LOSING MY NOBLE AND GREAT HORSE!

In my fantasy series, "The Mist Trilogy," I made up a story about the noble and great horses who are chosen to be unicorns when they die.

I now have sent a second "noble and great" horse to Celestia, the unicorn kingdom in the afterlife.

On Sunday, Oct. 15th, my beautiful Kit left this earth life. Kit was an amazing horse that I had the privilege of owning for twenty-two years. He was almost twenty-nine when he died which is old for a thoroughbred. His health was not great. He had already lived through a surgery to remove a tumor around his optic nerve. He also had to have daily medication for cushings. Cushings is a common desease in older horses though it has been diagnosed on rare occasions in younger horses. The symptoms include: 1. Excessive thirst and urination. Normally, a horse drinks 5 to 8 gallons of water a day. A horse with cushings drinks 20 gallons of water a day. 2. His coat gets long and doesn't shed in the summer. 3. He looses muscle tone and weight and his eyes get dull. They often develop a hay belly. 

Your vet can do a blood test to determine if your horse has cushings. It can not be cured but can be managed with medication. I was giving Kit daily Prascend pills by hand. They made a world of difference.

However, even with the best of care that I was giving Kit, I can't stop time.

Kit was the leader of my band of horses at my house. Yet he was always the gentleman. The other horses respected him and deferred to him but he was never unkind to any of them. I called him my "benevolent dictator!"

Kit was the RMDS Dressage Champion at First Level and First Level Freestyle. He was also the cover boy for all my trail guide books titled: "Riding Colorado." I bought him as an untrained six year old and trained him to compete in Dressage and ride the trails in the Colorado mountains. We shared some amazing adventures together.

I am so grateful that I had the privileged of owning and loving this amazing horse.

Here is a beautiful poem that a friend sent to me. Maybe it will make you feel better if you've lost a horse, too.

Don't Cry For The Horses by Brenda Riley-Seymore

Don't cry for the horses that life has set free.
A million white horses, forever to be.
Don't cry for the horses now in God's hands.
As they dance and prance to a heavenly band.

They were ours as a gift, but never to keep
As they close their eyes, forever to sleep.
Their spirits unbound, forever to fly.
A million white horses, against the blue sky.

Look up into Heaven. You will see them above.
The horse we lost, the horse we loved.
Manes and tails flying, they gallop through time.
They were never yours, they were never mine.

Don't cry for the horses, they will be back someday.
When our time has come, they will show us the way.
Do you hear that soft nicker close to your ear?
Don't cry for the horses, love the ones that are here.

If you would like an autographed copy of "The Mist Trilogy," go to the website: 

www.dancinghorsepress.com

The series is also available in print and ebook wherever books are sold.

BEWARE OF LIGHTNING WHEN TRAIL RIDING

Sunday, May 7, 2017, was a very sad day among the horse people in Colorado. At 3.20 in the afternoon, a fellow Rocky Mountain Dressage Society (RMDS) member was riding her wonderful dressage horse on the trails in her neighborhood in Douglas County. A violent thunder and lightning storm suddenly blew in. As lightning will do, it struck a tree approximately fifteen feet away from the 37 year old woman.

The charge traveled through the ground, up through the horse's legs and into the rider, killing both of them. A fifteen year old girl riding with her was severely injured and is in the hospital. This breaks my heart.

Having spent many days out on trails, I have encountered far too many lightning storms. They are especially common in the late afternoons, though usually later in the summer. Such a violent storm is not that common in Colorado in the spring.

In my third trail guide book, Riding Colorado-Day AND Overnight Trips with Your Horse, I included an article about lightning. I am repeating it here:

LIGHTNING AND TRAIL RIDERS

By: Steve Deitemeyer, Consulting Forester

Wildland Resources

(Excerpt used with permission from the author)

Horseback groups, large or small, or individual horsemen need to understand and anticipate the risks of thunderstorms and lightning and have some practiced and predetermined plan of action.  Mountain weather records in the west provide us a clear understanding about the high risk and predictability of afternoon thunderstorms with lightning. People and stock need to be down off of high mountains and ridges by noon or before to help avoid risk of death or injury by lightning.  Proper planning and preparation is paramount to protecting people, property and prosperity.

