Writing a Novel ... About a Horse ... Of Course

In March of 2001, I was a few months into a career move that I honestly was not happy with.   I decided to do a couple of things with my life:

1) I had to find a way out of the environmental engineering firm that I had moved to.
2) Until I solved problem 1, I needed to find a way to relieve the stress that I had with problem 1.

I decided to start doing something utterly impossible. No, not like eating asparagus, broccoli or 100 year old eggnog (No Fear Factor for me).   Actually, I decided to write a novel and it had to be about the things that I knew a little about ... say ... baseball, horses and history. I know ... it would been easier to write a novel about ballet, the World Wrestling Foundation and 100 year old eggnog.   

I told myself that I'd write a half page at a time, as I could find the moments.  I actually got up to about 30 pages or so in June of 2001.   However, that month,  I left the environmental engineering firm to go back to the bank that I'd worked at before and the writing stopped, because suddenly I once again had a purpose.

Then came the day that changed the view of every human on the planet who thought they had purpose. I knew a couple people who died on September 11th ... not people who I'd met face to face, but a couple of distant voices on the other end of the phone that I conversed with, did business with, joked and laughed with.

The two voices had names, lives, histories, mothers, fathers, homes, cars, pets, spouses ... families, dreams and purpose ... and everything that I had...except now... all of that was gone for them, their families and friends... even for my distant voices on the phone  

That was the day that I decided that I needed to expand my purpose.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still incredibly happy at the bank and will be until I retire in 20 years.  However, I just needed more ... another purpose. 

On September 12, 2001, I once again put my two hands on my keyboard and started typing as I had time.  I wrote a half page here and a half page there for ... 10 long years.  It was a long decade of learning, writing, editing, copyrighting, query letters, rejection, rejection, rejection, self publishing on Amazon.com and then ... poof.... Frequent Flyer

After all of that, who knows if my novel is any good?  I still find things that probably should change and even odd typos after reading it umpteen times (it's really hard to proof your own writing).  However, I like the book a lot.  It was fun, I learned a lot, achieved my goal and ... yes ... expanded my purpose.

The Frozen Double Dog Dare

It was negative eight degrees below zero yesterday morning before windchill and the horse's water buckets were frozen solid. While it wasn't quite as cold the day before ... it was cold enough to catch Bobbie off guard.

Anybody whose grown up in cold climates has done what he did. It's a rite of passage of sorts for those who were plucked from the womb with ice tongs. You only know what I speak of if you were toddlers with frozen mittens, icy scarves and feet so cold they felt like walking on pin cushions.

We recently heard on the morning news of unfortunate waif who had to have emergency services release him from his big brother's similar double dog dare.

For those who view snow to be as mythical as leprechauns, you may want to put some more sun screen on and roll over so you don't get sun burned on this January day... for what I'm about to tell you will make your jelly fish sting burn a little less. Here goes...

If one sticks ones tongue to any metal object (flag pole, chain link fence, car door or your coats zipper), ones tongue will stick to and occasionally be trapped by said object until it is released by warmth (hot water and global warming typically work best).

Until the other day, I thought humans were the only ones who were bold enough to attempt the double dog dare. However, with the frigid temperature, Bobbie thought he'd try licking the frozen metal snap of the chain that holds his pasture gate shut. He, as we all are, was complete caught of guard by the fact that the tongue is 80% water. Who knew?

In order to free himself ... he almost pulled the gate off the post with his super equine tongue. Of course he has little hope to out do those that tow tractor trailers with their tongues in the Guinness Book of World Records (although he's in training now).

I think it hurt the poor pony a lot as he was smacking his freeze dried taste buds for a good five minutes or so. All I could say to my four-legged friend was, "Been there, done that."

The Best Horse Movies Ever

On these wild, cold and snowy Syracuse nights (we had a 10 below windchill this morning), there's nothing better than hunkering in with a bowl of hot popcorn, a warm blanket and a GREAT movie. OK... the hunkering comes a little after we hammer on frozen water buckets for an hour. The list below clearly represents the best horse movies ever (in my humble and slightly frostbitten opinion). Of course, there is just the "smidgen" (not a word I use everyday) of a chance that you may disagree.

10) Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (Awesome!)

9) Into the West (Most obscure movie on the list -- This is a movie you should see)

8) The Black Stallion (Great)

7) Hidalgo (What a story!)

