October 2010

October 29, 2010: Eish. But They're Still Magic.

That pretty much sums it up. Skye still hasn't foaled. Come Sunday it will be exactly a year since we put her with Achilles. I think we must have missed a heat or something, or else Skye is merely taking her time. Oh dear. I feel like knocking on her stomach and yelling, "Can you hear me in there? We're getting a little impatient, you know," in the hope that the foal will take the hint and make his/her appearance.

Skye is about to foal, and has been for the past week. I check on her every night at eight o' clock or later, so if you happen to be wandering around the Highveld and bump into a horrifying apparition it's only me. The cows and horses deserve a medal for not running away at the very sight. I am fully kitted out in baggy pyjamas, a huge, prehistoric white dressing gown in which I am almost lost, gumboots that make a squelchy noise, and, on a bad night, a ferocious headlamp, affixed to the centre of my forehead and occasionally slipping down onto my nose. On good nights I merely wield a half-ton sledgehammer of a torch, which I use to scan the entire paddock with one sweeping gesture. It is also helpful should a bull/mad cow charge; I suspect that, swung with enough determination, it could knock them out.

As for her signs: her belly became suddenly much lower, deepening but going flatter along the sides, which Miss A did shortly before she had Dancer. Her udder is full - very full - and she's going all soft around her tail. She has every sign except those little blobs of dried milk (I've heard it called "wax") on her teats.  Her appetite has changed; she seems to be eating grass and hay with greater gusto and not as keen for her pellet feed though this does not prevent her from neighing wildly to be fed when I come in sight at feeding time. She has also gone off apples a bit but Skye never really liked apples and they're not exactly an essential part of her diet.

Pregnant as she is, grumpy as she sometimes can be, Skye is still magic with that deep subtle magic that horses have. They're all magic. This afternoon a friend of our visited with three children: Nika, aged four, Juan, aged about nine, and Luke, same age as Juan. They could all count the amount of times they'd been on a horse on one hand.

Well well, since Skye is enjoying her maternity leave, I saddled up Miss A to give pony rides. Missy has been doing rather a lot of pony rides lately; she's the calmest next to Skye and who knows, it might have a steadying influence. At any rate she's safe enough and, as horses do, understands when her rider is inexperienced and she ought to go quietly. I plumped Juan onto her back and off we went. Flighty Miss A, nervous Miss A ambled patiently alongside me. We even chanced a trot, me scampering along, and Miss A, so prone to get over-excited and canter, never broke her stride and slipped quickly into her lovely flowing trot.

Little Nika was frightened at the start. I stood Missy still and waited for Nika to get over her first fright. At length we moved off and I could not believe it (which is saying rather a lot). Paranoid Pony, Neurotic Nag Miss A put her head down and half shut her eyes and plodded like an old carthorse. She went smoothly and softly and she never once jarred her little rider.

We left Rain to instruct Juan and Luke on brushing horses and went to brush Skye. Skye has met Nika before and she is an absolute dream with younger children. We've had a kindergarten to the farm to learn where milk comes from and Skye and I gave a brief bareback demonstration, and afterwards all the little kids swarmed around this big golden shining creature. I doled out brushes and they stood there brushing her legs and belly and the bigger ones brushed her shoulders, and they went under her belly and all those little hands were patting over her noble face and she stood like a rock, radiating horsy magic. It was the same today. Nika brushed Skye's tail, hit a knot once or twice and gave it a tug. Skye didn't mind at all. Nika brushed wherever she could reach and helped to clean out Skye's hooves and right at the end I handed her the bodybrush and let her brush Skye's face. She could only reach her muzzle and pat-patted there with the tip of the brush. Skye sighed softly and lowered her head so that Nika could groom almost her whole face. A little girl was shown the magic of horses today and I doubt it is something she will easily forget.

Siobhanny also came over to nibble bits of apple, and everyone clustered around to brush Dancer whom they could all reach properly. Dancey stood still and let them all groom her. Even such a petite specimen of the equine kind understood. She poked her tiny muzzle at them and snuffled them over and loved the attention. I can see her becoming a people-loving horse just like her parents.

Yesterday Dancer gave me yet another fright of my life. There's a gate in their paddock opening onto a smaller area mostly used as a passageway. At feeding time I lock Siobhanny in there so that she doesn't irritate the mares when she's done eating. It usually stands open in the afternoons and yesterday at feeding time Skye and Missy were in their paddock, the gate was (as usual) open and Siobhanny and Dancey were in the passage only a few metres way from the mares. I shooed Siobhanny back into the paddock so that I could get their supper ready unmolested and once she was inside I turned to give Dancer a poke to get her to follow. No one was stressed and as Dancer came up to the gate Siobhan tried to barge out and blocked the way. Dancer stopped, turned her head, saw her mother and a gap in the wire of the gate, and decided to try to jump through the gap. She made it up to her hindlegs which got tangled in the wire. I tried to help her legs over but they were already tangled up so I ran around to her head and held her still so that she wouldn't struggle and hurt herself. By then I'm not sure if Dancer or I were the most terrified. I'd dropped the horses' feed and Missy and Siobhan were ferreting around there for supper while Skye kept her distance and watched.

I bellowed for help from the milkers, who were nearby. "JABU! PAULOS! DAD! BRING THE PLIERS!" They all arrived at a commendable speed, untangled Dancey's legs and freed her. She was tied up in the wire for less than two minutes. She took a moment to recover before getting up easily and stamping her hindlegs a little. She skinned the front of her legs, but there was no blood and she wasn't lame so I just covered the sores in antibiotic spray to guard against infection. This morning her sores looked fine but her left hindleg was slightly swollen up. She's still not lame, but I want Kevin to look at her this afternoon in case she needs treatment. Poor little Dancer. Luckily she doesn't seem to have taken a psychological knock and is as tame and trusting as ever.

