Polopony: the Horse that made me a Horsegirl.

Topps, in a very unattractive, but sensible winter trace clip.

For better or worse, I am a horse girl for life.

It’s all Topps fault. He was a 15.1 bay running Quarter who was originally supposed to be a very fancy polo pony for high goal polo. (For someone else, obviously. I develop terrible hand-eye coordination every time someone hands me a polo mallet.)

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My brother and I were kids when were lucky enough to start riding. The drive to Windy Hill Farms was the highlight of my week. Everything was possible; we were heading to ride! My stomach would flutter as we ran into the main aisle to see which of the patient school horses we had been assigned to get ready and ride.

I hoped it be Tiny or Tim, the two almost identical chestnut ponies with opposite personalities. I loved them both. I usually got one of them; they were small and so was I.

It was heaven.

Eventually we half-leased horses during the winter. Tim was mine for three months!

Obviously, by then our fate was sealed. Spoiler alert: my brother and I both still have too many horses.

When we discussed actually owning a horse, my father sat me down and told me repeatedly that a horse was not a pet. It was a horse. NOT A PET. I nodded my head like I believed him.

Hell, I’d have agreed with almost anything as long as I could have a horse of my own.

I was 12 when Topps came into my life. For some reason that was his barn name, but his ‘real’ name was Polopony (pronounced, Pa-la-pony like from the “Honeymooners” show. Google it.).

Shortly after Topps joined the family. I was about 12 and had a lot of hair.

We bought Topps from the Giant Valley Farm, a polo barn that also took in a few boarders. I kept him there and it quickly became my second home.

Topps in front of the cow barn for some reason.

The first thing I learned when I went out to try him, was that he had arrived there a few years earlier, shipped from out west loose (!!!!) on a train car with a dozen or so other future polo ponies. He had cost by the polo folks $5000, an astronomical sum in the late ‘60s. He was supposed to be great.

That plan went south during his training when someone, (first referred to as ‘a moron,’ which as we aged became ‘that stupid bastard’) hit a beer can with a polo mallet on the way to the stick and ball field.

The noise either scared Topps or just pissed him off. Both are possible, but the end result was that he wouldn’t tolerate anyone carrying a polo mallet, stick or whip on him. Ever.

Thus ended his polo career.

Typical of most polo ponies, Topps had excellent ground manners. That was ideal for a kid, especially a vertically challenged one like me. I had to fling my saddle up onto his back and straighten it and the saddle pad out after it (hopefully) landed on his back. He would stand like a statue with an exasperated look on his face while I maneuvered his tack.

We didn’t have mounting blocks, so it was also a struggle for me to get into the saddle. Most of the time Topps would stand quietly while I hopped around hoping to get onboard, but occasionally he’d bite my rear to speed the process along. I have to admit, it worked.

For all of that, Topps was a completely inappropriate riding horse for a beginner, which, no matter how many lessons I had taken on school horses, was what I was. He was sensitive, had a soft mouth and was super comfortable. But he was also almost as green as me.

He learned to jump by someone foxhunting him. That meant he thought jumping was his cue to take control and run like hell to every jump. Not ideal for a novice.

After years of lessons, we both figured out a better way to ride. When I had actually learned what to do, he was a hoot to hunt.

We had to trailer to lessons and I needed so much help. My trainers still have that look of exasperation.

He also had strong opinions. Really strong.

We should have figured that out when we heard his origin story.

Topps would have been a spectacular polo pony. He was fast, agile and could stop and turn on a dime. But when the polo mallet connected with a can, his fate changed. A life in polo was not going to happen, and that was that.

The polo folk never completely gave up on him. Every so often someone would pass hand me a mallet just to see what would happen.

What happened – every time – was that Topps would bolt and then spin and rear until I dropped the mallet or fell off, whichever came first.

Topps might have been my dream horse, but he was their White Whale. The one that got away.

Getting what he wanted was Topps’ specialty. The horses at Giant Valley were turned out all day in the winter, and all night in the summer. When I rode after school I’d have to go into the 10 acre field he shared with five or six other horses to catch him.

It sounds simple. It was not.

He would leisurely walk away from me and maneuver himself behind the one horse that would kick. After a half an hour or so he’d usually let me catch him. The grain someone finally told me to bring, helped.

But more than once he didn’t feel like being ridden and would sashay into the pond and swim out to the little island. Where he would just look at me.

I swear he was laughing as I plopped to the ground and cried in frustration.

The smart thing to do would have been to sell him and get something more beginner friendly. However, I loved him beyond reason, and I’m very stubborn. (I know, hard to believe). I also complicated things by getting very sick.

My parents simply didn’t have the bandwidth to keep me alive and get rid of the one thing that kept me going. The first place I’d go after the hospital, was to see Topps. Sometimes before we even went home.

Eventually I did learn to ride him. It was never a perfect partnership, but we were okay and I adored him.

One year I was lucky enough to take him to a fancy riding camp. Two lessons a day with good instructors, horsemanship classes and camp shows every weekend. I was in heaven.

Topps hated it.

He was used to spending 12 hours a day in turn-out. At camp, he was stuck in a stall except when I was riding or the few hours a day he was in a turn-out.

Not surprisingly, he objected and regularly broke out of his stall. Literally. If I walked him by a horse van with a ramp down, he would load himself. He wanted to go home.

Topps and I showing. I should have been mortified by those braids, but I was too ignorant to know better. Thank goodness.

We were asked to leave after only a few weeks. Not surprising.

A few years later we went to Pony Club camp. Topps approved of this. When we weren’t riding, he was turned out with the other campers’ horses in the huge cross country field.

Topps and me at Pony Club camp. He was way readier to do the cross-country than I was.

All of the horses’ grain and hay was stored in a barn in the field. One night Topps figured out how to get into the barn. In the morning we discovered him locked inside, with every grain bag ripped open, and scattered around.

He was very pleased with himself. The Pony Club people running the camp were not.

My current horses would all have died from colic or had some expensive veterinary problem. Topps was fine, if a little fatter.

I was blessed with the luck of the ignorant in my first years as a horse owner. Days into our partnership Topps foundered. Laminitis is a hoof disease that can be disastrous and is often fatal. At the time, the only treatments were anti-inflammatories and keeping the feet cold.

(Laminitis what eventually killed the Champion racehorse Charismatic. Thanks to him and his owners, there are now treatments that can help.)

Topps spent weeks with each front foot in a separate bucket filled with ice water. I left him loose while I sat nearby cleaning tack. Usually he fell asleep. When he could walk a little bit, we hobbled to a nearby stream and he stood patiently in it for hours.

He got better. I doubt this same result would occur today. Obviously at the time I had the luck of the ignorant.

That was proved the first week I owned him when he somehow got tangled in wire and nearly de-gloved both back legs. The polo people suggested cleaning his legs, covering them with Furicin and ridind. So I did.

He healed with barely a scar. My current horses would be have to be retired.

Topps even went to college with me, and my sister-in-law, (then roommate), rode him.

He was in his mid-20s when a pasture mate took him down. An overnight spat and kick landed, and Topps leg was fractured.

The polo guys wouldn’t let me be there when he was put down, they said it would too traumatic. They were right. They also gave Topps the honor of being buried on the property.

When I went out that night, the barn owner, who was by then in his 80s, greeted me with tears in his eyes and told me, “That damn Topps. He cost me $5000. He was the best damn horse.”

He was. And he made me a horse girl.

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Holiday Lights. I’m In.

I’ve always wanted an inflatable, but the dogs would pop it. Immediately.

Because we were Jewish, and in olden days there was no such thing as a Hanukkah Bush, my family never had a tree during the holidays. We used to drive all over our area of Southern Connecticut looking at other people’s Christmas Lights, which was super fun. There was one house that was magnificent. It had a Santa and his sleigh flying off the roof into space as well as multiple lighted trees and a variety of other decorations. They added new ones every year.

