Sean and Snow - January 27th

Saturday January 27th 2007.

Sean sitting on his bed, wrapped in his comforter and chilling out. Why?

Well, it's 10 am and guess what? It's been snowing since 6 this morning. Not a blizzard of course, just some steady light snowfall. The sixth week in a row...

Sean seems to take the enforced idleness in stride. It would be very dangerous to take him out in the snow, while he is good at walking and, as you can see from previous entries in the blog, he can gain confidence enough to walk over the field, the footing has become so treacherous that we don;t want to chance it.

Several people have asked how Sean knows it is snowing as he is deaf/blind. Of course we don't have a definitive answer but there are a couple of things that bear on it, we think. Sean can see light and dark, shadow and color. Rubella meant that when he was born he had very dense cataracts, they were removed and almost immediately they came back. The doctors and we made the decision to remove the lens altogether so that there would be light and color and some sight but Sean has no lenses to focus.

Sean does make good use of his residual vision and as he grows familiar with an area he gets better and better at functioning in it.

So to answer the question - how does he know? We think it is mainly due to the quality of the daylight. Most of the time, here in Colorado, it is sunny. For you unfortunates who have not been here and may not know this - most of the time we have crystal clear blue skies and sunshine. It is gorgeous.

Jan. 22nd 2007 Schooling Moon

Moon backs up when I gently pick up her tail. She has progressed from one step to ten! I am not pulling her here at all!

Below, Moon learns the first steps to The Bow. Here, I am holding her right front leg up and she is leaning down to touch the target stick.


The New Year has been fun despite our amazingly wintry weather! Between the snow storms there have been some fabulous, sunny days which have allowed me to make serious headway with Moon.

She is such an avid student that we have tackled all kinds of fun things. Some of the lessons were planned and others were spontaneous. Sometimes I go out to the pasture expecting to do one thing, but Moon has an interest in doing something else, so the lesson plan changes accordingly. An example last week was that I had put her halter and lead rope on (her) to help her get used to the feel of the lead rope hanging onto the halter. But she seemed more interested in mouthing everything so I switched the lesson over to having her touch things with her nose, and then having her pick things up in her mouth! The lesson moved on from there to "retrieving". Within a few minutes, Moon 's progress was excellent: I would throw my glove down on the ground a few feet away and she'd go get it for me! She loves all this stuff!!

I have also been helping her to move her feet based on a very light physical suggestion from me. Again, she is an eager student. After only a few short sessions, she has learned to back up slowly and carefully with a light-as-a-feather suggestion from me. All I do is stand behind her and pick up a few of her tail hairs. Sometimes I add the command "back" but usually I just pick up her tail as lightly as possible. What began as one step back has now progressed to ten. She will continue to back up as long as I keep holding her tail, moving back with her.

Another thing we have begun working on is "The Bow". She is such a gumby horse - she is the most flexible horse I have ever seen. Teaching a horse to bow is fun and it's a great introduction to teaching a horse to lie down, so over the last couple of days we have been working on The Bow. It will take a few more sessions before she gets it all because there are many steps to learning it, and we are just doing one or two steps each time.

In the pictures of her backing up, you may think her ears are pinned, but they are not. She has her ears turned back toward me and is listening. She also is looking at me. Horses use each eye separately and she is working hard in these pictures to do what is asked. Of course she gets rewarded every time for her trying!! She is getting lots of goodies for her efforts!

Our First Ride!
Last week was our first ride! One Jan 16th, I got on her bareback and we had a couple of nice rides in the pasture. Not long rides, but good, non-eventful rides. The safe kind! There was no saddle or bridle on her nor even a halter. I depended on what I had taught her from the ground, and I trusted her. She went forward, stopped, backed up, and then she went forward again, all by verbal command and by feel. It was exhilarating! She was so calm and she just wanted to please me!!

My 3rd and 4th rides were today, the 22nd. Even though it was cold outside, it was a beautiful day and she remembered her lesson about lining up at the mounting block for me to get on. So I got on twice - once from each side. It's important for horses to get used to things happening on each side of them, including people getting on and off. Again, the rides today were short but sweet. Pictures will have to wait I'm afraid. Mick had already gone into the house by the time I decided to ride today!

There are other things I have introduced to her this week: pulling me while I hang onto her neck. In case of emergencies I'd like her to be able to pull my weight, on cue. Then she can graduate to pulling/dragging things while I am riding her. Then maybe a cart of sleigh next year! Ha!

That's another of today's reports! I hope you enjoy this blog! Please feel free to comment below any individual entries!
Nancy

Jan 22- More on the Storms of Dec/Jan

Here are some photos taken in December when the blizzard first hit. While the horses look pretty bedraggled, that ice and snow on their coats actually kept them well insulated. As long as they get a steady diet of hay, they can handle the cold pretty well.

