Goodbye, Mare

I think, a few times in the past six months or so, I've made a passing reference or two to the Mare, my elderly Holsteiner dressage horse.  I purchased her in Jan. 2001 as a green broke 12 yr old, a horse that had been given rudimentary under saddle training in walk and trot (and whoa) at age 4, but then not ridden again until I bought her.  Obviously, I got her as a project horse; one that I was going to train in dressage while taking lessons to further my own riding education.

Well, as often happens in life with a husband and a bunch of children, my riding time got interrupted for long periods on a pretty regular basis.  Meaning, we'd be going great, the Mare and I, and then my Mom/Wife life would get in the way and riding and training would be on the back burner for months at a time.  Some years I would ride three to five times a week for most of the year, and some years I'd be happy if I got in the saddle once a week. Add in my instructor's failing health, and we haven't had a lesson in about eight years. So her training never progressed quite as far as I'd hoped. And we never got into the show ring (in addition to time, there's the whole money aspect of showing that my Mom/Wife life didn't allow).  We did have a nice solid Second Level set of skills in several areas (such as trot, oh what an awesome trot she developed), while still sometimes struggling to get much above Training Level on other things.

This past winter, the Mare became reluctant to trot under saddle.  It was as if the gait was too difficult for her.  Being the ripe old age of 26, I figured there might be some arthritis playing a factor there.  She had been semi-retired for a couple of years (meaning I didn't ride her hard or regularly, and had made the Quarter Horse my main mount), so I decided that rather than force her to trot during rides, I would just ride her at a walk.

But then some funky things started happening in her hind end.  A weird swelling on the inside of one hock that didn't make her lame or seem to bother her at all, yet it persisted for months.  Muscles she'd always had, even during long periods of not being ridden, began to shrink.  She developed a habit of standing with her hips tilted and one hind leg smack under the center of her body.  Sometimes she lay down right in the middle of her dinner hay and would stay down for hours, this mare who had always been one to clean up every last bit of chaff she could find.

All this happened over a period of months, one thing adding to another.  And I began to see something familiar, the muscle atrophy and posture reminding me of two other elderly Holsteiner mares I had known: the Mare's mother and mother's full sister.  They both had developed hind end problems/neurological issues in their mid to late twenties that had eventually led to them being put to sleep when they were no longer able to get around.

I had the vet out in early April to check her out, and to give all my horses their Spring vaccinations.  The vet performed a few tests on the Mare, and confirmed what I had come to suspect: neurological issues coupled with muscle wasting, and enough coordination problems in her hind end that it was unsafe to continue riding her, even at a walk.

So, the Mare became officially retired.  No more riding at all, no matter how light.  The chance of her stumbling and falling with a rider was just too great.

And, having seen what her mother and her aunt had gone through at the ends of their lives (they both were at the farm I used to work at for many years), I decided I was not going to put the Mare through any of the sort of suffering they had gone through.  I would put her down before the ground became frozen/rough or icy or deep snow that the winter season brings.

All summer, she ate well, but her muscles continued to deteriorate.  Her hips showed, then her spine started to become prominent even though her front end was still robust and her weight was good.  The muscle atrophy began to move toward her front end.  Her withers started to stick out.  And, recently, her shoulders had begun to shrink.

As her body was wasting away this fall, I had noticed that her spirits weren't always as cheerful or sassy as she'd always been.  It was getting tougher for her to move around.  Life was not as enjoyable for her as it had been earlier this year.  No doubt about it, it was time for me to let her go.

So, I made an appointment with my vet to have her euthanized. Yesterday was her last day.  I had her turned out with her buddy, the Old Man, for most of the day as is her normal schedule.  Then, in mid-afternoon I brought her into the barn, gave her a good grooming, fed her an apple and lots of treats (oh, she thought she was being spoiled rotten, all the goodies and attention she was getting), then I took her back outside to one of the remaining patches of grass still growing in this cold weather and hand-grazed her until the vet arrived.

It didn't take very long to put her to sleep.  She was happy and pampered right up to the end.  As I wanted her to be: not suffering, not struggling to walk or stand.

Goodbye, Mare.  Thank you for all the rides, for all the slobbery horse kisses, even for all the frustration when you were being naughty and "Holsteiner mare-ish".  Especially thanks for all the things you taught me as I was teaching you.