When I was a tween (which really wasn’t a thing back then), my Uncle’s girlfriend, who I always considered my Aunt Maud Ann, started inviting us to decorate her Christmas Tree. She had gorgeous family ornaments and had very elegant taste, but allowed us to dump tinsel on the tree, and my Dad who was usually snoozing on a chair. I’m sure she rearranged the clumps of tinsel later, but was gracious enough to never say anything to us.

It was New Haven, so we’d go out to Modern Pizza afterwards. As they sing in “Fiddler On The Roof,” ‘TRADITION!’

When I first moved to Los Angeles, my only holiday decoration was a particularly unattractive Menorah that I’d bought in Israel. In my defense, I couldn’t find one that was pretty, and really wanted a Menorah from Israel.

I still use it. It’s still boring.

After I moved into my first house, I started to embrace decorating for the holidays. I bought a tiny live tree sadly reminiscent of the one in a “Charlie Brown Christmas.” I bought a single strand of lights and a drugstore package of shiny ornaments.

The living room/dining area had a huge bay window, and I plopped the tree in front of it, and plugged in the lights. Every night I’d sit and bask in the festiveness. I’d plant the trees after a few years when they grew too big to remain in a pot. Most never survived, but I tried.

The front yard of my next house, the ranachette in Chatsworth includes a round pen that at one time apparently housed a hot walker. It is way too small for anything but mini horses so it serves no purpose for me.

But there are electric outlets and it is surrounded by pretty white fencing. It was begging to have lights strung around it.

That first year I was fairly restrained. I hung white lights along the top rail and bought a timer to turn it on and off. It was pretty and almost elegant.

Maud Ann would have been proud.

As time went on I bought a slightly bigger live tree and decorated it with a some colored lights and my ornaments. By this time I had acquired a few Breyer ornaments including Seabiscuit and War Admiral. Subsequent years have seen the addition of Zenyatta (of course!) as well as Justify and American Pharoah. I also hung some lights on the mantle over the fireplace.

After the holidays I’d always transplant the tree to a bigger pot and use it for about three more years. Eventually I planted it, probably a little too close to my fence line. That first one is now about 20 feet tall.

I planted the next tree (also three years old) in a corner where the dogs had already dug a giant hole. I was pretty sure that it would die. It hasn’t exactly thrived, but it is hanging on.

A holiday miracle? Maybe.

Eventually I hung a second and then third string of lights on the fence around the round pen. Three was too much, so I settled on two strands.

One year at Halloween, Home Depot sold live sized skeleton horses. I bought one, named him Otto put him in the round pen and covered him with orange lights. The next year I added a smaller horse, Chunky.

Instead of putting Otto and Chunky away after Halloween (the best holiday there is!) I just switched the lights to white and blue ones.

Ta da! Festivus horses!

The next tree went into the back yard. A few years later I saved a tiny live tree a friend was going to toss and planted it too.

I’ve run out of places to put live trees, so it became apparent that I needed to stop buying live trees. I have a big back yard, but I need to make sure hay trucks can still access the barn. Also I want to look out the window and see the horses, not a forest of scraggly evergreens.

Last year I purchased my first cut tree.

I have realized that there are certain things that people can only learn in childhood. One of those is how to do seasonal lighting. If, as a kid you don’t learn how to store and test lights, it’s a yearly nightmare when it’s time to hang them. They are tangled, and the one strand that doesn’t work is the third one you hung. To fix the problem, you have to disconnect them all and start over.

Swearing is involved.

The other lesson I’ve learned the hard way, is that you need a village to place a tree in a stand so it is straight. My first cut tree sported a definite tower of Pisa list. This year, I recruited some friend to help.

It made a huge difference.

This year’s tree was pretty big, probably five feet tall. I didn’t mean to get a big tree; it looked so much smaller in the lot.

Oh well, I bought a few more drugstore ornaments and moved on.

It was straight, but I placed in the room badly. Whenever the dogs charged through the room, they scattered shiny ornaments all over the place.

I didn’t care. I loved this tree and the warm light it threw every night when I plugged it in. I even lit a fire in the fireplace a few nights.

It was delightful.

Unfortunately, it’s time to put everything away. The outdoor lights go first. It always takes about an hour, including dismantling the horses and storing them in an empty stall.

The tree takes a longer, because I treasure some of the ornaments. I carefully store those including the ones I purchase at every racetrack I visit, the Breyers and the precious Yellow Duckie I was given this year.

Zenyatta and ornaments from Hollywood Park, Del Mar and Santa Anita.

When everything is put away, I’ll take the tree over to a barn with goats and let them go to town. Goats love eating trees. *****

That night I’ll be super sad. My front yard will be dark again. My living room and my life will be a lot duller.

But then I’ll remember it’s only 10 months until Halloween.

****If you do plan on giving your tree to goats or other animals, make sure it doesn’t have tinsel and hasn’t been treated with chemicals. You can tell if the branches near the trunk are greener than the ones on the outside.

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Breeder’s Cup is My Favorite Holiday

As I write this we are well into the holidays. For most people, the holiday season begins with Halloween in October. (Obviously this does not include Lowes, Home Depot or Costco, all of which start displaying Halloween stuff in August, and Christmas stuff in October, if not earlier.)

For me, the holidays are ushered in by the Breeder’s Cup World Championships, which is held yearly the first weekend in November. (A bonus for me is that it is conveniently close to Halloween; the only traditional holiday I enjoy.)

The Breeder’s Cup is comprised of 14 races held over two days and attracts the best Thoroughbred race horses from around the world. This year was 40^th Breeder’s Cup World Championships of was held at Santa Anita Race on November 3 and 4.

Of course I was there. This was at least the 19^th Breeder’s Cup I’ve attended.

I lose track of the exact number I’ve been to, which may be why this year one of the main sponsors was Pevagen, was perfect marketing. Prevagen is said to boost mental acuity while aging. Sadly to those of us who love it, horse racing’s main demographic is getting older by the minute.

Still if you ask a true racetracker who won the fifth Big Cap at Santa Anita, they will know immediately. Of course, there is a good change that they will also forget where they parked their car. Prevagen for everyone!

A group of my friends and I have gone to the last 15 Breeder’s Cups together. Breeder’s Cup shifts venues between the Kentucky and California. In the early years it Texas and New York were also part of the mix, but the weather in November at those locations was problem. This means we have been lucky enough to go to Churchill Downs and Keeneland in Kentucky several times as well as Del Mar and Santa Anita.

When we travel, we make a vacation of it. Last year BC was in Keeneland, and we took almost a week. We flew into Cincinnati, in theory, so we could get a direct flight from LA. In reality, it was so I could go to the Cincinnati Zoo and see the hippo bloat.

Fiona the hippo. I watched her and her bloat for hours.

I couldn’t be that close and not visit Fiona! I was in heaven. The other ladies were pretty charmed. Really.

After the zoo closed we drove to our rental house in Lexington and spent the next three days visiting as many breeding farms as we could. We also went to the early morning works, which is always one of my favorite things to do. The first year we went to Kentucky, it was like herding cats to get everyone up and out at 4:30 am.

Not anymore.

There is something magical about arriving at the track before the sun comes up and standing so close to the rail that the earth moves when the horses run by. Watching the works also provides a close up view of the horses, riders and trainers that are competing.

It’s a piece of heaven for me.

If we didn’t attend morning works we wouldn’t know that Aiden O’Brien always has his charges out at the same time, and they enter, work and leave the track in rigid and precise formation. They remind me of the Madeline stories. (“…Lived 12 little girls/ In two straight lines…”)

We wouldn’t have met Harley the gigantic appaloosa pony horse, as well as multiple other equine superstars. We probably wouldn’t have chatted with Bob Baffert and Donna Barton. We have gone to parties in Lexington and had the opportunity to chat with past and present heroes of racing. We danced in the streets of Lexington at street parties.

