands inside the blankets to feel the body heat of the armless four-leggeds, who can't tell you “Hey, I'm dying over here,” or shed their own sweaters should they sense a hot flash coming on. In fall and spring considerable time is spent determining the proper blanket formulas for morning, afternoon and night. Consultations are held, second opinions sought. It does my heart good to know my Bandi has a blanket master figuring out his precise layering needs when the thermometer reads eleven below, even before the wind chill, and I am warm and cozy in central heating with a fireplace to add to the atmosphere.

Even though Bobbi assures me horses don't feel the cold much, and that they suffer more from the heat and pests of summer, I only half believe her. Most humans cotton to warmth and abhor cold. We'd be much more concerned about global cooling than we are about global warming, the latter evoking an extended Caribbean holiday. To contemplate a New England winter getting colder and longer would give us all religion about our wasteful habits and probably induce a voluntary ten percent tithing to develop technologies against it.

So the blanketing makes all horse caregivers feel needed, at least psychologically, and the basic models overlay the horse from the withers, down the sides and over his back end to the bottom or so of the haunches. The blankets Velcro and buckle across the front of the chest, and two straps run crossways under the belly. At the rear end it gets complicated. One strap reaches either side of the blanket under the tail, or two straps reach from the sides of the blanket around the inside of each leg to hooks under the tail. No matter how cleverly you twist and loop and otherwise fancy-knot the straps out of the way of the poop and pee chutes, it is wasted effort. These fastenings are often urine and manure-encrusted and must be unhitched by human, gloveless hands.

The problem compounds with mares in heat. Their legs and any blanket straps bring dried menstrual blood into the mix. Again, even in the cleanest of barns, the horse blankets quickly get disgusting, and you'll go broke trying to keep enough clean blankets and Tide on hand to satisfy a stickler. Furthermore, these cover-ups are hairy, big and bulky to wash and take forever and a long sunny day to dry. So, the best remedy is to de-hair and wash the blanket on occasion, make peace with the dirt, resist the urge to pluck that annoying horse hair from your tongue, and invest in a cruelly stiff nail brush for the shower. A surgeon's got nothin' on me in the scrub-down department.

“Why are your hands so red and raw?” Scott asks.

It defies my reason that no one succumbs to the dreaded, kill me now, twenty-four hour intestinal bug in this germ factory, including my kids who aren't as careful as you and I might be about the hands to mouth infection highway.

On the whole, however, properly cared for horses appear hygienic to humans, especially their noses and mouths. I have never seen them stick their faces in manure, sniff each other's butts or lick their genitals dog or cat-style. Their faces are satin sleek, with deep, expressive eyes sprouting long eyelashes and camel-like muzzles that are soft, dry, and, when they lower their heads to greet you, just at the perfect height for nuzzling. While a horse might shy from busy hands flitting about their heads, they often favor a face forward approach to identify people by their individual breath and smell. They rarely drool, unless exposed to moldy clover weed in which case they pour saliva in alarming flows. But this is exceptional; generally their faces invite intimate contact. I have always been affectionate with my animals, kissing and hugging them all the time. I'm not alone. The girls at the barn face-nuzzle their horses regularly and even let them bite off chunks of frosted donut, a half of a ham sandwich, a blueberry muffin top, or share a sip of Vitamin Water straight from the large-mouthed plastic container and go right on finishing it themselves. On their birthdays, Bobbi's horses receive name-inscribed carrot
cakes, each moist slice shared and icing smeared between her and the honored equine.

During one grooming session I was lavishing Bandi a typical how ya doin' muzzle smacker and cooing at him about what a handsome boy he is.

“Bandi loves to roll out in the field when we let him out nude,” Bobbi reported.

“That's for sure,” Meghan agreed, “Especially after we clean him up real good.”

“You should see him roll around in the manure out in his paddock. He gets covered in it, even all over his face. He must balance on his head to get it between his eyes like that, right Meg?”

I pulled my face quickly away from his and searched for evidence.

