Archive for the 'horses' Category

Thankful revisited

Published on June 8, 2008 in horses. 6 Comments

You may recall the little horse that was caught in deep snow and starving.  Suzy snowshoed miles a day to bring hay to this animal, saving its life.  In the last installment, the Indian who owned Thankful was sort of mean about the fact that someone else fed his horse all winter.  I thought Suzy should have been given the horse, so I called the guy a big poop.  But I’m wrong.

All winter, I wanted something from that creature.  I wanted pictures.  I wanted her to come to me when I brought food.  I wanted to touch her.  And I wanted the story to end with the horse on Suzy’s land, helping her with the farm.  I was led astray by desire.

ahorse1.jpg

Here’s Thankful, looking happy as can be. 

ahorse2.jpg

She’s still technically alone, but there are horses across the fence and here she’s hanging around with a pair of birds.  The rest of the herd will be dropped off soon, and come fall she won’t be left behind.     

ahorse3.jpg

She’s a pretty little Indian pony saved by kindness. 

Which is its own reward. 

ahorse4.jpg

Suzy still comes and visits her, and Thankful follows her around like a dog.    

The not-so-nice ending to Thankful’s story

Published on April 11, 2008 in horses. 8 Comments

The winner of the “Name that Photo” contest is

horse22.jpg 

Solitude

Nice title.  And here’s the end of Thankful’s story… but it’s not very nice. 

 I called my friend Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Land Management for 18 years and managed their Wild Horse Program in Nevada.  He said that when the horse was on public land, if someone puts food and labor equal to the value of the horse then they legally own the horse, and can legally take it away.  He estimated that a wild yearling mustang was worth $300 to $400, so Susie already legally owned it if it lived on public land.  But on Indian land it was a different story: she had to get permission from the Tribe to take it.  Since the horse would’ve died and they’re liable to charges of animal abuse, he thought they’d agree the horse was hers, but that agreement had to be in place before he’d help her take the horse.  And it was no problem for him to catch the little filly–he’d put up his portable corral with a one-way gate, and put his old mare inside it.  Little Thankful is so lonely that she’d go into the corral for company, the door would shut, and he’d load them both into his trailer and take her over to Suzy’s.  But she needed to get permission from the Tribe first.   (Is that a nice guy, or what?)

Suzy had called the tribal headquarters back when she started feeding the horse late December, but no one responded.  When I gave her Paul’s information she made a few calls, trying to track down permission to take the horse.  Well, word gets around, and she got a call about it today.  He wasn’t a bit nice.  Not a speck. 

He said that he heard she’d been feeding his horse.  That he knew it was left behind on the mesa, and he’d tried to catch it but couldn’t.   When the deep snow came, he tried to snowmobile in to take the horse out, but the snow was too soft.  So he left her.  And Suzy said, yes, it was starving and stuck in the snow, so she brought it food. 

horse11.jpg

This is the horse when she started bringing it food,

horse41.jpg

and this is the horse last week, and the only reason this filly is so plumpy and nice is because Suzy skied in all those bales of hay. 

We figure he was mean to her because he was afraid that she would file charges of animal abuse.  He had an accent, and lived in Towaoc on the reservation–maybe his first language was Ute.  He made out like Suzy had been overstepping to have fed his horse. And get this: he said he was coming with a portable corral to pick up the filly; would Suzy come help him get her?  I thought, this guy has cojones that put the gelande jumpers to shame.  No, I’m thinking, I won’t help.  No.  And I’m getting my chair back tomorrow. 

But since Suzy is a much nicer person than I’ll ever be, she said yes, she’d help.  That she brought the horse food every day last winter, skiing miles each way, because she wanted the horse to live.  

And in the end he said 

“Thank you”

in a very small voice.  I say, Pooh pooh to you, you big poop.  You shouldn’t be mean to someone who saved the filly you left to starve.  You big poop. 

And since I managed sludge for the Boston Harbor Clean-Up twenty years ago, that phrase has always held particular resonance for me.  Ya big poop.

The mustang filly

Published on April 3, 2008 in horses. 8 Comments

Several people have requested an update on the little mustang filly who was trapped in the snow all winter.  I took three trips to the middle of nowhere to get these shots (the first time I forgot a piece to my camera; the second time it was snowing with a flat grey sky that didn’t make interesting photos) so if three time’s the charm, well, here we are:

horse2.jpg

Little Thankful has grown a lot. 

There isn’t much snow now, but there still isn’t anything for her to eat.  The ice has melted and there’s no way to cross the river at Suzy’s house.  Instead of skiing east to feed her, Suzy drives a few miles down the road and hikes in with hay from the other direction.

 horse3.jpg

The trouble is, Thankful is still skittish to the extreme. Someone has brought her hay every day since early January, but no one ever sticks around.  So I brought in some equipment–a beach chair, a bottle of water, my good old dog and the NYT crossword puzzle–and I settled in right next to her food.  

horse4.jpg

She paced back and forth.  She pretended she wasn’t hungry and walked away; she came back.  This took the first chunk of the crossword.

horse51.jpg

Then she started making a slow, step-and-pause approach to the hay

horse6.jpg

and finally dared a mouthful with a human being sitting six feet away.    Not such a big step, really. 

horse7.jpg

She calmed down enough to eat, and to look at me while she ate.

horse8.jpg

and she listened to me tell her what a good nice horse she was. 

