Ted's in the slammer -- and it's a life sentence

Yes, unfortunately, Ted is now caged, and will have to stay caged for the foreseeable future, perhaps for the remainder of his life.

It’s that or put him down because he’s urinating all over the house. Territory marking, no doubt; stress at multiple males, perhaps; maybe simply the grumpiness of advancing age (he’s in his midteens). I never caught him at it, but I suspected him of house-pissing after Ed and Fred’s deaths. The episodes ended after a couple of weeks in each case; perhaps he thought he’d sufficiently marked his territory for the new world order?

Now, with Tomba’s departure and the arrival of Stan and Ollie, the house-marking has not only returned, it’s ratcheted way up. He’s hit my office especially hard, and I’ve actually caught him twice doing it behind my back – literally behind my back; I was working at my desk, heard THAT noise, smelled THAT smell, and turned to see him scram as I screeched. I’ve thrown out ruined stuff, scrubbed and pet-deodorizer-sprayed all the blasted surfaces I found by crawling about the room in the dark with a blacklight, have a steam rug cleaner with special pet-odor agent on order – and I just can’t trust him; within a day of the big all-but-steaming cleanup I caught him backing up to the wastebasket for another hit. He’s sprayed in the living room too; I suspect the upstairs bathroom (sniff – whiff?) but can’t find the exact place; who knows where else he’s gone I haven’t found yet, where he’d go next if I did nothing?

You ask, what about giving Stan and Ollie back to the shelter? And I reply, what if that doesn’t solve the problem? Once they begin this sort of pissing, they rarely reform. I could try kitty Wellbutrin, but (a) it didn’t do much for Tomba, and (b) Ted is a bear to pill. My office, to be blunt, intermittently stinks, and we’re not even into warm humid weather yet. I can’t work around, I can’t live with the stench and the constant vigilant mistrust of leaving Ted free to roam and piddle where he will.

Ted’s too old and too wary of strangers to try to rehome, even assuming anyone would want to adopt a known pisser. So it’s prison or death, alas, and I – judge, jury, executioner – have chosen the slammer for him.

I already had a small cage, the one I’ve used for housing cats on medical hiatus from freedom. After lying awake last night for hours pondering what to do, I went out today and bought a larger cage, the standard sort of large-dog-sized folding wire crate, and have tied the two cages together. Voila: Ted’s new prison. The white object above Ted is a rolled towel tied into place to block the gap between the larger and smaller cage openings.







On order is a six-foot-high, three-perch cat cage which I will tie into the other two cages. Since that has a door at all three levels, when it arrives and gets added to the current set-up I’m hoping to tie into the second-level door yet another crate I bought today, a cloth-sided dog den with a plush (removable) floor that I’ll put on top of whatever crate ties into the tower.


Oops! I might have to buy still another large wire crate to substitute for the one currently in use, because that one, what I was able to get on short notice today once I’d made up my mind, only has one door. (This crate, for example, has three doors, all removable, which would make tying cages together much easier, but I didn’t want to wait for the shipment to arrive to take action.) Would’ve been cheaper to euthanize Ted, eh? And no giant cage complex cluttering the living room!

But I just couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s selfish of me; maybe he’ll be so miserable caged that it would be kinder to call it quits. He’s already lived a good long happy life. But he’s handling the caging pretty well so far; complaining, yes, but after the first few minutes of looking for escape he seems to have settled down, and he’s eating, so he can’t be too freaked out.

So there it is: Ted’s a prisoner and I’m his warden. What a life.

Oh-oh -- I'm surrounded

When the Ipswich Pride get hungry and want me to feed them, they start to gather about me. Quietly, one by one, they drift from their various snoozing spots to wherever I happen to be.

I’m working in my office. All seven of the senior felines have come in and disposed themselves about me.

They look hungry.

They’re eyeing me.

* cue theme from Jaws *

The ponies enjoy their winter

Ben and Commander have been enjoying their winter, and why not?  They’re fat, fuzzy, and exceedingly well-fed.

They haven’t had to work for months.  All they have to do is hang out in their generous turnout, come inside once in a while if the weather’s vile, eat mass quantities of hay (plus a stingy ration of grain – treat time!) and dump the processed hay wherever they like, secure in the knowledge that the human who feeds them will also remove the result.

 

 

Being smart (and lazy), they tend not to wade out into the deep snow we’ve amassed over the last two months, unless the cruel human tosses their hay out there and their only hope of survival is to struggle through the wilderness to the life-saving food.

 

 

 

But mostly they spend their time hanging out in the run-in with their pals Cholla and Counterpoint.

 

 

Sometimes the boys play face-fight over the divider.

 

 

The game can get intense.

 

 

Eventually someone gets pissed off.

 

 

And the game is over.  For now.

 

High winds; high as kite horses; high terror

The adrenaline rush has worn off; the shakes are about gone; the heart rate is back to near-normal, here at home, safe, unharmed. But I’ve just gone through the scariest time in my horsekeeping life.

I’m back now from the barn, from bringing four horses in out of the run-in, into their stalls for the night. The wind’s blowing well over 20 mph, with gusts up to 40. All four geldings – my two; the farm owners’ two – were freaking out from the roar and rush and banging when I got there, even before I started leading them in one by one. At least the ground was bare, the ice all melted, or there’d have been a wreck for sure; at least floodlights illuminated the path we’d have to take; the distance from turnout to shelter was only a couple of dozen yards; but oh! what a vast and daunting distance it was, and worse with each traverse.

The first one out was Counterpoint, the Lipizzaner, herd king, likely to have a meltdown if others came in before him. He dithered at the gate but let me buckle his halter on, slithered through an opening brief enough to get him out without his companion Cholla jamming through on his heels, and snorted his way in, body bunched, head tossing, swinging sideways several times but yielding to my making him circle. Released in his stall, he rushed to the window to see what was happening with his herd.

That was the easy one.

Second: Ben, my normally quiet, laidback, biddable Thoroughbred, now strung out, wild-eyed, nostrils flared to fit a fist in, swinging between head-flinging bouncing whirls around me and brief bouts of frozen staring into the goblin-howling dark before his front feet left the ground again for another plunging eruption. There’s nothing like a half-ton of terrified Thoroughbred to focus the mind, eh? I managed to keep my deathgrip on the lead rope, tight to his head (let him get any slack and he’d have broken free or gone skyward), as we crabwised and spun our way up the drive, around the snowbank at the top, and into the barn. He stayed wired all the way down the aisle and into his stall.