We had fun.

Everything (except perhaps meeting Champion Beholder at Spendthrift Farms) is just a lead up to the racing days. Friday is billed as the future of racing, and all of the Breeder’s Cup races feature the juveniles. Saturday is for the superstars of horse racing. The Dirt and Turf Sprints, the Miles, the Distaff (always in my opinion the best race of the series) and of course, the Classic.

Even before the first horse steps on the track, the site – it doesn’t matter which venue it is – is dressed up. Santa Anita is my stomping grounds and when it hosts Breeder’s Cup I can get lost. The place is decked out like a prom.

There are garlands of purple and yellow flowers, the Breeder’s Cup colors, everywhere. From the Grandstands, to the walking ring to the observation decks it’s a sea of purple and yellow. Even the Sally, the draft horse whose job it is to ferry stewards to their observations posts, has purple and yellow ribbons in her mane.

Sally is decked out in Breeder’s Cup colors and logos.

There are a ton of places designed to be featured in Instagram posts. There is a champagne lounge, several places to sip bourbon (Woodward Reserve or Makers Mark) and high and low end eating opportunities. There are at least three enormous merchandise tents stuffed with t-shirts, sweatshirts, drinkware and branded luxury items including Burbour , Lululemon as well as gold and diamond jewelry.

It’s enough to make your head spin. Most attendees take it seriously too. A lot of men come in their best bespoke suits and the women pull out their fancy dresses and jewelry. The hats would do Ascot, or a royal wedding, proud.

There are a fair share of dudes wearing their best bro clothes and gals dressed to catch or keep the attention of rich men. Those girls are the ones that after the second 12-hour day of walking on concrete, limp home in Breeder’s Cup branded flip-flops while clutching their stilettos.

All of that is fun, but the horses! The racing!

At best I’m a mediocre handicapper, but Breeder’s Cup races are tough for even the professionals. These horses are the best of the best. Even the horses with the longest odds are better than most Grade I runners.

This year the racing was spectacular. Even the best story of the week, Cody’s Wish who should be Horse of the Year, didn’t disappoint.

Cody’s Wish was named after a profoundly disabled child, Cody Dorman. Dorman was visiting the farm when the horse was a foal.

There was an immediate boy between the boy and the colt. Instead of being fearful of the little boy in a wheelchair, Cody’s Wish came right up to him and stuck his face in the kid’s lap and nuzzled him.

The farm honored the child with his name and the family became regulars when they could watch Cody’s Wish run.

Cody Dorman and his parents were in the Winner’s Circle at Keeneland last year when Cody’s Wish won the Dirt Mile. They were back this year when the horse battled to defend his title, winning by a neck. It was a spectacular race, and even the most hardened viewers choked up when Cody’s parents rolled his wheelchair up to the horse in the winner’s circle.

Cody Dorman passed away only two days later. I am positive he waited until after the Breeder’s Cup.

The Distaff was fantastic. Randomized broke in front and held the lead, but Idiomatic stuck to her hip like glue. When they hit the final stretch Florent Geroux opened Idiomatic up, and she and Randomized dueled all the way down the stretch only to cross the line almost in tandem. Spectacular racing.

The Classic is marquee race of the Breeder’s Cup but it lost a little luster this year when Archangelo, the winner of the Belmont Stakes, and the favorite, scratched on Tuesday due to heat in his foot. This left the field pretty open, with Arabian Knight and White Abarrio the co-favorites.

White Abarrio won with a calm and calculated ride by Irad Ortiz, Jr. The horse was trained by Rick Dutrow in his first year back after a 10 year suspension for drugging horses. I like the horse a lot, but call me cynical; his improvement was remarkable and possibly miraculous since he changed trainers in the spring. I have strong thoughts about Rick Dutrow, but I will keep them to myself.

The Classic was not the last Breeder’s Cup race of the day since organizers had to keep the TV audience in the East in mind. The last two are the Turf Sprint and the Sprint which were also superior racing.

And then it was over. There was a palpable air of sadness that it was over; after all, we had ordered our tickets in March.

Next year it is in Del Mar. Which means I need to get busy finding a rental soon.

In the meantime, for those of you who celebrate, Happy Holidays!

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My Reality Show Horse Life: Part II

When I left off, my four-year-old filly Layla had just given birth, as a surrogate, to a foal belonging to Taylor Swift. (She’s not Taylor Swift.) It was striking how much the foal looked like Layla since they were definitely not related.

Until then I always thought the idea that boys were slow was just a joke designed to trigger incels, but apparently in horses, it’s a fact. This foal took twice as long to figure out its feet and learn how to eat then either of my girls did.

The good news is that eventually he did learn where the milk bar was, and became adept at using it. I left the clinic that night around 3AM content, knowing that both Layla and the colt were fine.

I got back to the clinic the next morning and they were both well. The colt was zooming around Layla like he’d never not known how to use his legs and Layla was tired, but trying to be patient with the pesky little guy.

I knew that at some point Taylor was going to want to meet her colt, or there would have been no point to having it. But I was extremely concerned. Layla was a maiden mare we didn’t know how she would react to having strangers near her foal. Some mares are positively vicious. Think mama bears and their cubs.

Since I really didn’t want either Taylor, or, more important to me, the foal, to get hurt, I texted Taylor’s trainer and asked with her to let me know when Taylor was coming out. The trainer insisted that Taylor wanted private time to ‘bond’ with the foal.

If that’s what she wanted…. I saved the texts, just in case something bad happened and I needed proof that they’d been warned.

Thankfully it went okay; I found out because there were photos on Instagram. They were pretty, but definitely unsafe poses.

Sigh.

A few days later when I was making my daily visit to the clinic, I noticed a several black SUVs with tinted windows in the parking lot. These were not typical horse people cars. For one thing, they were sparklingly clean. They looked more like protection for the mob. Or something.

I called out to Layla as I entered the mare motel. She whinnied back and I noticed a bunch of people crowding in front of her stall.

It was Taylor, her assistant and the trainer, who was not pleased to see me. The guys in the cars were bodyguards. Protection.
K.

Layla whinnied again, louder so I gave her a carrot, and introduced myself. Taylor was very pleasant.

Inside the stall a vet tech was giving the colt a plasma infusion; this is standard with foals just in case they don’t receive enough colostrum after birth. At one day old, the colt was only about 60 pounds, but 60 pounds of confused, anxious and annoyed horse is still quite a handful. But this was not the tech’s first rodeo. She got the colt infused with a speed that was impressive.

While the foal was otherwise engaged Taylor asked a number of appropriate questions and carefully listened to the answers. Mostly we all admired the colt and I praised Layla for her good job.

After a while they needed to move on. I was giving Layla the rest of her snacks ,the caravan of SUVs peeled rubber out of clinic, spooking a horse a vet was treating.

After a week at the clinic Layla and the still-unnamed colt moved back to the field and joined the four other mamas and foals. Layla was thrilled to be out of a stall and back with her friends.

The other equines were not nearly as delighted to see Layla and the colt. The other babies were all a month or so older than the colt, and bullied him a bit. After the second time they chased him through the electric fence. Layla became a protective tiger mom.

The saying “don’t f*** with a boss mare” is based in fact, and Layla is nothing if not a wanna-be boss mare, happy to show off her skills. A few kicks and bites were all it took. After that, the baby-without- name stayed glued to Layla’s side and the other foals backed off until he approached them.