And whenever she forgot, for a moment, that I was there, she’d shut her eyes as she ate, and pause to take a deep breath that was filled with the scent of hay. 

horse9.jpgAdd to Technorati Favorites

Thankful on my third visit

Published on March 6, 2008 in horses. 8 Comments

I made a couple of preparations for my third trip to see the little filly stranded in the snow.  I bought a pair of cross country ski boots and borrowed skis because the snowshoeing was ridiculously hard last time.  And I brought along 2 carrots, one for each of us to feed to Thankful.  It was dead easy to ski out there: the snow has a serious crust on top, so with skis you don’t even need a trail; you could just skittle along the surface.   But little Thankful wouldn’t play.horse-runs.jpg

All she does is run away.  Where the spring flows, the snow is gone and she can run away gracefully.  Where there’s snow, it’s still too deep for her to move, and she has to run away like a fish leaping through the waves.  But still she runs. 

runaway-horse.jpg

Thankful isn’t afraid of the dog, but people scare the pants off her. 

horsedog.jpg

I’m using a camera with a telephoto lens, so you can’t tell how far away I am from this scene.  But in truth, the deer and wild turkeys let me get a lot closer to them than this little horse. 

Six weeks ago, Thankful looked like a bag of bones.  She’s still stuck in the snow and she’s dirty from lying down in the mud, but she looks great.  We left the carrots on her pile of hay

 littlehorse.jpg

and skied off, leaving the little wild child all alone.  If she could follow Suzy home, she would. 

Kindness of Strangers 2

Published on February 1, 2008 in Colorado women and horses. 3 Comments

I went out to see Suzy’s little horse again.  As you may recall, Thankful is a yearling who was stuck in the snow on top of a mesa without food or water.  Someone from Suzy’s household had been skiing out every day with hay or water, but that little horse was still running away from humans the first time I saw her.  I thought the follow-up photo would be a pile of bones.

horse1.jpg

Here is Thankful two weeks later.  She comes slogging through the snow as soon as she sees us.  Suzy feeds her under a ponderosa pine, where there isn’t much snow. 

horseundertree.jpg

She likes her hay a lot.  A lot.

horseeating.jpg

The thing that’s so sweet about her is that she’s not only hungry, she’s lonely too, and is really happy to visit with Suzy’s big dog. 

horseandrosie.jpg

This is a horse who really wants a friend, even though they have to work through misunderstandings. 

horseandrosie2.jpg

Thankful is lonely and thin, but she is no longer thirsty.  Suzy lured her down to an irrigation ditch, so she has water.  

ditch.jpg

This faraway glade in the mountains is like a little slice of heaven, thanks to Suzy’s deliveries of hay, but it was hell to get there.  There has been a lot more snow since my last visit, and the wind had been blowing, obliterating the trail in some places.  It was really heavy going.  I came home, made chowder, and went to bed.  The next day I’m nursing a patch of missing skin on my heel, and I’m sore.  But Suzy will be out again carrying her bag of hay miles through the snow.   

suzywithbag2.jpg

Thanks. 

The Kindness of Strangers

Published on January 17, 2008 in Colorado women, Snow storm and horses. 8 Comments

Suzy lives beside a stream at 8,200 feet, and the storm last week left her with piles of snow. 

 suzys-house.jpg

About a mile and a half upriver of her house there’s a mesa on Ute Mountain Ute land; the tribe kept a herd of horses up there last summer.  When the herd was moved last fall, one little yearling was left behind.  She has been toughing it out alone every since, and was doing OK until the deep snow came and she got stuck.  Since then, Suzy’s household has been taking the little horse hay every day.  She was getting terribly dehydrated without access to water, so Suzy’s renter skied out with a five gallon bucket of water that morning. 

I snowshoed and Suzy skied on a trail through deep snow–it looks reasonable except if you fall off this path you’re floundering around in three or four feet.  It’s a little sketchy for my old dog, who steps on the back of my snowshoes for an assist every chance she can.  We went over the river and through the woods,

through-the-woods.jpg

across the fields, we turned left and right and I’m thinking that if this little horse depended on me to carry her hay every day she’d be a goner.  

To get on top of the mesa is so steep and soft that the dog can’t make it, so Suzy keeps them down below while I snowshoe up  and look who’s here: 

little-horse-in-snow.jpg

poor little guy can’t get anywhere, doesn’t have any food.  She’s totally wild, and would run away if she could (when there was no snow, there was no way to catch her, and now there’s no way to move her.) 

little-horse-head-shot.jpg

And that strand of hay hanging from her mouth is from Suzy toting those bales by backpack.  Suzy said, we named her Thankful.  I think she really is.