Third: Cholla, the Quarter Horse. Usually in a four-horse take-in I’d leave him for last because he can handle it, but by now he was running and whinnying. I had to bark at him to hold still to get his halter on; almost got body-slammed going through the gate; and could barely hold him back from bolting up the drive, never mind I was spinning him every few steps, my elbow jammed into his shoulder to keep him from trampling over me. He dragged me down the aisle and was still quivering when I got his halter off and slid home the stall door.

Three down, three trips of barely contained terror, and only Commander left. Commander, the smallest of the four, but a Morgan has power to spare and he wasn’t sparing any. By now he was yelling and running and agitated almost out of his skin. When calm, he’ll shove his nose into an outstretched halter and walk quietly on a loose rope. Now? Head-flinging, dithering around the gate, barely holding still long enough to be haltered; slamming past me out the gate; fighting me all the way up the drive as wildly as Ben and Cholla. By the time I got him into his stall I was done for – arm and shoulder aching, hands shaking, legs weak.

I slid his door shut and went back out into the wind, to secure the gates from slamming and to set up breakfast hay in the run-in. Returning to the barn, I found all four had calmed down enough to dive into their hay, and to accept as their due the horse cookies I offered. I dragged the barn door shut, staggered against the gale to my car, and came home.

I should note here my undying gratitude to the persons who put basic ground manners on these horses. True, they were horrible to handle tonight; were on the edge of losing control; but they never went over that edge, despite their freaked-out craziness they listened just enough for me to get us all safely through the ordeal. Badly trained horses would have lost it completely and gotten us into a wreck. Whoever halter-trained the boys deserves credit for that.

Yes, I did have a cellphone in my pocket, and there was a person in the house had I needed to scream for help (he knows bupkis about horse-handling, but I’m sure could cope with ambulance-calling if need be). But it was something I never want to go through again.

Unless, of course, I have to. You do what you have to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update the following morning:

With time to digest the events of last night, to reflect on what happened and what could have happened, I’ve drawn some conclusions, learned some useful lessons, the most important of which is:

Don’t ever do that again. It was dangerous, foolhardy, and needn’t have been done in the first place, had I exercised reasonable forethought.

I was handling the farm owners’ two horses because they’re away on vacation, and another boarder, Donna, is sharing the horse care. She’d been there at 5:00 to do early supper and, had I thought to ask it of her, would happily have brought all four horses in then, in the light, when they were not as worked up as I found them.

But I didn’t think to ask. It wasn’t my only failure to think, either.

I didn’t think to double-check the forecast, to understand just how violent the winds had been and were then.

I didn’t think, when I headed to the barn, that the horses would be as frantic as they were; after all, I’ve brought them in before on windy nights and, while they’d bounced and snorted, they’d stayed sane. But I’d never done so when the gusts were as brutal, the wind-roar, the thrashing in the bushes and trees were so intense.

I didn’t think through just how hard and dangerous it would be trying to bring them in alone, with no horse-capable help at hand, in conditions where every step in the gale-battered semi-dark would spook them even more.

I didn’t think to give up my plans entirely, stuff mass quantities of hay deep in their run-in stalls, and leave them out for the night. It wouldn’t be comfortable for them, true, but they’d lasted out a day of gusty cold and could have made it through the remaining hours of darkness without much difficulty. No great harm would come to them, and we’d all have been a helluva lot safer. Not only did I risk getting seriously hurt by them, but if they’d broken free and bolted, they could have run into the road just dozens of yards from the barn; a road lightly travelled on a Saturday night, true, but the traffic that does fly by flies by at 50 mph or more.

I didn’t think. And that lack of thought put all of us at risk. It’s a failure I won’t repeat.

Tomba will have to go

For months now, I’ve wrestled with whether to keep him.  I like the guy, even though he isn’t effusively affectionate like Tanya.  But he has never completely settled into the pack here.  The hostility toward the other males, especially Schooner and Pumpkin, did ratchet way down after I started him on kitty Wellbutrin but never entirely left him.  The screeching growling wailing charging furies still erupt now and then.  It’s not just him and his target that are unhappy when he goes off on someone; all the other cats get more or less upset by it.  Is such daily angst fair to them?  Is it kind to Tomba himself to live with such daily stress?

And then there’s the pissing.  Over the last few weeks I’ve found it three or four times on the stack of catfood cans in one corner of the kitchen countertops.  Couldn’t be sure it was him; could have been Schooner, in  fact, who is the only cat that gets up there when I’m fixing meals and so might consider that territory he needs to mark when he’s stressed about Tomba.

But this morning I caught Tomba backed up to a corner of the second-floor landing, letting loose a stream.  And that was that.

So I’ve called and left a message for Matt, the animal control officer in charge of the shelter, and we’ll arrange a time for Tomba to go back.  At least it’s a lovely, comfortable refuge, with a good-sized, well-furnished catroom rather than a cage awaiting him.  Last time I visited, a couple of weeks ago, there were only two cats in the main room, so his odds of finding a new (one cat only please!) home quickly should be good.

Damn.  I feel as if I’ve failed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, February 16th:


Today Tomba went back to the shelter.  He confirmed the decision by having a meltdown at Schooner shortly before we left.  He had a lot to say, none of it good, about the car ride in the carrier, yet was oddly hesitant to leave its suddenly comforting confines when it came time to decant him in the catroom.  Coaxed out, he scuttled belly-down to a hiding place, growled and hissed at the tortie who came over to investigate him (and who hissed and growled back; no further dramatics ensued), and by the time I left had settled into a sort of lair under a towel-draped chair with a catbed underneath, snug in a corner.  Matt told me he has someone in mind for Tomba already, and given how handsome he is, I suspect he’ll be placed quickly.

So there I was, down to seven cats.  And then as we were chatting Matt mentioned there were these two six-month-old orange boys, just been neutered, he’d be picking them up from the vet’s in a little while, he knows how much I like orange tiger boys, and................

No!  NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I couldn’t possibly.....................

But of course I did.  Damn that Matt!  He knew I’d be a sucker for a new adoption on the heels of having to give back Tomba.  So now I have two orange tiger boys sitting in a cage in my living room, getting over their surgery and getting used to the smells and sights and sounds of their new home, while the other cats, horrified yet resigned, alternate between cautious investigation and hanging out in a disgruntled pack on my bed upstairs.