“You should see him in the morning sometimes. He's got poop all over his face and ears and head. I don't know how he manages it.” Meghan shook her head.

“I guess I'll have to stop smooching him so much.” I wiped my mouth on the arm of my jacket, on which I noticed the crease marks of brown dirt, dust, manure... whatever.

“Well, he usually keeps his nose out of it, so you're probably safe,” Bobbi laughed.

I thought about Scott's reprimands regarding dog kissing.

“Do you have to do that?” he'd demand. “It's really revolting.”

“But look how cute she is,” I'd say and hold Velvet up to his face. “How can Daddy not love you, Velvie? . . . She smells so good. Come on, give her a little peck.”

“I'm not that dog's father, and you're not its mother, by the way.” He'd recoil in displeasure. “You're a real nutter, you know.”

“But she's so cute. And dogs are very clean—we can't get their germs. Here, just give her a pat.”

He rolls his eyes and does just that, a perfunctory knock on the head.

Now my affection has multiplied to horses, cats and bunnies. It's hard for me to understand his aversion; I feel so naturally connected to our
pets. But it must be strange for him to have these, to him alien, creatures roaming his house. He has acclimated, but still must physically restrain himself when the kids take my lead. But, there is hope for him: on a trip to Anguilla, as instructed, he kissed a dolphin. We have it documented on the video we bought after our “dolphin experience.”

When it comes to toilet habits—like human, like horse. Some men pee all over the rim, splash a close wall and leave the seat up. Others you'd never know paid a visit. Same goes for women. Though better in people's homes as a rule compared to men, women are just as bad in public. We hover, and splash, and leave the mess for the next victim, who hovers even higher and showers even more until you must hike the cuffs of your pant legs and teeter on one tiptoe to avoid contamination.

Likewise, some horses are neat and their stalls a pleasure to pick out. Angel, Theo and Cleo for example, poop in a tidy pile toward the backs of their stalls so that one organized pass of the toothed shovel scoops mostly poop with minimal precious wood shavings ending up in the muck bucket. Some horses are pigs. Bobbi's young horse Toby dumps in the middle of his stall and pirouettes the whole pieces into small bits that spread throughout his bedding—think chopped salad—and fall through even the smaller tines of the pitchfork. Not only is cleaning his stall harder, but his shavings must be replaced more often,
and
Bobbi gets to pick it out of his hooves during grooming, a triple whammy.

“Is Toby worse than Chase?” I asked Meghan one day.

“I would rather scrub Chase's wall twice a week than clean Toby's stall once.”

This surprised me. As we spoke I glimpsed Chase's stall in all its glory. Poop stains of old smeared the back wall from the window down to the floor bringing to mind a brown, black and tan Jackson Pollock. We admired Chase's handiwork, and, as if he guessed our attentions, earlier he had deposited two manure nuggets, one large and one mini on the metal windowsill in between the bars, all artistically framed by the distant blue sky and lovely nearer scene of the fencing, grass and riding rings
of our spring blossoming farm. A turd still life. I pictured him wedge-boosting his haunches to manage it, and we all shook our heads, marveling at his dexterity. I thought I heard him whinny his pride from a distant paddock—“Yep, that's my Chaseroo special—pretty impressive, huh?”

“At least it's in one spot,” Meghan said, getting to work.

“Cleo and Angel are the best,” Bobbi said. “They leave neat piles in one corner and never walk through it.”

Women really are superior beings
, I thought.

“The girls are better on the whole,” Meghan said, echoing my thoughts. Our barn, run by females, is not above the occasional male-bashing.

“Bandi's not the neatest,” I quietly acknowledged, feeling responsible in the way a mother might of a four-year-old child that still wore a diaper and breast fed.

“Oh Bandi's pretty bad. He poops wherever and whenever he feels like it,” Meghan laughed.

“He especially likes the expensive footing in the indoor ring,” I admitted. We've all cleaned up Bandi's double releases during a single lesson.

