With the one-year anniversary of our closing date inching nearer and nearer, our little home sweet home received a major upgrade this weekend 😍 From "house in the country" to "house in the country, with horses"!
At first I wrote "...to FARM!", but that doesn't quite fit, and I think that's something I've been kind of sad about for the last year. I suppose, it might have been a stretch calling our old place a farm. It had been a dairy farm at one time, and it had a cool old dairy barn on it when we first moved in. It had (has) a silo. It had the words "hobby farm" in the listing. It was a farm without animals until we put up fences and built a few stalls and added a couple of horses. (And, later, chickens.) It has farm history. I have the aerial picture from about the 60's or so, I'm guessing, to prove it!
(Actually, I don't have it. The boy has it. It's in the house. It was in the house when we bought it, and you can't take something like that with you when you move! And on a side note, there are old aerial pics available online as well...)
All this reminiscing just to announce that we finally brought the horses home this weekend! I will absolutely positively NOT point out that when we first moved in, the plan was that we'd move them in the spring...or maybe early summer, at the latest. As soon as the ground thawed, and we could get the posts in the ground, and the hubby could get the addition on the pole barn put up. That wouldn't take very long, right? MAYBE mid-summer, but not much longer.
Definitely NOT almost a year.
Hey kids, guess what?! Life happens. You make plans, other things happen that get in the way. In this case, to make a long story short, my hubby (who does all the building of things in this household -- I'm not very productive in that area) got called to work on a few other projects before he was able to complete the pole barn project. I mean, he didn't absolutely have to, but he wouldn't have declined, which is just another reason why I love him. And the horses were fine at the boy's place -- heck, they'd been there for 17+ years, what was a few more months?!
Anywho, the big day was last Saturday. Of course, it was a cold, windy, snowy, crappy day, and a part of me wanted to cancel and wait until Sunday for better weather. I barely slept the night before, worrying about all the things that could go wrong. What if the trailer wouldn't work? (I had arranged to borrow a horse trailer, sight unseen, from some good friends...who weren't completely sure it was going to be what we needed but said if it would work, we were welcome to use it. Do you know how rare that is? To be able to just use someone's horse trailer like that? It's very rare. I am very, very thankful for our friends and the huge favor they did for us!) What if something went wrong with it, if a tire blew, or the floor was bad, or the doors flew open while we were driving? And the roads were crappy, and I've seen enough pics of horse trailer accidents online to have all kinds of nightmare-ish images going through my mind all week night.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself, because to even get that far, I'd have to get the horse into the trailer. Sounds easy enough, right? But do you know how many things can go wrong just trying to get a horse to load into a trailer?! For one thing, neither one of my horses has even seen the inside of a trailer in at least 16 years. Suddenly, the advise of a riding instructor I once had came back to haunt me: "You should trailer your horse every now and then, just to get her used to it, because you never know." Thanks, Kare...RIP. A lot of good that does me now because I adopted Nicker like 20 years ago and have never owned a trailer in that time, but I digress. So many things can go wrong. They can refuse to get in. There are literal weeks-long workshops and videos and training programs whose sole intent is to help you train your horse help your horse trust you enough and learn how to feel comfortable getting into a trailer and standing there, trying to balance inside this strange little closed-in area with it's unfamiliar sounds and smells, for God-only-knows-how-long, while you pull it down the highway in what has to be a terrifying ordeal for a horse who is used to being in her quiet, familiar, predictable environment. Especially a 29-year-old chestnut mare who likes to act up on windy days. I reminded myself so many times that *I* had to remain calm and confident, because horses totally pick up on insecurity and fear in their people. So, I did my best.
And my beautiful, beautiful 29yo boss mare walked into that trailer like she does it every day of her life. I love my horse!!
The original plan was to take the back roads home, but the back roads hadn't been plowed yet, so it was actually safer to take the main roads. I was nervous about that, going faster than I wanted to go, but at the same time I wanted to go fast so we'd get home sooner. Oh, and I wasn't driving -- that job went to my hubby. If the weather had been perfect and there'd been no snow or ice on the roads and it wasn't windy, I like to think I could've done it but still would've been nervous about it. Do you know how many things can go wrong with horses?!?! So I felt better with our safety in his hands for that drive.
The drive actually went well. Uneventful. I rode almost backward the whole time, watching Nic's silhouette out the back window. Then we got home, and faced a bit of a dilemma. She walked into the trailer like nobody's business, but...we haven't done groundwork in a long time. She used to back on verbal command, but it's different when she's stressed out and can't feel any ground behind her to step on (no ramp on the trailer). For a moment I thought she could turn around and walk out, but nope, she was just a bit too long to turn around in the trailer. Finally, after a few minutes of coaxing, she agreed to step out backward, even though it was a little slippery, and I breathed the biggest sigh of relief ever. Well, it felt like it, anyway. Maybe it was just another big gust of wind.
You may have noticed this story was all about Nicker, and you may be astute enough to recall that I actually have two horses. The trailer was only big enough for one, so we had to make two trips. I was planning on having to make two trips anyway, unless the trailer had a divider, because...let's just say Nicker doesn't get along with other horses, especially in small spaces. Not even Shasta, who has been her pasturemate for the last 16 years. Are you kidding? Just this morning, Shasta stepped too close to Nic while they were out in the pasture and Nic pinned her ears back and nipped at her. After 16 years together.
Anyway...I wasn't nearly as worried about trailering Shasta as I was about Nicker. For one thing, Shasta's a lot smaller. Which isn't to say that things don't go wrong with smaller horses, too, because they certainly do. I don't know how to explain it, exactly. I just realized I'm more concerned about getting hurt by Nicker than I am by Shasta. Maybe because I actually have been hurt by/with Nicker and I haven't been hurt by Shasta? I don't mean maliciously, of course; but, you know, (or maybe you don't if you're not a horse person), but you do stupid things like fall off or stand where you shouldn't and get bumped into or stepped on or kicked, etc., or get your pride hurt, or whatever. It's a whole thing. Horses aren't toys, they're living things with emotions and moods and personalities. Anyway...I digress, again. After going through the first trip and knowing more about what to expect, I wasn't as nervous when we went back to get Shasta.
Except that the little shit doesn't like to be caught. I was hoping that she'd be so distraught about the fact that I'd taken her best friend away, that she'd be pacing the fence (like she does when I take Nic out of the pasture without her and she can't see her) and would let herself be caught easily, because it was really cold and I wasn't in the mood to go chasing a crazy pony across the frozen tundra. But noooooooo, little miss had other plans! She does this thing where she stands still and lets me get like five feet away from her, then she charges off. I know, I know; I should work with her and build up the trust so she doesn't feel the need to run away, yadda yadda yadda. I know. Short story long, it only took about 5 minutes of "chasing" her (I put that in quotes because it's hard to explain to non-horse people how you "chase" a horse, because you don't chase it by running after it; you chase it by trying to push it toward where you want it to go, basically.) before I could catch her. She did fine in the trailer -- she's so short, she couldn't see out the windows, and the drive was again uneventful, and now they're both safe and sound in the pasture (I don't know what else to call it. Is it a paddock? A pasture? It doesn't seem big enough to be a pasture, but too big to be a paddock or a pen. Hmmmmm.) and settling in just fine.
Alright, that's all the time I want to spend writing for now. It's just nice to have them here. I feel complete! And I didn't even get to tell you about the new cat, but I'll save that for next time! :)
