Here is another installment of Cat Blogging Friday. Pearl is a cat my wife found as a kitten in the middle of the road. Not exactly the brightest cat I have ever known but it got the job done! Most of the time Pearl does not trust me and runs away to hide under the bed. She is young and her personality is still developing but I think we are as close as we will ever be. She allows Chewie to play with her but not Sassy.
This is the guy. He is a strange and kooky cat. If I try to read while in bed, he likes to lay on my chest between me and the book. He is fixed but he likes to torment our two female cats. He attacks them and chases them around the house. He likes to play with common items, rolls of stamps, USB sticks, plastic bags, etc. He fishes these “cat toys” out of their hiding places and bats them around the room. This is especially annoying in the middle of the night.
My wife found Sassy when she was a wild kitten. Sassy had accidentally gone inside a friend’s house looking for food. My wife brought her home. Sassy has adjusted to living indoors quite well but she displays a few wild tendencies.
I took this picture for my brother-in-law. For many years he and his brother would go hunting over the Thanksgiving holidays. Now that they are much older they do not go out as much. In fact my brother-in-law will be with my sister and our parents for Thanksgiving.
My son and I take out horses in the evening. I have tried to encourage him to try and establish a relationship with the horses he is handling. I found that when you listen and respond to a horses needs, the horse is more willing to listen and follow your requests. If you ignore a horse they probably will ignore you, too. Last night a horse got loose when my son tried to release him into the pasture. When he tried to catch the horse, the horse would run away. This was fun for the horse! It was not fun for my son. He is almost sixteen years old and these chores are messing up his plans for the evening. He thinks horses are dumb and they should follow directions without discussion. The horse on the other hand does not care. Horses are almost always obedient to the implicit hierarchy of the herd. My son has set himself apart so the horse is independent, too. So the horse decided to have some fun! My son finally got fed up and threw the halter down at my feet. He walked away muttering, “You catch him!”
It took me about ten minutes to catch the horse. The horse wasn’t going anywhere dangerous so I had plenty of time. I calmly walked after him. Eventually he let me catch him. They always let me catch them. Since the “teachable moment” had long since passed, I patted him on the neck and quietly led him to his pasture. The excitement was over. Patience, humility, and a sense of belonging are real important traits when dealing with horses and humans. It would have to be another day for the horse to help my son understand a little bit more about he relates to others.
Last week we were notified that the H2B Visa for Pedro was finally approved. We really liked Pedro and his brother-in-law, Fernando. Over a period of about a year, Pedro showed us that he was both a good man and a good worker. He had the highest wage rate on our farm. His brother-in-law did a good job selling us on Pedro’s ability. He wanted us to pay him in cash but I declined. I wanted to see a social security number since I wanted to put him on our payroll. He fussed a little but he complied. I felt bad about withholding US taxes. I doubt he will ever collect the refund he is due. He was pretty close to the perfect employee for us. He easily did the work of two of our normal employees, high school students. He has a wife and three boys in Mexico. His wife’s sister is living near Milwaukee so his wife was interested in eventually moving to the US. It looked like a win-win situation. In April we applied to sponsor his new Visa. The lawyers led us to believe that the Visa would be approved for re-entry around June 15th despite a change in policy. The previous visa was sponsored by a horseman’s group. We were told that option was not available anymore. The new policy required each farm to apply independently. As long as we could get nine months of work out of him and the legal costs were not too onerous, we had a workable plan.
As you can see the visa came in late. We struggled to find help with the farm while he was gone. It is hard to stop being a farm. My wife and I ended up doing a lot of the work he would of done.My wife skipped some of the training she does with our horses to do barn work. I am starting a business and barn work took time away from that activity, too. The legal fees were much more expensive than we were originally told, too. Now that we have the paperwork in our hands, we can see it is valid through February. His visa is good for barely four months. If we want to continue to use him on our farm, we are already two months late in applying for the next visa. We cannot run the farm this way. We went from helping someone participate in the American dream to wondering how many dreams are being killed by this immigration mania. We are disappointed. As far as we are concerned the border is closed to Pedro and Fernando. He tried to do the right thing. We tried to do the right thing. It didn’t work. We will find another way to get the work done. Hopefully, Pedro will find a job that will feed his family.
A couple of years ago I decided to fix the the mud problem at our gates with gravel. I chose to dig out about eight inches of dirt and replace it with gravel. I dumped the dirt in a pile about twenty feet from the gate and left it as a future project to fill various low spots on the farm. I was surprised to find the horses fascination with this little hill. After snorting at it for awhile, they each took turns placing their front hooves on the peak. When they did this they got this funny look on their face like I’m “King of the Hill”. They repeated this for many days till I finally moved the dirt elsewhere.
Last night when I took Whimsy out he stopped and climbed a small berm to get some grass. Once again he that look at me attitude, “I’m king of the hill!” Silly horse!
Although Fall does not end for another month the beauty of Fall is quietly ending. For the last two weeks the leaves of our maple trees were a beautiful shade of yellow and the leaves on the red oaks were a brillant shade of red. We have woken to a few frosts but the temperature during the days has been very pleasant. Then a thunderstorm came through on Sunday and the leaves are all gone. The weather will be very nice today but we can tell that the cold and grayness of winter is just around the corner.
My son helps me take horses out in the evening. Since the flies have died off we turn the horses out any time after they have eaten but it generally is around six o’clock. My plan is turn out horses before I start preparing dinner. This conflicts with my son’s schedule of playing a video game called Warcraft. He admits that he plays the game too much so our battle for his attention starts at six. After extended negotiations I generally leave and start hooking up the leads to the horses. Most of the time he appears shortly after I start so we leave at the same time. Yesterday I was out of the barn before he got there. When he tried to hook up to the second horse, she pushed through the door and both horses got loose. He was pretty mad at me! Although the horses caught up to me, I kept my horses(older mares) and put them in the pasture. My son waited for his horses to quit running, hooked up to them, and took them into their pasture with the other mares.
You might think this was mean of me but I take these horses out by myself and I take the horses out in this order. In a way he was disappointed with himself for not keeping his horses. He thought he was a better horseman. The horses showed him who really was in charge! I am glad both the horses and he were not hurt but this was a cheap lesson in horse handling.
Last night we had a horse get loose. My niece and her friend came running up the stairs at 9 pm to tell us a lady had driven up and said a horse was loose on the road. I thanked the lady and then proceeded to walk across the paddocks to the far field. I counted the horses as I went. The geldings were surprised to see me and snorted at me until they could figure out who I was. The mares recognized me almost immediately. I counted the horses and I was missing one horse, Ruly. Since all of the gates were still locked I scanned the fence line and soon found a break. Somehow she had knocked down three boards in a four board fence. I did not find any blood. That’s good!Boy, these horses are strong! I looked around on the street but could not find her. I came back with the car a little later. I found manure on the street and hoof marks near our neighbor. Since I did not see Ruly I was now pretty sure she was in the woods. It was going to be darn near impossible to find her and get her out of the woods so I went home. Trying to lead 1200 pounds of excited horse out of thick brush would be difficult and very dangerous for me. I went home and went to bed. She would find her way out. Andi made one more trip in the car to try and find her before going to bed. The next morning Andi woke me up early. She has seen Ruly. Ruly had made it out of the woods but was now blocked by a fence. For all the damage to the fence Ruly had suffered only minor abrasions. She was still excited but probably grateful to see me. Her great adventure was over.