May 2012, our last ride I have photos from

one last photo, 12-3-15

age 26 years, 8 months

Yarn Along 2015.47: A Familiar Pattern

Good Wednesday to you!  It's hovering at freezing here, with cloudy, almost white, skies. Snow flurries are predicted for this afternoon.  After spending four hours outside this morning, I am planning to be indoors for the rest of the day. Much crafting to do (I actually have the house to myself today, for the first time in nearly a month, so looking forward to about four hours of uninterrupted creativity!)

But first, we must join Ginny's Yarn Along!

I have been working on the never ending cross stitch again this week, but I have found a little knitting time, too.  Using the Knit Picks Comfy I pictured in last week's yarn along,  I cast on the first sock of a pair of Rosamond socks for DD1. This is the same pattern as a pair of socks I made for a KAL exchange last winter, and the pattern was easy to remember.

Honestly, I've been planning this pair of socks for DD1 ever since starting that knit-a-long last February (or was it January?).  I thought she might like the sorta lacy, slightly feminine pattern. And the purple yarn I bought in early summer specifically for her socks. It just took me this long to get around to starting them.

For being cast on Sunday afternoon (and not spending much time knitting), this sock is coming along really quick.  I am all ready through half of the pattern repeats on the leg.  Which is good, right, because I have about three weeks to get these knit, plus a few more dishcloths I want to make and two young child sized hats.  The Christmas knitting list is beginning to feel the countdown squeeze coming on.

this picture is pretty true to color;

reminds me of grape juice

this picture is blurry, but shows the pattern better

I'm sort of between books at the moment.  What are you reading and knitting these days?

Don't Need a Bootlace That Bad

Good Friday to you, Dear Reader!

As usual, I worked this morning (horses gotta eat, you know), then I came home, where I will stay for the rest of the day.  I am not a Black Friday shopper.  In fact, I went out after work on Tuesday and got everything I could possibly need--food, gas, and otherwise--to get me through until Monday next week.  I don't battle the last minute Thanksgiving ingredient crowds, and I certainly don't take part in the Black Friday shopping mania.

This has always been my modus operandi.  So much so, that all of my kids are also reluctant to venture off property in the days immediately following Thanksgiving.  It's not just shopping that's treacherous, driving is markedly more dangerous in the hysteria of Black Friday.

However, this morning, a little while after I returned from work, DS2 (who is home for the holiday & weekend) asked if I might need anything from the city about 20 minutes away.  "I need to get a pair of bootlaces," he informed me; "one of the laces on my hunting boots broke."

I shook my head.  "Nope, I'm good.  Besides, I can't believe you are going to go in Walmart or Meijer today." He has always been the least social of my kids, the one most comfortable by himself in the middle of nowhere. Maybe living and working in a large city now that he's out of college has changed him, made him a little more used to crowds and heavy traffic.

His eyes widened as realization dawned.  "Oh crap," he said.  "I forgot what today was.  Never mind.  I don't need a bootlace that bad.  It can wait a few days."

Yarn Along 2015.46: Finished Sock and a Good Book

It's late, but it's still Wednesday, so I'm joining Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.

Again, not much knitting happening this week. I did finish sock #2 of Toad's Christmas socks.  At first, I was a little disappointed that the yarn wasn't self-striping, like the yarn I had used for K3's socks.  But, now that the socks are done, I do like the way the yarn is dyed.  I just wish I had picked up an extra stitch on one side of the gusset and then did a K2tog somewhere before getting to the foot.  Would have avoided the little gusset hole. But, I guess Toad won't mind.

I have some yarn set aside for my next knitting project, which will be a pair of socks for DD1, hopefully in time for Christmas.   I'm going to make them in Knit Picks Comfy, which is cotton, because she complains that her feet are always hot when she wears shoes  and she can't wear the wool socks I made her a few years ago because then her feet sweat.

The colorway is called Blackberry, which is a deep purple.

This week, I read a really good book.  It was my 'hunting' read, meaning it was the book I put in my hunting bag at the beginning of the season, and have read only during slow spells in the tree stand or deer blind.  This week has been really slow hunting, for several days there was no fresh sign at all and none of us saw deer.  So I got a lot of reading done.