Dr. Louis the vet was here yesterday morning. On Wednesday he tested all our Jerseys older than six months for tuberculosis, a simple procedure; the vet just clipped a tiny area on their shoulders and injected 0.1mm of PPD; if they have or are carrying TB they get an allergic reaction to it and it swells up. Yesterday he just came to check if they'd swollen up or not and they were all clear. Since he was there we begged him to have a look at Skye anyway. He checked her over and said she looked fine to him, that we just had to keep the circumstances as close to natural as possible and nature would take its course. He recommended lowering the amount of concentrates she gets, too. She doesn't much like that idea but it's good for her so she has as much good quality teff and eragrostis hay as she can eat, constant access to grass (mainly kikuyu), an apple/carrot a day to keep the doctor away, and a small amount of 13% protein horse pellets. Hay and water are always available, as are small amounts of grass (the cows and horses eat it before it can really grow, so there's not much, just a bit of greenery to nibble to keep them occupied. I think they eat it more for entertainment than for any food value). Dr. Louis gives her another ten days before she foals, I think it's going to take forever and ever and ever (it feels as though it already has), and we have yet to hear Kevin's verdict. Sigh. Mares.

Oh, and Niggie finally had a bullcalf. He is an absolute darling with the loveliest white star and little speckly socks. I suggested Nostradamus, got told it was too fancy, downgraded to Nickel and was told it was too foreign, and even suggested Nice Socks but was told it was too dumb. Too dumb? The poor thing eventually ended up with No Name. He seriously does have a name, only it's No Name.

Other news is that Group Twelve of the Frieslands have arrived. Their names had to begin with an I. I wrote to my pen pal in Canada asking for help and was buried under a flood of 47 names, all beginning with I. We had great fun and named one It's A Panda for her panda blaze; the worst one was Ill-Behaved with Impossible in a close second, Incinerator has a flame-shaped mark on her forehead, and Imperceptible is really, really tiny. Lily Of The Valley suddenly went skinny a few weeks ago, so we had Dr. Louis check to see if she was still pregnant and thankfully she was. If her calf is a heifer, she will be saddled with the name Look Who's Talking.

Well... I suppose we just have to hang in there for a little while yet. Come on, Skye, be all right...

October 22, 2010:  Me Still Not Dead. Skye Still Pregnant...

... but her udder has FINALLY started to grow. I was getting really worried because she's three weeks overdue by my calculations (356 days pregnant), and I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't miss a heat cycle, but I have some doubts because Achilles is as keen as mustard and Makes It Known. So, Skye's udder has been slowly increasing in size for the past week and this morning it was suddenly much bigger and harder, which Miss A's did three days before she foaled. Maybe we don't have to wait much longer anymore. I really hope so because I'm starting to feel sorry for poor Skye, whose belly is enormous (and becoming lower slung by the day). Luckily it's cooled down a bit so she comes out from under her tree in the daytime to graze and socialise.

She is still glowingly healthy, which is why I haven't gone running to the vet yet. If we used coat enhancers on her, we'd have to look at her through sunglasses. She shines bright, burnished gold, sunshine personified, her mane moon-silver and silk-soft on her powerful neck. She is not over-fat and not too skinny, and she shines like glass. Her eyes are wide, clear, and bright, and she chomps away busily most of the day; when I show up at feeding time she paces the fenceline whinnying her special "Feed me!" whinny until her mouth is too full of food to make a noise. She whinnies whenever she sees me anyway, but it's very clearly a greeting, a different sound. And she loves apples and carrots and sugarlumps nicked off the table at Mom's favourite tea garden. Oh, except if you try to give her two apples on the same day. She'll invariably only eat half of the second one. No one knows why.

The herd situation has stabilised; Miss A has stopped pushing poor Siobhanny around and has decided to be nice, so the foursome all graze/suckle together now. Dancer has discovered that Siobhan makes a wonderful toy. Being a foal, everything has to go in her mouth, including Siobhan's tail. Little Dancer has become a real tag-along kid skipping in the wake of her bored teenage sister. Siobhan quite likes her really - once, when I was working with Dancer, she suddenly had a temper tantrum, reared, sat down on her bum, got up again and calmed down, and Siobhan came galloping up to investigate what was torturing her li'l sissy - but Dancer annoys her sometimes and then Siobhan is not allowed to do anything worse to the filly than shove her out of the way with her nose, or Missy or Skye will give her a nip. Dancey sometimes tries to mimic Siobhanny while she's grazing. Her legs are still way too long but she has really small teeth now and pulls the grass out by its roots and stands there sucking it for a while before she spits it out and tries again. I think she can drink water now, though most of the time she just stands there playing submarine and splashing water over everything. Whenever her mum finishes eating, Dancer goes over to the feed bowl and licks the crumbs out. Then she gets hold of the side in her teeth and tries to pick it up, but she's not strong enough yet. She has the legs of a spider and a fluffy, wildly curly mane, eyes you can drown in, and a really tiny silver muzzle. Due to the silver nose and grey legs, I wonder if she might turn grey.

In any case, she's a lot tamer now. She approaches quickly and you can touch her anywhere, though she still isn't very happy with her face around her eyes being stroked. She went through a stage of trying to kick people but a smack or two sorted that one very quickly. I can pick up all four her tiny little teacup feet, and she loves being scratched on the withers. It is quite, quite enchanting to sit with her in the hay in the early mornings, when she is still very sleepy and lying down, and allows you to stroke her all over while she breathes little milky puffs at you.