Snowball update

The snow has been a playground for our two dogs - (The Artful) Dodger and Snowball. Both of them are fully winter capable - they have the thick undercoat and absolutely love the cold weather.

Snowball is he elegant looking one - he is much taller than Dodger and is completely white. We got him from a family who had obtained him from a dog rescue in Wyoming. We have no idea what his lineage is - he looks like a mix of retriever, some sort of elegant hound of some kind and who knows what. He has a beautiful coat, he has the retriever smiling face and he runs like the wind.

Snowball is also a ferocious defender of his "pack". Snowball has a very imposing bark - it's deep and fierce and he has an imposing set of teeth. He is a real softy but he does not get on that well with other dogs. During the days and weeks after the great blizzard when traffic was all but shut down around here the dogs in the neighborhood got used to running around. (There are a lot of dogs around here).

At one point about two weeks ago Snowball (or Snowby as we refer to him) came back in and had some blood on his back very near his tail. We tried some udder butter but it just would not stop bleeding. The next day Nancy decided to take Snowby to the vet in Strasburg, they shaved the area of his tail - giving him the appearance of an oddly groomed poodle - and found that he several deep lacerations. Whichever dog it was that took some hunks out of Snowby's hide, had been ferocious. Talk about an ass chewing.

Unfortunately for our elegant dog the temperatures plunged - highs in the single digits - and we would not let him out because his unprotected skin would get frostbitten in short order. That means that Snowby has not been able to enjoy the snow because we only take him out on the leash. But today it looks like the temperature will be above freezing and it will be warmer in the sun so Snowby and Dodger will get to go romp in our neighbor Gigi's field. Finally some running time for Snowball.

The Winter of 2006/2007

It has been almost 5 weeks since the blizzard of December. It started on Wednesday December 20th. Around 5 in the morning I was taking Snowball and Dodger out for their early morning "stress relief" walk. I always take them out early in the morning so that they won't bug Nancy to take them out after I leave for work at 6.

As I took them out into the field just to the south of the house I noticed that the predicted snow was just starting. I decided not to go into work that day because C-DOT always seems to close I-70 at the drop of a snowflake - and when they close it going east they usually close it from Aurora to Kansas. The last time I got stuck in Denver during a snowstorm and tried to drive back home using the back roads - it took me seven hours and two trips into the ditches. Not doing that again.

The snow just kept coming - it snowed from that first moment on Wednesday morning until Friday. Here are some photos from outside the ol' homestead from that period - the "breaking wave" from the south side of the barn was spectacular. It is kind of hard to judge the depth of some of the drifts but they were deep!





It was kind of funny the way the snow drifted between the barn and the horse shelter - I say "funny" when I mean "peculiar" because there was nothing funny about dragging the cart with the hay through the drifts. It was hard, tiring work. One of the things that Nancy has taught me is that horses need hay and water to stay warm so we had to haul a lot...

And, of course, there is getting the water up to the trough. By Thursday morning the hose line from the well to the trough was buried under 4 feet of snow (and frozen solid of course) so we had to bucket the water up to the trough. Now THAT is an aerobic workout. Try slipping and sliding through the drifts carrying two ten gallon buckets

And with all the snow everything just takes longer.

Remarkably, Sean has been extremely tolerant of the conditions. The depth of the snow and the ice make it very dangerous to try and take him out for a walk - his footing is precarious at times and we have to provide a guiding arm. If he were to slip and fall it would be very upsetting for him and the chances are good that trying to prevent it or trying to lift him up would be physically tough on Nancy and myself - and I am not sure we would be able to do it.

So Sean has been restricted to the house for those days where it has been impossible for his care worker - 'Doc' - to make it out here and he has done very well on those days.

The blizzard and the cold temperatures meant that Christmas 2006 was a picture perfect one - loads of snow on the ground - we even had snow showers on Christmas Eve. I'll write about the actual Christmas day in a separate post - it was just great, a day for the memory books.

After Christmas we got smacked with snow, again, on the Friday. It wasn't as bad as the blizzard just before Christmas but it was substantial. Then the temperature plunged and we went into the deep freeze. The next Friday - it snowed again.

And that brings us up to this weekend - it didn't snow on Friday - it snowed a little on Saturday and then a lot on Sunday, we had blizzard conditions in the late morning and - drifts. Drifts again..

Funnily enough Nancy has been able to do some sterling work with Moon - I hope she is going to update the blog with the great stories.

I will be updating the blog with the dog and cat stories.