I ponder the germ warfare waging at our farm. My kids' favorite nook in the barn is the snack cabinet that I stock with the highly processed, guilty pleasures prohibited at home—goldfish, cellophane-boxed stick pretzels, hot chocolate mix and vanilla-flavored milk, fruit leathers, gummy bears and cookies n' cream granola bars—in an unimaginative but effective manipulation of cottoning them to barns and horses. Junk food and barn work go well together, and we all succumb. Disgracefully, I rarely remind the kids to wash their hands before digging in.

“Hawk is the funniest though,” Meghan said. “He used to poop in the back of his stall, but when Chase moved in next door, he started pooping in the front right corner, as close as possible to Chase's food bucket.”

“Oh that's rude,” I laughed. “The ultimate insult.”

 

 

NOT ONLY MUST ALL THIS MANURE BE PICKED UP, it must be properly disposed of, too. Usually this amounts to a big pile along the back tree line out of sight, unless you cough up the big bucks to have it hauled away. Our farm is large enough to get a good compost heap going, but according to Chip, it is not enough to leave it to ferment itself. Good composting technique involves stirring, airing, rotating and even temperature taking with a long triple yardstick of a thermometer. So far, no one has risen to the challenge.

Lucky for us our neighbor takes all the manure our horses can produce. Once a day, Bobbi rides the freshly loaded tractor across the street and up the narrow, graveled road, romantically labeled the “goat path,” though its reality hardly conjures that cheese heaven of the Dordogne, into Ed's field. I rode with Bobbi once, excited about our new, authentically green and yellow John Deere tractor, fascinated that Bobbi could drive it. I crouched uncomfortably between the stick shift and the one seat, with a death grip on a small handle bar and my one buttock hanging ten, thinking
tractor accident
and wondering why I imagined riding sidecar would be fun. Bouncing eight feet off the ground with no seatbelt, I avoided Bobbi's cranking arms and legs that maneuvered this unsophisticated piece of equipment over ruts and through soft dirt into field position.

Rumor had it that Ed planted this field to lure deer. In hunting season, he and his buddies congregate on Ed's front porch, comfy in their chairs with rifles at the ready to get themselves some venison, all without the hassle of traipsing through the woods or hanging out in trees. Maybe they can even keep a hold ‘a their beers. It's easy to criticize his method, take the Jed Clampett cheap shot. But I have eaten feedlot cows my whole life and therefore have colluded in barbaric animal husbandry. And the deer have vastly overpopulated the area, only to starve in harsh winters and increasingly suffer roadside calamity. If Ed can finagle couch potato hunting, who am I to argue if the results are the same as from those who rove camouflaged? It is still meat on a plate; fairer game
perhaps, without beef's long, crowded trailer hauls to slaughter chutes of death. Ed probably appreciates the meal more than we supermarket hunters and wastes less after looking his kill in the eye and butchering it himself.

As concerned carnivores, Bobbi and I split half a cow from John Bottass's herd. I liked the idea of organic, free-range, antibiotic-free, well-treated even if short-lived protein. No doubt I have ridden past this fated cow by bike and car for all two-plus years of its life. I am confident it was “harvested” humanely. John respects his livestock, and Meghan accidentally witnessed its well-placed shot to the head and a bleeding neck slice right out back in a familiar field—no long truck transport, no tunnels of doom, no odor of blood or terrified moos of panicked, excreting, death-sensing cows. Processed and packaged by a meat locker in a neighboring town, I now have three freezers' full, an astonishing 350 pounds of all cuts of meat, some rather bony and brontosaurus-sized that I haven't a clue how to cook.

Bobbi and I entered Ed's deer patch, and she jostled that tractor into position. When I realized Ed's practice of the on site kill was no worse than John's for my half a beefer and considerably better mass production, I grew comfortable that Weatogue Stables continue to supply Ed with free deer-bait fertilizer. As we chugged along the slick, deeply creased field and Bobbi switched on the rotator blades of the tractor bed to literally spray the ground with finely chopped manure, I realized, with that sudden clarity of “ah-
ha
,” the origin for the saying “When the shit hits the fan.”