Names, you ask?  Well, given the difference in size, roundness, and stripe thickness, how about Laurel and Hardy?  Or Stan and Ollie?  Or how about Wire and Cable?  Okay, maybe that last one is a bit much.  Anyway, provisionally they are Laurel and Hardy, but we’ll see.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, February 17th:

Everyone is glad that Tomba’s gone – even Tanya, it appears.  She certainly doesn’t seem to be pining at all.  The rest of the pride have been relaxed and happy, even with strangers in the living room, and I awoke in the wee hours to find a tangle of Schooner, Squash, Pumpkin and Peanut snoozing at my left side, their favorite night spot till Tomba uglied them away from me.

Stan and Ollie – provisionally, that’s where I am right now on naming them – are out of the cage and exploring the downstairs.  They still haven’t vocalized – do they mew at all?  I’m beginning to wonder.  Definite differences in personality!  As soon as the cage door swung open Stan was out and exploring – cautious but forward.  Ollie hung back and refused to come out.  Schooner slunk up to sniff; the two exchanged hisses from inches apart; then Schooner retreated and Ollie still sat in the doorway, dithering.

I went away to do stuff and came back some minutes later to find Ollie reconnoitering the living room while Stan did forward scouting through the kitchen into the dining area.  Ted came downstairs and stalked over to Stan, there was an exchange of hisses, Stan backed away – and that was that.  We’ve got workmen whacking away at roof ice outside and the noise scared Ted back upstairs.  The newbies resumed exploring, with Schooner creeping about to monitor from varying safe distances.  I picked up Ollie at one point and he enjoyed a little snuggle before asking to be put down.  They’re both friendly guys.

They’ve been out now for over half an hour and so far – ah, there’s Schooner walking upstairs now, calmly.  I haven’t heard a single yowl yet, and the pride in the bedroom seem not very worried about the strangers lurking below.  No, they’re not hiding on the second floor; they always congregate after breakfast in the bedroom by the slider to the deck, to soak up the sunshine and snooze.  

So far, so good.

Why I love winter horsekeeping

Since I rough-board, meaning I pay for the horses’ housing but buy my own feed and do most of the work myself, winter is not fun. In exchange for the farm owner doing some of the work (hauling hay bales from the barn to the run-in, doing a couple of hay feedings per day to my boys) I daily refill the water trough that supplies my two and their two, a clawfooted bathtub which fortunately has a floating heater in it so at least I don’t have to smash ice out of it. But I do have to get the hundred-foot hose out of their basement, hook it up to the barn faucet, unreel it to the tub, fill, then drain, recoil, and return it to where it won’t freeze, over whatever the footing may be – and they’re not into putting salty sand down because of salt leaching into their ground. I pull ice cleats on over my boots and walk like a very old person.

There’s also the fun of trying to pitchfork up manure that’s partially or wholly frozen to the ground. Ground which offers an assortment of rock-hard bareness (yay I'm safe!), snow, either fresh to sink into (huff puff slog lurch) or packed (crunch crunch), and ice (creep creep omg please don't let me fall). Normally the horses are out all the time in their run-in, paddock and fields, but in weather like this they come inside the barn, in huge, airy stalls. Huge, airy stalls which I have to muck out. In their stalls, Commander produces about one wheelbarrow load per day of manure and wet/dirty shavings; Ben does more like two. If it’s cold enough they’ll get ice in their five-gallon water buckets that has to be broken out. I get hay bales from the overhead loft and equally heavy bags of shavings from the storage place in the basement floor of the bank barn (built into a slope so the back entrance is one floor lower than the front main entrance where my stalls are), heave them into my barn cart, haul them to where they’re needed, and heave them out.

Sounds like fun, huh? Normally I go there every day, at least once per day, to do the chores. But thank goodness I won’t have to for today and tomorrow. I’ve set up the hay and grain for the two storm days in advance and the farm owner will see to feeding them and giving them water. I did that pre-feeding work when I brought them in late last night, having set up the stalls (bedding, hay, clean buckets waiting to be filled) the day before. No way am I going to go out in this mess!

Why, yes. Yes, it is a lot of work. And I’m almost 62 and getting creaky here and there. No, I don’t know why I do it, especially when it’s 11:00 at night, I’m having to lead two mildly excited horses (“We’re going inside! Into our stalls! With lots of hay!”) through a gate without it swinging back into and spooking them, get them turned around and sorted out so Ben is on my left, the side his stall will be when we get into the barn aisle, trying to pirouette them around me while keeping the leads from getting tangled – and Ben accidentally flings his head WHAM into my face, into my lip, OUCH! and suddenly there’s the taste of blood, it hurts like blazes, I can feel the gore welling on the outer corner of my lower lip, and I can’t do anything about it (other than whimper and curse) because I have the lead rope of a mildly excited (but mannerly, they’re good boys and they don’t actually lose it) horse clutched in each hand and I have to get them up around and into the barn.

Which I do, sneaking in mitten-dabs at my battered lip here and there as we walk, get them into their stalls, and then I can check to discover that, yes, I am indeed bleeding. Fortunately I keep a roll of paper towels in the tack room. The paper towel wad I press to the wound gets big red blotches quickly. I still have to set up the grain and lay out two day’s worth of hay. I need both hands for much of that. Thank goodness I did the water buckets before going to get the horses! I layer a fresh paper towel wad over the injury, chomp down on one corner to hold it there, and get everything set up. By the time I’m done and can leave, the bleeding has slowed from “Omigosh do I need to go to the emergency room for stitches?” to “Eh, just miniblots now; I’ll just go home.” This morning it’s ugly but healing.

Winter horsekeeping is so much fun!

Goodbye, Sophie

Sophie was given her release this afternoon.

On her last vet visit, in November, her weight was down to a bit over seven pounds; today she barely made it to five. Within her skin-and-bone frame Dr. Anderson palpated what felt like a mass in her abdomen. It wasn’t painful, but it confirmed the decision I've been coming to over the last couple of weeks.

And so my little old lady -- who always enjoyed visits to the vet (once out of the annoying carrier) because it meant attention! from people! and she loved attention! from people! – purring throughout, received a sedative, drifted into a doze, and lay quiet and light in my hands as the last injection slipped into her.

She was a good cat. Her life was long and happy. She went peacefully, with dignity, painfree, purring and unafraid.

