Into the Woods

I worked so hard in the yard yesterday, and it was still in the 80's after 6 p.m., I was in NO mood or condition to ride the horse! But hey, that's why I trained him to DRIVE, ha ha!!

It was a BEAUTIFUL evening, a soft breeze blowing, the horse was halfway through his dinner when I got there, and he was sooooo slow and unenthused, I had to drag him from his stall and down the aisleway. Good!!

Got him brushed and harnessed and hitched without any problems, but once I told him to "Quzqo, WALK!" he leaned into the breast collar and hiked right up the hill and away we went! Once we got to the paved road he slowwwwed waaaay dowwwnnn...but that's okay, it was such a peaceful evening, very little traffic being Father's Day/Sunday evening, I was content to just dawdle down the road, listening to the birds and crickets.

We went in a different direction from last week, I've had enough of angry rednecks yelling at us. This other residential road is full of higher-class people with nicer yards and better attitudes, who are more likely to holler out "Your horse is pretty!" than "Git back here, Killer!!"

Didn't see much of any people, there were some rednecks further down sitting on the steps of their singlewide while their red hound dawg barked and bayed at us, and I heard them laughing, but don't know at what.

Got Quz trotting, and THAT he was interested in! That previous sluggishness disappeared, and he booked right along, ears forward, clip clop clip clop merrily along!!

We left the paved road and headed into the State forest at the end of the road...lovely flat wide dirt roads for miles and miles! Much to my surprise, Quzqo kept on trotting...normally he wants to walk so he can shy at stumps and dappled sunlight on the road, but no, this time he wanted to GOGOGO!! So I let him!

We blew past "Calamity Corners" (the spot where I fell off Tezlu on Father's Day in 2000 after being chased by dirt bikers) and headed straight instead of turning left as usual, and headed for the human camp ground instead of the horse camp ground to the north. What the heck, I haven't been that way since Tezlu times!! Beautiful deep woods, oaks and maples...we had a car come up behind us, but there's enough cutouts in the roadside (because this part isn't wide enough for two cars to pass), and we ducked into one of those so the guys could pass.

There were a few more cars, and we came to an intersection of dirt roads. To the left was the road to the human campground, to the right was the road out to another paved road, and I don't know (yet) where the straight-ahead leads! We stopped to let the traffic clear, and then I found out why Quzqo was constantly switching his tail...MOSQUITOES! There were zillions of them, EVERYwhere, clouds of them, and they were all biting us!! I was trying to swat bugs and hold the reins, the horse was cranking his tail and flinging his head and wiggling.... soon as the last car crept by, we turned around, I put Quzqo into overdrive, and we TORE out of there at a road-eating trot! It was GREAT..the road was smooth, we left the mosquitoes far behind, and that horse was just trotting and trotting. I was impressed that he didn't want to slow, so I didn't ask him to. We made it totally out of the State forest, had to be a mile easily, got across an intersection, and got him trotting again, and he went on, at a slower, more civilized pace!

Towards the end of the road I got him walking, then I noticed him LIMPING on his left fore! Shit!! It wasn't a big limp, but noticeable...so we walked, but the further we walked, the less the limp, and by the time we got back to the barn, he was fine. After untacking him, I examined his foot, and there was a spot where it looked like a stone had hit the sole, but he wasn't tender about it. Who knows.

I was SO pleased at how well he did...no spooking, no shying, even leftover Graduation Party balloons tied to a mailbox didn't bother him! Glad to be getting the old Quzqo back again!!!

LOL...there's now a Belgian in the stall right next door to Quz...talk about a contrast of sizes!!!

My, What Big Testicles You Have!!

There's a saying about the only thing that separates the men from the boys is the size of their toys. Well, it seems this past weekend was THE weekend for all those overgrown boys to be out and about, showing off their toys and their apparent testicular endowments personified by those V8 engines and glass-packed mufflers!

I'll commend Quzqo, who has no testicles, with maintaining his level-headedness when it seemed we were confronted with a never-ending weekend-long parade of Redneck males in/on about every kind of mechanized projection of their masculinity short of a Monster Truck coming down the road!

Saturday on our trail ride, we were both surprised to find two good ole' boys four-wheeling in a bright red Chevy truck , doing donuts and going round and round in a hilly empty field without roads (just a horse trail). We stayed on the opposite side of the field to see what their plan was, and apparently it was to drive aimlessly over saplings and wildflowers before heading up a sharp bank and back onto the road and southwards to find other unsuspecting natural areas to express their virility through their shiny red truck. My my, weren't we impressed!

A local campground also hosted their "Harley Round-Up" this weekend, I can't recall a time there were so many Harleys on the road, roaring up and down, their elderly riders sporting the barest minimum skullcap helmets, their beer guts interfering with their ability to steer their Hawgs. Thankfully Quzqo isn't fazed one way or another by a blatting glass-packed muffler, so if they thought they could scare the horse, I hope they were disappointed.

