one week down

So it's been a week now since I wrote last. I've dived headfirst into every task I 've been given and, out of necessity, I've learned a lot very quickly. Two days after my last entry Adam and Claudia left for about a week. They're due back sometime this weekend. This meant that during the week it was Barbara, Esteban, Diana, and myself that worked, and on the weekend it was up to just Barbara and me to keep things running. I've gotten the feeding schedule of who gets what and when down. I'm also learning the art that is loading and tossing bales of hay. Each morning and evening we load 29 bales on the open trailer connected to the pickup and we disperse them accordingly around the grounds. Since Barbara and I have been the only two working in the evenings I've had the pleasure of both helping drive the pickup, as well as be the one who tosses the 120 lb. bales. Personally, I prefer the latter of the two roles as every dog here seems to have a death wish and enjoys running practically under the truck tires giving me a slight anxiety attack.

Aside from getting a handle on the normal day to day requirements I also helped Barbara with some "projects" this weekend. We made a 24 foot wide wire gate to close a hole in the fence dividing our property and that of our neighbors. Luckily we opted not to go with barbed wire as I fear that probably would not have bode well for me. We also built a step for the generator room, a task which involved the use of a hammer, nails, and power tools (hope you're busting with pride, Dad).

In the past week we've gotten some new residents as well! First we received three mustang mares. They were rounded up a few years back and a horse rescue group offered to take them to try to domesticate them and adopt them out, but apparently these three simply wouldn't hear of it (which frankly, I was happy about). They've gotten to be too much for the rescue group to handle so we said we'd take them. We took them straight across the street and released them on the 800 acres. It was really cool to see them run. What was not really cool was the two ladies getting their truck and horse trailer stuck on the dirt road across the street. We tried to use our truck and ultimately had to go get the tractor to pull them out. We released the horses at 7:30 pm. It was 11 pm before we got back to the house. Fun fun.

Our newest arrival is Joe, a 25 yr old Paint who was the horse of an old cowboy that just passed away. The cowboy's son and a couple friends asked us to take Joe in. He's been a bit crazy since he got here and we later found out why - the poor horse had been kept in the same pen for 24 years, being let out only when taken for a ride (but who knows how often that really was). So here he is for the first time in 24 years out in a new place and surrounded by a good 100+ females. He's kinda lost his mind.

A funny note relating to Joe - and a little food for thought - one of the people who brought Joe to us was a lady that was friends with the son of the cowboy. They all talked about how Joe was this old cowboy's "baby" and how they loved Joe so much and he was a sweet horse and they were so glad we could take him because they would hate to have to put him to sleep, but there would have been no other options! Barb gets an email from this lady later. In it she says she just wanted to check on Joe, and she also mentioned that they used to breed Joe and if we decide to breed him she wouldn't mind taking a colt. A couple thoughts came to mind when Barb told me this: 1) we're a sanctuary. we take in and care for horses that people don't want, we don't breed horses to feed back into situations we're trying to save them from, and 2) I realized (and got very angry after realizing) that this woman is asking us for a colt after she just dropped off a horse that she "loves" and "couldn't bear the thought of putting him to sleep" because they couldn't care for him. So apparently she has the means to care for a young horse, but not for an old horse that can no longer be ridden and thus "serves no purpose." I mentioned this to Barbara and it got her fired up too. Apparently whenever Barbara is asked to give lectures she talks about the problems of our "disposable culture" - this situation with Joe being a perfect example. We're a society where once a living thing stops being useful to us, it's tossed without a second thought. I was shocked by the woman's own inability to recognize how contradicting her statement was, but it's just a testimony of the societal mindset in general I guess. Just a little tidbit to think on.