It hurts like hell.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the aftermath of immediate grief for Sophie, as the first fierce wave of weeping ebbs, the words below of Emily Dickinson have crept into my mind, crept in and stayed with me, exquisite distillation of what I’m feeling now. “It’s only a cat,” one might say; “surely a loss too small for such powerful poetry?” But grief has its own logic; each new loss dredges up echoes of old losses, past pain reverberating in the present grief.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

…………….

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Belly Fur Icicles

Now, there’s a phrase you don’t run across in ordinary conversation, eh? But after the recent snowallop we took, it certainly applies to the doughty Morgan, who of course rolled vigorously in the soft fresh snow as soon as he was released from the barn where he’d sheltered from the storm into the field and run-in complex where he and his Thoroughbred buddy Ben live most of the time. Commander’s body heat, well stoked by all the hay he inhales, melted most of the resulting white crust off his woolly mammoth exterior, but the drips refroze and -- voila! mini-icicles:



I think they add a seasonally festive touch, don’t you?



Commander is thriving on a mere two cups of grain per day, perhaps because he gets massive amounts of good grass hay to keep him happy and healthily fermenting:



Every now and then he peeks over the run-in’s divider to check on his buddy Ben (“Does he have more hay than me? Does it look tastier? Maybe I could sneak in and steal some?”):



Ben is going commando this year – no blanketing at all, for the first time since I’ve owned him. Left uncompressed, his fine Thoroughbred coat has furred out almost as thick as Commander’s and he’s thriving. He doesn’t roll as much as Commander so in this photo he’s still wearing a dusting of shavings from his stall snoozes:



Of course, when it’s wet and stormy, or bitterly cold as it was last night, the boys get taken into their huge, well bedded and generously hayed stalls. Commander likes that as much as Ben, maybe more; in fact, when I was working on the run-in cleaning today, Commander went over to the exit and stood there, hoping I’d take him back inside. Sorry, little big guy; you’ll have to wait till Tuesday when the next storm rolls in.

Ben bullies Commander

Ben was a greedy piggy bully to Commander at lunchtime today.

When the wind permits, I like to hay the boys outside of the run-in, and have two tubs and haybags set up behind it. Even when there's some wind, it's sheltered there; the ground is hard-packed stone dust so it's not muddy; and the boys tend to clean up every scrap rather than trampling some into the muck and wasting it, as they do inside the run-in.

Normally, they each take a position at their own bag-over-tub station and eat peaceably. But the recent blizzard left a huge sweeping drift curving along the base of the slope up to the run-in, and Ben found it a cinch to block off Commander's access to the inner hay. That drift on which Ben's tail is just resting is only hock-high at that point, but it rises up to chest-high on Commander within a couple of feet.



I was watching from a few dozen feet away, hoping Commander would swing wide into the snow where it was shallower and come up around to the inner feeder; the drift had already been broken through near the fenceline (Ben chasing Commander, perhaps?), so surely he'd follow that path?

Nope. He stood patiently watching the big bully chow down, just waiting. He's certainly smart enough to know how to get there; I guess he just wasn't hungry enough make the hard work of plowing through the snow worth the effort.

So I grabbed a piece of baling twine, looped it around his neck, and took Commander around to the path (okay, spaced-out holes) in the drift, unbaling-twined him, and slapped his ample rump. Off he went, breaking through to hay, glorious hay! I followed him to dry ground, knee-deep even lurching precariously from hole to hole. At least I didn't actually fall into the electric fence.

After a pat for my gobbling Morgan and a snuggle with Ben (not to mention a lecture on sharing which he of course completely ignored), I left them contentedly munching away. It's amusing to see Ben, always an underhorse in every herd I'd ever seen him in before, exercising his royal prerogatives now that he has the little Morgan to push around. For his part, Commander doesn't seem to mind his second banana status; and somehow, if there's any hay to be found, there's always some hay to be found in his mouth.

Warm cats for a cold December day

Chilly day, chilly winds whipping by outside, but inside it’s snug and snuggly. Warmth is where you find it, and these critters warm my heart:

Squash and Peanut:




Ted, Peanut, Squash, Pumpkin:



Squash:



Tanya and Peanut:

Sophie

My little old lady is getting very old; at least 16, if not older.

She’s also been getting thinner and frailer over the last several months. Oh, her spirits are still good, her fur is sleek and shiny, she eats -- though a bit more erratically; she goes about her daily routines -- though they’ve gradually constricted; and she’s able to get about the house and do what she wants -- though she can’t jump places she used to, and the other day while sitting she tried to roll back to wash her butt and fell over.

In short, I fear her time remaining is short. She had a yearly checkup a couple of months ago, which confirmed what my hands were already telling me about her weight. She was otherwise in good health. If she goes markedly downhill I will of course zip her right back to the vet, to see if anything can be done, but mostly I’m making sure she’s fed, comfortable, and loved, and making the most of what time we have left together.

Taken a few days ago, and – as is so often the case with my photographs of her – not nearly a true reflection of what a lovely little cat she is:

Schooner and Tomba -- sometimes it's okay

Below, two photos I took yesterday morning of the combatants. As I said before, sometimes these two appear to get along just fine.

When things do get tense, though, it’s always initiated by Tomba. In fact, he’s been showing intermittent fearful hostility recently toward all the other male cats – even Pumpkin. Even humble, meek, rock-bottom-on-the-totem-pole Pumpkin! He has no problem with the girls, either his sister Tanya or my Sally and Sophie.

So, what’s up with that? Why, when he had apparently established himself as king of the household, does he now seem to see all the other male cats as a threat? I have to wonder whether Schooner tried to play with him (the doofus likes to play rough), accidentally hurt Tomba, and that caused Tommy Boy to lose his confidence that he was, in fact, the Big Man around here. So perhaps he’s regressed to that scarey stage of trying to figure out where in the pecking order he belongs.

The other boys seem bewildered and wary but not inclined to duke it out with Tomba for a higher position. Tomba himself may be marginally less wound up than he was a couple of days ago. May be. I just hope he gets himself sorted out soon. As king he would sometimes bully an underling but was a lot less intense about it.

Anyway, the photos. First, with the flash; then, with the flash not firing. As you can see, Tomba’s left eye is a bit squinchy still; it sometimes is completely open, sometimes is like this.



Now, if there were tension simmering between these two at this moment, I doubt we’d be seeing body language like this.