On our Sunday afternoon drive, we were going down a dirt road I like to call Deliverance Drive, due to it's frightening dirt-poor white trash hovels (I have GOT to take photos one of these days). I got Quzqo trotting so as to get past the scary buildings as fast as we could, when I saw a rather large woman unloading groceries from her car. At her feet was a small black dog, bigger than a Chihuahua but smaller than a MinPin...it immediately started yapping and heading for the road. The woman started hollering at the top of her lungs for the dog to git back here! Oh, yes, a yapping dog and a hollering human, Quzqo loved THAT! I calmly told the woman that it was all right, even called her "Ma'am" but little doggy was in the road chasing after us, and the woman kept on hollering. Quz shifted into third gear, almost broke into a canter, but blew out of there, trotting powerfully over the lovely washboard road, pausing only to shy at a mailbox before we made it past the settlement into the open countryside beyond.

I hate going down that stretch of road. Seriously.

On our way back to the barn (and boy, does Quzqo know when we've turned around and are heading HOME!), I went a different route, returning down the dirt road we leave by... Now leaving entails going up a long, gradual incline and down a short, sharp decline. Which meant going home, we have to go back up the short, sharp incline, and then the long, gradual decline. I was worried about this, because Quzqo gets very slow going up that hill when I'm riding, and sometimes I dismount and lead him instead. I was pondering where to stop the cart to get out and lead him, when behind us I heard a large engine with a bad muffler approaching. Ah, shit, a big pickup truck racing down the dirt road, heading for the hill and us!

I got Quz off to the side as far as I could (which wasn't far with 10 foot high dirt banks on both sides), and the truck slowed and trundled past us, blaring rap tunes with the bass thudding, and two ugly dogs hanging out the passenger side window (one was a half-Rottweiller, couldn't tell what the other one was). Quzqo was fine with that, but then suddenly right on his bumper came a big white van that neither of us knew was there, its engine sound drowned out by the hick-hop music blasting from the first truck! Quz froze in place, pointing slightly into the lane of traffic, the van slowed slightly, then tore off in a cloud of dust up the hill. Quz started to back down the hill....NO! Forgive me O Wise Ones of Chronicle of the Horse, but I slapped the reins on his rump and he leaned forward and tore off at a ground-grabbing trot up the hill after the van and had NO problems running up that hill and beyond!

Heck, he wasn't even breathing hard when I slowed him down eventually!

Back on the county road leading to the barn, we were passed by a few more Harleys and a modified hot rod. By that time Quzqo had seen it all and wasn't impressed. All we needed to make the day complete would have been some ATVs and dirt bikes. Maybe next weekend.

Kind of makes me long for the days of $4.17/gallon gasoline, when people couldn't afford to waste their money.

Our Journey Through Caterpillar Hell

Right now, in mid-June, Northern Michigan is in the midst of the worst Tent Caterpillar infestation in remembered history (well, MY remembered history anyway). The "normal" tent worms have already decimated the wild cherry trees (and are working on my rose bushes, grrrr), and now the Forest Tent Worms are wreaking havoc on the hardwood forests in the area!

This is clearly evident by the forests behind the barn property.


The right side of the forest has been stripped by the little buggers, it looks like an early Springtime forest! The left side has been mostly untouched, and that's what the whole thing SHOULD look like!

The insects are stripping the maples and beeches of every bit of greenery it seems! The damage is awe-inspiring in its destruction!


This past weekend I took Quzqo on a nice 3 hour trail ride on Saturday, by ourselves, and unfortunately our path took us right THROUGH caterpillar-infested forests. Not only did we have to look at this mess, but also caterpillars constantly falling from the canopy, landing on my shoulders, legs, head, hands, the horse's neck or head or rump. Or else coming across them hanging at eye-level from threads of silk, lowering themselves to the ground so they can move on to the next tree. If you stopped and listened, you hear a constant soft pattering sound like raindrops...which is either falling worms, or falling worm poo. Needless to say, we made it out of those woods in record time!

I mean, seriously, LOOK AT THIS mess:


I'm no fan of insecticides, but you can't tell me a mass spraying with BT or something couldn't have helped! Er, that'd be assuming the state of Michigan had any money, ha ha, silly me.

We took pretty much the same route on Sunday, only driving this time. Although we didn't go through the forest, thankfully the trail is too narrow for my cart. But I was able to get more photos, such as this:


All the little bits of leaves on the top edge are what's falling from the trees. The black specks are caterpillar poo. It's mind-boggling to see all this poo over a mile-long stretch of road...imagine how many caterpillar rectums produced all those little poos! And how much food it took to produce all that! I guess the bright side will be that the forest floor will be well-fertilized!