6) Secretariat (Haven't seen it yet ... heard it was good... Yes... I'm cheating on this one)

5) Black Beauty (A classic)

4) Justin Morgan Had a Horse (On the Wonderful World of Disney when I was 7 ... it counts)

3) The Horse Whisperer (A chick flick with horses)

2) National Velvet (A classic)

1) Seabiscut (Great Movie... Great Book ... Great Horse)

A Bread Crazy German in America

We've had more pounding snow this week ... measured with yard sticks not rulers.

It normally takes me 45 minutes for my drive home from work each night. This week, as a result of the snow, I had two nightly drives of 1.5 hours and one that took close to 2 hours. That night I'd been gazing at tail lights and snow flakes for two hours which can be hypnotizing. For part of the drive I was thinking back on the blogs I'd been reading recently.

I remembered reading "A Horse Crazy American in Germany". She noted that when moving her horse to Germany, her horse was going to have to get accustomed to eating bread. Apparently, it's been common for centuries to feed horses bread in Germany.

One of our 5 horses is a mammoth 18-2 Hanoverian named Monte who was actually born in Germany. We never actually met his owner ... but he was shipped with a his passport (he has one ... I don't), a box of raisins and a note that said "he likes raisins". So, he gets raisins. He flips out when he gets the box, acting like a goof swinging his head and tongue around like he's experiencing extreme equine ecstasy.

Remembering the blog, I decided to give him half a slice of bread ... same reaction ... like he was remembering his youthful days frolicking with some Fraulein Phillie in Frankfurt. He loved the bread. However, his boorish American siblings were not as crazed about the bread.

Note: if you're going to try bread with your horses ... you may want to Google "feeding horses bread" No, not everyone in the world is convinced bread is a good idea.

That being said, I think perhaps I'll try Monte with some raisin bread. I'll probably put the poor guy into a coma. I just Googled "feeding horses raisins." See above disclaimer and substitute "raisins" for "bread".

We Live in a Giant Snow Ball

Just off the east end of Lake Ontario, Syracuse New York (the area we live and survive in) annually averages 121 inches of snow. The last few sadistic winters have been closer to 150 or 200.

The recent snows you may have heard about on the national news (we don't brag about much but snow) helped push us to almost 50 inches through December 10th of this year.

My son had 2 snow days off from school and the horses stayed warm inside their cozy stalls for 3 straight days. This of course make stall cleaning more challenging ... but at least we don't have to worry about our wimpy thoroughbreds freaking out because a couple of flakes hit their muzzles just wrong or the wind messed their manes up. A bunch of divas those thoroughbreds are ... always asking for limos, fruit trays and bottled imported room temperature water.

When it starts snowing and blowing, we can't get to our pastures the normal and easy way because we have an eight foot snow drift that drops right in the middle of the desired path. So, when the snow is not blowing sideways, for winter turnout we have to walk the long way around and normally take down some rails to get the horses in. Yesterday, I built a gate to eliminate the rail removal portion of the process. I talk more about our winter snow struggles in my February 2010 post "Equine Snow Angel":

http://bobbienosocks.blogspot.com/2010/02/equine-snow-angel.html

When I went into our shed to get some gate materials, I scared the walnuts out of a squirrel who in turn scared the crap out of me. Apparently, he'd be nesting in the shed for the winter ... the whole thing led me to have an odd dream last night about a talking squirrel, with a trash mouth and anger issues.

Anyway ... we thankfully have a little warm up today. The saying in Syracuse is ... If you don't like the weather ... just wait a couple of hours. There's a big ice storm coming.

Frigid Night Checks

It's 25 degrees and snowing on our tiny chunk of the planet tonight.

Part of my self imposed function with the horses are the nightly checks. On summer nights I can walk to the barn in 5 minutes in shorts and flip flops. In the winter, it may take 5 minutes alone just to find my gloves. Eventually the 25 degree nights become 15 degree nights. Fifteen degrees soon yields to 5 degrees which becomes negative 5 ... with a windchill of 35 below zero.

Night checks themselves are simple enough for me. I just check the water (sometimes needing to break the water with a hammer), adjust the blankets (sometimes needing to fix the buckles with a hammer), drop each horse a mint or carrot and make sure that no horse is suffering from colic, casting or bed wetting (equine bed wetting, of course, is a common incurable affliction).

Our whole family actually loves snow ... crazy yes... but we love skiing and snowboarding as much as any family. Our kids, growing up, would even superstitiously wear their pajamas inside out magically guaranteeing a school snow day.

