Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Tiki and the Technicolored Coat

So, Tiki has become the complete mystery horse as she sheds out. Around her eyes and muzzle is gray skin with some dark reddish/brownish sort of hair. There's a spot on her neck where she got a little hair knocked off weeks ago and it's growing in VERY dark brown. There are spots on her legs where her hair has been knocked off and scratched that ranges from dark gray to dark brown to black. And, the oddest part--her stifles are salt and pepper grayish. The hair growing in at the roots of her mane is dark reddish brown. Her tail has her dorsal stripe down the top of it, then has flaxen blond highlights on each side of her tailhead. The rest is bright red/chestnut. The hints of gray plus the blackish brownish reddish hair in different places is just odd. It's very, very odd. Her sire, Masetto (affectionately known as Eddie) was EaAa. I had him DNA color tested by UC Davis. Eddie's sire Diego is eeaa. Eddie's dam Operista is EEAa. She was genetically bay under a gray coat. This means that Tiki could possibly be genetically chestnut under a coat that turns gray. I have not had Mona color tested.

So, last night Kim and I attacked Tiki's tail at midnight and got hair samples. I'm mailing them off to UC Davis for testing today. It won't tell us what shade of chestnut she'll turn out, but at least it will solve the gray mystery. If she tests positive for any gray, that will mean that she will eventually gray out, no matter what she looks like now (much like her granddam Operista who is a dapple gray on the outside, but genetically bay).

Stay tuned.........

Monday, October 11, 2010

Coffee With Tiki

This is a little less about Tiki and a little more about what I am learning from her. This morning, I did something I have never done for the entire 8 years we've lived here. I went out on the deck to have coffee.
For those who don't know the backstory, let me just summarize by catching you up--for the last 15+ years, I've worked two jobs, usually 7 days a week, usually averaging 14-16 hours. I would work my day job M-F, then zoom to the barn to train or teach. Weekends were spent training/teaching/doing manual labor to improve the barn, ring, or run errands for supplies for the horses. As you can see, I, myself, or Joe were really not in this picture. Just horses and work--and horses BECAME work. Occassionally (like what happened yesterday, actually) my body forces me to rest by hitting the "reset" button. I get sick. Stress tends to have a very psychosomatic affect on my body and makes me physically ill. One thing that I've learned about myself--and many others have seen--is that I will work,work,work,work until it's "sit down or fall down". I was brought up that you ALWAYS finish your work before you play. Unfortunately, I always have an insurmountable mountain of work at any given time. I feel guilty playing with so much work to do that I cannot ever really let go and just ENJOY life. This is hardwired into me. There really is no getting past this.
The past two years, having bought the farm (hahahaha! I really almost DID thanks to the purchase of a large training facility!) the workload that was already at maximum capacity DOUBLED. In the middle of this, Joe and I changed jobs to something more demanding, but something we really, really enjoy (most days, LOL!). So, in the interest of sanity, Joe and I decided to sell the big farm :-). In a better economy, it would have worked well. We would have had the capital to make the improvements we wanted to make, pay the salaries we wanted to pay, etc etc but we bought the farm in the fall of 2008 just as the entire country was taking the largest economical nosedive since the Great Depression. The profit just wasn't there to be able to run the facility the way we wanted, and horse people were doing everything possible to keep their horses. This usually meant moving to the cheapest facility they could find, and that was not us. Not because we didn't want to charge less, but because we physically couldn't. The mom-and-pop stables down the street that had no mortgage and had been in the family for oodles of years could drop their board to $200/mo, but we could not possibly pay our fixed operating costs while competing with them. We were throwing our own personal money, to the tune of $3k+ a month, into the business while barely able to survive ourselves. No one was sending their horses out for training, hardly anyone could afford lessons and board, and then our 4 y.o. andalusian stallion ended up not being able to be a viable breeding stallion for AI, and then suddenly died. We're a victim of horrible timing and terrible luck, and while we're still paying for it financially, we're very glad that due to the economic hard times our house didn't sell so we had something to come back to.
So, we sold the farm, moved back to our farmette in Aberdeen, had a party, and Joe and I looked at each other and collectively sighed. Time to relax! We're HOME again, and back close to all our friends!! Since moving back, our friends stop by often, we have LIVES, we've had some awesome parties already, (pot luck.....we're still broke as heck LOL!) but our lives are so much richer for the experience. We're grateful for every second we get to spend with each other, the horses, and doing things around the farm that make it better, even if it's only tiny little things that only we will notice. Right now, there is a large 4 foot ditch in front of our 5 stall barn where we're laying in a french drain. Our wonderful neighbors, Christy and Aaron came over with their barely-alive backhoe over the weekend and dug it for us so we can fix the drainage in the barn. It will be alot of backbreaking shoveling, but it's on OUR time, and (thanks to just boarding to a few friends vs a huge public facility like we've done for 10 years) we don't have clients staring us down asking us "when will this be done?!?!?!?!"
It's wonderful. I'm happy even digging a ditch......because it makes the home for our horses better.....on my terms......when I have time....with no huge expectations or judgements because it's not done fast enough, pretty enough, or with footing that Pooky likes but Fluffy doesn't. (hey, 10 years of listening to client demands will make anyone a little sarcastic LOL!)
So, for the first time ever since we bought this 7 1/2 acre farmette in 2002, we have our own horses in the barn instead of running down the street and spending more time at a leased facility than our own home. I can sit on my deck and watch the horses chew peacefully on their hay and notice how beautiful the back pasture is as Ariana and Sandy stand under the tree that's turning red this fall. I didn't really have a reason to go out on the deck and drink my coffee under the morning sun before. I didn't have Tiki to go watch and laugh at as she tries to mimic the older horses by putting her head in the round bale holder pretending to eat hay I KNOW her little neck doesn't let her reach the hay. I didn't have a chance to laugh while Tiki victoriously grabbed a mouthful of hay she discovered outside the round bale holder, waved it in the air for all to see that she too has hay like the adults!!! I didn't have the time, either. I was always racing to go teach a lesson or train a horse.