And the little poo-producers themselves, humping along like inchworms across the road. They ranged in size from 1/2" to 1-1/2", very pretty with turquoise sides and dots on their backs. Whenever possible I swerved the cart to ensure running over as many as I could!

Even Quzqo wasn't immune...this little hitch-hiker landed on his dock as we were trotting down the road, and danged if he/she didn't hang on for dear life to a trotting Arabian's tail for a good quarter mile before it started slipping down.

Seconds after I took this photo, Quz swished his tail and the worm went flying!

Less than half a mile away, across a relatively well-traveled paved county road, THIS is what the landscape looked like:


Full, lush green Maples and Beeches. A few of the normal Tent Worms were crawling on the road, looking for more wild cherry trees to kill, but I didn't see any of the Forest Worms...probably they couldn't make it across the paved road, who knows.

The Experts say "be patient" as this infestation will be over with "in a few weeks"...we won't have any trees left, but "be patient". Next year we'll either have a BIGGER infestation, or, what I hope, they'll have eaten themselves into starvation this year and their numbers will be miniscule next year!

Anybody know of a cure for the chronic Heebie Jeebies, cuz I've sure got 'em! Brrrrrrr!

Why I Don't Miss Horse Shows

Today was a big horse show weekend in town, the same show I attended full-bore last year, spending lots of money, renting a stall, pissing off the horse, and amassing a large collection of last place ribbons for my trouble.

I had no plans to attend this year, if the thought surfaced, however briefly, it quickly popped like a soap bubble to be replaced by throat-clutching revulsion. Instead I watched with amusement the other folks at the barn fussing and preparing their horses for the big weekend. Quzqo got to wear his manure stains all weekend, his muzzle was unshaved, his hooves unsanded, my brand new box of French White chalk remained unopened in the back of the tack cabinet. And a wonderful feeling of calm and peace replaced the stress and nerves that I normally would have felt.

I did go to the show this morning, to WATCH. That's the bad thing about showing, you never get to watch the show, because you're busy in the back of a trailer trying to squeeze into your breeches or looking for a safety pin or wiping green drool from the horse's lips. Took plenty of photos of unusual horse colors and patterns, and watched the Pleasure Type halter classes, knowing that Quzqo would have cleaned up, looking at the ribby, elderly mares that would have been his competition. But he already has a nice collection of Pleasure Type Championship and Reserve Championship rosettes. Who needs more hollow victories.

There were a LOT of ribby horses being shown. You shouldn't be able to count their ribs from across the arena. Is it the economy, people can't afford the hay? But they can afford to bring the horse to a show and pay the entry fee. To be fair, I did see a significant number of downright fat horses as well. At least the judges placed those who seemed to be in the best condition, pleasantly padded but not obese, trim but not ribby.

I watched some people already in the practice arenas in their Huntseat garb, some in Western tack, no sign of anyone showing harness. The pattern for the trail class was frightening, and I was glad I wasn't showing. Yes, I'm sure Quzqo would have enjoyed backing through a serpentine of cones, and pausing on top of a wooden bridge so I could open a mailbox, show the letter to the judge, close it, and continue on. Uh-huh.

The show broke for lunch around 11, and I'd had my fix. That afternoon I went to the barn and saddled Quzqo up for a 3 hour trail ride, where I found myself with a goofy grin on my face at random moments. We probably did as much as if we had gone to a horse show, with walking, trotting, cantering, hand galloping, a trail course, backing, side-passing up a road shoulder to avoid a pick-up truck coming towards us on a two-track. I know I had a much more enjoyable afternoon, it didn't cost me anything, the horse was happy, and I wasn't exhausted and hadn't cried all day.

I don't fault anyone for enjoying horse shows. Please, continue on. You need to be a certain personality to be good at it, and your horse does too. It's obvious neither I nor Quzqo are that personality. So we'll just do what we enjoy, you do what you enjoy, and I'll come watch, and maybe I can convince you to come on a trail ride with us some time.

He's Back!

Yes, the Quzqo I know and love has returned!!

I haven't ridden him off the property since that near-disastrous Memorial Weekend Poker Run Trail Ride nearly 2 weeks ago. The few times I took him around the fence perimeter, it was like riding a Mexican jumping bean on Starbucks...jittery, spooky, jumpy, twitchy snorty tail-wringy equine incarnation of Mr. Chicken!

But tonight I took Quzqo out and off the property. The big difference was that it was nearing sundown, he'd already enjoyed his dinner, and just in a mellow kinda mood all around.

We cantered up the hayfield until he pooped out near the top of the hill, gave a prefunctory Drama Queen performance as we left the barn property, and up into the woods and down a dirt road. I was admiring the late spring wildflowers and the sweet smell of honeysuckle, listening to the clip-clop of Quzqo's hooves on the hard dirt. Suddenly there was a crash to the left in the trees, and I the south end of a Whitetail Deer heading north!