And as for Siobhan's training? Wow, where do I begin? We did have our outride last Friday, with Kevin on Achi and me on Siobhanny, and it was beyond amazing. Siobhan behaved herself beautifully and by the end of the lesson she was getting less frights than Achilles. In the beginning she was pretty nervous and shied at everything, including one rather hair-raising twirling running spin, which was especially shocking because Achilles was even more panicked and almost barged into us. However, in the end, it was just magnificent, apart from my horrible saddle. Comfortable on Skye, it's a downright danger on Siobhan, because in a matter of moments after mounting it slides forward almost onto her neck. It doesn't hurt her, but it is very disconcerting when she has one of her sudden brakes and I almost pitch over her head. Worse is holding the reins halfway level with her ears. Every so often I have to get off, put the saddle back on straight, and get back on again.

Despite the saddle's every effort, the outride ended beautifully. I haven't ridden all the way around the Kopjie for weeks now, since Missy went on maternity leave, and all is green and well. The earth has been laid open, bare, sweet and scarlet, next door; the hardy stunted trees on the Kopjie are setting out new leaves, and spring is in the air, the pattern of raindrops still left in the soily surface of my arena. Riding home, I missed Skye for her wild gallop, but knew that soon we would run again; and enjoyed it for once again I sat on a black-maned horse who was made more of fire than flesh, whose ears were ever moving, whose body was ever awake and yet got over the nervousness, who, despite her size, had enough fire to fill a 17hh carthorse. Siobhan has come a long way from that wild, rearing, dangerous young filly, and yet somewhere in those veiled dark eyes and flamelike black mane and the way she drinks the wind when it blows, a mustang runs still. Siobhan is an education and, now, a joy. She has a tremendous personality, and one cannot help but love her. A friend of mine, upon seeing Siobhan, said, "Oh, she looks like Spirit." Admittedly the producers of Spirit could be told that horses seriously don't have eyebrows, but it was a pretty apt description. Today Siobhan and I cantered for the first time, with Kevin's endurance saddle. She looked like she had stepped straight from the pages of the better class of Western novel, and Kevin was relatively certain that the saddle wouldn't slip forward nearly as much as mine does. He was wrong. We cantered, we cantered, Siobhan put her head down, I pulled her head up, Siobhan went on cantering, Siobhan got a huge fright, Siobhan crashed chest-first into the side of the ring and stopped dead, the saddle did not stop dead and I nearly pitched over Siobhan's ears as most disconcertingly the saddle lurched forward halfway onto her neck. Luckily endurance saddles have nice high pommels and Siobhan has a nice thick mane or I would have fallen off. It took a hair-raising moment to scramble back down the saddle and get my foot back in the stirrup. It looks like the canter idea will have to wait a bit, not because Siobhan is being naughty but because I really don't want to go flying over her ears and break my neck because of a saddle that won't fit. So we rode around in the implement camp while Siobhan got the hang of moving forward, though she still occasionally slams on brakes and starts backing up unexpectedly.

Missy has dropped her nickname of Hissy Missy and is now so sweet-tempered and gone back to being rather a darling. The first time I rode, with Dancer very excited and zooming off in all directions, Miss A half-reared once or twice because she couldn't see Dancer and bucked a bit when we cantered, but the second time was a huge improvement. Now our main problem is that Miss A is so full of energy that she quite honestly doesn't know what to do with herself. She's acting like an ants-in-the-pants six-year-old on a sugar high. She leaps up into the air at random moments, flirts shamelessly with Achilles, tries to race with Dancer (ever wondered how fast a three-week-old foal can be? She outruns her mom) and goes all in zigzags. She isn't as unfit as I thought she was, though, and I've found that the best way to deal with Miss A in this sort of mood is to point her at a long, straight uphill, give her rein, hang on for dear life until you reach the top, and then to start the training session, having taken the worst of the tickle out of her feet.

Dancey doesn't mind Miss A being ridden, once we came to the arrangement that every half-hour or so we stop for a break and to let Dancer suckle. Then I have to get my foot out of the way because otherwise the poor foal stands there, staring in the direction of the milk bar, and looking dejected because Dancer and my stirrups really don't get along. She hates them, and takes every opportunity to chew them. Siobhan is already chewing everything within reach, so I try to discourage this sort of thing, though Dancer chews everything - feed bowls, sand, water trough, grass, Missy's mane (which looks perfectly horrible but I suspect that's because Miss A likes to scratch it on the fences), and Siobhan. She developed a particular liking for the salt lick and once it had been broken up into bite-size lumps she tried to pick them up and suck them. Silly dear thing.

The Achilles situation is much better, having had a much much better lesson today. He's a smart boy if he manages to concentrate enough brain cells on the task in hand. He just really hates a loose saddle and a bad rider. The loose saddle is remedied by pulling up the girth; the rider not so easily fixed.

We went to see the Lipizzaners' schooling session yesterday. It deserves a blog of its own when I get round to it, and it was stunning. Favory Modena came and courbetted for us again and I was reminded once more why this king of a horse inspired my unicorn Modena. We saw a magnificent, humungous white stallion imported from Piber Stud in Austria, one of the actual Spanish Riding School stallions. I want to become a rider of these wonderful creatures someday. It's a pity Lipizzaners aren't golden. Skye would probably like to learn the capriole. So long as it has galloping and/or jumping in it, she's game. She has the piaffe down to a T, especially when we reach Galloping Stretch and I try to hold her in.