I decided this morning to take the time to go out on the deck, have coffee and watch Tiki nap for 10 minutes. The view from the deck is great. Sure, there's a lot of projects we want to work on around here--the work is never done--but they're OUR projects. We own them. They're for us, our happiness, and no one else. They benefit other people who come here to enjoy their horses,sure, but we're boarding to friends now and the barn is peaceful. The horses are incredibly happy and so are we. Even Pepper has found a happy place to nap. Makes all of us nervous as heck, but she uses a birds nest for a pillow and snores away during the daytime.














Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Completely OT - Bring your ferret to work day :-)

I just had to share! I had to bring Ice to the vet today for glucose testing before heading to work. He's now 5 years old and is FINALLY mellowing out. He's curled up on my lap at work right now, napping. One of the cool things I missed about our first ferret Sparky was his desire to curl up, cuddle up, and hang with me.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Well, you can't sit on my lap anymore, Tiki

I had a "Boy, she's gotten BIG!!" moment about a week ago. I got home late from work and grabbed a glass of wine. Well, ok......a plastic cup of wine......and went out to the barn to play for a few minutes with Tiki before heading off to bed. Recently, life has been a bit crazy and I haven't been able to spend as much time with her as I'd like. So, even though I only had about 10 minutes and I was tired, I was determined to go visit her.

I discovered two things: Mona really likes wine, and Tiki's gotten big!

I walked into the stall to be INSTANTLY mugged by Mona. I swatted her away, telling her to go eat her hay, but she was having none of it. She was determined to see what I had in my hand, and could she have it? NO, MONA! I tried walking this way and that in the stall and she was mercilessly pursuing my wine. I knew there was no way I could just set it between the bars of the stall--she would knock it right over with her upper lip. So, I reached WAY up and set my cup of wine on the fan hanging on the outside of her stall and sat down on the beanbag in the stall.

Tiki was desperate for company. She hadn't seen me in a few days, so she was all over me asking for scritches. If she could have crawled inside of me, she would have. She stood with her chest pushed firmly up against the bag, reaching over my shoulder and "hugging" me tight with her neck to her chest while I scratched her withers and all around her neck and shoulders. We spent about 10 minutes like this, and she started to try to climb on the bag with her front feet. NO Tiki! If you want on the bag, you have to turn around and sit on it with me.

I got up and gently repositioned her so she could sit. Her favorite thing to do when she sits with me is to lean up against me, hoping I'll pull her onto my lap, grab her front legs, and cross them over me on the other side of my lap. She then drapes her head on the other side and starts snoring.

Well, I discovered how big she's gotten when she leaned next to me. :-) She was gentle, but it was obvious she wanted to lay across me. I figured I'd try, more for fun than anything else. I put my arms around her neck and shoulders and gave her a big hug. As I hugged her, I lifted her up. Whew, she weighs alot now!

The comical thing was how Tiki seemed to be happy no matter how uncomfortable she looked. Because of her increased weight, I couldn't lift her very far over my lap, so her front legs stuck straight out in front of me. Her neck and chest covered my lap and her head fell off completely on the other side of my lap now. I started laughing hysterically--this HAD to look ridiculous! It sure FELT ridiculous! "Tiki, this CAN'T be comfortable!" She looked at me, still desperate for attention, and it was like she put on a brave face "Nope!, it's fine, ma!". She laid there with her body limp, legs rigidly stuck out in front of her, and her head craned towards me looking up at me, ears pricked forward. What next??

I tried to grab her front legs and bend them, but they've gotten too long to grab from a sitting position now. I slid her down the bag so she could at least lay down. Her butt remained up on the bag, while her barrel, head, and neck all slid down to the stall floor. I was imagining being her, with all that blood running to her head. Again I started laughing, as she was obviously putting on a brave face for attention--"Tiki, this CAN'T be comfortable!" I repeated. She didn't move an inch. Surely she'd get tired of this and leap to her feet soon, right? Nope......

I pulled her forward off the bag and got her level on the ground. I laid behind her, hugging her and rubbing her all over. She sighed and closed her eyes, happy to be petted and loved.

"Tiki, you're getting too big for this!!" Somehow, I don't think she cares......