Trouble in Paradise?

Hopefully this will all prove to be no big deal, but....................

Roughly a week and a half ago, Tomba went ballistic on Schooner, yowling and howling and growling and all “Bring it on!” Schooner, bless his dumb-bunny incorrigible curiosity, kept approaching the furious feline rather than doing what any sensible cat would do: flee and hide. Which of course just stoked Tomba’s rage even more. And of course all the other cats were freaking out at the brouhaha, which further ratcheted up the tension.

I was finally able to placate everyone by feeding them, and discovered that Tomba had a watery eye with a bloody tinge in the exudate. Since this was after midnight, I wasn’t feeling well, the bloody exudate didn’t resume after I carefully wiped the eye, and the nearest animal hospital open for emergencies at that time of night is a good half-hour’s drive away, I opted to wait for morning and see what was what.

What was what next morning was a squinchy but not wholly closed eye with both inner eyelids partially showing, and a bit of redness in the conjunctiva. So off to the vet we went, to the reassuring news that the eyeball was undamaged, the conjunctiva may have been nicked by a Schooner claw but nothing was seriously hurt, and a short course of an eye medicine I already had for both Tomba and Tanya* should set Tommy right. And so it has proved; Tomba’s eye is doing fine.

What aren’t doing fine are Tomba/Schooner relations. Oh, it’s not all war, all the time; most of the time, in fact, they seem to be perfectly amicable and will peaceably hang out or pass by within feet of each other; but since the initial episode there have been two or three more keening-fury eruptions from Tomba, as well as a handful of other lower-key cursing confrontations. Schooner doesn’t react with anger, he just partially bottles out with fear-fluffing, but damn his foolishness still tends to approach rather than run. What triggers it? Damned if I know.

So far Tomba hasn’t out-and-out attacked Schooner, other than short charges that break off just shy of actual engagement, and I’m hoping it never comes to that. But I gotta tell ya, it’s a bitch being yanked out of sleep by the wee-hours siren of an enraged cat. I’m hoping I can continue to placate them when things do blow up, and that Tomba will get over this with time, but what do I do if things escalate to full-on fights? The way my home is set up, I can’t keep them permanently separated, other than by caging one or the other. If it came to giving someone up, I have to say that I think Tomba would be quite content as an only cat, but I’d rather not go that route if at all possible.



* T&T have had off-and-on squinchy damp eye (her, right; him, left – the one Schooner apparently got) ever since they came from the shelter; the vet said it’s likely to be a herpes infection, perhaps shelter acquired, perhaps even picked up from one of my other cats, but very difficult to avoid in a multi-cat situation, not a serious problem, and easily controlled with eye med when it flares up and adding lysine to the diet to promote ocular health.

Thanksgiving Day, the Myopia Hunt, and yours truly

Thanksgiving Day was a mixed bag for me; I’d been sick for a week with a low-level but persistent bug that left me headachey, fuzzy-minded and dragged-out-feeling. Never blew up into something horrid; never would go away and leave me alone. So although on Turkey Day itself I felt somewhat better, I chose not to inflict any lingering contagion on my brother and his family, and stayed home rather than driving to Melrose for the festive dinner. Don’t feel too sorry for me (I did a good job of that myself anyway); I had tasty takeout and a most excellent Zinfandel for my private feast, so there’s that, anyway.

One thing I did go out for (besides the obligatory horse care), despite my somewhat enfeebled state, was the annual Thanksgiving Day meet of the Myopia Hunt Club. It’s their traditional season-ender (though they do go on hunting for a week or two longer, weather and ground permitting), it’s a huge social occasion, and they welcome spectators, with or without camera. Despite living in Hamilton and Ipswich for the last fifteen years or so, I’d never gone to see it; but this year, what with being at loose ends and having a budding photography business, I figured, what the heck, why not? The meet was at Appleton Farms, a gorgeous and highly photogenic backdrop, only a few minutes’ drive from home and a place I’ve ridden through many times over the years.

I got there in plenty of time to see and photograph the riders arriving, eventually the hounds, and to capture (I hope) the feel of the event. I did not, unfortunately, capture the hunt leaping over any fences. It seems that the field of riders does a ceremonial loop around and over a coop and stone wall flanking a farm lane, in full view of the delighted spectators who line the fence to watch, before heading out to gallop over the countryside on the drag hunt proper. Another photographer told me which way they’d be coming, and I trudged out into the adjoining field to get the perfect angle on them coming toward me over the coop. Alas, they took it in the opposite direction! So I have some good galloping pictures, but............

Anyway, despite that disappointment, I had a great time, ran into some friends, handed out a number of business cards, didn’t freeze to death though I could have used one more layer – oh, and got some photos! And here they are.

Oh, yes, I did get more traditional sorts of rider, alone and in group shots, but here are three somewhat less orthodox samples:

From Pee to Periodontal: A Prisoner Swap

Pumpkin has been liberated! He’s now back in population, and loving it. Oddly enough, he still loves me, too, unless he thinks I might be trying to capture him. While he still needs to stay on a special diet – a fresh can of worms now that he’s out, but one I’ll leave be for this missive – he’s otherwise in fine fettle indeed. I expect to have him snugged tight to my side when I go to bed tonight. The humble little roly-poly guy is a happy LRPG.

In his place as prisoner, alas, is Peanut. A distraught and horrified Peanut. A Peanut desperately trying to scratch, claw, climb, tunnel his way out of the cage.

And why is he in there? Because at a recent wellness check we found serious periodontal issues, requiring a future appointment for plaque excavation under sedation, and antibiotic followup at home. Trouble is, getting him to that vet visit entailed catching him at mealtime and stuffing him into the carrier despite fierce resistance. Whoever would have thought a massively obese 18-pound cat could writhe and twist and lunge so vigorously? He almost got away. Only a lucky seizing of random handfuls of blubber foiled his escape long enough for me to shove him into the carrier and force the lid down on his madly surging self. Peanut thrashed and protested all the way to the vet’s; huddled in horror during the examination; and yowled miserably all the way home.

Well. The poor little fat man was utterly traumatized by the whole thing (and who can blame him?); so much so that ever since he’s been wary of coming downstairs for mealtimes. He lurks till he’s sure I’ve left the area before scuttling down to forage for whatever the others have left uneaten. This is not all bad, since I daresay his caloric intake has dropped and he could stand to lose several pounds; but it means that getting him back to the vet’s for the dental work, and then administering a course of antibiotics at home, will be a bitch.

