We had a nor-easter last night and it rained. A lot. Archie spends his days in Pasture Six, a lovely long field with good grazing--which gets muddy in rain. There are clear farm expectations that the field will remain grass and not succumb to mud. When it rains (a lot) Arch has to stay inside to avoid churning up the turf with his Archie-sized hooves.
The rain stopped pretty much by mid morning, so Archie went out. I wasn't sure, given the ground saturation, if it was okay for him to go out, but he insisted that out was where he wanted to be and that he planned only to hang out and sun bathe. Some days there are two horses in the field next to him, one wears a bell, and they parallel graze across electric fences. Some days Archie is all alone. He's good at alone, but far prefers friends.
When I returned to the barn later in the day, and headed out back for a wheelbarrow, I gazed down for a glimpse of grazing Archie. The wind had risen and the sky darkened with threatening clouds. A gleam of red, raised tail fanning his muddy legs which propelled him circle after circle, Archie galloped fueled by some demonic force. I looked and listened to try to see what he saw: barking dogs, cheers from the high school two fields over, passing geese, a leaf blowing across the field? I watched as he tore around twice more, waiting for him to calm--but he didn't. Calling ,"Yo Archie! Woah!"from my clever vantage point up the hill near the muck pile, he slowed, looked up as he always does, but not for long. Off again, he churned up grass divots the size of old fashioned LP record discs, alternated with long, grass shearing mud slides as he braked at the pasture boundaries.
Trudging down to rescue both horse and pasture, Archie trotted up to me, head alert, sniffing wind; high on ionic change. Still dancing at the end of his lead rope, he suggested a quick green grass fix on the nice lawns between pasture and barn. His barefoot hooves sank into the sodden turf, leaving island-like dents which created a whole network of tributaries and ponds.
Arch pawed in cross ties until he had his pre-ride Maalox -laced snack and then settled
down while I sorted the good from the bad in his stall bedding. By the time he was girthed and bridled, he was more himself but his contribution to a lively ride was seriously compromised by the exhausting 20 furlongs he'd indulged in an hour previously. Yawning and claiming hunger, he called it quits early and walked himself back to the crossties to be dis-robed,brushed down and blanketed against the cold air blowing in with the back end of the gusty storm. Impatiently ushered into his stall, he fell into a face- full of hay, followed by an agressively consumed chaser of grain.
While Archie munched, I went down to survey the pasture damage. Not good, it looked like a herd of large pigs had partied heartily, inviting guests from the elephant and rhinoceros clans as well as a 14 year old with his first 4x4. We were in Big Trouble. Nothing shows up brown mud as clearly green grass. Humps and bumps of scored pasture looked like a battlefield of horse poop. Disaster. Solution? Iron out the divots. Available tools? Feet.
An hour later, I had literally followed in Archie's thousand footsteps, pulling, coaxing, stamping turf back into holes created by churning quarterhorse feet. The long slides were out of my control and remained mud, albeit flattened mud. My jodphur boots squelched muddy water through my toes. The wind raged as the nor-easter chased itself out of town; gray skies, a shudder or two of rain and wild trees shedding autumn leaves at rapid rates. The sun sank. By the time the pasture had stopped screaming train wreck, I was late for everthing else, and my feet were un-pleasantly un-warm. The pasture looked a little more peaceful. Would we get away with it?
So I covered the evidence. Would I have done so for one for our boys when they were teenagers? Car dents remained to be ironed out by the perpetrators, and racing around the house and punching holes in the wall, no matter how elequently explained away ("I punched the wall instead of my brother--you mean you'd rather I punched my brother instead of the wall ?") resulted in Loss of Privileges. Does this mean I have subjugated my moral standards for my horse which may eventually come to No Good? Quite, quite possibly. So it goes.
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