Even in Austrailia

One of my favorite kids stories has always been Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. This week I have found myself appreciating that book even more than normal. Especially the part where Alexander decides the only way to deal with his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, is to move to Australia. I'm right there with him. My bags are packed.

Its actually been a whole bad week, not just one day. I'm coming up on three months running the ranch by myself since Dave had to move back to Chicago for a job. We've only been able to bring him home once in that time. I knew running a remote horse ranch by myself would be challenging - especially given the health problems I've been battling again. But I set myself up to meeting this challenge and I have met it well. I've kept the ranch running, the animals healthy and the business thriving. I like challenges. And I don't mind fighting tooth and nail to hold onto the life I want if I have to.

But its taken a lot of fighting. We are still recovering from the damage done by a storm that hit last fall. We couldn't make any real progress until the snow melted and we could see the extent of the problems. And they are extensive. I've had to replace fencing in almost every pasture, removed trees and debris and get very creative about how to contain 20+ horses while we work to fix the damage.

When spring finally got here, I thought moving out of this record snow year would see things ease up a bit. But instead of relenting, things got harder. Breeding season started and I had five mares show up at once. Normally this isn't a problem, but this year, with so many pastures out of commission, and mud season making other pastures highly unpleasant, its taken a daily juggling act to make sure that all the horses have safe, secure places to stay, and still get a little room to run. Then three of the mares came into heat at once (two for Ryder, once for Chance) and all of them stayed in for 8 days. So for 8 days I have been breeding three mares per day (mostly in the pouring rain) as well as keeping up with repairs, moving the fencing along, careing for the horses and doing everything else I do around here in the spring.

By the time the last of these three mares went out of heat, I was exhausted. I hoped to rest a bit, as my next mares aren't due to come in for at least another week. Another week and Dave comes home for his second visit. He'll stay 12 days. And the day after he gets here, Karen and Aud come out. They are as good at running this ranch as I am and they are staying for 20 days this year. So I have had my eye set on just needing to get through one more week and then I would have reinforcements. But boy, the week this has been. I've got three more days to go before Dave gets here and I am about ready to join Alexander and move to Australia.

First its been raining for two weeks straight. Pouring rain for about 6 days in a row, then raining on and off - mostly on. As usual, spring rain brings mud and that makes it a challenge just to walk into many of these pastures, much less bring feed to everyone and keep everyone healthy and semi-dry. So my week of rest is turning into a challenge, just getting the normal daily chores done.

Then I was checking a mare against the stallion and the stallion reared up and landed on my foot. So, while I don't think anything is broken, it still hurts a great deal to walk, even 5 days later. This has not made things any easier, as most of my job does, in fact, involve some measure of walking.

And, of course, there is the inevitable day when I was exhausted, it was pouring rain and I took some shortcuts while breeding one of my mares (funny how I always remember to follow all the appropriate procedures with other people's mares, but when I am working with horses I know well, it is easy to forget all the steps). For probably the first time in my breeding career I didn't put on my helmet (the mare and stallion were both easy breeders and I just didn't expect any trouble). And as I was walking the stallion to the mare, I forgot the number one rule of breeding - never take the stallion for granted. This particular stallion is young and amiable (this is his first breeding season) and I've raised him from a colt. One of the easiest stallions I've ever bred. So, being tired anyway, I didn't pay attention to him as he followed along behind me. At least, not until I realized that he had gotten so happy to see the mare he had reared up and was coming down on top of me.

Both his hooves hit me in the head and the rest of his body landed on me. I rolled out from under him and I actually knew right away that I wasn't hurt. He clearly didn't mean to hurt me and had pulled his punches when he realized I was there. Came down remarkably gently and stood there looking ashamed with his head hanging. I didn't even have a lump on my head or much of a lasting head ache. But it was a rather alarming experience which only served to point out to me that I was a lot less alert than I normally let myself become around the horses.