So the plan was formed: Once Pumpkin exited the cage, wait till the opportunity presented itself to get Peanut into the vacated confines, lock Peanut in, and voila! Being able to make an appointment with some confidence that I’d actually be able to show up with the cat? Check. Withholding food and water for ten hours before the procedure? Check. Being able to catch said cat for pilling afterwards? Check.

Accordingly, when Pumpkin won his release after a checkup this afternoon, I left the cage set up in the living room, complete with litter box, water dish, and towel bedding; left the side door open; and waited. About an hour ago Peanut entered the cage, sniffed about, and stepped into the litter box at the end away from the side door. Aha! I slithered from the adjacent recliner, swooped around to the side door, and quickly shut and latched it. Success!

Peanut went berserk. Pumpkin had fretted for a bit, then accepted his fate quietly. Not so Peanut! For the first fifteen minutes or so he frantically tried to fight his way out of captivity, radiating distress vibes that freaked out the other cats. The box got shoved all over the place; the towels got dug up and bunched; the water dish (of course) got tipped, spilled, and pawed into the towel snarl. Now, roughly an hour later, he’s settling somewhat; has stretches of several minutes where he’ll lie still on his towel pile and even lean into caresses through the bars; but is he resigned to his fate? Hell, no! As I write this, I hear intermittent bouts of scratching, bar-rattling and yowling wafting up from the living room.

I’m off now, to spend a couple of hours sitting with him, soothing and observing. I hope to be able to right his water dish and leave him with something to drink by the time I go to bed; to push a bit of food through the bars when he’s less crazed; and to find him calmer in the morning. And I hope like hell they can fit him in tomorrow for his damn teeth cleaning!



Update, the next day:

Alas! Just called the vet’s office to schedule Peanut’s periodontal reaming out. Today and Monday are booked solid; surgery (under which this falls since it involves anesthesia) isn’t done on Tuesdays; it looked as if the first opening would be after Thanksgiving! But I whined as piteously as the prisoner cat himself, and so Peanut is now scheduled for the procedure on the 24th. Happy Thanksgiving, little fat boy!

So will I...? Hell no! Let him out now and I’d never drag him back into captivity. He’s a lot calmer this morning, mostly sitting or lying and whining about how awful it all is, but his struggles to escape have become half-hearted. I was able to give him a breakfast bowlful through the side door without him bolting over me to freedom; to extract the poor tumbled-about water dish, clean and refill it, and return it to the cage; and to clean the box while he was stuffing his pathetic face. Maybe by the time he goes for the cleaning he’ll be sufficiently resigned to his cruel fate to endure the carrier ride and so forth with less angst.

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Interlude with camera

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And here he is!

As you can see, he’s been rearranging the furniture while I was writing this.



At least the scrabbling for escape isn’t as fiercely desperate and prolonged as it was last night.



One of Peanut’s preferred maneuvers has been the retreat: keep backing and backing and hope it ends well.



Lemme outta here!



Is that a pathetic Peanut or what?



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Update

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After Peanut's encounter with dentistry, he had to stay on a course of antibiotics for ten days, thus remaining a periodontal prisoner in the living room cage. Physically he did well; but mentally he seemed depressed. He was been eating and drinking, and processing his intake, in good health; but moralewise, I thought the boy could use a bit of a pick-me-up. So I got him a hanging scratching pad, complete with toy, and hung it in his cage. He seemed dubious at first, but the aroma of catnip infusing it, plus his native curiosity, lured him over to it soon enough:





Catnip aroma etc. also lured Squash to check it out. Seeing Squash play with his new toy goaded Peanut to get competitive. Pumpkin watched from a safe distance.





There was a bit of a tiff over toy rights.



Peanut, holding the superior position, won out.



Squash made do with the back of the pad (also enticingly surfaced and catnippy). And everyone was happy.



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Final update

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Peanut emerged from his prison stay mentally as well as physically healthy, and noticeably slimmer than when it began -- a good thing, given how grossly obese he'd been. He continues to be wary of capture at mealtimes, and slow to come to the feeding frenzy. That, combined with the all-wet-food, only-three-meals-per-day regimen the household is on now, has encouraged further weight loss. He's still too heavy (boy is he solid heavy!) but he no longer looks like a duffel bag with a golfball-sized cat head stuck on it. And as long as he doesn't think I'm going to grab him and stuff him into a carrier, he's snuggly and happy. So all's well that ends well.

Pumpkin Update

The Prisoner of Pee is doing much better. He’s gone from many small piddlings to a few near-normal sized outflows per day. This progress has held even now that he’s off the medicine that relieved his discomfort. He gobbles each serving of S/D with quiet gusto.

The last couple of days he’s been feeling so good, he’s become playful. Yesterday I observed that he was restless, chirpy, and staring at a certain spot outside his cage, where a tattered fluffy mouse lay. He’d glance over at me, mew, and look back at the toy.

“Do you want that toy, Punkin?”

“Mmreep!”

“Here ya go, then.” (In through the bars)

Let the good times roll! Pumpkin batted it, tossed it, chomped it, disemboweled it, all the while keeping up a running chirpy commentary on how much FUN he was having. The battered batted mouse did, of course, end up in his water dish and had to be fished out by the human. Later I gave him a fuzzy ball to have a ball with. That one went for a swim too.

Currently there are two fuzzy ball toys in with him, which he plays with intermittently, and as I write this neither had wound up in the water dish today. He’s in good spirits, seems darn near normal, and will probably be released into the wild in another day or two, if he doesn’t backslide.

Pumpkin: Prisoner of Pee

Alas, poor Pumpkin!

The sweet little guy is prone to urinary tract problems, thanks to a crystal-forming propensity. Dry food of course aggravates the likelihood, and with the need to keep food always available during the introduction into the household of Tomba and Tanya I’d gotten away from feeding mostly wet food. The predictable result: Pumpkin blocked up again.

I caught him straining in the box one morning, with minimal results, and promptly hustled him off to the vet. He came back after an overnight stay, subcu fluids, and extensive lab work with better functioning plumbing and no infection culturing out. That’s the good news.

The bad news was, he still wasn’t getting a free flow out, was still feeling frequent urges, and was surrendering to them wherever he happened to find himself – including on my recliner-settled lap. The poor little guy found himself swept away into lockup in the half-bath while I zipped out to Petco to buy a cage to confine him for his recuperation.