On the writing side of things, I missed the deadline for my short story Before the Legend, so I hope I'll someday find another niche for it because it's a lovely story (by my standards). A Beauty of Horses is only due in January, so plenty of leeway there. January's also the bladder-trembling moment when the finalists for MML are going to be announced. It's just long enough for me to start to wonder about The Morning Star Mare but not long enough for me to write it off, so I am now in great suspense.

Oh, and another novel appeared, quite unannounced, the other day. It kind of popped into my head one day while I was listening to What Child Is This?, perfectly performed by (you guessed it) Josh Groban. And then... there it was. Just... there. I gave it a few experimental prods, very dubious about the whole affair, until the stallion came floating in and I swooned over him. Resembling an Arabian, only there's no Arabia in the Seven Isles Kingdom, the mighty black horse looks built of blades and is the fastest horse around; I am one for long flowing manes but this horse is so fast that I gave him a mane cut short so that it stood up a few centimetres from his neck. I named him Shyam. The story includes a minstrel named Arion (Shyam's owner/dependant), a knight-to-be named Kaydence, her little unicorn guide Aiden who is four inches tall and has a liking for strawberries, the backhasten (magical grey horsy thing, Google it) Lake Eyes, the evil Shadows (my best villains yet, in my opinion, second only to the Auryon from Sparrowhawk), and their equally evil riders, the Shadow Tamers. And, of course, Modena the First Unicorn. The story's name is Singing for Unicorns.

Sparrowhawk is drawing nigh on the climax and my characters are beginning to pull themselves together, unfurl the banner and rally the armies for The Last Stand. Okay, not yet, so the Jicarilla is still mustering his evil hordes, and Falcon and Sparrowhawk still have to do their valiant night ride back to the castle to warn the Knights of Fire before the first real battle can actually come and Sparrowhawk and co. can be Knights. There are going to be a few desperate fights, acts of terrific courage and derring-do, displays of breathtaking swordsmanship, beautiful horses leading the charge, and at one point Modena is going to fall from the sky and bravely sacrifice himself for Falcon and Sparrowhawk though I am not heartless and seriously don't want to kill him off so I talked him out of it and instead he only gets wounded and instantly healed (how, I have no idea, I'll leave that one to Rufus the Healer, he can figure it out).

Moonrise at Midnight is also doing pretty well, not a booming first-priority absorbing, thrilling delight to write as Sparrowhawk is, but a nice little tale all the same, something quiet to fall back on when the others are out of breath/sulking. Midnight (point-of-view character) is beginning to have breakthroughs with Moonrise (wild silver Andalusian stallion) and Amor (lame wonderful white mare) is making friends with him. Lad (very odd dreamy imaginative believing personage) is starting to sleepwalk which must mean something, though at present I have no idea what, and Winifred (owner of the farm and most of the horses, plus Lad's apparent guardian) is Hiding Things from everyone else; I wanted them to be ticked off and sulk but instead they're being frustratingly understanding and paying less attention to Winifred and Lad's problems than to the newest addition to the Eagle's Nest (horse farm) family, a dappled grey horse previously used for hunting whose name was Sir Silver but I think I'm going to change it and his owner, May (who loves the horse and, when he gallops, she merely sits in the saddle yelling "Wheeee!" until they both run out of breath), whose name is also subject to change.

Farm-wise: We ran all the young Jerseys through the crush and sent a whole bunch of them to the bull, including Bambi's Brandybuck (as in the Brandybuck River from The Fellowship of the Ring), Jane's Justyn Thyme, Nune's Not A Boy (don't ask), Exquisite's Elfie (who is two years old and one of Hydeaway's runts. You see more of them on Hydeaway than on most other farms, not because we breed more runts, but because here runts don't die), and Her Majesty the Queen of Hydeaway Corne II's daughter, mundanely named Carrie. Her Majesty is our best cow, which is why we curtsey when we see her and salute when she walks through gates. Her Majesty's other calves were named Cloud Nine (rest in peace), Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler (well named), Calamity (born in the same month as Catastrophe and Crisis), and King Charles I (commonly known as Charlie). Our newest arrival is not Lily's or Niggie's or Rinda's, but the daughter of our darling Bluebell (daughter of venerable and beloved Blommie). We were thinking of lovely royal names for the little calf when suddenly the creature stuck out her tongue and bawled, and was promptly named Bulkie, seeing as 'bulk' is Afrikaans for 'bellow'.

Well, time to wrap it all up now and send it off with a last hopeful message. Hopefully, my next blog will bring joyous tidings. Tidings of a foaling, of a healthy, happy new life and most importantly of a healthy, content, delighted mare.

October 8, 2010: Back to Work

Okay, so despite the fact that Missy foaled on Skye's due date, Skye is still pregnant - no baby yet. The heat is sweltering here as spring kicks into action. It's getting to Skye, who spends most of the day under a tree by the water trough, going to eat hay and grass when it's cooler in the early morning, late afternoon and, I assume, night. She had her hooves trimmed today. Skye hates having her hooves trimmed. Anyone can do anything with her feet except trim them. She detests the hoof clippers. Either she just doesn't like the noise, or someone might have hurt the tender part of the hoof with clippers and she came to associate them with pain, or she remembers the time that someone put a cruel twitch on her to trim her feet and I did nothing about it. Horses are extraordinarily forgiving. Anyway, she's better than she was, and the job is done and Skye looks much happier with her trimmed hooves.