So, here is a set of recommendations:

· Plan and layout the timing of the trip and selection of trails to avoid high peaks, mountains and ridges in the afternoon. Think about having an alternate route available. Organized rides should have a formally established “Lightning Safety Policy” as a part of the overall “Safety Plan”.

· Pay attention to the weather.  Mature storms generate lightning and typically include a sudden reversal of wind direction, a noticeable rise in wind speed, and a sharp drop in temperature.  Buy a weather radio and/or a lightning detector and assign a person to monitor NOAA weather radio broadcasts, which are updated hourly.  Adjust the ride as necessary based on morning reports and predictions, but monitor the reports hourly for any changes.

· Be prepared to make some conservative decisions and suspend activities and riding when you hear thunder.  Measuring lightning’s distance is easy.  The “flash/bang” (F/B) monitoring technique is that for every five second count after you see the lightning and then hear the thunder, the storm is one mile away.  For example, an F/B count of 10 equals 2 miles, an F/B of 20 equals 4 miles, etc.  Do not resume outdoor activities until about 30 minutes have passed from the last observable thunder or lightning.

· Do not use electrical equipment. Stay away from fences, railroad tracks and any tall equipment or structures.

· Get away from water tanks, ponds, streams, lakes, and avoid damp or wet ground.

· Get off of your horse, tie up (but not under the tallest trees,) get away from stock and avoid grouping people together. Think about getting at least 15 feet apart and staying twice the height of the tree away from the tree.

· Use your slicker to stay dry, and do not stand under the branches of tall trees.  Avoid tall objects like lone trees. Find a ditch, trench or other low ground. Shelter may be found in clumps of shrubs or trees of shorter more uniform height. Avoid open country, but if in open country, make yourself as small a target as possible.

· Advise your group members that if they feel an electrical charge, if their hair stands on end, or their skin tingles, a lightning strike may be imminent. Squat in a baseball catcher’s stance, kneeling, on your toes with heels off the ground, feet as close together as possible, arms crossed and resting on top of thighs. This technique lowers your profile and minimizes contact with the ground. Cover your ears with your hands to avoid damage and potential hearing loss.   This is opposed to sitting high on a wet horse and saddle with four widely placed steel-shod hoofs on wet ground that would maximize the opportunity to “close the switch” and complete the circuit.

First Aid is extremely important in lightning strike cases as injuries include electrical shock and burns, including entry and exit wounds.  These individuals carry no electrical charge after exposure to lightning and can be touched safely.  Victims of a lightning strike may suffer respiratory and/or cardiac arrest.  Therefore, administer CPR immediately if needed and first aid, as required.

An individual in full-cardiac arrest is a medical emergency and must be transported to an advanced life-support medical facility as quickly as possible.  If there are multiple strike victims, render emergency medical treatment first to individuals who are unresponsive, and then next to those with vital signs who exhibit the most life threatening   injuries.

I hope you will have many wonderful and SAFE trail rides!

MY BLIND HORSE-HE WILL BE ABLE TO SEE AGAIN WHEN HE BECOMES A UNICORN!

Kit in the Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO

Kit at Fox Run Regional park in El Paso County, Colorado

My precious thoroughbred, Kit, is now 24 years old. I found him in a pasture in northern Colorado as a barely trained six year old. I began training him in dressage and on trails. I competed with him through 2nd level in dressage and he was the RMDS champion twice before I retired him from competition and just used him as my main trail horse. He is the cover boy of all three of my "Riding Colorado" trail guide books. I love this horse with all my heart.

On Halloween, 2014, I was on a trail ride with my friends and Kit ran into the horse in front of me. "Weird," I thought. Then,  on another ride last fall, he ran into a tree. "Weird," I thought. Then on the trail ride at Fox Run pictured above, I was standing beside him and he ran right over me! I knew something was very wrong. I started swinging my hand toward his left eye and he didn't flinch or even blink. I called my vet, Dr. Marc McCall and told him I thought Kit had lost his vision in his left eye. Dr. McCall said it was probably just a cataract and he could remove it, making his as good as new.

When Dr. McCall checked him, he discovered that it wasn't a cataract, that it was optic nerve damage and that there was nothing we could do. Kit would be blind in that eye for the rest of his life. I was heartbroken for him.