That was almost two weeks ago. He’s been back to the vet for a checkup and more fluids; is on a med to ease his urges (no, fellow human UTI sufferers, it doesn’t turn his pee orange, but it does give him comparable relief), and has settled more or less philosophically into his life as a prisoner. He’s still going too often, with low to significantly low output each time, but he’s much more comfortable than he was when this all began, and he IS getting urine out. We have him on a straight canned S/D diet to dissolve his crystals, which he’ll be on for a month; after that it’s recommended that he stay on C/D to maintain his urinary health. Not all cats find those foods palatable, but fortunately Pumpkin finds them scrumptious.

I call the vet’s office periodically to update them. If Pumpkin doesn’t improve the outflow in the next day or two, I’ll have him in for another round of subcu fluids, to flush him out.

In the meantime, the poor little guy endures. As do I. Having a cat caged with litterbox in one’s living room is not my idea of premium home decor, but it gives Pumpkin more mental stimulation than anywhere else, since he can look out the slider to the deck to watch whatever birds or squirrels happen to appear, and he has the company of other cats passing through or sacking out near him, sometimes pausing to sniff at him, his cage, or his food bowl (or to dabble a paw through the bars into the bowl, stealing what they can). I spend as many hours as possible in the living room to keep him company. And so life goes on.

What’s that you say? Why, yes. Yes, of course I have pictures. But you knew I would.

My Guilty Pleasure: Mantracker

Oh, my. For years I’ve turned up my nose at reality TV shows. How could anyone ever waste their time on such silliness?

Well, now I know. Now I’m hooked. Now I’m a faithful devotee of the Canadian reality show:

Mantracker. (Warning: Has auto-play video but you can halt it)

And it all began so innocently. I recently upgraded from barebones basic cable to a wider range of FiOS channels, and among them found all sorts of good stuff on the Discovery collection of channels. Between Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Animal Planet, there were lots of fascinating shows to watch, shows that I could tell myself were educational – yes, truly! There’s How It’s Made, How Do They Do It, instructive stuff like that.

There’s Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs -- definitely fun to watch, and also instructive, yes, they are too!

There’s Fatal Attractions – um, okay, so stories of how exotic pet owners get offed by their beloved critters IS a bit creepy....

Then of course, there are shows like Hoarders (on A&E) and Hoarding: Buried Alive – ah, well, yes, that’s kinda sicko voyeurism, I admit it; but hey! Every time I watch one of those shows, I clean out some clutter, so it can’t be all bad, right?

But then there’s Mantracker. There is no way I can defend that as educational, instructive, or in any way useful. But dammit, what a blast it is to watch! And I adore Terry Grant, the Mantracker himself. The Wikipedia article on the show has lots of information, if you, my Gentle Reader (assuming there's anyone out there), are inclined to learn more.

Well, yes. Yes, one does get to see magnificent scenic vistas amid the wilder areas of our friendly neighbor to the north. Also to see two guys on horseback hunt two people on foot through said scenic wonders. And no one eats bugs. So at least there’s that.

Ben's bonkericity: Not just his back

Today I tested Ben's willingness to be ridden, now that he's had a massage to ease (hopefully) whatever was bothering his back. It was a perfect day for a test ride: warm and with light winds, rather than cool and stiffly breezy, so one could discount the weather as a factor. No strange horse between him and Commander; no Commander bustling off ahead away from him. I used the recommended pad to lift the pinch points of the saddle off him.

Ben was fine about being caught; fine about being groomed; fine about being saddled; fine about being mounted. We headed down the lane toward the culvert and the fields beyond the knoll.

Ben got to within a dozen feet of where the lane ran over the culvert and stopped. I pushed. He tried to turn away. I insisted. He began to yield.

And a long skein of motorcyclists went roaring and snorting and growling down the highway behind us. Ben turned to look, locked on, and stood rooted, all of his tiny mind focussed on the interruption, ignoring me. Drat!

When they'd finally passed and grumbled away out of sight and hearing, I swung Ben into the adjoining ring, got him moving at a brisk walk, and headed down the lane again. Again Ben tried to say "No" but I legged him on and he went ahead. I steered him out the same way we'd gone on our rodeo ride, around the back of the knoll, across the hayfield, through the gateway into the next field, and up toward the wooded ridge.

Ben was tense and apprehensive, looking for things to be worried about, stopping now and then and needing to be turned a bit to the side and strongly legged to get him moving forward again. Oh, no, he wasn't nearly as hyped as on our blowup ride, but leaving the barn was not something he wanted to do. He got happier when instead of heading down the Lane of Doom I turned him into the adjoining field and bent his course back more or less barnwards. I asked for circles and figure eights (all at a walk, for obvious reasons of Benly sanity, not to mention it was too warm to be doing anything faster on an out-of-shape fat boy whose winter coat has started to come in) and he settled down and listened to me.

We crossed into the next field homewards and zigzagged down its length. Ben was a Good Boy. When we got to the end of the field, where heading to the right would take us home, I steered him left. Ben's resistance to turning away from home and instead crossing over some dug-up ground where an irrigation pipe had recently been laid was minimal, barely one sucked-back half-step before marching on, so after a few dozen strides into the next field I thanked him and turned for home -- at last! Was that a sigh of relief I heard?

Ben was very lovey-dovey when we got back and I untacked him. Having his debridled face brushed with his very own special soft brush was so wonderful he snugged his nose into my chest and blissed out. He was so happy and relaxed, in fact, that when I hayed the boys he didn't even ugly Commander off the pile, merely came up on the other side to dig in.

So there you have it: Ben's barn-sour. He needs to be worked away from the barn, tactfully but firmly and steadily farther, till he gets over his worries about leaving his safety zone.

Ben gets pampered; Commander goes commando

After Ben's freakout on Sunday, thanks in part to the comments of a friend, I began pondering whether his back might be bothering him. It shouldn't be, given how little work he's been doing for lo! these many months, and the ideal life of puttering about the fields he leads. Still, he does have kissing spines, which flare up painfully once in a while, and the last time he had the injections for that was well over a year ago. Plus, when I ran my fingers down his back near his spine yesterday, he flinched.

So today Ben got a visit from Lael, his massage therapist, who hasn't worked him over in almost a year -- after all, he wasn't being ridden much, so he didn't need the regular maintenance he used to get. And whaddaya know? He had knots of ouchy tenderness here and there about his body, primarily in the areas of his right wither and left croup. It certainly wasn't as bad as he's been in the past, but it was more than Lael expected from the life he leads.

