Dear Friends,
The late afternoon sun had gotten low enough to cast long shadows in front of the pickup truck as my 22 year old, Melanie, and I drove down to the house from the barn. As we bumped and rattled down the track we call our driveway, we talked about our colorful history with ranch horses. Early on, we brought horses to Alderspring as our partners; we had to move cattle across several miles, even on our first ranch. Some of our neighbors adopted ATVs to do this work, and although there is a place for motorcycles and ATVs in our operation today, I’ve never been a fan of these fossil fuel burners. Cattle respond differently to them, and we never use them to move our beeves long distances.
When in the saddle, I can quietly move through the beeves, observing each one from an elevated horse’s eye view. It’s simple animal elegance. Besides, our horses never run out of gas, oil, or get flat tires. I can’t think of a time where we couldn’t complete a job we set out to do with our pony partners. Sure, they drop a horseshoe or get nicked in the goat rocks we move our beeves through, but they always finish the job. Even aside from frustrating mechanical breakdowns, wheeled contrivances are often completely out of the question on the range; steep, timbered mountainsides are often littered with what we call jackstrawed downfall and swampy creek crossings that would be unthinkable and impassible by ATV or motorcycle. If someone tried to achieve passage through areas like these, the impact from the machines would invariably alter these special places, and would violate our leave-no-trace policy of how we run on our rangelands.
Our recollection of horse memories was interrupted by the beauty of the rosy glow of a setting sun over our horse herd, grazing along the road. One older mare, in particular, made me slow the pickup to a crawl as we rolled by. It was Shippy, the thoroughbred quarter horse cross; full birth name of Shippakota. She is of that same breed of famous racehorses such as Secretariat and American Pharoah, but she isn’t much to look at. We had used her on the range for many years, and she is now retired to the green pastures of our valley ranch. The younger girls still ride her with abandon in pastures free of rocks and down timber, and she was in great flesh from unlimited green grass.
She faced the setting sun so that the topographic relief of her sides was on full display from the light and shadow created by the setting sun. Her figure was still impressive in spite of the sway years of gravity had placed on her horizontally oriented spine; the only flaw we could see from our vantage point was a golf-ball sized hole near the base of the mare’s abdomen. It would be nearly invisible in any other light, but it was clear as day today as she faced the setting sun.
“That’s quite a hole.”
“Sure shows up in the sunlight,” Melanie added.
As the pickup continued to rattle on down the road, it became memory lane. Transported in time and space to the nearby Lemhi Valley 13 years ago at our ranch along Agency Creek, nestled among the foothills of the Continental Divide, the movie from the past played in my head.
It was April, and the high snows were melting with abandon, and the creek roared to life after the long quiet of winter. All around us, life was teeming with the onset of spring, and our 200 mama cows were dropping babies on the ground at a rate of up to 10 new arrivals daily. Spring was time when we just couldn’t keep up with work on the ranch, and I woke and emerged from the house at sunup each day to try to stay on top of it all. This morning, I was a man on a mission and was heading down to the meadows where cows were calving. I latched the yard gate that kept the foraging horses at large out of our front flower beds, and noted about 6 head of horses gleaning hay that I dropped off the wagon yesterday on the trip out of the stackyards.
I was about to turn around and mind my bovine chores when I did a double take on those cayuses by the hay. Something wasn’t right. Five of them had their heads down, eating. One had her head up, and was unmoving, except for an occasional switch of the tail. It was Shippy. It was too early for flies to be on her, so the switching had to come from her mind—they’ll switch if they are a little unsettled about something.
The other horses moved a few steps as they grazed. Shippy was a statue except for that tail. I changed my direction, and walked over to them.
The bay continued to stand still as I approached; the others looked up from their graze and swung around to make eye contact. She was standing right in front of our ancient 1960s series backhoe. The Case 580B had a big bucket on the front of it that was parked immediately next to Shippy. I had been using it to load bales on the hay wagon just yesterday afternoon. It easily picked up those 1 ton bales of hay with the two large bale spears I had attached to the bucket. Each bale spear looked like a giant pencil protruding from the bucket, and reached about 4 feet out from the loader, so you could get good purchase and lift after penetrating the spears into the bale.
Suddenly, I had a grisly thought that was immediately confirmed as truth when I walked around Shippy’s nose to the other side of her: I had left the parked backhoe with the bucket on the ground, but the bale spears pointed up at a 45 degree angle off the ground—into the air, except that now, only one was in the air. The other one was grotesquely stuck and buried in the mare’s abdomen. A few streaks of blood ran down the shaft of the 2†thick polished steel bale spear.
In the dark and moonless night that preceded, somehow, she sidled up to the sharp point, and impaled herself. In a testament to her sanguine nature, she got stuck, ignored pain, and simply decided to wait until someone came to help her. I stroked her neck as she turned toward me with what looked like a flush of gratitude.