Skye is a good leader. She knows when to act, when to leave well alone and when to sympathise. Miss A lets Skye near Dancer; she attempted to bite Skye once but my golden mare didn't like that at all and promptly bit Miss A back. However, poor Siobhan is now in the dog box. She doesn't try to approach Missy or Dancer, she merely stands there, and Miss A suddenly gets a bee in her bonnet and decides that it's time to be mean to Siobhan. So she chases her older daughter and bites her. Siobhan's laying low and trying to stay out of her mum's way, but on Wednesday night she was very lame and would hardly put any weight on her right foreleg and I think Miss A must have kicked her. Thursday morning she was much better, though still pretty lame at the trot but nearly sound walking, and her fetlock and pastern were all swollen up. I tried to get some cold water on it and when she started rearing I decided against it; breaking several rules of training horses, but I didn't want her to further damage her leg. So, no riding Siobhanny until she's better (probably next week). This morning when Kevin came for a lesson he got Siobhan to stand still and have her leg washed and this afternoon the swelling is down a bit. For the next few days I'll wash her leg off and hopefully next week she can be ridden again. I really look forward to it, despite the fact that Kevin decided... well...

"And next week if Siobhanny's better we can go for an outride," he announced.

"That will be nice," I said, imagining my first outride on Achilles and Rain's first outride on Miss A; both times we got led.

"And yeah, you can ride Siobhan, I'll ride Achilles."

I was flabbergasted. "But she doesn't know how to go round corners yet!" The horse mutterer's reaction: "Oh, we can teach her that on the outride." Whoopee. That should be interesting. Especially with Achilles being one big nervy bag of testosterone at the moment and starved for better company than a sulking donkey.

So Skye's hand in the matter: beforehand, she used to push Siobhan around a bit - nothing hectic, just a nip or two to keep her in her place - and now Skye is being very sympathetic. The two Ss stay together most of the time and keep one another company. Skye is nice to Siobhanny to make up for Miss A being mean.

Apart from being mean to Siobhan, Miss A is doing very well. She lets me do anything with little Dancer. She lost some weight when she was pregnant, which is actually a good thing; even now she's still fat. She's very healthy, though she had a bit of a reddish discharge for a few days after she foaled, and Kevin gave me the all clear to ride Miss A again. Yippee! That should be fun. It's on the to-do list for tomorrow. I'll start with just riding in their paddock - it's reasonably large and I want to get Dancer used to the idea; I mean, what would you think if your mum suddenly sprouted an extra head? - and eventually ride out a little, but Mom implored me not to go far; she thinks Dancer will get tired. I doubt it, the way she runs around half the day.

It's going to take me a while to get Miss A fit again, considering that she was never very fit and she must have lost most of the ground we gained over the past six months while she was heavily pregnant. Grrrr.

Dancer is doing really well. She suckles, she sleeps, she runs. My word, she runs. She zooms off in a random direction and then runs laps around Miss A, who gave up running after her. When Miss A walks, Dancer can keep up at a walk, but no, she has to trot (or even canter, very slowly). The other morning Dancer led Skye and Missy around their paddock, Skye cantering, Miss A cantering faster and Dancer galloping. As for getting Dancer used to humans, I instantly made my first mistake: Dancer had no human contact for the first day of her life. I was under the impression that it would be over-handling. I think she could have been much tamer by now. Anyway, she's coming along nicely; if you kneel down she comes to you and lets you stroke her nose and chin, and if you stand up she comes to you anyway but will only touch your hand with her nose. When she's suckling I can do anything with her except touch her belly (she hates her belly and face being touched). Once a day or so, I catch hold of her - one arm around the shoulders, one around the haunches - and the first day she fought, rearing and bucking and thrashing around. Now she just tenses up a bit and I can hold her still with one hand on her neck while I stroke her body. She accepts her back from the withers to the tail being touched; she doesn't mind her shoulders and flanks being stroked and I'm allowed to rub her mane, but she's still very touchy around her belly and face and nervous with her legs being handled. She is a source of constant amusement; she tried to eat grass for several days but the legs are too long; just this morning she actually got it right, by sticking her forelgs out, pushing her head in between them and bending down until her nose is almost between her hindlegs. Unfortunately she hasn't the teeth for the job and settles for sucking grass and lipping sand. She also tries to drink water. She had fun with the water. She was wet all down her front and stuck her nose in to the eyes and blew bubbles and almost drowned herself. I don't think she got anything in, unless she absorbed it through her skin, which was drenched.

The Achilles situation... is a little better... that's all I have to say about it, really. I'm going to try to ride him more this week, last week I was very occupied with Dancer.

Oh, and more good news; Bubby and March both had heifers this morning. As a tribute to March's previous calf, Mystic Melody who died so young, we named her new calf Mystic Memory. Bubby's is called But Wasn't She An Angel (a famous line; I asked this of Dad, who was not inclined to think well of Bubby since she jumped off a trailer and, whilst attempting to catch her, he tore his bicep), just Angel for short. Memory and Angel are living together in the stall where I kept Bubby while she was clipped, which is pretty nice and typical of the Hydes. Next to pop: Skye and Lily.

So, to do list for the week: a) Ride Missy. b) Ride Achilles. c) Make Siobhan sound. d) Convince Dancer that I haven't got claws and am not going to rip her belly open. e) Put fly and tick poison on anything that moves. f and most important) Love Skye.

October 2, 2010: Dancer

(Sorry readers if I reintroduce all the horses and people and tell this story as if you were all totally clueless - I want to be able to send this account to anyone who will listen, however bored they get).

It was my turn to cook supper, so I made a sort of chickeny concoction and put the baby marrows and beans on to steam. Considering what happened next it hardly seems possible that I had been doing anything as mundane as cooking less than half an hour beforehand. The sun was setting, and it was quarter past five in the afternoon - supper time for the horses.