We checked the fit of the Aussie saddle, on his bare back, with the usual saddle pad, and with the pad plus a contoured foam pad I used to use on him but hadn't lately. The saddle was snug with no pad and didn't rock, seemed to fit fine -- but wait. Under the left panel up in front, if one slid one's hand beneath it in the dip just behind the shoulder/wither, one could feel it pressing a bit too tight. Tight too, though not as much, on the right side. Put the cloth saddle pad on -- about the same. Add the foam pad, and it lifted the tight part just high enough to relieve most of the pressure.

Verdict: Saddle needs restuffing to fit the grazing-enlarged Ben. Till that can be done, he can be ridden as long as I use the foam pad.

Verdict on the Sunday explosion: He's been in greater discomfort than this before without blowing up, so the soreness isn't the whole story; but if he was upset for other reasons, then any nagging ouchiness would just move him that much closer to the edge of losing it.

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Meanwhile Commander has decided he wants to go naked -- no more shoes! He's pulled his left front shoe off, taking some hoof wall with it, three times in the last two-three weeks, the first time because he was mucking about in the bed of the creek that runs alongside his fields. That's been fenced off now, but still he's managed to remove that shoe from his increasingly chipped-away hoof. The third shoe expungement happened sometime between Saturday midday when I rode him and Sunday late morning when Rick was grooming him and discovered his oh-no-not again! bare foot. Since he seemed perfectly sound on it, and we were going to be riding entirely on grassy fields, we decided to go ahead -- and Commander was fine for the whole ride, not ouchy at all.

Which led me to wonder, well, instead of asking my poor farrier to reattach the shoe yet again (nailing into what? Is there anywhere in that hoof wall that's still solidly nailable?), maybe Commander could go shoeless? This is always a dicey question with a horse who's foundered in the past. Still, his single bout of founder was four or five years ago; he lives out on grass; what limited riding he gets is on the fields; and watching him move about with both shoes gone, he appeared be be quite comfortable, only taking one yikes! step when he put his newly bare right foot down on a stone.

So I talked it over with my farrier, the pros and cons, and we're going with no shoes for now. Ken will trim his feet tomorrow, to tidy them up, and we'll see how he does. I may put some Venice turpentine or other hoof toughener on his soles. Come winter he may well need to go back into front shoes (he does great with no hind shoes), but if we can give him at least a couple of months to grow out his hooves, perhaps he'll hang onto his shoes when they do go back on.

Sigh.............. It's always something with these critters, isn't it?

Ben Goes Bonkers. I Survive.

And it all started so well....

Well. Actually, it didn't start entirely well. Commander's former owner, Rick, had come to the farm to go for a ride this morning, bringing along his girlfriend Carol and Carol's mare Lanny. While Carol tacked up and warmed up Lanny, Rick and I got the boys ready. We mounted up and headed out, with me on Ben leading, on a cool, cloudy, breezy day.

We weren't fifty yards from the barn when Ben refused to go forward over the culvert past the pond. We argued for a bit; then Rick went ahead on an eager Commander; Carol and Lanny fell in behind them; Ben and I brought up the rear.

We headed out past the knoll and across the hayfields beyond. Ben felt tense under me, an attitude not helped by Commander's tendency to break into a happy little trot up ahead, especially ascending a gentle slope to a tree-lined ridge. Ben's catchup trot included some nervous headshakes and -- dammit, was that a crowhop? I let Rick know we were edging into dubious territory, Ben-brainfry-wise, and he curbed Commander's enthusiasm to a walk. Ben trudged unhappily at the tail of our little procession, frequent snorts and an occasional headshake or neck snake betraying his unsettled state.

In retrospect, it's all my fault. I should have told Rick to steer Commander rightward, along an open field, instead of letting him ride the bold Morgan down a narrow lane walled by dense underbrush, with trees crowding in, pressing a leafy green ceiling down low upon us, dangling thin whippy branches in our way. Ben was tight with tension by now, but soldiering on obediently, until we had to slide leftward of a sapling half-fallen across the lane, brushing against it as we went by.

Ben was almost past the blockage when something -- a rebounding branch? A smell of deer/fox/coyote in the underbrush? An overwhelming blast of "I've had it I can't take it any more AAARGGGHHHHH"? -- lit his fuse and he exploded. In an instant he was bolting, plunging, fighting to get his head free and down for a fullout buck that would send me flying into the underbrush we were careening into the fringes of.

Yikes! Damn! I'm not quite sure how I stayed on, stayed with him, in the adrenaline-charged blur of the next few seconds. (It sure didn't hurt to be riding in my ultra-secure Australian stock saddle.) Somehow I got his head back up, his headlong flight stemmed, and enough of his panicked brain refocussed on me to halt him before he rammed through the bushes or crashed into Commander (we'd passed a horrified Carol and placid Lanny in a heartbeat).

Phew. Holy guacamole. When we'd all caught our breath Rick and Carol offered to call it a day on the ride, but by golly I wasn't about to let a near-death experience spoil our fun. We decided to put Ben in the lead, figuring his going last, with a strange horse between him and his best buddy Commander, was part of what was freaking him out. With some tactful urging my snorty high-headed Thoroughbred marched dubiously but obediently forward, out of the narrow Lane of Doom (which fortunately was opening up at that point anyway), and away to the fields beyond.

I don't mind telling you, for the rest of the ride I put the reins in my right hand and kept my left hand on the bucking strap that's clipped to the front of the saddle (which I hadn't had time to grab when the balloon went up). Often I spoke soothing and encouraging words to my still suspicious Thoroughbred. Where it was open enough to allow it, Rick brought Commander up beside Ben to offer buddy security. Ben continued feeling tense the farther away from the barn we got (and oh, yes, he knew exactly which direction it was, even in fields I'd never taken him through before) but he listened to me, he behaved, and bit by bit his tautness eased, his walk regained its swinging fluidity, and his head came down from Danger! High Alert! to its usual relaxed level-necked carriage. By the time we got back to the barn you'd never know to look at him that He'd Almost Died!!!

Well! That wasn't what I was expecting when we tacked up, that's for sure. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable ride, and I've invited Rick and Carol to come back any time they like for another hack out -- hopefully minus the high drama.