Hippotherapy.

Here's some pictures of my fetlock.





I had a total ankle replacement in mid-March and today I saw my surgeon for the last time (hopefully) for a year. He is very pleased with my progress. I had some complications during surgery due to my soft bones because I hadn't walked for so long. Also at 6 weeks post op I was pulling some long grass up on my knee scooter for Wildairo, when I lost my balance and put my full weight on my repaired ankle. Thankfully I only tore my Achilles. It was 12 weeks before I could start to put weight on my ankle. Sunday I climbed a hill to look for Foxsun because he wasn't with his old cow wife. He was off in the sage brush grazing and when I called him from my hill he couldn't believe his eyes. He hadn't seen me up on that hill for years and he walked right to me not taking his eyes off me once. I was so happy to have been able to walk up that hill and then back down again.

That little hill is near the spot I broke my ankle 23 years ago. May 1985 I was helping Brad and his brother bring the cattle in so the calves could be branded, get their shots and the bull calves turned in to steers. Brad's brother, Milo was driving hay truck to lead the cattle into the corrals. Brad was riding an old mare and I was riding my Morgan, Magic. We had rode through the sage brush looking for the cattle and getting them all bunched up and moving behind the hay truck. We had about 100 pairs then and 4 bulls.

All the cattle had gone through the gate and then four or five calves trotted back out. I thought if I galloped Magic straight towards the feeder I could head them off and get them turned back towards their mothers. I remember I only had one foot in the stirrup, but heck I could ride good without stirrups. I have a memory of falling backwards and thinking 'I can't land good like this'. I landed on my head knocking myself out and Magic stepped on my ankle. Thank goodness I was wearing a helmet like I always do. I remember looking up at Brad and wondering why he looked upset and then wondering why I wasn't wearing my lab coat. I thought I was at work in the local hospital's lab. I was so confused to find myself on the ground all dirty. It was days before I started to remember rounding up the cattle. I never did remember how I fell off my horse. Brad said he never bucked or spooked, he said I just fell off him!

I've had some spectacular falls from horses over the years because I used to ride like a bat out of hell. I've even had a horse flip over and land on top of me while we were jumping against the clock in mud. I have never been hurt before till the day I fell off for no reason! Oh well. I told the PA at the local hospital (where I happened to be on call that night) to make the splint small so I could get my foot back in the stirrup. I try to always look on the funny side of everything. I did in fact ride again within four weeks.

The next morning we drove to Spokane for surgery to screw my ankle back together. The doc said it was crushed like an egg shell. Over time post traumatic arthritis set in till my ankle was very painfully bone on bone and then finally wouldn't bend at all. For the last 4 years walking has been difficult and in fact impossible most of the time, even inside the house.

Lessons learned; always wearing a helmet because I think mine might have saved my life when I landed in those rocks. Also, don't suffer with pain any longer than you have to because life is too short. My doctor, Dr. Craig Barrow in Spokane, gave me back the chance to live the life I love. It was hard to find a doctor willing to do a total ankle replacement on some one under 60 and then we had a fight with our insurance company for them to cover it. Dr. Barrow warned me against ever running again or lifting anything heavy. I told him about Wildairo and he was worried at first but then said if it's something I love then he would never tell me to stop doing it. He called it 'hippotherapy'. He told me to try to keep on even surfaces and to see him again in one years time.
All's well that ends well.

Today was a good day.

What a wonderful day.

A lady from the BLM in Virginia called and told me I was the highest bidder and did I want him. Duh! She asked me when I was going to pick him up and I told her they had a special going on in Burns, free shipping through August!



I then called the BLM down in Burns and told the man who answered the phone I'd successfully bid on a horse from their corrals. He asked me where I was at to see if I qualified for the 400 mile radius free shipping offer. When I told him I was in Odessa he asked me if I was the one they bought another colt to in April and I told him I was. He remembered me and Wildairo and asked me how he was doing. I told him Wildairo was halter broke and leading like a champ, in fact he was so nice I wanted another one. I didn't mention the beer drinking incident. I said maybe Wildairo and #7915 know each other because they were from the same herd, he laughed and said maybe they were cousins. I was so grateful to them yet he thanked me for adopting #7915. He said it might be awhile before they bring my new horse up here because they will wait till they have a load. I'm going to mail his halter and lead rope down there so they can put it on before he leaves.



He sounded like a very nice man. When I adopted Wildairo I couldn't walk and I think they may have been a bit concerned because one of the BLM guys, it might have been him, tried to talk me in to adopting a already gentled mare. I wanted a wild one though because I really wanted to gentle him myself and to know I did it. It's been a really incredible experience and I can't wait to try it again with our new boy. Because what I did before seemed to work so well I'm going to do the same thing again.