I wandered into our scullery-cum-horse and dog feed room and measured out the four horses' pellets, soaked it in water and set off to the horses. Milking was in full swing with still a few cows to go when I threaded through the bustling parlour. The parlour is always a magical sort of place for me, with the patient cows munching their feed and the golden milk gushing into the bottles, the workers in their spotless overalls and white boots never being still for a moment, washing teats, plugging on clusters, living and breathing to the rhythm of champing cows and beating pulsators. More doe-eyed Jerseys waited in the concrete entrance camp, swishing their tails over their butterscotch flanks. I made my slippery way down the ramp, hopped over the drain and called, "Hello beautiful!"

My words were drowned in a deafening, melodic neigh from Skye. Gleaming burnished gold in the thick sleepy light of the sunset, she stood by the gate of her camp, stamping her well-feathered hooves and tossing her noble Roman-nosed head. It was not only for her supper that Skye's dark eyes shone. There is something very special between Skye and I. Her mane, silver like spun moonlight, floated on her neck as she stretched out towards me with eager little whickers shivering down her broad back. Beside her, Siobhan gave her gruff whinny; a pretty average colour, bay with black legs and two little white socks, but made unique by the secret glimmer in her eye and the long black mane that hung all the way to her shoulder.

But where was Siobhan's mother?

The grey roan mare, Arwen (Miss A to most) was heavily pregnant. Only this morning I'd noticed the dried milk on her teats, showing that within three days she would foal. It was actually Skye's due date, but mares foal quite erratically and Skye wasn't planning on foaling on her date. I scanned the camp for her, but there was no sign.

"Where's Miss A, Skye?" I asked, rubbing Skye's white star. Her eyes hid a secret. She whinnied again. She wanted her supper. I let Siobhan out quickly, so that she wouldn't bother Skye while she was eating, and gave them their feed. I was really worried by now because Miss A hadn't come at my whistle and I grabbed her bowl, tipped her food into it and half ran down the hill, calling, "Miss A! Supper!"

The cows had crowded thickly around their bale ring, eating hay, but they parted when Miss A raised her head and whinnied softly. As I approached she groaned and got up. I offered her the feed; she ate, but when I put my hand on her neck, she was hot and damp and I knew she was going to foal. Fearing colic, I gave her feed to the cows. She didn't try to get it back. She pawed distractedly at the hay underfoot and stamped her hind feet. She was sweating hard between her forelegs on her chest.

I phoned Mom, but before I could even say a thing she was saying, "Okay, I see you, I'm coming," and within a minute Mom was there too, phone in hand, ready to call the horse mutterer or the vet. Missy was in some discomfort, uneasily moving around and looking around at her stomach. Then she turned around, tail high, and we saw the water bag coming out.

I felt like screaming. Instead I clutched Mom and gibbered, "Mom look there's the water bag Mom she's foaling DO SOMETHING!"

Mom gawked. Mom phoned the horse mutterer. "Kevin, Arwen's water just broke," she said in quite a calm voice as Miss A lay down. Kevin advised us to watch and wait; if there was no progress in an hour, there was a problem. Mom called Rain, Miss A's part-owner and my sister, and Dad, who were in town, and told them. By this time there was a little black hoof out and Miss A was still lying upright. She grunted and heaved and there was another hoof. Around this time she lay down flat, half propped up against the bale ring, and began to push for real.

Skye had finished her supper and trotted up to us. She stood next to me and watched, fascinated, as Miss A strained. I put my arms around her neck and said, "Oh, Skye, Skye, I'm so glad you're here," and I was, because I think I might have fallen over if I hadn't been leaning on her. She nuzzled me gently, still watching.

In seconds a tiny muzzle came out alongside the legs, which were insanely long. Now she had some trouble, pushing hard, but again it took only a minute for the tiny black head to appear. I couldn't believe our luck. Here was the first foal we'd ever bred, even if it was by accident, being born right here in front of our eyes. It was sort of dreamlike.

Miss A rested for a few seconds as the foal's head came out, and then with a last huge straining, the shoulders and body followed in a rush until only the hind legs were still inside Miss A. The sac broke and the little foal's nostrils twitched. I prayed for it to breathe, and it did, snorting to clear its lungs. It was soaking wet and its ears were still flat against its head, and it looked rather like a large black spider with its terribly long legs. It sat up, looking shocked, and gave a funny little whickering grunt. Miss A sat up, shaking hay and forelock out of her eyes. She whinnied softly, reaching down with her neck towards the foal. The foal's ears came up and it grunted again, thrashed around with its forelegs until it got a leg hooked over Miss A's hock, and reached out to Missy with a nose. Miss A, quite enchanted, began to lick the foal's hoof gently. The soft white covering on the foal's hoof was already breaking off. Grunting, the foal leaned into her gentle caress as she licked its face. She stopped abruptly, faced forward again, struck out her forelegs and after a few attempts got up. The umbilical cord broke and the foal came out all the way. Missy turned around - the afterbirth was already halfway out - and began to lick the foal. It thrashed around some more, but couldn't quite find the strength to stand. It had all taken less than a quarter of an hour.