At three weeks old the colt still didn’t have a name. For reasons I don’t remember but I think has something to do with his breeding, we took to calling him Cooper. He learned it pretty quickly and figured out that he got head and butt scratches while Layla got her carrots and snuggles. When he saw me or heard me calling Layla, he’d come running.

All of the mares were used to me coming out, and didn’t care when I played their babies. Of course, they usually got a carrot or some peppermints and had been for months. Bribery works when broodmares know and trust you.

When the mares and foals know you are a human Pez despenser, they come running.

If they don’t, you can get double-barrel kicked if you get close to their babies.

Which was why it was just luck that no one got hurt when Taylor and her boyfriend, plus a huge entourage came out to the field. The bf, who I will call Travis Kelce, (It’s not Travis Kelce,) is a huge music star. I’m a fan, but it I was much more impressed that he made time to see his girl’s baby horse than anything else he has done. That guy is a keeper.

Unfortunately, no one was informed before their visit, and these are mostly people with absolutely no horse sense. None. We had visions of people being chased, kicked and trampled by a herd of pissed off mares.

Truthfully we were worried that the foals would be hurt in the melee.

Real question: are body guards required to throw themselves between their clients and a furious mare?

I was oblivious to all this when I came out a few hours later, but I did wonder why the mares were so unsettled. Thankfully, no one – human or equine – was injured during the visit.

Phew.

After that, there were no more celebrity visits to the field for a long, long time.

Most of the time when I visited I was the only one there, which was the best. The babies were all curious and friendly, if a little bit pesty. Being mobbed by foals three or four days a week is my idea of heaven.

When Cooper – Taylor eventually named him Columbia but Cooper stuck as his barn name – was four months old he and the others went to Oldenburg breed inspections and ratings. Judging is based on looks, conformation and way of going, ostensibly to maintain the standards of the Oldenburg breed.

I call it toddlers and tiaras for horses.

All the mares and foals were braided, bathed and impeccably turned out. They looked super cute and the the braids were all a bit wonky on the babies which it makes it hard for me to take it seriously, but it is.

The judges are very stern and surround the mares and their babies with a checklist and clipboards rating them on a number of different categories. The judges confer with each other, and then announce their results.

Toddlers and Tiaras, aka foal inspections.

Cooper’s bio mom, who is very cute, was recorded in the breed registry as a Premium Dressage Mare. (Huh? She is a jumper.) Cooper was named Best Dressage Foal (Also huh? His daddy is a fancy FEI horse.), and deemed Elite. He got a nice blue ribbon which he tried to nibble on.

Totally darling.

They all returned to the field as soon as judging was complete. The other mares are all older retired show horses, so travel, new environments and judging is old hat. Layla is a good traveler, and went through the judging herself as a foal (Premium), but she is only four and found the whole experience exhausting. She and Cooper napped most of the next day.

For the next two months things were pretty peaceful. But foals are weaned between four and six months old and the other foals were all a month or two older than Cooper. That meant that gradually the other mares left the field. Their babies were frantic for about a day, and then… just as quickly they got over it.

For more than a month, Layla was the last mare in the field. She looked like the Pied Piper of foals. The other babies were mostly independent by that time but they would check in with Layla regularly. Cooper split his time between playing with his friends and sticking with mama when he was hungry. At that point he was also eating some hay but still liked a regular drink.

Now when I visited I’d get even more surrounded by babies since they weren’t with their moms. They were looking for attention, scratches and the fly repellent that I’d slather them with. It was like wading through five 150 pound Golden Retriever puppies.

It was getting hard for me to get to Layla because, well, foals. When they got to be too much she’d chase a few of them off. Which left Cooper, and he was the biggest puppy of them all.

I’m not sure if it was all the babies glued to her like Velcro, or just Cooper being a pest, or just time, but Layla was mostly over being a mommy. I can only imagine.

On October 1, it was Cooper’s turn to be weaned. I was also time for Layla, now a solid four years old, to go to work for a living.

It took a village to maneuver Layla out of the field and keep all five babies inside, but we managed. The foals were curious but calm when she was on the other side of the fence and they could see her, but all hell broke out when she stepped into the trailer. When we drove away, they all began charging around the field bellowing.

Cooper and company were fine when Layla left the pasture. It wasn’t until she got in the trailer that they got upset.

Even though I knew that by the next day they’d all be fine, it was kind of heartbreaking.

Layla had no qualms about leaving. By the time we to her new home, all of eight minutes away, she had moved on. She unloaded like a dream and marched into the next phase of her life.

Cooper remained in the field with his friends before he was moved to another farm. I visited him one more time right before he left.

All the babies were glad to see me. They all looked fantastic, and it was very gratifying when he pushed his way through his buddies to give me a push and a nuzzle.

I am very grateful to Taylor for letting me play with him for five months. I know he will have a good life. I hope I see him again when he’s grown and working, but that’s a long time from now.

As I was leaving, he followed me to the fence. I admit I cried when I got to my car.

Featured

My Reality Show Horse Life

I have spent a lot of my life being famous adjacent. Sometimes more adjacent than others.

I’ve worked with a bunch of well-known people. REALLY legendary folks. You know the kind I’m talking about. The people you mention – I try not to- and others go, “OMG! What are they like?”

(Note: they may or may not remember me. Sometimes even while I was standing next to them. I spent a week doing radio/tv and other media with David Crosby who never bothered to remember my name. He called me “publicity girl.”)

These people have done stuff. Created timeless music. Written insanely good songs, books and directed classic movies and television shows.

Those kinds of people.

I have zero experience with reality tv stars. I’ve never watched a full episode of any of those shows, though I admit I’ve seen trailers of “F*Boy Island.”

They make me throw up a little in my mouth.

Basically I try to live by the rule that if I want to waste time with useless creatures, I play with my dogs and horses.

Strike that; the horses and dogs aren’t useless. They make me laugh and bring joy into the world.

But sometimes being an adult means you have to be tolerant, and do cringey things to ensure that everyone eats.

I HATE adulting. Really, really hate it.

About 16 months I had a come to Jesus moment and had to deal with my reality. That is, I was (and still am) barely working. Being a woman of a certain age, with no discernable skill set, I’m not exactly in demand by anyone for anything.

Though I now walk dogs for money, this is and wasn’t nearly enough to pay for anything necessary.

Like food.

But mostly hay and kibble.

Most pressing was what to do with Layla. She was three, and it was no longer sustainable for her to sit around in a field looking pretty. She needed to learn her job and then something that I’d figure out.

A smart person would have sold her immediately, and that would be the end of it. The fact that I have four horses should prove I’m not smart. Or practical.

Layla is Lucy’s biological daughter, but my late Faith, her half-sister, was her surrogate mother.

Faith and me the morning Layla was born.

The idea of losing Layla, and my last connection Faith, was unbearable. It still is.

Enter a celebrity. We will call her Taylor Swift. (It’s not Taylor Swift.)

Janis rides a little. (She is a model and spends her time getting paid huge sums to wear fancy clothing in exotic locations and shill dull products on commercial sets.)

Her former riding teacher convinced her that breeding her older, saintly, mare would be fun and Instagram worthy. Taylor planned to keep the mare and hopefully photographic foal at my friend A’s farm, where Layla lives.

But horses are not reality shows, and even with the best veterinary care and expensive stallion sperm, Taylor’s mare could not stay pregnant. The search was on to find a young, healthy mare to act as a surrogate so Taylor could fulfil her momentary dream of breeding her own foal.

I got a call from A, who was well aware of both Taylor and my situations.

“Have you thought about using Layla as a surrogate? Taylor needs one. She would pay a small fee, and pick up all of Layla’s expenses until the foal is weaned.” Then A added the kicker, “It will save you a lot of money.”

I didn’t have much time to think it over, but I consulted with my horse trainer and my conscience -putting my filly at risk for someone else’s foal was hard to justify – but ultimately, I agreed.