Quzqo halted mid-step, pricked his ears, lowered his head and continued walking.

I don't know what caused the change in personality, but I like it...now THAT is the Quzqo I knew and loved!!!

A June Evening Drive

I was just plain tired last evening, but since I hadn't visited the horse on Wednesday, I wanted to go to the barn. Wasn't planning to ride, didn't have any real idea of what I wanted to do, I just needed my Quzqo fix!

It was such a beautiful evening though...the sun out, the honeysuckle in full fragrant bloom, a gentle warm breeze, low traffic...sun not setting 'til around 9:30...horse was fed and looking at me out his stall window, like "well???"

What the hell, let's drive!

I haven't driven Quzqo since that incident in the ditch on Mother's Day. Not that I've been afraid, I just didn't get around to it (as an aside, I recently drove the car past that spot in the road, and y'know what? It WAS a deep, steep ditch and I had every right to be scared at the time!). Like they say, you only live once!

Quz was all for it, pawing at the pavement as I harnessed him up, stood good as gold as I got into the cart (okay, yes, I give him a peppermint so he's distracted trying to chew it with a bit in his mouth, so sue me), and stepped right out when asked. We didn't go our usual route, instead turned right onto a residential street.

Such a beautiful evening...since Quz is shod on the front hooves, I didn't have any reservations about trotting him out on pavement, and he had no hesitation either, and we merrily headed down the road! Love the sound of those clip-clopping hooves!

After a mile or so we came to the edge of the State Forest, and as it was getting towards twilight, I had no intention of taking him into a gloomy forest. We rested at a stop sign, he fussed and fidgeted but stood relatively still. About 1/4 mile down the interesecting road we both saw a small pack of pre-teen boys on bicycles, wheeling hither and yon down the middle of the road. I could hear them yelling and hollering and picked up "A horse!!" and then whinneying noises!

Quzqo saw the glittering shapes moving erratically coming towards him, his ears pricked up, his head went up, his feet went up, and he was having none of those things coming towards him. I turned him around, he couldn't do it fast enough, almost prancing in place, head up, neck arched, ready to explode if he could! I got him walking as the boys got closer, he broke into a trot, a ground-devouring roadster trot and I could NOT slow him down! We left the boys far behind and Quz just flew down the road. No traffic, maybe a mile before he came to the busy county road near the barn, so what the hey, I let him have his head! He trotted and trotted, head up, ears pricked, just enjoying the ability to run! The wheels were humming on the pavement, I glanced nervously at the bolts I could see, everything was still tight...I quick glanced at the harness, everything still buckled, nothing frayed and about to snap. Mailboxes flew past us, that "clip clop" sounded more like a Thompson machine gun. His tail was flying high and nearly hitting me in the face. The reins were thrumming in my fingers. Katie bar the door, here comes Quzqo!!!

Luckily I was driving Quzqo, and to paraphrase John Lyons, I can drive as fast as he can run, and after maybe 3/8 of a mile he pooped out and slowed to a more civilized trot. We slowed to a walk as we went by the farm with all the Tennessee Walking Horses (it's good manners after all). By the time we reached the county road, whatever bee was in Quzqo's bonnet had buzzed away and he was content to walk along the road, oblivious to whatever traffic flew by.

I felt good as we returned to the barn, Quzqo was sighing and his ears were sort of flopped off to the sides, his whole demeanor the picture of mellowness. Was it good for you too, Quz?

Things Aren't So Bad

Y'know, I was actually kind of traumatized by that Memorial Day weekend trail ride. I'll admit now that my confidence in Quzqo has been shaken, and I can't quite trust him like I used to. I don't know if it's ME who has messed HIM up, or visa-versa; he seems to be getting worse the older he gets, more spooky, more jumpy. Maybe it's my fault in that he needs to be ridden more, needs to get out and about more. He needs to be more a Horse of the World, and not limited to the comfortable and familiar surroundings of his pasture and his stall.

At least that's how I felt until Memorial Day weekend. I was mowing my lawn (it needed it), and I happened to glance up just as a neighbor rode past my yard on a bay horse. I'll admit I couldn't quite identify the gait, as it seemed to be walking, trotting and pacing all at once, with its back hollowed and head held high and tail wringing, and the woman riding (no helmet, for shame!) had a grim expression, and neither party seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I don't know if my mower upset the horse (It would have upset Quzqo!), but watching that woman and her high-headed hollow-backed mystery-gaiting horse clipclop down the road made me realize that my horse isn't THAT bad after all. He'd more likely than not go trotting down the road, head level, tail still, long ground-eating stride, and he might shy sideways at the trot at a lawnmower, but keep moving forward willingly (especially if he knew he was heading home).

For all his faults, and all of mine, I think he's actually a pretty good horse, and I don't have it all THAT bad, all things considered.