Desire Lines was interesting to read, right from the start.  A few scenes were a little more, um, descriptive, than I prefer to read (romantic situation), but mostly it is a mystery type of story more than a romance novel.

That's all for this week; I hear the oven timer going off, which means it's time for me to get back to my pre-Thanksgiving pie baking.  All from scratch, of course: pumpkin, pecan, and dutch apple.  I'll be feeding a crowd of seventeen tomorrow, so hopefully a variety of pies will satisfy everyones' sweet tooth.

Snow Serene

Saturday brought us a lot of snow.  About eight inches, I think, when it was all said and done. It began in the night on Friday, and was supposed to be rain at first, turning to snow.  We were supposed to get 1-3 inches of accumulation, since the ground was still warm (temps were in the low to mid 60's earlier in the week), and most of the first snow was going to melt on contact.

But when it was time to go hunting Saturday morning pre-dawn, there was all ready a good inch or more accumulated on the soft, warm ground.

The snow fell steadily, never really being a gale or storm, just a nice, quiet, serene snowfall.

I sat in the new elevated blind DH built late this summer on the edge of the field, where the woods and field meet, and watched it snow.  For hours.  The sun rose, but the lighting hardly changed all day.  All of these pictures I took, hours apart, while sitting there in the blind.  

I love the way they came out looking like old black and white photos, even though I didn't use any special settings. In fact, they were all taken with the camera on my cell phone just on the standard automatic setting.

Yarn Along 2015.45: Little Socks

It has been a busy, windy, rainy day at this little place here.  I'm sliding into the Yarn Along quite a few hours later than normal.

Not a whole lot of knitting in the past week; in addition to the hours upon hours I spent deer hunting, I've also been working on a sewing project and the counted cross stitch project that is beginning to feel like it will never end.

However, I did finish the pair of Jellybean's Special Socks that I was knitting as one of K3's Christmas presents.  In the interest of full disclosure, I was working on the heel of sock #2 when she spied the completed sock #1 in my knitting bag, took it out, recognized it as a sock, and put it on her foot (in the innocence of a 3 yr old, I don't think she ever realized it was a sock for her versus just a small sock).  Well, apparently even though I measured her footprint (on a project she made in preschool recently) and made the sock to that length, when it was actually on her foot, the sock was a little snug.  Definitely no growing room.

So, I made sock #2 an inch longer than sock #1, then went back, took out the toe of the first sock, added an inch to the foot of that one, knit the toe again, and had a matching pair.  Or, pretty close to matching, anyway, as the stripes in the yarn didn't come out quite exact from one sock to the other.

Then I started a sock for Toad, in another skein of Regia with a blue colorway (but unfortunately, not striping; when I bought it I thought it was self-striping like the pink skein).  After K3 had tried on the sock from by bag the other day, he'd wanted it on his foot too (at 15 months old, he's very much into copying everything his sister does).  That size fit him well with some room for growth, so I will make his socks to the measurements I'd originally intended for his sister.

Late last night, (as I was waiting for DH to stop snoring enough that I could get back to sleep), I finished the first sock of Toad's pair.  Didn't get a chance yet today to cast on for the second sock, but the night is young here still, LOL.

Meanwhile, I requested from the library a book recently suggested by a reader of this little place here.  The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson.  It came in earlier this week, and so far (Chapter two, I think) I am finding it interesting.

One Less Deer in the Woods

(Warning, parts of this post are graphic.  If you're not a hunter, or someone who has processed their own meat, you may not want to read more than the first dozen paragraphs.  And don't look at the pictures!!)

Yesterday was opening day of firearm deer season here in Michigan.  The weather was not right for it; unseasonably warm with a high that topped out at 63 degrees.  It was also fairly windy, averaging 8-10 mph from the southwest and west-southwest all day with gusts up to 20 mph or so.

In other words, too warm for the deer to be moving around, and so windy that scent (more specifically, human scent) was blowing all over the woods.

But, it was opening day, and we have no venison in the freezer, and it was Sunday so none of us had to take off of work in order to hunt.  So we hunted.  Or, at least, DH and I and one of DH's buddies (aka a 'guest') hunted in the morning.  In the afternoon, DH, his buddy, myself and DS1 hunted.