The fee was enough to send Layla to a trainer for three months while she was newly pregnant, and then give her a full year to mature before she went to full-time work.

It also took her off my bill for a year. A had me at “It will save you a lot of money.”

Technically horse surrogacy is the same as for human surrogacy. After hormones sync up the donor mare and the surrogate, a fertilized egg is removed from the donor and implanted in the surrogate. Then everyone holds their breath until the 45 day mark, when an ultrasound shows if the embryo is still viable.

The world learned about the results days after I did when Taylor teased it on the family reality show. (Doesn’t every family have one?)

“There’s an embryo!” Taylor crowed in clips that went viral on the internet and The Post’s Page Six. Of course when it came out that what she was expecting, was a foal, not a new Swift, there was an onslaught of memes and disappointed fans. Someone called Layla an equine version of a handmaid.

I had rented my horse out to a reality show. I hang my head in shame.

My phone started pinging immediately with text notifications to watch “Access Hollywood.” The last time that happened to me, Billy Bush was blabbing with Trump before he grabbed a friend on camera.

A great moment for all of us. This time was slightly less traumatizing, at least for me.

Meanwhile, Layla was living her best life. She was residing at the farm where she was raised, sharing a field with four other pregnant mares. I visited four or five times a week.

My only contact with Taylor was having to harass her people to pay me. I don’t blame her; like most really rich folk, she has money managers who pay her bills I wasn’t high on the list. But there were a few months that it looked like I would own the foal.

If only.

Eventually it was straightened out and I didn’t have any interaction with Jendall or her people for the next 11 months.

You read that right. The gestation period for horses is 11 months.

Layla’s due date was late April. The great thing about artificial insemination is that you know exactly when the foal is due. I cleared my schedule for four weeks around the day, since babies still come when they want. Layla was born four weeks late, hence her registered name, Fashionably Late.

I started to worry about month 10. Layla was huge. Unlike Lucy, she didn’t moan every time she moved, but I was a wreck. In the weeks before Layla was due, three very high profile and valuable racehorse broodmares died giving birth.

I was feeling better and better about this deal. Not.

Layla went to the veterinary clinic a week before she was due, and I visited her every day with carrots.

There were a few glitches at first. Mostly paperwork, but important paperwork. Like if there was a problem and a choice had to be made, it had to be clear that Layla would be saved, not the foal.

I also needed to make sure that when Layla went into labor, I would be called immediately. No matter what time it was.

Horses are prey animals, and tend to give birth at night. Unlike the Swifts, they don’t like an audience. Wild horses can literally stop labor in emergencies and wait until it is safe to deliver.

On April 22 at midnight I got a call from that Layla was in labor. I arrived at the clinic 20 minutes later. She had just given birth to a colt.

He was still wet when I walked into the same stall where four years and three weeks earlier, Layla was born. Layla was relieved to see me and nearly stepped on him to get to me.

That would have been bad.

So I sat in a corner to allow them space. Some mares are viciously protective of their babies and will kick and bite anything that comes between them. Layla has known me since she was mere minutes old; she desperately wanted me to comfort her while she waited for the wet lump to do something.

Anything.

We all waited.

Both my foals were girls, and were on their feet, if shakily within an hour. After the first hour, the colt was still struggling to straighten out his legs while lying down.

Cooper didn’t know how to use his legs for the longest time.

I asked the vet tech who was waiting with me if I should be concerned.

“He’s a boy,” she said, as if that explained it all.
“Colts are slower?” I asked. She burst out laughing. “Oh, yeah!”

She was right.

I spent the next few hours taking tons of adorable video, for Taylor since she was out of town attending the Met Gala. (That’s not a sentence I thought I’d ever write about anyone.)

Her trainer didn’t want me to have Taylor’s number (Really? Okay then.) and acted as an intermediary. Or translator. Or something. So I sent about six of the videos to the trainer and she forwarded some to Taylor.

A few turned up on Taylot’s Insta a few days later.

Almost two hours later, we were all losing patience with the colt. He was barely trying to get up. When Layla went over to him to give him a gentle nudge, he bit her. The tech tried to pick him up, but he kept crossing his front legs seconds after she uncrossed them.

Just as I started to think he was a dummy foal he sort of figured it out. (It’s a real thing. Dummy foals cannot stand up, stay up or figure out to eat on their own. They can and often do, die.) He uncrossed his legs and wobbled his way upright before falling over. This time he kept trying, eventually started hopping around like a bunny.

It took another hour or so before the colt figured out how to eat. At first he would grab Layla’s elbow, which obviously was pointless and just pissed her off. Then, when he did discover where the milk bar was, Layla was super sensitive and kept squealing when he tried to drink.

Around 3 am they both got the hang of it and he had a real drink and I finally took a breath.

I thought the hard part was over. I was wrong.

End Part 1

Featured

Piggy Love

It’s not exactly a state secret that I love pigs. One of my dreams when I moved to my ranchette in Chatsworth, was that I would have a porcine. I love almost everything about pigs. They are smart, adorable and surprisingly clean.

I even went so far as to find a breeder for Kune Kunes.

My dreams crashed into reality when my brother’s rescue pig was attacked in his yard by his own dogs, aided and abetted by a neighbor’s dog. The pig was so badly injured that it had to be euthanized.

Pigs don’t have a lot of defenses. Some pet pigs have tusks and they are sharp. But most people keep them clipped so handlers and other pigs don’t get stabbed.

Pigs also scream when they are angry and upset. This sounds trivial, but the sound can reach up to 115 decibels which is three decibels less than a supersonic plane. So their voice is somewhat effective in keeping them safe. At least from humans.

The sound is god awful, but it won’t dissuade a real determined predator. Mostly pigs screech to complain about pushed around, like when they are getting shots, or their feet and tusks trimmed.

Basically domestic pigs are very vulnerable to predators..

There is a special horror, guilt and lingering PTSD that occurs when one of your pets kills another. A newly rescued dog of mine murdered my feral kitten. I’ve never gotten over it, and will do everything in my power from having it happen again.

I have three Great Danes. Great Danes were originally bred to hunt boar. That’s the reason that their ears were cropped. Natural floppy ears are easier for hogs to stab with tusks.

All of my Great Danes have floppy ears and not one of them has a prey drive. Most of the time they can’t find a hot dog unless it is right in front of their noses and I point it out.

Recently Pen discovered a cricket in the house and was horrified and confounded to discover that every time she got near it, it leaped away. She chased it around my room for ten minutes before Tuff, the foster Brittany stepped in squished in mere seconds.

Still, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I put my piggy dreams in the rearview mirror.

Then the pandemic hit. One of my friends who runs a animal rescue got a call about a potbellied pig. The poor thing had been dumped in a vacant lot. This happens more than you can imagine.

Potbellied pigs are not small. Adults are usually between 100 and 150 pounds. They are called ‘mini pigs” because normal domestic pigs can easily top 1000 pounds. In comparison, they are downright dainty.

In reality though, no matter what someone tells you, there is no such thing as a “micro-pig.” Tiny pigs are either piglets, or have been starved to keep them small.

That’s why, when potbellied pigs turn into normal hogs, bad owners get rid of them. Which is probably how Pepe ended up abandoned in an empty yard. For months he survived on scraps tossed over the fence by concerned neighbors. Eventually someone caught him and brought to the East Valley Shelter. Once there, he attracted the attention of a caring volunteer, who contacted my friend.

It is also no secret that during the best of times the LA Shelter system is broken. If possible, it was even worse during the pandemic.

The shelters were closed to the public. If you wanted a pet you had to choose from their website, make an appointment and commit to taking it. You couldn’t look around, temperament test them or meet it in person to see if it was a good fit. (Is it any wonder that a huge percentage of those animals have been returned? But I digress.)