To gentle Wildairo I put him in a small pen and sat with him for hours by the gate. I brought him fresh alfalfa and grass I picked in the meadow. I used to play with his lead rope through the gate, giving it little pulls making a fuss of him the whole time. Oh, and the bamboo pole bit. I touched him all over with the bamboo pole and he just loved it. I wonder how it will work with another horse.

Today I went in Wildairo's corral with a grocery sack that had cut up apples and baby carrots in it. He does his head bobbing to beg for treats and we find it very endearing. He put his nose inside the plastic sack look for the treats. I even held the sack up above his head and let the wind fill it like a balloon, while feeding him his treats. He's OK with anything done slowly and in full view but I do notice he startles easier than a domestically raised horse still and will start to swing his back end around to defend himself. He's never done that with me but Brad's startled him a few times. He is a lot better than he was and I don't see this being an on going issue with him. He doesn't trust strangers though so I'm a bit worried how he'll react to the farrier. He needs his feet trimmed. I notice Foxsun trims his own feet. Fox and the girls have to walk about a mile over hard trails to get to where they like to graze, so his feet look good.

I can't believe I'm going to have three horses, wow! A Morgan and two Mustangs. My Morgan's pedigree goes back about 225 years, I knew all about his parents and bought him based on his parents wonderful attributes. All I know about these Mustangs parents is they met and fell in love the old fashioned way.

WE HAVE A HERD OF WILD HORSES

I got him I got him I got him I got him. Too emotional can't write.

Tomorrow is the big day!

The on-line adoption ends tomorrow morning. I am the only bidder on the horse I want. The other bid dropped out. I'm very nervous. The corrals are not finished yet, but will be after this coming weekend, I hope. If I get the horse I have no idea when he will be coming up here. Brad and William keep saying he might not be as nice as Wildairo and he might be crazy as a loon. If Brad says, "You got really lucky with Wildairo" one more time I'm going to flip. He looks nice in the photos. Besides he's one of Wildairo's home boys and Wildairo will keep him in line, right?

Wildairo gave me a huge scare on Saturday. He was making chewing motions and drooling. I went all 'shakey leg'. I asked him what was wrong and he walked up to me and bit the wooden fence board to show me what he'd done. Silly boy had a splinter in his mouth. I ran my fingers inside his lips and gums. I was tempted to put my hand inside his mouth. Anyway he ate his hay and afterwards was OK.

Wildairo has become accustomed to the tractor and backhoe working next to his corral. I think he enjoys the entertainment.

My youngest son, William who's 19 has become very fond of Wildairo and keeps going over to the corrals to talk to him. William has never shown any real interest in horses till now. I bought Foxsun when I was pregnant with him, so he's always had a horse around and thinks Fox is a family member. He's asking lots of questions about horses and scratching and kissing Wildairo. I was afraid of him getting hurt at first because I thought he wouldn't be able to 'read' Wildairo's body language but William seems to have good horse sense because he seems astutely aware of Wildairo's moods. He has also confessed he's been going into Wildairo's corral to play with him when I'm not around. Wildairo does seem to really enjoy William's company.

Brad is oblivious when a horse is threatening him even though he's been around horses all his life. Brad's father had no horse sense either despite using horses for farm work as a youngster. His first job, he told me, was unhitching the team. When my father-in-law was alive and around me and my horses, I was very surprised that he knew diddly squat about horses. No, I take that back; he actually gave some advice one day, he said, "When you hit a horse, don't stand right behind them because that's how I got my wrist broken". Ha ha. He hit a team horse with a 2x4 while standing behind him! He was amazed I could stand behind my horse to brush his tail and not get put into orbit.

Brad's grandfather, BJ Lyons, was a pioneer and homesteaded where we still live when he was only 20 years old. We live in the house he built 100 years ago. BJ was a rancher when there were no fences in this part of the country yet. They would have huge round ups where everyone participated. He would capture his cattle in a place called Parker Horn in Moses Lake which is 50 miles from here!

BJ Lyons was born in 1870 and died in 1967. He wrote a book about his adventures called, 'The Thrills and Spills of a Cowboy Rancher', 1959. I have chosen some parts of his book to copy here as they are of particular interest to wild horse enthusiasts. The following is from the chapter titled 'Migration'.

'When I first came to this region one could plainly hear the clattering of hoofs through the night as large bands of wild horses came galloping down the south-side trails that led to the creek, barely a stones throw from where Odessa now stands, greatly widening the creek channel at that point. These unfamiliar sounds, though not unpleasant, were to me a new phase of life that could be experienced only in the West'.