The tree stand I chose to sit in is in the northwest corner of our woods.  Because it was bought as a Christmas present for DS2 back when he was in high school, it's official location is known as "DS2's Stand".  Now, with the wind coming right off the field from the west, and DS2's Stand being only about 25 yards inside the woods off the field, DH tried his best to convince me that DS2's Stand was the wrong place to sit yesterday.  The wind was all wrong, he said.  I wouldn't see any deer, he said.  They would scent me long before I could see them coming through the woods.

But, I had a persistent feeling that I was supposed to sit in DS2's Stand on opening day.  And when I have a persistent feeling, it is very hard to get me to change my mind.  That gut instinct has proven itself right too many times.

During the four hours I sat in the stand opening morning, I saw six deer, all to the north of me.  Some headed west to east, but most headed east to west.  And none of them came within range of my gun.  But, at least I saw them.  I knew they were there.  A very good sign, since the last two weeks (bow season) DH hadn't been seeing hardly any deer.

Still, when we came in for food and to watch the Lions actually play some decent football on TV, DH tried to convince me I should sit elsewhere for the afternoon hunt.  But no, my mind was made up and I wasn't budging.  Back to DS2's Stand it was, at 3:00.

Now during the morning hunt, there had been a fairly good amount of shooting going on in the neighborhood.  And by neighborhood I mean a couple mile radius.  Basically as far as you can hear, that's the neighborhood in this instance. I counted 45 shots between roughly dawn at 7:00 a.m., and when I got into the house at 10:30 a.m. (I'd been sitting since 6:20, but not enough light to shoot by until around 7:00).

By contrast, I think I may have heard three shots during my afternoon sit.  Don't know if there were suddenly less hunters in the afternoon, or if there were markedly less deer.  I saw a deer in the woods to the north of me (on the neighbor's property) go from west to east around 4:00 p.m.  Then about 4:45 I saw one of the same size, roughly the same distance north, go from east to west.  My assumption, being that it was smallish and alone, is that it was a button buck just wandering around from one side of the woods to another.

A little after 5:00 p.m., I heard deer coming up from the south, about 40-50 yards east of me.  It took a while for them to come into view, as it is fairly brushy in that direction.  I got a visual on them about 5:20 or so.  In the lead was a large doe, followed by what I assumed where her two fawns.  They didn't seem frightened at all, just on a normal jaunt through the woods in search of food and water.  When they were almost due east of me, I heard another, heavier sounding, deer coming up the same path from the south.  Thinking it might possibly be a buck, I let the lead doe go through my shooting lane and continue northward.  The two smaller deer followed her at a leisurely pace.  By the time the third deer of that group was in my shooting lane, I could see the following fourth deer.  It was good sized, but it was not a buck.  No matter, as I had in my pocket a doe permit too, since I first hunt dinner, then horns.  (DH will not shoot a doe until the final week of November, prior to that he is out for a large buck.)

So, as the front three deer moved out of my shooting lane and into a little more brush, I brought my gun up to my shoulder, and waited for that fourth deer, that bigger doe, to come into the clearing.  To my surprise, she not only came into the clearing, but she turned and headed right toward the tree I was sitting in!

Now, with a wind from the west, and the deer being to the east of me, she was not supposed to do that!  She was supposed to scent me on the wind that blew right past her nostrils. Because I was in the wrong stand for the weather. I don't know if the wind suddenly died off in that moment, or what, but I ended up with a hefty doe standing broadside to me at about 20 yards distance.

So I shot her.  Knocked her sideways, and when her feet hit the ground again, she took off running west toward the field, then changed her mind once she was past my tree and headed south into the brushy cover.  A couple of big crashes, then the sound of dead branches breaking, a little gurgling wheeze, and silence.

That's when I started shaking.  I was shaking so hard from adrenaline that it's a wonder the stand wasn't clanging against the tree.  I did some Lamaze breathing (I tell you, that breathing technique I learned in child birth class back in 1989 has steadied my nerves more times than just the four births I've been through).  I answered DH's text that yes, the shot was mine, and I believed she hadn't gone very far.  Then I waited. And waited.  And waited. Approximate shot time was 5:36 p.m.  Dark fell about 6:05.  I had to wait until dark to get down, so as to not interrupt anyone else's hunting.