Given that, it’s no surprise that no one even bothered to list the Pepe the pig on the shelter website. (Or a horse they had during that time, but once again, I digress.)

About this time, Tracy ,the owner of the ranch where I keep my horse, mentioned that she too, liked pigs. She had recently adopted three abused mini horses and three abandoned sheep and had a small flock of chickens. Tracy is my kind of person.

Naturally I put her in touch with the rescue.

Because the shelter was closed to the public, Tracy couldn’t just walk in and meet Pepe. But with a little help from the volunteer working on the inside, the Tracy was smuggled in, a la James Bond, and met Pepe.

He was a mess. His feet were so overgrown he could barely walk. His terrible diet meant his coat and skin were a wreck. His tusks were long and fat rolls covered his eyes.

It was love, or empathy at first sight. Pepe arrived at the ranch the next day.

He was quickly installed in an in-and-out stall bedded with straw located next to the goats. A veterinarian specializing in pigs came out. Pepe’s feet and tusks were trimmed and he was put on a pig appropriate diet. Pepe knew he was safe. You could literally leave his pen open and he wouldn’t leave. He had found his home.

I began to visit him every day. Pepe was originally quite shy, and scared. But it didn’t take long before he would waddle out of his newly built house inside the stall when I called him.

Pepe waiting impatiently for his peppermint(s)

One of his favorite activities is to get forked. Forking is a thing with pigs. If you want a pig to swoon and grunt with pleasure, take a fork and run it up and down their backs.

Seriously.

It took about a week for me to teach Pepe to sit for a peppermint. (I had permission to give him the snack – I didn’t want him to go off his diet.) I admit that he does get a little pushy if I don’t give him as many mints as he wants. And there is no limit to how many mints he would like.

Not long after Pepe’s arrival, the Tracy rescued two more pigs. First came Don Julio. He is about Pepe’s size and coloring, but younger and in better condition. He does not like peppermints, but will follow you to the end of the earth for a cheerio.

The youngest member of the pack is Taco. She was raised as a house pig, but when she started growing, as all potbellied pigs do, the owners dumped her. Tracy took her in, spayed her and added Taco to the group. Taco was quite young when she arrived and has since doubled in size. I still call her the little pig.

Taco with my foot. She nudges it if she thinks I’m holding out on peppermints.

The pigs now share a double in-and-out with the goats and a flock of chickens. They have fans to keep them cool in the summer. They used to have a wadding pool, but these pigs don’t like water. Go figure.

Now when I yell “Piggie, piggie, piggie” all of them come running. Okay, Pepe isn’t so young anymore, so he doesn’t run. But he always wakes up from his nap and meanders his way over to me.

I love them all. But my heart belongs to Pepe.

Pepe usually watches me and my peppermints walk away.

Featured

Toddlers and Tiaras for Foals

It’s that weird time of year in the horse breeding world: Foal Inspections. Or, as those of us with no sense of decorum call it, Toddlers and Tiaras season.

I get that there, are and should be, standards for purebred animals. Otherwise some idiot might mix a Great Dane with a Poodle and call it Greatdoodle and charge $5000 for it. Just kidding, no one would want that.

Unless it’s already been done. Then it’s still a stupid idea.

Everything from Lionhead bunnies to Bactrian Camels has very strict breed regulations. So it’s no surprise that different types of horses do too. Arabians have certain requirements, Quarter Horses have others, and Paso Finos have their own specifications.

To be registered in the Jockey Club and therefore eligible to race, Thoroughbreds must be live covered which means that the mare and stallion actually do the deed. With witnesses.

(Almost every other breed, including all Warmbloods relies on artificial insemination. It’s so much fun waiting at airport cargo terminals late at night to pick up semen straws packed and shipped as carefully as transplant organs. The cargo handlers always eye me suspiciously when they hand over containers marked “FRESH SEMEN.”)

I don’t understand breed standards other than some for Thoroughbreds and Warmbloods, specifically Oldenburgs. Even so, I only comprehend bits of the Oldenburg Horse Society (aka GOV) rules, because they are written in German. (Google translator was hilarious and not helpful in this regard.)I wouldn’t even know that much, but I’ve had two homebreds. Three if you count Cooper, who is only mine emotionally.

Each foal going through Inspections gets judged and rated on conformation and movement. In theory they are also evaluated on how well they are built for the job they were bred to do: jumpers, eventing or dressage. (They are supposed to also consider hunters, but the Germans don’t show hunters and are pretty clueless about them.) Most judges are specialists in a single division. So if you have a foal bred to be a jumper being evaluated by a dressage judge it might not go well.

Dressage is not my thing. See where I’m going here? Story of my life.

This year the GOV approval season in the US and Canada runs between August 4 and September 22. In other words, right now.

The horse version of Toddlers and Tiaras came to my little portion of the world on Monday.

The foals are between four and six months old and still with their mothers. Imagine Mama June on stage with Honey Boo Boo. That helps make it a full-on spectacle. Occasionally it’s also a shit show.

Before the presentation, it all starts with the horses. Foals are naturally more gorgeous than any four-year old child wearing more make-up than Tammy Faye, but a little zushing up never hurts.

So they all get spa treatments. There are pedicures, baths, and manes braided all to impress the judges with clipboards and German accents. (This year there was a, gasp, American judge.)

Monday’s inspection featured ten pairs of mares and foals. It was loud. It’s always loud. The foals scream because are away from home and separated from each other. The mares may be agitated by strangers coming up and fussing with their babies. (Or not. Some of the mares are sick of their foals and are grateful for anyone, or anything that keeps the little monsters busy.)

Full disclosure: Layla was out of sight of the other mares and screamed constantly from the moment she got off the trailer until when she went back in the field. She settled when I hung out with her. But I couldn’t stay all day, so who knows what she did when I left. But I can imagine.

It takes a lot of work to get the foals in pageant- ready shape. Many have been living in fields, so they look scruffy. Hopefully the foals have shed their baby fuzz, but sometimes they look a bit moth- eaten. They also have the nicks and cuts that inevitably come from living in a group of horses.

At Three Wishes Farm, foals where my babies grow up a baby whisperer starts work when the foals are barely a week old. They are handled, haltered, brushed and learn to pick up their feet politely. My job is spoiling the little buggers and playing with them constantly. Sometimes I overdo it. Sorry, not sorry!

That isn’t the case for a lot of the foals. A lot of them are practically feral. Some have never been brushed, bathed or worn a halter. They don’t know how to lead. That works out as well as can be expected.

At our place, the day before the Inspections looks like backstage at Little Miss America. All the horses get a bubble bath and their manes braided. The broodmares are usually retired show ring superstars, so for them, this is just another day. They practically sleep through the whole thing.

The foals, not so much. Not only are all their manes more like mohawks than manes, but they aren’t used being braided. Cue more screaming, wiggling and temper tantrums.

Eventually everyone is for their close-up. The arena has a tent in the center where the judges hang out. Banners line the ring walls, and the ground is freshly dragged. Outside the ring is a viewing area with risers where the breeders, owners, future trainers and interested outsiders can sit and watch. I usually hang out by the portable rail that separates the judging area from the staging section of the ring.

The Inspectors are (usually) German men sporting crisp, clean, white uniforms. One or two stand safely in the center with clipboards and pens barking orders. On cue, the handler holding the mare starts to run. If all goes well – and it sometimes does- the mare trots off and the foal, who is loose, trots along with them both, showing off its way of going. That’s mostly a fantasy.

More often the foals zig and zag around the ring, kicking or mowing over the mare’s handler. Sometimes they stop, and then race after its mom in a full gallop. Then they notice the crowd. Some are terrified.

Mine had a habit of running around the ring or crashing through the portable railings to visit with me. This was frowned upon but I thought it was funny.