All this time I was chasing the cows away to keep them from disturbing Miss A and her newborn baby. Now I edged nearer and and lifted the foal's leg for just long enough to see that it was a filly. A beautiful, healthy, dark bay filly. Mom was grinning from ear to ear. She phoned Rain, Dad, and Kevin, and, having taken a few thousand pictures with her phone, MMS'd our friends - Vida the ballet mistress, Missy's previous owner and breeder Antoinette. The filly grunted and hiccupped, attempting to whinny. Skye was quite fascinated. When finally the filly sat up and gave a tiny neigh, Skye answered musically, coming a few steps nearer. Miss A laid back her ears and swung her quarters around, warning Skye back. Skye respected her, despite the fact that Skye's the dominant mare, and stopped. As the filly tried to stand, Skye wandered off to graze, never going far. Miss A continued to lick the filly; her afterbirth came out now, and she tried to eat it, but the poor thing couldn't get it down - I don't blame her - and eventually gave up.

The filly pushed herself up into a sitting position and stood for a second before tumbling down again to land in a heap with her belly in the air. She rolled upright, quite peeved, and snorted. With a spirited effort she stood, propping herself up against Miss A's shoulder. Very chuffed, she neighed, louder this time, and again Skye answered and came nearer, her eyes shining and her ears pricked. Poor Skye can't wait to have her own foal.

After a few seconds the filly collapsed again, but within an hour of being born, she had staggered to her feet and stood there, swaying. I chased the cows away and when the bull, King Arthur, advanced and wouldn't go away, I kicked him on his forehead (don't worry, bulls have really hard heads) and stubbed my toe. More surprised than hurt, King Arthur bumbled off.

What more can I say? It was an utter miracle. 345 days ago exactly, Miss A got into a paddock with my mother's Friesian stallion, Achilles. Now there was a tiny bay foal finding her feet, scampering around, beginning to trot, trying a canter and falling over. Sitting up, whinnying, rising again. How does this happen? How can a life spring from nothing? And a life so perfect! so real! so complete, with two bright eyes, and a fluffy feather-duster for a tail, and hardly any mane at all, living and breathing and tiny with legs like a daddylonglegs. Minutes later the foal found Miss A's bursting udder. There was dried milk all down Miss A's legs, but now the filly latched onto a teat and closed her eyes in bliss as she sucked. Miss A was marvellous. She rested a leg and stood still except for sneering at the cows when they came too close.

Rain and Dad arrived around now, and the four humans, all the cows and not the least Skye were completely entranced by the new arrival. It was pitch dark, a perfect, moonless night, the stars watching like a thousand angels. Somewhere in the distance a jackal howled; I love the sound, but I shivered, frightened for the filly, despite the tall electric fences that keep them out. Before the jackal's cry could drift away, Skye raised her head and neighed a challenge as bright and powerful as a star. I hugged the golden mare tightly. I was beyond glad that she was there.

Rain was enchanted. She was just about screaming with excitement. Since all was well, Miss A was healthy, the afterbirth was out, the filly was drinking, we left them there for the night. We put Siobhan in a different camp, planning to introduce her to her half-sister in the morning, and locked Achilles in the garden. I was sorry for him, because he trotted up and down all night, neighing. But soon we'll geld him and then Siobhan can live with him until the foals grow up.

We went to check on them before bed. All was well; the foal standing by her mother, Miss A relaxed. Skye stood on higher ground, head high. It was quite clear that she was keeping watch.

It was hard to sleep that night for excitement. The next morning I was up at the crack of dawn, going to check on the horses. Achilles was forlorn and hoarse, poor boy, and I took him to his morning paddock where he found solace in lots of golden hay. Siobhan was unconcerned, eating hay. Skye and Miss A grazed side by side with the filly standing close by Miss A. As Rain and I approached, the bay filly snorted and began to canter. She had the hang of it now and ran around in circles before taking off in a straight line. Snorting, tossing her moon-silver mane, Skye trotted after, Miss A following, as the filly led them on a brief canter. Then, tired, she stopped and went to suckle from Miss A. Skye neighed and ran up to me, greeting me with gentle silence before wandering away to eat grass. Miss A stood proudly beside her tiny foal. I approached first, for fear that she was aggressive, but she let me touch her and I'm sure she'd let me touch the filly too, if I wanted to - but we'd agreed not to over-handle the foal. She nuzzled her foal's rump gently and the tiny black tail twitched with glee.

I brought Siobhan to them and she made no fuss at all, merely coming close to snuffle gently at her half-sister. Miss A was quite defensive and chased Siobhan away, but a few hours later Miss A and her offspring were standing together comfortably. Skye was keeping herself to herself, dozing in the shade or grazing in the sun. Achilles was okay, having calmed down now. Rain named the filly Dancer.

We have the most horses that have ever lived on Hydeaway Farm. We've had Skye for six and a half years; only two years ago, Miss A arrived with her first foal, Siobhan, then only two months old. A year ago we bought mighty Achilles. And now there is a new arrival, the first foal ever bred here, Dancer.

Skye, Miss A, Siobhan, Dancer and Achilles. Our five beloved horses. One gentle, one fiery, one majestic, one curious, one beyond beautiful in body and heart. Soon the number will rise to six when Skye has her own foal. And with a mother like Skye, who knows what that horse will become? For now I can only watch her belly swell and wonder. For now we celebrate Dancer and wait for Skye's foal, and watch as Dancer looks and learns and lives, and wonder at how unbelievable, how magic, how great the miracle of life is. It is true and pure everyday magic.

Photos coming soon!

October 1, 2010: Happy Birthday Dad!

So Dad turned forty-six yesterday and celebrated with several cups of coffee, made for him by each of us girls in turn. I didn't have a clue of what to give him, and eventually settled for drawing a rather smudgy tractor. It was my first tractor for a few years, and the wheels look very odd, but at least it's recognisable as a tractor.