Then, once it was dark, and DH walked over to my stand on his way in, he wanted to go in the house and eat dinner before we started tracking my doe.  He didn't want to kick her up and make her run if she wasn't dead yet.  I agreed, as I really really hate tracking in the dark, so I didn't want to risk pushing her from where I thought she was based on the sounds she'd made and the direction she'd run after I shot.  I was pretty sure she was within about 50 yards of DS2's Stand, south and a little east, on the edge of the woods and not in the field.

Earlier, between hunts, I'd put together a big batch of chili and had it staying hot in the crock pot while we went out for the afternoon hunt.  Serving up dinner took only a few minutes, and about fifteen more to actually eat it.  Then I was raring to go retrieve my deer.  I had in my pocket a Ziploc bag to put the heart in, two gutting knives, my doe permit, and a flash light.

It seemed like forever before I got DH and his buddy up out of their chairs and out of the house.  I don't remember for sure, but I might have said something about going and getting the deer all by myself if they didn't get a move on.  They, I'm pretty sure, thought she wouldn't be dead yet (from their collective past experiences with shooting and tracking their own deer and those of their friends).  But I was positive she was.  Her short running distance, big crash of sticks, and gurgle sounded like the last deer I'd gotten, years ago, that I'd clipped through the heart and had dropped and died within a few minutes of being shot.

Once we'd gotten the tractor from the barn (the loader bucket on the tractor is so handy for carrying deer in from the woods) and driven to the edge of field at the woods, DH wanted to start looking for blood right there where the woods and field met.  I insisted she hadn't run that far.

I walked back to where I'd aimed in my shooting lane so close to DS2's Stand, and turned on the flashlight.  Almost immediately I found the blood trail.  DH's buddy jumped five yards ahead of me, to where a small tree was sprayed with blood, and he practically rushed through the woods looking for my deer.  DH called him off, saying that I was to take the lead and do the tracking.  If I lost the trail, then they would fan out and help look.

I didn't lose the trail.  It was well marked, bright red droplets of blood plentiful in the fallen leaves.  Brush and small trees were splashed with it, clearly showing the way my doe had ran.  It wasn't even ten minutes later that I found her, crawled up underneath a wild apple tree, definitely dead.

At that point, DH handed me the spot light and told me to break a path through the brush so that he and his buddy could drag the doe out to the field for me.   Sounds nice, like I got the easy job, right?  Unless you know that the brush happens to include some nasty stuff with 2" thorns on it.  So, I backed my way through the brush (to protect my face from getting scratched), using my body to break a path for them to follow, and shining the spot light at the ground so they could see what was under foot.

Once we had her out in the field, I insisted on a posterity picture (mainly because the last deer I got--2009? 2010? I can't remember--I never got a picture of because after it was dressed and hung, I went in to wash up and forgot to have someone take a picture of me with my deer).

(of course I had to edit this photo in keeping with my 

no recognizable faces policy on this blog)

Then it was time for the messy job of field dressing her.  I took off my coat, rolled up my shirt sleeves, unfolded the preferred gutting knife, and got to cutting.  She was still hot inside, and that kept me from getting chilled, since the temperature was down below fifty now.  Doing the gutting didn't take long, and when I putted out the heart, I proudly showed off what had sort of become my 'signature': a heart with a top corner shredded.  Ever deer I've harvested (all whopping three of them now) has been shot through the edge of the heart.  Like I mentioned before, I hate tracking in the dark.  You shoot the deer in the right spot, put the bullet through the heart, and it's a pretty quick death for the animal.  Some people bemoan the loss of that section of the heart as meat once it's been shot.  Personally, I'd rather give up a little meat and give the deer a quick death.  I feel it's more humane.  And, it saves me some tracking.

Once she was relieved of her internal organs and other inside partss, I rolled her up onto her belly to let the large puddle of blood out of her gut cavity.  Then we put her in the tractor bucket and drove her up to the barn for hanging.

And weighing.  Several years ago, DH received a game scale as a Christmas gift.  Since then, we've weighed all our deer.  It's curiosity more than anything else;  we tally up the weight of the meat once it's all cut and packaged for the freezer.  It is nice to see the ratio between hanging weight and the weight of the meat procured.

My doe weighed in at a very respectable 125 pounds, dressed.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

one less deer in the woods