A storm moved through about 4:30 and the temperatures dropped about twenty degrees Fahrenheit as it did so. It feels heavenly. There was a little hail mixed with the rain, but not large enough to cause damage. I hope I can get the house cooled down before bedtime. Last night, when Jack got home past mid-night, it was still 78F inside, despite the floor fan and open windows. We are starting to discuss getting a whole house fan before next summer, though the low pitch of the roof might make it tricky. Fortunately, Jack’s sister is a mechanical engineer who specializes in environmental systems for buildings, so we ought to be able to pump her for information.
Jack is spending most of his time this weekend at XIV-Khan, a local Science Fiction / Gaming Convention. He is promoting and trying to sell memberships to Cosine, a new science fiction convention to be held January 16, 2004 in Colorado Springs. This con is being sponsored by the science club to which we belong, and we feel honored that Barbara Hambly has consented to be our guest of honor.
Enlivened by the moderate temperatures, the dogs are fence-fighting with Smoke. Smoke is a 26 year old Quarter Horse gelding. You would think he would have more sense than to tease large predators. However, he seems to delight in driving the dogs into a screaming frenzy. He trots up and down the fence line, egging them on, and will sometimes gallop, buck and rear as well. For the sake of our peace, and that of the neighbors, we had to block off one end of the dog run, so there is a buffer zone most of the time between Smoke and the dogs. However, the new field shares one long stretch of fence with the dog run, and I have been letting the horses out most of the day the past few days. The grass is no longer so rich that I worry about Rags foundering. (Smoke no longer eats enough grass for me to worry.)
Twenty-six is old for a Quarter Horse. Smoke has almost no teeth left, and gets over 90% of his calories from pelleted feed developed to be a complete source of nutrients, even in the absence of hay and grass. His legs, especially his knees, are so gnarled that it seems miraculous that he is reasonably sound. I hope, when it is time for him to go, he does so quietly in his sleep one night, but doubt that will happen. He is a tough old son-of-a-mare, and my guess is he will go down fighting.
Smoke was my therapy horse for a while: back in the days when Hap could be a daily battle, I would take Smoke out on the trail by himself, drop the reins on his neck, and ride along with my eyes closed. I would tell myself that this was a horrible habit, that even Smoke could step in a hole and fall down, but it just felt so good not to have to be work at riding for a change. Smoke kept me confident in my ability to ride after some particularly soul-destroying episodes with Hap. He was my baby-sitter horse: he seemed to know when we were escorting green horses or green riders that we had to keep things slow and unexciting.
I only ever once came close to coming off of Smoke. We were riding with the Bijou Springs Hunt, and there was a large yucca plant in our way. I decided to go one way, then changed my mind. Smoke, as an old stock horse, worked off of minute shifts of weight, and tried to cooperate. I nearly went off to the right as he headed to the left. After that, I tried to make up my mind in advance and stick to it.
When I was still trail-riding him, I used to joke to my friends that if Smoke ever refused to take a trail, I would turn around and go back. The year of the rains, my trainer brought Havoc, her old show hunter, out to my place for a week’s stay. He was at the end of his convalescence from a bone chip. His last day here we took Smoke and Havoc out on a short trail ride. About one hundred yards along the trail, Smoke started to fuss a bit. Smoke never fussed. He might complain if we weren’t going fast enough, but he never fussed. We were leading and my trainer followed on Havoc. I turned around to comment on Smoke’s behavior to my trainer, and the bottom fell out from underneath of Havoc. He had gone down in quicksand up to his belly. Smoke, the lighter horse, hadn’t broken through, but had obviously detected something he didn’t like. Fortunately, my trainer was able to encourage Havoc to jump to dry ground after several tries, but for a few tense seconds, I thought he was a goner.
Smoke was also reassuring to ride because I never worried about getting lost on him. I knew I could always drop the reins and let him find his way home. This is not unusual: most horses have a good sense of direction for going home. But Smoke seemed to be able to know where the horse trailer was, even when he was someplace he hadn’t been before.
He was close to the perfect trail horse, but far from perfect in other respects. Smoke is prone to panic attacks caused by separation anxiety. This has been exacerbated by being primarily pastured with Rags for the past five or six years. When he was working, it was not a problem, since he was very task focussed, but it has caused a few situations over the years, as when Jack left him in his stall one night. Rags left. So did Smoke, bending and folding a heavy metal gate in the process. Neither we, nor my trainer, nor the vet could believe that he could do that much damage to a metal gate and incur relatively superficial injuries.