We all begged Miss A to have some sense of occasion and foal on Dad's birthday but no foal yet, STILL... Skye's due date (335 days) is tomorrow and Miss A has already overshot hers by ten days. We had the vet out yesterday to pregnancy test thirteen of the Frieslands, and twelve of them are pregnant, which we're very pleased about since Mom worked really hard to pick up the conceptions. We asked him about Missy and if we should be worried, and he said that often mares carry colts for eight to ten days over their due date and we need only worry if she goes 21 days over (the length of a heat cycle). In herself, Miss A progressed in pregnancy at a wild rate and suddenly ground to a halt for several days, to the point that I began to wonder if it was a phantom pregnancy, if she'd had a stillborn and no one noticed, etc., but all of a sudden, Thursday she started to look very pregnant again. Her udder shot up by the hour and yesterday it was really tight and warm and tender and she started to get that dent in the muscles on either side of her croup, like the muscles are falling away from the spine.

Today - great news from Missy. Both the vet and the owner of the nearby Arabian stud (home to my favourite Arab ever, well second favourite after Silvern Gleam anyway, a chesnut colt with four white stockings all the same length and two stars, one on his forehead and one midway between his eyes and his muzzle. His name is Bel Rock and he's a Belvedere son. Stunning horse) have told me that within 72 hours of foaling, mares leak some colostrum (first milk) and a little blob of this collects on the teat (dubbed wax). Well, Missy's got it. She looked vaguely embarrassed when I went bounding around her going "Missy's got wax, Missy's got wax," (well, wouldn't you?) so I'm excited out of my skull! Come on Miss A, you've got us all waiting!

So hopefully my next blog will be about Miss A's new foal. Hopefully...

Skye on the other hand has a huge stomach and possibly the beginnings of a slight edema, poor girl. Still no udder as yet, and still the appetite of a starved racehorse. Skye's not moody at all; she's her usual, patient, gentle, steady self, and the boss of the little herd, as she demonstrated to Siobhan when the daring filly attempted to steal some of Skye's lunch. I really miss riding her. Already I check on her five times a day plus grooming her every day except Fridays to give her a break of my constant fuss, fuss, fuss. But I miss that hour I had, six days a week, that was just Firn and Skye time, when we could do whatever we wanted at whatever pace we wanted (usually a gallop). I know I just need to be patient for a few more weeks before Skye and I can go zooming off again and poor little foal will have to keep up as best as he/she can, but it's telling on me because riding's no pleasure anymore. I have to ride Achilles, which means - well...

Achilles has been progressing beautifully. He comes on the bit at a walk and trot and sometimes canter. He stops squarely, he's learning to move off with the correct leg, he no longer bolts and hardly ever bucks. He jumps 60cm from a canter and a trot without complaint. He hasn't refused to jump once. He knows what an extended trot is. He doesn't shy much on outrides. He's nice-mannered and well-behaved for a four-year-old stallion. It's not Achilles who's the problem. It's me.

Ugh. It's been awful. I am quite simply scared to death of riding him. It's totally irrational because he behaves beautifully - the bucking and running away are both things of the past - but still, I'm terrified, especially of cantering. I don't get it. I'm usually quite confident around horses. From the ground I'm not afraid of him, even though he is a bit pushy and he needs to have his manners worked on, it's just the riding...

When my Post-Climax Writer's Block developed into that despairing "I can't write at all!" - even this blog was hard to start - I knew the cause; Achilles has been preying on my mind. Eventually the ugly truth was spat out onto poor old Kevin, who was expected to come up with an instant answer. One riding lesson later - Mom came and watched, which was really nice - I'm feeling a lot better, like a huge weight has been taken off my shoulders, if I may dare to use such a tired comparison.

Thank heaven for my fantastic, supportive parents, who back me up and give me good advice, who're always there and who, though they never had horses before, always understand that "just a horse" is a lie, and for my best friend Skye, who, even though I can't ride her, is always a gentle nicker of welcome and a warm golden neck that fits perfectly in the circle of my arms. The joyful whinny you give when you see me, and the way your eyes light up, will never fail to lift my spirits, no matter how low they are. No matter how bad the day is, you can always fix it with your sunny equine smile.

I rode Siobhanny too, today; outside of the ring all by ourselves for the first time. She got rather confused and wanted to go back down the hill to Miss A and Skye, but she didn't run away and she didn't rear and eventually she got the hang of it. We just practiced walking, trotting, and turning; she's got stopping down to a T. She's very lazy, contrary to my expectations, and needs a lot of kicking to get her started. Using the I-only-have-to-ask-once method (I give her the signal clearly, she doesn't respond, I give her a whack with the reins) we're improving quite fast. She's being a real darling. When she gets confused or feels trapped she just shakes her head and walks backwards, no rearing or bucking or anything like that. When she gets going into a trot she's very nice, though my saddle doesn't fit on her. She has her mother's withers and after a few minutes the saddle slides forward half onto her neck, no matter how you do up the girth. It's not hurting her, but I think she can't move as freely as possible, and it feels odd to be perched up on the horse's withers. Unfortunately my saddle doesn't have a ring for a bucking strap, so let's hope Siobhan suddenly grows really big shoulders. Riding her is really fun and she and I are beginning to develop a nice bond. This morning I spend fifteen minutes just hanging around with her; the mares had gone off grazing at the bottom of the paddock and she was having a nap up top, lying upright with her legs folded under her. I came and sat with her and finger-combed her mane and she got really sleepy, leaning on me with her eyes closed. I gave her a gentle shove to the shoulder and she flopped over onto her side and snored, as far as a horse can snore. Spoilt little brat.

So wish me luck with Achilles, please, and pray that Miss A and Skye unload their babies soon. I know that things will be a thousand times better when Skye has her foal and a dream comes true.