Hay, Eyes, and oh yes, here we go again, Dominance

We came close to running out of hay, but are now back in business - phew!

A very nice farmer and his wife, who live nearby, brought it over, stacked to a perilous height on the back of their pick up truck. Mr. Burkman must be seventy if he's a day, and he scampered over the roof of his pick up, scaling the tower of hay like a mountain goat, to undo the ropes and then throw the bales down. We'll run out again in another month or two, but he said he'd have hay for sale until spring. It's nice clean, dry brome hay. He lets it dry for three days before baling, and frowns on farmers who bale sooner than that.

The horses prefer our own hay and will eat it first if I put both out, probably just because they're used to it. The bought hay is better quality, I think. Ours got a little damp due to its forcible removal from the barn during the wedding. It was in wagons and covered in tarps, but there was some severe rain during that time. Only a few bales actually got mouldy, but the rest ended up a little dusty.

Next year I'm hoping our own hay will last through the winter, because:
1) with any luck a severe drought won't make me have to start feeding hay in August;
2)  a neighboring farmer spread manure on our hay field, and we had some new seed drilled in, so we should get a better crop; and
3)  I'm planning to take back three of the acres which we have been renting out during our absence in Mississippi. It currently has alfalfa growing, which I'm planning to overseed with a grass mixture - giving us some alfalfa/grass hay mix to ration out to the horses in the colder weather. (Of course, I belong to the Blanche Dubois School of Farming, depending on the kindness of strangers to effect these little miracles on my behalf.)

Rose's eye is looking a little better. I have been mixing the Chinese herbs with a little apple sauce and serving them up in bowls. If I then pour the goop onto my hand, that's even more acceptable.

She will eat up all of her uveitis remedy in this way, but refuses the immune booster.

This prompted me to bring out the pendulum again and re-test the herbs. The uveitis formula produced the same reaction as before - alternate vigorous swings clockwise and counter-clockwise. However, the immune booster formula caused a different reaction - a strong back-and-forth swing, followed by a vigorous counter-clockwise swing, following by a short, weak clockwise swing, and then a halt. Ok, I won't insist on the immune formula.

I believe Chinese herbs really ought to be prescribed by someone who can check the meridian pulses, or whatever the heck they're called. However, I take comfort in the fact that the eye is improving, that Rose seems to enjoy the uveitis formula, and that the pendulum says, um, I don't know, that it's in balance or something .... ?

My good friend, who has slightly divergent opinions from me, was over and we hung out in the field with the horses. Last time she came over our different approaches led to a confusing and slightly upsetting situation. However, this time, I found I was able to listen to her, even follow her suggestions, and because I have a better connection to the horses, it was possible to try a little bit of doing things her way without losing that connection in the process.

She was trying to get me to move Bridget's shoulder over.  She saw me moving her hindquarters over, and remarked that the real test is moving the shoulder. She poked her finger (gently but significantly) into a spot on Bridget's shoulder. Bridget just about jumped out of her skin. My friend is trying to achieve what she sees other, more dominant, horses do - namely obtain instant obedience by a look or gesture. She is actually extremely good at this, and her own horses are devoted to her, as well as being very friendly and confident. So I wouldn't want anyone to think that she's really on a very different tack from me.

I agreed to try what she was suggesting. But it was confusing to me and to Bridget. As I am not trying to obtain instant obedience, I don't feel an immediate need to overcome initial resistance from the horse. So when I sense Bridget's reluctance to cede her shoulder, my instinct is to stop and re-assess rather than press forward to compliance. I believe she needs to take her time and agree to what I ask because she trusts me rather than because I'm mimicking mean old George. My attempts to do what my friend was suggesting only ended up with Bridget resisting or becoming anxious.

The next day, when I was out in the field on my own, I reprised the shoulder yielding exercise. I gave it some more thought and remembered how I obtained a good result with George. It is easier to cede the shoulder from movement than from a standstill. So I asked Bridget to move forward a little and at the same time indicated that I'd like her shoulder to move away from me. She moved away beautifully, even crossing one front leg over the other. A second attempt was much more muddy, and I called it a day.

Here's what I've been thinking: there's a difference between insisting and making. My friend has noticed that when she, or one of her riding students, is able to control the horse's movements at will, the horse becomes more confident. I would not disagree, and that's what Carolyn Resnick talks about. However, it is possible to insist without becoming coercive. I think that's what brought about the recent change in George - that I finally figured out it was ok to insist, and that it's possible to insist without forcing. I mean, gosh, isn't that what I've been doing as a mother for the past 24 years?

The difference between me and my friend is that I draw the line between insisting and forcing in a slightly different place, although actually we're not far off each other.

I think when you sense resistance in a horse, you have to try to get inside what's going on and unravel it from within, rather than trying to overcome it by remote control.

And here's another thing. This cold weather business. It makes it much less appealing to go out and just spend time, share space. I need to invest in some serious cold weather clothing. This won't help George, though, who is a little uptight in the cold. My friend, who knows a lot, says that the cold weather makes the fascia get tight, and tight fascia don't like to be touched. George is a tight guy at the best of times, and the cold weather exacerbates it. Still, he might like the company. So, I need long johns, vests, scarfs, balaclavas, down jackets ... oh well, Christmas is coming.