The foal has to trot long enough to be evaluated. Ideally that is the length of the arena. In reality the Inspectors take what they can get: sometimes only a couple of strides.

This is not an exact science.

Next, the foals have to stand so the clipboard guys can walk around them to appraise their conformation. Remaining still around strangers is not always a thing for foals. Moving around and leaping in the air happens. A lot.

Eventually, the Inspectors leave the ring to confer with one another. Eventually the judges pick up a ribbon. They then address the crowd and announce whether the foal is Elite, Premium or, gasp, unrated.

Cooper became an Elite foal. His bio mother was a Premium, and the judges strongly urged that she be used as dressage broodmare. (Huh? She was a 1.30 jumper back in Germany.) Layla was a Premium foal. They told me they liked her confirmation, loved her trot and didn’t like her walk. Which is fine. As a hunter, she shouldn’t be walking much in the ring.

Then it is over. Braids are pulled and the horses all go back to their field. The babies pass out. It is a big two days for them.

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We’re Having A Heat Wave and it Sucks.

When it was hot in the past, my late Desi wanted in the house. He wasn’t subtle.

Like all of the Southwestern US and most of Europe, my little ranchito in Chatsworth is baking hot right now. It went from it being Chamber of Commerce weather, slightly overcast and 71 degrees, to sizzling sun and 105 degrees overnight. I am not exaggerating. I wish I was.

But, and this is just one of the many, many reasons, I am grateful that I live in Los Angeles and not Phoenix, it does cool off at night. Usually summer evenings temperatures drop to a delightful 65 to 68. This gives us all a chance to recover from the daytime sizzles.

That’s not happening much right now. It gets cooler, but only to the mid to high 70s.
It isn’t much, but I’ll take it.

Obviously, this nasty heat has changed my life. I suddenly feel deep kinship with vampires. I try to do everything very early in the morning or after the sun goes down. If I can avoid the sun, I do.

But because I have far too many animals, that isn’t entirely possible.

Keeping them comfortable takes a lot of time and creates a fair amount of anxiety. I worry about the dogs, the cat, the horses and even the Mourning Dove that is currently on her THIRD nest of the season on a beam over my patio.

Sigh.

I have three Great Danes. Danes are gorgeous, sweet and delightfully loyal. They aren’t, however, always smart. For instance, they tend sunbathe when it’s far too hot to do so.

Pen, the Dane puppy is not only completely black, but she is a Velcro dog. Where I go, she goes. Even when it is steaming hot outside.

Pen ignores the pool but likes to bake on the grass.

Thankfully, I’ve discovered that her adoration does have its limits. It is when the thermometer hits 98 degrees. She still goes out with me every time I do barn chores, but by the time I’ve cleaned the first stall (and during the summer I muck out three times a day so we are talking about five minutes) Pen has disappeared. She dives through the dog door that was designed for a miniature Schnauzer like her tail is on fire. It just may feel that way to her.

Jasper is also a fan of the sun. and loves his pool. He spends a fair amount of time soaking in it, looking like a spotted alligator. When he has had enough, he runs to the patio where he stands around looking pathetic until I come over and open the door for him.

Jasper loves his pool. He soaks as much as possible.

Ruckus doesn’t even pretend to hang out with me in the heat. She stays in the house as much as possible. My bed has a permanent Ruckus dent right under the ceiling fan.

Ruckus stays on the bed to avoid the heat.

So I’m not too concerned about the dogs. Or even Tilly the cat. She hasn’t even gone out to her catio for over a week.

In contrast, I’m constantly worried about the horses. Lucy is in her late 20s and Talen is in his late teens. He also has cancer. Both of them tend to colic when there are dramatic weather changes. Or when it is hot for extended periods of time.

Like now.

You know that old saying, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink?” It’s true.

But since hydration does help to keep colic at bay, I do my best.

I feed the horses breakfast at 6:30. They get their supplements, including electrolytes, in a bucket of bran soaked with water and topped with carrots. I also keep water buckets in the aisle because horses don’t like hot water and the water trough is in the sun.

They also have fans that go on around 7:30am. There is an industrial standing fan for the aisle and three smaller ones hanging from the stall rafters.

Hanging them was a whole lot of fun. Not.

I hate heights and I don’t have a tall ladder. That means that rigging the fans involves a lot of wobbling and hanging on while tying stuff up and yanking zip ties tight while creative cursing.

If you don’t hear from me in the late spring or early winter, there’s a good chance I fell off a ladder in a stall. There are worse ways to go.

While the horses eat their lunch, I top off the horse trough to keep the water cool. Of course they eat in the covered aisle in front of the fans.

I hose them every day off before their dinner, which Talen resents and Lucy appreciates. This is important because evening seems to be their witching hour for colic. One of them – they kindly take turns being sick – starts to get a tummy ache and they plop down in the paddock with their mouths twitching. They might roll if they really want to freak me out.

So I dig out some Banemine which helps for minor colic. It tastes extremely bitter, but Lucy is so good about meds that I can get it down her throat without a halter. Talen is more difficult, which is how I know what it tastes like. If I’m lucky, they are better in about an hour. If not, I call my vet.

So far this year I’ve been lucky.

If all is good, around 8:30 I go back out to take off their masks, fill the buckets and trough and turn off the fans. They get some carrots. So do the ponies next door. Call me a sucker, but they whinny plaintively when they hear my horses getting snacks.

Normally it’s a lot cooler by then, and the dogs LOVE carrots, so suddenly the Danes appear, all begging for their snack.

By midnight I can usually open the house windows, turn off the AC and put on the ceiling fans. That keeps it cool enough that we can all catch a few zzzzs before we start the whole process all over.

According to my weather app, it’s going to be miserable for at least another week. At least I don’t live in Phoenix.

P.S. I do put out water for the Mourning Doves every day.

Mourning Doves can have up to six nests with two chicks at a time. This is her third this year and the heat doesn’t seem to slow her down. I still worry.

Featured

Canary Dummy Eggs.

I got a package from Amazon the other day. It was the size and shape of one of Bob Dylan’s autobiographies, but it wasn’t. Tucked inside the box, surrounded by bubble wrap was a small package, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Inside that were eight blue plastic egg, each the size of a jelly bean.

That’s a lot of packaging for eight jelly bean sized fake eggs.

This isn’t a story about the wastefulness of Amazon packaging; that’s for another time. The eggs came from Amazon, because that was the only place I could find dummy eggs for my canaries.

That sentence contains a lot to unpack. Let me start from the beginning.

Most people don’t know that I really like canaries. I do. A lot.

I got my first one at a department store’s pet department when I was about six. I’ve had at least one canary ever since.

One of the first things I did when I moved to across the country and settled in North Hollywood with Keeper the dog, Catcher the cat and Herbie the eight-inch goldfish was purchase a canary bird and a cage.

Some people love parakeets. No judgement here. Parakeets are super cheerful, friendly and attractive. I think of them as the Golden Retriever of pet birds. They are easy, people pleasers and live a long time.

They are great birds; I just don’t want one.

Canaries are a little trickier. They are a bit high strung, mostly indifferent to people and often delicate.

But the thing is, they sing. Like seriously SING! Both sexes warble, but the females tend to be a little more nuanced, trill-ier. The males have powerful, showy voices. Think Taylor Swift vs. Mick Jagger.

All of them sing along with other music.

Back in my music critic days, my canaries were particularly fond of metal. They didn’t care if it was good, like Metallica, or god-awful crap from that Christian band that dressed in yellow and black stripes like demented bumblebees. (Stryper maybe?) It didn’t matter. My birds would start belting it out as soon as it the music began.