I yelled back to the house, while stroking her neck. It wasn’t like she needed calming down. She had been in the same position for hours, after all. No response from the sleeping troops back home.
I slowly pulled away from the mare’s side, and sprinted back to the house. I found Caryl, up now, and explained what had happened; she ran outside with me after I grabbed a halter and lead rope, and we found mare still as she had been.
“I think we need to try to move her off the spear before she moves and her guts spill out on the ground.†I looked over Shippy’s back at a concerned Caryl, who could not get her eyes off the spear—quite buried in belly. “Then you go in and call Jeff.†Jeff was our veterinarian. He was 30 minutes away.
Caryl shot an anxious and penetrating glance at me. She had tears in the corners of her eyes. “What are we going to tell Melanie?†I knew what she was thinking. After all, Shippy was 9 year old Melanie’s horse. They had been through a lot together over the past 3 years, and they had forged a solid relationship over that time. To make matters worse, our oldest daughter had a way of catastrophizing nearly everything.
“We don’t have to tell her. Let’s get Jeff over here and see what the prognosis is.†Caryl had spent time apprenticing as a large animal vet and the fact was that introducing foreign objects into the abdominal tissues of a horse nearly always spelled disaster. Colic. Internal bleeding. Infections, hard to treat in poorly vascularized tissues. Slow and painful death. Steady as a rock Shippy may indeed have to find her end in a euthanizing shot that would proactively stop what could be months of suffering.
Regardless, it was time to act. I haltered the mare, and as Caryl observed and directed me, I led her ever so slowly and carefully off the spear point. No intestines hung on the point, thank God. The other horses cared not, noses to the ground licking up hay. I looked in the 2 inch hole as I held her lead rope. It was a bloody mess in there, and I couldn’t see anything in the black. Caryl looked at me questioningly. “I don’t know. I have no idea. Let’s see what Jeff says.â€
I looked up to see a dressed Melanie walking from the house. We’d been discovered, and showed her the damages. Her eyes teared up when she saw the hole in her mare’s side. I handed her the lead rope, as we both looked at the wound. “You’ve gotta stay with her and keep her from eating or rolling until Jeff shows up.†I looked her in the eye. “Can you do that?â€
“Yes.†She sniffed. “I can.â€
“Good girl.â€
Jeff was out in good time, especially after I told him what had transpired. After poking and prodding, and flashlighting, he commenced to clean the wound out with some Betadine. Shippy stood stoically, as he inserted brown gauze into the hole and swabbed it out. He then got some clean gauze and proceeded to swab some more in the cavity, and left the hole, big and gaping, unstitched. He worked silently, between spitting tobacco juice shots from his mountain man bearded mug. Jeff was never much of one for clever conversation. I tried to make eye contact as he worked to see just how ugly things were, but he wouldn’t oblige. He was a good vet, and seemed to actually relish the interaction with his animal patients much more than the humans that owned them. Bedside manner for patient was always excellent; for the patient’s family, Jeff’s interactions and engagement were definitely lackluster. It caused some folks in the valley to not call him back.
“Aren’t you gonna close her up?†I asked.
He continued looking at the hole as he worked. “Naw,†he mumbled. “She’d be better if it could drain.†He turned, face downward, and spit a squirt of tobacco juice out, sending up another puff of dust in the dirt. He turned back to the wound, looked it over one more time, and stood up, and walked back to his truck. He produced syringe and needle, and gave the mare a shot of penicillin in the neck.
“What’s the word?â€
“You’re dang lucky that the bale spear wasn’t sharper. It penetrated her skin handily, but then, because of its insertion angle, it just bounced along the abdominal muscles and peritoneum, and never broke either. I think she’s gonna be just fine. I just wanted it to be able to drain in case there was any infection, and the penicillin should handle that. You’re also dang lucky she just stood there.†He turned and patted the mare on the back, and spit some tobacco juice at her feet. “Yep. Dang lucky.â€
“So she’s gonna be OK?,†Melanie asked.
“Yep. I think she’s good to go.â€
Jeff was right. It took a few weeks, but the hole filled in and even haired over, but there always would be a golf-ball sized dent there. And when the light was right, as it was tonight, we’d remember. It would be a constant reminder to keep those backhoe bale spears pointed down. But it would also always remind me of how when we make animals our partners, they trust us. Cows come when we call them, entrusting us to take them to greener pastures. Our border pups look to us for the next job, eagerly hanging on our every word, wanting to please. And horses, well, they require the most investment time in relationship; trust is hard won, but once that’s earned, they will pretty nearly die trying to do what you ask them to do.
And that is a microcosm into the story of Alderspring; it’s about relationships that can take a long investment period. We have one with the land, and the plants and wild animals on it. As with the horses, it has taken years for us to gain some understanding of how it all works…and interconnects. The years of learning and observing and care yields true sustainability and wellness that we can happily share with you. And that relationship is one we will never take for granted. Thanks for being part it.
Happy Trails
Glenn, Caryl and Girls at Alderspring
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