Balance

I've decided to go with Chinese herbs for the treatment of Rose's eye. The vet doesn't think it's uveitis, but then again, he doesn't know what it is and was using a scattershot approach to treatment. The folks at For Love of the Horse believe it is uveitis and have recommended an herbal uveitis remedy, as well as an immune system support treatment. As uveitis is something which conventional medicine treats with only moderate success, if any, I'm placing my confidence in the herbs. Chinese medicine got my daughter over fibromyalgia and got me out of a borderline thyroid/fatigue slump, so here goes.

I know very little about Chinese medicine, but I gather it is all about balance - keeping the body's own systems functioning harmoniously - strengthening the parts which are weak, and toning down those which are overactive - helping the body cope on its own with the challenges thrown at it.

Every organism is in a constant state of adjustment. If we were in a permanent state of equilibrium, we would be deader than rocks, not to mention hermetically sealed off from our environment. Life is movement, rearrangement, change, and interaction.

In Paradise, I imagine every creature's ability to adjust to changing conditions was finely tuned, and each challenge met with the immediate, appropriate response. If you run fifteen minutes in the sun and then take a drink, you'll stay in balance. But try to run a whole marathon without hydrating, and you'll probably need days to recuperate. A little off-balance is what makes us alive. It's only when the response is too little or too late that pathology ensues.

I'm reminded what they say about the traditional Chinese doctor - that he is paid only when you're healthy, and you stop paying him when you're sick. The fabled Chinese doctor maintains your health by helping you constantly adjust and compensate in the face of all the challenges thrown at you - by the environment, by the available nutrition, and by the micro-organisms who share your world. Pathologies are to be prevented before they happen. The creatures of the world were designed to function together as a harmonious whole, interdependent, but not mutually exploitative.

My reservation about the remedy which I've bought for Rose is that it was prescribed for the disease and not for the individual. Strictly speaking, Chinese medicine should treat the individual, which means that two horses with the same symptoms might receive totally different treatments. However, we do what we can.

I checked the herbs with the pendulum and was very surprised to find a reaction I've never encountered before. The pendulum swings vigorously clockwise, then stops, then proceeds to swing vigorously counter-clockwise. I take this to mean - somehow - that the remedies work in a very different way from allopathic or homeopathic ones, which attack, or help the body attack, a specific disease.

Ok, decision made about treatment. Now to persuade the patient that this is the right thing to do. I went out today, all bundled up (remembered gloves this time), and determined that Rose was going to take her herbs without me bullying her, but also determined that she was going to take them. It took a full hour to accomplish this.

Rose politely but resolutely declined to have anything to do with the syringe containing the delectable and health-restoring concoction. Bridget was jumping up and down: "Me! Me! I love Chinese herbs! Give 'em to me!"

Bridget's opinion of Chinese herbs

Rose thinks Chinese herbs are dumb

After a while, Rose let me scratch her face with the syringe. She started giving Bridget the evil eye, which is a good sign, and it means: "I'm having a good time, buzz off and leave me alone with the human." However, she was not, not, not, not, not going to let me put that syringe into her mouth. At one point, I started to wrap the rope around her nose, and then realized that was not the way to go. I hoped she'd finally get so bored that she'd capitulate, but no such luck.

Eventually, I discovered that if I led her along, holding the tail of the leadrope in my left hand, and with my right hand holding both her halter and the syringe, I could touch the tip of the syringe to her muzzle every step or so, and she would only tug her head away a little bit, focussed as she was on forward movement.  Then I managed to infiltrate the tip of the syringe into her mouth every so often and squirt some in. In this way, I managed to empty both syringes, with Rose making a big show of smacking her lips and chewing and opening her mouth, but not actually pulling away.

I don't know if it's the taste she doesn't like. More likely she just has an aversion to being dosed, as the poor girl has had so much of that in the past. Next time I'm going straight for the walking application method, and I sincerely hope it doesn't take an hour.

Paraphernalia

What a Night

We went to bed last night to the sound of the deluge continuing for the second day in a row.

Around midnight I awoke to a crashing, flashing storm. After running downstairs to unplug the computer and tv, I went back to bed, where sleep was slow to return, besieged as I was with thoughts of the horses out there amid the mayhem. My daughter appeared at the door, just like in the Sound of Music, and I was grateful for her company as we snuggled down under the duvet.

Finally, as the booms of thunder grew more intermittent and distant, I drifted off to sleep. Only to be woken by a mighty wind howling and lashing the house, its fury persisting unabated until morning. Not much sleep to be had with the gale whirling around outside my head and thoughts of the horses agitating the inside.

The wind is still blowing this morning - it's not a cold wind, though, as I discovered when I stepped outside. The horses were grazing, and as so often after a storm, the light and the clouds were particularly pretty.

Looking East

Looking West

Although the horses were jumpy in the wind, Rose was calm when I administered her eye treatment. This morning, the pendulum said no to the banamine, so it was pretty easy. Her eye looks the same as yesterday.

Well, the pendulum didn't actually say no. I take a counter-clockwise rotation to mean no, and a clockwise rotation to mean yes. But sometimes the pendulum swings side to side or back and forth; I don't know what this means. For the banamine, the pendulum swung side to side, which may mean something like - it's not actually counter-indicated, but there is no need at present. I am a rank amateur at this and am kind of making it up as I go along. I've heard that you can "program" the pendulum to swing whichever way you choose. If you prefer counter-clockwise to mean no, then that's what it means.

I believe the pendulum's ability to diagnose is simply a mechanism of nature that science has yet to understand. But lawks a mercy, it sounds like voodoo.