At some point I had a four-foot flight cage built and filled it with a lot of gorgeous birds. There were a mix of males and females. I picked the males for their voices and females because they were pretty. (Yes, I am an avian sexist.) I had yellow ones, orange ones, green ones and even a white one and a few with little feather hats called Glosters.

I left them alone to do what birds do, which meant in addition to singing, some of the females got broody and built themselves a little nests in their food bowls until I bought them real nests. Then they’d lay eggs.

I am convinced that it is a miracle that the canary species exists. Canaries don’t have an abundance of parenting skills.

The females would lay an egg or four and dutifully sit on them for a bit. But, more often than not, when the hen flew off to eat, she’d blithely knock the egg to the ground.

Splat.

Occasionally a miracle chick would manage to hatch only to end up knocked to the ground overnight. That was sad. The hens never cared.

I did have one baby hatch and manage grow to be an old canary. I named it Tweedy after Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy outlived all the rest of his family and died at the ripe old canary age of eight.

Then I took a bird break. I maneuvered the cage out of my bedroom and put in the barn for storage.

I missed the canaries, but I made up for it by obsessively feeding the pack of hummingbirds that frequent my yard, and watching the sparrow that vindictively nested on the top of Tilly the Cat’s Catio.

I didn’t’ think much about canaries for a few years.

Until this fall when I walked into my local feed store where a magnificent canary was singing his heart out. He took my breath away.

It was a cold wet day and not ideal for transporting a canary. I decided to wait, and if he was still there the next time I came in, he’d be mine.

Who was I kidding?

As soon as I got home I dragged the cage into the yard, scrubbed it down and set it up back in the bedroom. Two days later I returned to the feed store.

The bird was gone.

It was a minor setback. I was on a mission. I drove across Los Angeles to the bird store that decades earlier had built the cage for me. They had canaries. Dozens and dozens of them.

Sigh.

I stood around for about a half hour trying to catch some of them singing over the din of the screeching Parrots.

It was hopeless.

Eventually I picked out three that caught my eye. I knew one was a female, but she was so pretty and sweet I couldn’t resist. The other two were guaranteed to be male. (The males are always guaranteed. If they don’t sing you can return them. Like that ever happens. What kind of monster returns a pet?)

Two were bright yellow, the friendly female I named Adele. The other had a dashing grey spot over its eye so he became Spot. The third was a red Gloster with feathers on its head that looked like a red beret, so naturally he became Prince.

All was quiet for a while. Literally. None of the boys were singing, but Adele had a pretty little whispery song.

She also had a number feather cysts, which meant I took her to an avian vet. Since she is a tiny bird, there was a good chance she’d die at the vet office, but I figured if I didn’t take her she would definitely die. The vet surgically removed the cysts, and told me they’d probably return and she still might die.

No one told Adele. Her tail feathers remain scraggly, but the cysts have not come back and she still sings.

With the arrival of Spring both Adele and Prince, who was absolutely not male, became broody. Prince is quite the little nest builder. Using strips of burlap, torn tissues and feathers, she built nests that the Princess on a Pea would find restful.

Prince filled the nest with tiny blue eggs. The first batch didn’t hatch, so I removed them. She promptly laid some more.

Apparently canary hens aren’t territorial. Adele prefers using a food container as a nest, but she isn’t fussy about using the same container. The girls regularly play musical nests. Sometime Adele sits on Prince’s nest, and Prince occasionally tucks herself into Adele’s feeder.

Sometimes Prince moves into Adele’s nest, just to see how the other half lives.

All the experts recommend taking the eggs away when they are laid and replacing them with fake eggs until there are four eggs in the nest. If the fakes remain in the nest, the bird will stop laying. If you want chicks, you put all the real ones back. Or so they say

This brings me to the over-packaged eggs that arrived the other day. Your average Petco doesn’t even carry canary food, much less dummy eggs. Hello Amazon!

Yesterday I removed Prince’s eggs while the hens were eating their snacks and slipped in the plastic eggs. Neither bird seemed to notice that jelly-bean sized eggs weren’t real. I figure either I’ll have some baby birds, or at least happy broody hens. I don’t really care.

Spot doesn’t know what’s going on most of the time.

Meanwhile the wild birds are busy; the sparrow that nests on top of my Catio is back. She is driving Tilly crazy, and it will get worse when the sparrows hatch, which since they aren’t canaries, they will. Last year there were two sets of four.

No dummy eggs required.

Last year the sparrows nested in the corner of the catio. This year they are dead center, the better to annoy Tilly.

Featured

Covid Outlier No More

I am always late for the party. If the cool kids do something, eventually I catch up. Usually when most people have moved on to the Next Big Thing.

This time that meant I got Covid in March of 2023. I feel a little like Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front.

I mean isn’t Covid over?

I didn’t even feel terrible. Other than one day when I only got out of bed to feed the horses and dogs, and never changed out of my pjs, it wasn’t that bad.

The dogs LOVED sleeping on the bed with me for nearly 24 hours straight. So there’s that. (Let me bust one myth: Covid did not interfere with my sense of smell. At all. That would have been a plus, since I was sharing close space with three extremely farty Great Danes.)

Ruckus refused to accept responsibility for her gassiness.

As for me, I was just tired. I also had leg cramps from being squashed by the giant immobile dogs, but that is a whole other story.

I felt like I had a bad cold. You know, stuffy head, an occasional cough, sneezing and a runny nose. So very sexy, I know.

Because I was pretty good about wearing masks in public, I hadn’t even had a cold since before Covid started. Which was why all of the test kits that the government sent out in 2021 were sitting untouched in my medicine cabinet. I used one. It lit up like a Christmas Tree.

Naturally, I didn’t believe it.

I had a COLD damn it! Anyway the tests had expired. Normally I don’t believe anything goes bad on the expiration date, but since I was grasping at straws, I checked online and sure enough, the internet said that expired tests often give false positives.

The internet is always correct, right?

Still, the next day when I ran out to pick up a few essentials at the store, I wore a fresh new mask. And bought a thermometer. (Side note: I have THREE horse thermometers, but none for humans. Horse people understand.) And a new test kit. Just in case.

I had a lot to do that day so after I shopped, I cleaned the barn, spent a few hours mowing the grass, and a few other equally necessary tasks before it was scheduled to rain again.

I was tired, but it’s a push mower. (Don’t judge me: it was cheap. And so am I.) Finally I sat down and took the test.

I set a timer and then my sister-in-law called. I assured her that I didn’t have Covid, but I was being cautious. We talked for a few minutes, hung up and the timer went off.

Two dark lines.

NOOOOOO!

I was so incredibly pissed.

For one thing, I had been so careful. Not only was I still the Queen of the Masks (in stores and other crowded places) but even more important, except for going to the barn, which is outside, I rarely did anything involving other people. (Anti-social? Or just careful? You decide.)

I do know exactly when I got Covid. I had to fly back East for the funeral of my beloved uncle. When my sister-in-law met me at the airport I told her that I was the only one wearing a mask and someone a few rows behind me hacked up a lung the entire way across country.

At the time it seemed funny. Now, so much.

It’s well-known that I’m not a hugger, but funerals are an exception. So I hugged everyone.

This meant that my positive test had greater implications than for just me. I had visions of being Patient Zero at the funeral. This was not a pleasant thought.

Thankfully, neither my 92-year-old Mom, nor my Aunt, who looks and acts like she is in her 40s, but is almost twice that age, seemed to have picked it up. Nor have any of the other attendees, geezers or whipper-snappers.

One day post-positive, I spent an hour trying to connect on a video call with my doctor to see if, in the words of the slogan, “Paxlovid was right for me.” After the technology failed numerous times we ended up connecting on the phone.

I was already getting better and had no pre-existing conditions, so apparently Paxlovid was not right for me.

But I was giving instructions to quarantine for a few more days, drink liquids and rest.

At least the dogs were happy.