However, opening our back door on a snowy and windy winter night for the long walk to the barn is like standing at the end of snow covered dock peering into an icy lake wearing only a bathing cap and a smile. Jump ... the waters fine.

Gotta find my gloves!

Ode (or Odor) to Stall Cleaning

There's no way around it.
The poop just keeps coming.
You clean stalls every day.
While horses clean their plumbing.

No shavings aren't that cheap
You shake and toss and sift
Your backs about to break
What the heck was that I sniffed.

This ain't no perfume factory
The urine reeks and ranks
What did that horse drink
A thousand water tanks?

It's like any of life's struggles
Where should I begin
This stalls a wicked mess
There's no way I'll ever win

But persistence wins the day
Each poop I find and pick
The stall is finally clean
And I avoided getting sick

Tomorrow starts anew
The crap will drop and roll
I plead to my horse Friends
Just use a Toilet Bowl

Icy Horse Halloween

Halloween played a cool little trick today with some icy snow, not so gently falling from the heavens. Clearly there must have been a cold front moving through heaven. I picture angels bundled like Green Bay Packer fans with icicles dangling from their wings and frost on the halos (or probably on their cheese heads at game time).

Today the horses are all bundled in blankets. They wanted to go out regardless and are now munching on freshly chilled grass in the pasture. "Frost on the Pumpkins" is a phrase you hear around here a lot and we've been using it this year since mid-September.

As I took a wheel barrow of manure out to dump, my fingers burned from the cold and I was quickly reminded that I needed to get new barn gloves. My old ones were thrown out on a warm day last spring. "I'll get new gloves", I can remember announcing to the world as if I were moving from the Cavaliers to the Miami Heat. Of course 90 degree days in the summer aren't always the best for marketers of winter apparel. They do seem to be good marketer's of the Miami Heat.

You know you live in Central New York, when parents annually jam snowsuits under their kids spiderman and princess costumes. Yes, they'll be a lot of overstuffed miniature ghosts prowling for candy tonight.

Time to throw another coal in the fire. Time to defrost the candy.

The Equine Snow Angel

Winters in Central New York are tough ... it's like jumping into any icy river just walking out the back door some days. With a monstrous lake effect snow machine (off Lake Ontario), on average, Syracuse NY gets dumped on with over 115 inches of snow every year, more than any other larger city in the United States. The towns up here have the tools, plows and salt to keep the roads clear, although not always with laser guided precision.

The plows sadistically knocked our fragile mail box off it's helpless post four times last month. Funny how nobody at Home Depot questions when I buy three mail boxes at a time, knowing that the average life of a rural mail box is shorter than that of a dung beetle in sub zero weather.

If you think driving and living in the snow is bad, try taking care of five horses in the winter. With layers of thick blankets, the horses still do like to stretch their stiff legs all winter long out side, which makes for brutal days of blanket changing, fighting sub zero wind chills and shoveling snow paths to the barn and pastures.

So, while I'm at work enduring the harshness of fluorescent lighting, ringing phones and the heat that just always to seems to be a degree or two off. My sainted snow angel wife is bundling with layers of long underwear, ski pants and fleece like Sir Edmund Hilary on Mt. Everest, to go out into cold. With frequent six foot snow drift blocking the way to pasture, she shovels paths to fields to get our pampered equine snow mobiles out for a few hours of snow play. Of course, there's no grass in the winter, so, she lugs hay on the kids plastic red sleds to our tundra-like pastures.

The cold actually changes the dynamic of stall cleaning. On day's like today when it's 10 degrees out (yes Fahrenheit), the horse poop freezes in the barn within minutes of it dropping from it's heated maker. So, at least, the horses can't grind it into the shavings. The snow's too freaking deep to dump the manure too far from the barn, so it gets dumped in a big pile not too far from the huge front doors. Of course, in the spring, it gets moved to another pile, closer to our unsuspecting neighbors who can't quite figure out why the damn flies are so bad in the hot summer.

Yet, even with the cold and snow, it looks absolutely amazing outside with the happy horses eating hay on the white snow covered field. As steam exhales from their muzzles,icicles dangle from their whiskers like these are mystical polar horses from arctic circle. They roll and dance in the snow like school children ecstatic with yet another snow day off from school.

My wife is a saint! A cold saint ... but a saint none-the-less -- a virtual equine snow angel.