Then, later that day one of my yearlings was bitten by a tick with some nasty venom in him and we spent most of the evening working to pull him through the effects of that. I worked with him for two days, making sure he was recovering and in a pasture that was safe. And I worried about him a lot. I finally let him out Friday afternoon to join his buddies in the big pasture. He needed to get some exercise if he was to build his damaged muscles back up. But he got himself stuck on the wrong side of a creek and in trying to get back, fell into a small ditch. I spent about 2 hours working on getting him up, but he was trapped against the hillside and couldn't seem to get his balance right enough to do it.

I finally resorted to the one thing I knew would motivate him more than anything else. I went and got his pasture-mates and led them all to him. They came rushing over and Chance nudged him, pulled on his halter and did everything he could to get him up. But that didn't work any better than my ministrations (as I had expected it wouldn't). So then I led his pasture-mates away.

Thats about the biggest motivation you can give a horse. Especially a young one. He watched his buddies leaving him and fought with everything he had. Finally pulled himself up and trotted after us. I turned to go to him, intending to lead him quickly back to his safe little pen, when the rest of the horses caught sight of him. They were so excited to see him up, they all rushed at him, racing around him in a big explosion of stud-colt excitement. Again, not paying nearly the attention I would normally pay in the presence of so many young stallions, I did not process my danger quickly enough to get out of there. I found myself in the midst of the whole rioting herd as a couple of the two-year-old stallions suddenly decided to lunge at each-other. These guys are all great friends, but as stud colts, their play is very physical. And they have moments of sudden anger at each-other which results in one of them them challenging another and can get rather rough. Or at least, it can if you are standing in between them.

One of the young stallions lunged at the other and hit me, hard, in the side of the head. He threw me about 10 feet, through the midst of the whole wild heard as they reared and jumped and basically raced around their newly returned friend. I rolled out from under the crowd and got myself away, then scattered them in order to get them all calmed down.

He hit me pretty hard and I was covered in mud and still in the back pasture. It took me about 30 minutes to get my youngster to his pen and make sure he was safe and sound, then get myself up to the house to assess the damage. Eventually decided I needed to get to a hospital to get checked out. My sister drove up from Missoula and picked me up, since I didn't think I ought to drive.

The side of my head was pretty swollen and painful to the touch, but the doctor was pretty sure it was just surface damage. Nothing serious. Still, I was in the hospital until 1am and then had to be woken up every two hours for the rest of the night to check for signs of a problem. I stayed at my sister's and she drove me home today. I got home about five o'clock.

I was really glad to get back to the ranch and hoped to tuck myself into my bed and get some rest. But I checked on the horses first, and discovered that Echo's milk had turned white. There was a good chance she could birth tonight. This is two weeks early and she usually goes right on time and with everything else going on right now, I had not gotten my birthing supplies ready, didn't have a single stall that was not under water and hadn't even implanted the foal alert monitor in her yet. So I set about doing all that with an aching head in the middle of one of the heavies rain storms I have seen since moving out here.

I picked a stall and dug drainage around it to get the water out. Moved some straw into it and made a nice bed. Did a minor surgical procedure to implant the foal alarm in echo's vulva and then tucked her into the stall. Managed to get soaked to the bone and covered in mud, but I got it done and went inside to bed. Or I had hoped to go to bed. Actually, I laid there for two hours expecting the foal alarm to go off at any moment, until I finally realized that I wasn't going to be able to relax enough to sleep. Then I got up to do some work on my computer. Its 2:30 in the morning and I am thinking about trying to sleep again.

I've got three days before I get some help in here - three more days of running this ranch on my own before Dave comes home and Karen and Aud are here. Then I'll have folks around through most of the summer, so I ought to have plenty of help. All I have to do is get to Thursday. But there have been a number of times this week when I have thought that Thursday is much too far away. Those last three days seem like an awful lot to ask.

In the book about Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, he eventually decides that everybody has bad days, no matter where they are, and it wont do any good to run away to Australia. But I don't know. At this point I think I might give it a try.