For those of you who don’t live in California, you may imagine December here with balmy breezes and people rollicking in the surf. Actually that can happen here any time of year, but this winter has been cold! The horse tank water has a sheet of ice on it when we go out to the barn in the morning, and we have to add hot water to the horse’s water, as some horses don’t like it super cold, and it’s so important for them to drink plenty of water. In this photo, Sheldon is trying to finds bits of carrot he dropped while chewing, off the slightly frozen ground.
Christmas at Sky Ranch Sanctuary
At Sky Ranch Sanctuary we love Christmas: the chaos, the over-spending, the overeating, sugar indulgence…all of it. And we love sharing our Christmas enthusiasm with our horses. Our horses get carrots every day, but on Christmas we add in some Mrs. Pasture’s Cookies and apple slices. (OK, our horses are not strangers to those extra treats on other occasions, but at Christmas it’s a special mix of all the favorites.)
And we are grateful that these wonderful creatures get to enjoy our human celebrations with a full stomach, shelter, recreation time, and TLC. It’s chilly here on the California Central Coast today, and it really does feel like Christmas.The horses have their winter coats, and they are feeling especially frisky on these cool days.
We at Sky Ranch want to wish everyone, two legged and four legged, the Happiest of Holidays.
Scott
Some days I can’t believe how lucky I am to be part of Sky Ranch Sanctuary. Four years ago I could barely dream of taking on such a project. My two beloved Thoroughbreds had died of age related conditions, Snitch, my Arabian, had an injury that would limit him to pasture time only and with my limited riding skills I couldn’t imagine starting a new relationship with a younger horse. My experience with Ditto and Poco seemed to be taking me to the next logical step in my life with horses: caring for horses who were desperate for care. When I proposed this to my husband Scott, I expected “the look.” My love of my horses had drained our coffers for years. But instead I got not only his verbal support, but his financial generosity, and actual hands on help when horse care is physically challenging.
For example, when Snitch developed a nasty canker in his foot, my farrier and vet developed a treatment which involved screwing a metal plate onto Snitch’s foot to keep the foot clean and allow the medicine, packed into the hoof, to remain there.
Snitch is a horse that never stands still. He has danced through his life and that includes when he’s in the cross ties for grooming, a hoof trim or any other reason. He dances. Getting the medicine stuffed in his hoof changed daily and removing and then re-screwing the metal plate was an incredible challenge. I did it once or twice by myself, and when I was done wondered how I actually had done it! But Scott rose to the challenge, asked me nicely to just go elsewhere (I can get a little “instructive” [bossy?] when it comes to my kids and my animals) and said he would take care of it …and he did. And he did it numerous times without losing patience with the “moving target” and without complaint. And that’s just one example of his helpfulness.
There was the time Scott’s brand new shoes became covered with blood while he helped out with Poco (no one, horse or human, was seriously hurt) but I’ll save that tale for later.
Though in our earlier years together I didn’t think of Scott as an “animal person,” he has always been kind and attentive to every creature I have brought into our life, and there have been many. And now with my dream of Sky Ranch, he not only has encouraged me and supported me with words, but has generously helped get us off the ground and set up to provide the best possible care for these horses.
We have the horses’ backs and Scott has ours.
Horses and Hearts
Ditto was my first horse. I bought him from a training/riding facility in Los Angeles when I was 42 years old. A long wait for someone who has loved horses since she could put together the sentence: “I want a horse.” No opportunity presented itself for me to have a horse or even take riding lessons when I was a child, though I did get to occasionally sit on my grandparents’ working draft horses while they chomped hay in the barn.
My daughter Jenny was born when I was 39 years old. A “high risk” birth that culminated in a diagnosis of possible severe developmental disability. This was devastation and fear of the future such as I had never known. I couldn’t get my bearings, and I decided to take horse back riding lessons as therapy for me in between the numerous therapy appointments for my daughter. I signed on at a local hunter jumper training barn, and a new chapter of my love of horses began.
I nervously trotted through my lessons on wonderful “school horses” (most of whom should be awarded medals of valor for what they put up with from unskilled and often misinformed students) and a year or so later one of the Thoroughbreds owned by the training stable was up for sale. My trainer suggested I buy him. Though Ditto was far better trained and experienced than I was, we had a great initial ride together, and I think it was love at first canter!
I bought Ditto and the new chapter began. Ditto was a high strung, delicately built Thoroughbred with a kind but skittish disposition. I’m a bit skittish myself so we were a perfect match emotionally if not so perfect for performance! People would comment: “Why not choose a calm, more seasoned Quarter Horse? Wouldn’t that better suit you and help you get over some of your riding anxieties?” I ignored this advice as I was too much in love with this spirited horse, who sometimes was downright silly with his worries….as am I.
So….Jenny’s birth and horses: I often cried about Jenny. Wondering about her future, who would protect her when I was no longer here? How would she be received in the world? What could I do to give her a life? And it seemed a lot of this crying would occur in the car on the way home from my riding lessons or while just visiting Ditto and the other horses in the barn. What was that about? I asked a wise person and she told me: “It’s because horses and Jenny are both about your heart.”
I think for many of us who are “into” horses, it is about our hearts. Many animals are beautiful. But for us there is something so big and yet so delicately ephemeral about these creatures who challenge and enchant us simultaneously. There’s just no explaining it to those who don’t “have the bug.” A mother, who was at the training barn while her 11 year old daughter took riding lessons, told me she asked her daughter to explain the attraction to horses: her daughter replied, sticking her nose in her horses’ neck: “I just love the way they smell.” Maybe that’s it. It clearly defies definition or explanation. My daughter and my horses bring me much joy, but as with all things of the heart, they can also make me cry. They live large in my heart.
Fires
California is my home and I wouldn’t have it any other way… but these fires… of course the loss of human life and the destruction of homes is more than tragic, but when you love the other creatures of the earth it gets really scary.
We don’t have a horse trailer (though hope in time to have one) and though we have a friendly connection to H. E. E. T. (Horse Evacuation Team/ a wonderful, skillful group of volunteers who help get horses out of all sorts of difficulties..natural disasters, traffic accident, swimming pools, you name it) it is a little nerve wracking when there are fires within 30 miles of a horse barn.
Though the fire danger is ever present each year, the drought has made us ever more mindful of how fires, either created by natural phenomenon, mindless human action or worse yet, deliberate dastardly acts, can pose a great threat. Many years ago when I lived in Santa Monica there were great fires nearby that sent soot and ash drifting into our usually clear ocean air. On the TV news, I saw footage of a coyote facing burning brush on the hillside by the 405 Freeway, clearly trying to figure out which way to run. I can’t forget that image and only hope s/he found a safe way out. Fingers crossed that the fall/winter rains are not long in coming.