So, I started re-training Kit to get used to half a world. At first, he appeared to be super sensitive to sound and they would spook him, but now he seems to be adjusting and coping much better. I ride him knowing I have to be his left eye. I have been riding him with a slight flexion to the left in order to center his right eye more. When I approach him from the left (the "near side" where we equestrians do most of our work) I make sure I talk to him so as not to startle him.

Kit, like all of us, needs to be allowed to accomplish all that he can. None of us is perfect so we just do our best with what we have.

I found this youtube video of a completely blind dressage horse being competed at 2nd level dressage. The horse is in Oregon, my old home state.
Click here to watch it:
https://youtu.be/NS0TqVafEeI

Horses are healers for people but people can also be healers for horses!

Even Unicorn Riders can get old!

Well dear readers, I just had my 60th birthday. I tried to forget about it but my wonderful family and friends in Oregon and Colorado didn't let me. One of them, the photographer for my Trail Guide books, Lynn Johnson, sent me this poem.

When I am an Old Horsewoman


When I am an old horsewoman
I shall wear turquoise and diamonds,
And a straw hat that doesn’t suit me
And I shall spend my social security on
(horse feed) and carrots,
And sit in my alleyway of my barn
And listen to my horses breathe.

I will sneak out in the middle of a summer night
And ride the old bay gelding,
Across the moonstruck meadow
If my old bones will allow
And when people come to call, I will smile and nod
As I walk past the gardens to the barn
and show instead the flowers growing
inside stalls fresh-lined with straw.

I will shovel and sweat and wear hay in my hair
as if it were a jewel
And I will be an embarrassment to all
Who will not yet have found the peace in being free
to have a horse as a best friend
A friend who waits at midnight hour
With muzzle and nicker and patient eyes
For the kind of woman I will be
When I am old.

-By Patty Barnhart
Originally published in The Arabian Horse World magazine in l992



MEET MY FUTURE UNICORNS:

In my first post on October 14, 2010, I told you about my very first horse, Tai, who I am sure is a unicorn by now. As I write this new post, sitting in my tan breeches with hay in my hair, I want to tell you about the three horses that fill my barn and my heart.

My littlest horse is Hardy, a 14 hand 1/2 Welch pony, 1/4 thoroughbred and 1/4 Arabian. He got the best of each breed. I got him when he was 2 and 1/2 and started training him. He is now 16. He is the smartest horse ever and an absolute blast to ride. He can jump the moon and is one of those "Point and Jump" horses that picks his position for the jumps perfectly. I sometimes feel guilty that I have him instead of some 12 year old that could be taking him to the national pony championships...but I love him so much!

This is a picture of my biggest horse, Jazz just shortly after I bought him as a four year old from American Sport Horses in Utah. He is much more developed now as he is 10 and doing great in his dressage training. Yes, he is the star of Behind The Mist! He is a Hanoverian and has been a fabulous horse. He was the 2009 Rocky Mountain Dressage Society 1st Level Adult Amature Champion and the 2010 Rocky Mountain Dressage Society 2nd Level Adult Amature Champion as well as the 2010 1st Level Freestyle Horse of the Year. He is so loving and tries so hard to please me. If he could, he would just curl up on my lap and sleep! I love him, too.


This is Kit on top of Kenosha Pass in Colorado. If you read Behind The Mist carefully, you will remember that Kit in the book was an Appaloosa mare. Obviously, this handsome bay thoroughbred is NOT an appaloosa mare! But that is part of writing a fantasy horse story, I can make up anything I want! Anyway, Kit is my oldest horse. He just turned 20. I have had him since he was 6 and trained him in Dressage up through level 2. He was the 2001 RMDS 1st level champion, the 2003 1st level freestyle champion and the 2005 2nd level freestyle reserve champion. He loves me deeply...something I found out when I sold him. It only lasted 5 months. He was so unhappy that he was misbehaving and lost so much weight that he looked like a rescue horse. I bought him back and promised him that I would never sell him again. I even had to move to a place where I could have three horses so we would have room for him. He is the cover horse on both of my Trail Guide books: Riding Colorado and Riding Colorado II.

Send me the story of your future unicorn! Write to me at:

mjevansbtm@gmail.com

or on the Behind The Mist facebook page