BJ Lyon's book is so fascinating I'll copy some more from a chapter titled 'Range Riding;

'Cowpunching was rugged work, requiring a tremendous amount of experience and endurance if one hoped to become more than a mere helper. I have known of many instances when a husky young fellows without adequate experience became imbued with the idea that because they were robust and had ridden cayuses that merely "crow hopped" (a mild form of bucking) they could manage the Western bronco. Such performances were amusing to witness but never inspiriting. Among the top-ranking cowboys with whom I was acquainted very few indeed ever acquired more than a mediocre reputation as "bronco buster", regardless of his sturdiness, after reaching the age of maturity. Any man whose work was to conquer an animal that could bite and strike as viciously as any wild beast was, to say the least, engaged in a rather hazardous way of making a living.

Horsemanship has become a lost art in nearly every section of our state, and that noble animal, once the pride of the nation, bids fair to become all but extinct in the West. It is now mainly in the small mountainous area that a few horses are required in connection with the cattle industry, which is still carried on to a limited extent among the foothills of the Cascades.

Many of our native horses which originally ranges over the wild, unsettled regions once owned by Mexico but later ceded to the United States by that country were known as cayuses. These hardy little animals, survivals of an earlier era, are entitled to considerable credit as an active force in the development of the West. No animal was more tenacious of life, nor more inured to the merciless storms that sometimes swept over his range. Richly endowed with a self-reliance which enabled him to care for himself under the most trying conditions, he always emerged in the spring, thin in flesh but undaunted in spirit, while the larger and better bred horses were sometimes unable to survive. Nevertheless, many hateful imputations have been hurled against these heroic little horses, some of which were exemplified in their general behaviour both as work animals on the ranch and as saddle horses.

It must be acknowledged in fairness, however, that the typical cayuse was a natural-born chiseler, dominated by a special type of mentality which achieved the ultimate in deceitfulness. He would play the role of a race horse when one tried to catch him and the slow amble of infirmity when hitched to a load. However, he made a tolerably good pack animal when heavy and gentle enough to be used for that purpose'.

I wish he'd wrote more about the wild horses of this area. A few weeks ago in the local paper in the '100 years ago this week' section, they mentioned the wild horse round up in Moses Lake where they captured 5,000 horses and loaded them on to trains to be shipped back east.

Now here I am bringing the wild horses home.

BLM adoption, Quills and Wildairo

On-line Adoption update:

The BLM site is back up but many of the bidders have disappeared. I'm still there and I'm the only bidder on Wildairo's home boy. I'm sure bidders will return to the site but I hope they don't bid on our boy.

Stupid Airedale update:

I have been pulling quills out of Bobby's body since Sunday. These are the quills that have gone through and I pull them out the other side by the pointy bit. I've pulled several out of the inside of her mouth, near her gums. One in her gum! One beauty had gone clean though her swollen black nose and came out the top. Three quills had gone through the meaty part of her leg. Right now I can one feel that's gone down through her nose, through her lip and is trying to go into the gum. It's at a very difficult angle to pull out. I found some in Monties paws. One had gone between her paws and was getting infected and two were wedged between her toe nail and skin. Ouch!

Wildairo is so eager to learn. I couldn't find the lunge line I haven't used since 1989, so I bought another one. He didn't do anything silly during his first lesson, no kicking out, bolting, rearing. He was trying to do what I wanted but I couldn't do what I wanted because I can't put much weight on my ankle.

Once I saw he was super fine with it I stopped before thing's went south. When my ankle has improved some more and I can lunge him where there's no rocks we'll resume our lunge work.

I have never been around a horse that is so honest. Wildairo is a totally clean slate. He is trying so hard to fit in with his new herd and to please us. When he first came to live with us he was aggressive I had to react quick to stop it and he learned what the word 'no' meant. It's like a light bulb went off in his head. I watched him interact with the other two year old's from his herd, he'd approach some of them with his ears flat back in an aggressive pose and they would move out of his way very quickly. He never approached his best friend like that though. They would put their heads over each others backs and stand quietly together.

When he first came here, out of habit, or maybe he was testing me, he would come at me with his ears flat back. Once he found out that wasn't his place to do that he stopped, but he still didn't like or trust me. After weeks of talking to him, brushing him through the gate and giving him all kinds of tasty treats his attitude changed. I remember when Brad was with him in the corral scratching his back and I went in there too, he looked me right in the eye with his ears forward in happy mode and left Brad, walked right up to me and gently put his head over my shoulder and stood quietly while I put my arms around his neck and snuggled him. I knew then he like me.

It amazes me how such a large strong once wild animal can be so gentle, willing and eager to please. I know and he knows that just one kick could really do me in. I notice now how he perks up and is happy when Brad or William walks up to join us. We're his little herd and he's loved and wanted and he knows it.