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Julian & Friends

This thread is amazing. Horses are probably my second-favorite animal, second only to dogs, of course ;)
I worked with horses for many years. I live in an area with a lot of horse farms and dairy farms.

These photos and stories are beautiful, @Callistemon and have brought tears to my eyes :)

I hope that someday I'm able to find a husband who shares my passion for animals too.
 
Some time back I mentioned that my place might look a bit like Australia due to all the Eucalyptus trees here. I'm gonna have to eat those words! This place here is just a dry flyspeck (1 hectare) compared to your beautiful expanse. Is your place green all year?
On top of that you had a really traumatic childhood. You are an inspiration.
A deep connection with a horse(s) is something else. I can't describe it other than it seems more "primitive" compared to the connection with my dogs and cats. Horses have no need of us, so when one attaches to you it is a special thing.
A question though: Do you consider eucalyptus toxic to horses? Are some worse than others?
The horse and mule here scarf up the leaves like a vacuum, and they'll remove all the cambium from the branches when they fall (which happens a lot). I've had to fence off the trees because of this.
Curious too about your house- it looks as if the walls are super thick.
Cheers
 
Depends on the eucalyptus, @Jeff T - the low-oil varieties they seem to find palatable, and they occasionally chew a bit on high-oil leaves in a similar way you might use an after-dinner mint. ;) As long as they're not eating it in big amounts because there's nothing else for them to forage at the time, they should be OK.

Are your equines maybe looking for more roughage? If they're on concentrates and rich, fine hay they may have a deficit in that direction. A lot of donkey keepers give paddock donkeys free access to straw with their pasture (and limit their pasture). We have fodder acacia for ours, and also they pick the rough bush grasses. Donkeys need lots of roughage. Mules probably too, and a lot of domesticated horses more than they get.

The house walls are plastered straw bales. Our building photo album is here - when you go to individual photo view, it has captions explaining everything. We set it up as an owner-builder resource.

Strawbale House Build

It's not green all year on the ground - we have a Mediterranean climate with a 4 to 5-month summer drought - but we don't have native deciduous trees here, so the trees and bushes stay green-ish all year round. More of a fresh green during the growing season, and more drab during the summer drought.

I spy a horse on your avatar photo - and a dog. Will you tell us about them? And the mule! (Photos always great! :))

I have to say I'm especially flattered that after setting up my horses to be super-independent and not need me for their survival and everyday food, socialisation and exploration, they still want to come and hobnob with me now that they no longer depend on me not to be miserable. :)
 
Sure Australia looks all fine and dandy on the surface, but I have two words for you; huntsman spiders! :eek:

:) I'm just kidding, I want all the land and horses and donkeys in this thread. I'm working on my own property here but now I want all that Australian stuff. Except the spiders.
 
SCENIC DETOUR ON SPIDERS

Why? Because they are also Julian's friends. How can you say that, don't they get into the saddle cloths and need evicting? Yes, but we evict them from there, no harm done to horse or spider or Homo allegedly sapiens. But what do spiders eat? Norwegians? Well, Norwegian insects, OK. Norwegian hominids, not so much. Spiders don't care so much for the nationality of their food, they care more about proximity and taste.

Yes, yes, but why are you claiming the spiders are Julian's friends? ...because of the flies which bother Julian - Australian bush flies that crawl into eyes and nose and between lips, of any mammal they can find; because of biting flies that plague him and his friends in late summer, and because of bot flies which lay their eggs on the hairs of equines and turn into internal parasites that suck the blood from the lining of the digestive tract. Julian doesn't like bush flies, loathes biting flies and is extremely distressed by bot flies. All of those are meals a Huntsman Spider wouldn't turn down. The Huntsman Spider helps reduce the aerial assault by these critters on Julian and his friends.

So in honour of spiders, and because it keeps coming up whenever I'm on an international forum, here's some SPIDER STORIES. ️️️️️️️️️️️️

iu


HUNTSMAN SPIDER TALES

Most Australians are familiar with Huntsman spiders because they are relatively common in gardens as well as in the bush, and will venture indoors from time to time. They owe their name to actively hunting prey, rather than catching it in webs. Classified as the Sparassidae, this spider family has over one thousand species spread through Australasia, Asia, the Mediterranean, Africa and the Americas. There are around 150 Huntsman species downunder, with 95 of these recorded only in Australia.(1) They belong to a big spread of genera and are quite diverse in appearance. Most Huntsman spiders are large, all of them are fast, and the ones in Western Australia are especially hairy. Huntsman spiders typically have leg spans up to 13 cm. The largest Huntsman in the world lives in Laos and reaches leg spans of 30 cm.(2)

The speed of various Australian Huntsman spiders was recently measured, and found to range from an impressive 40+ body lengths per second for a species from Queensland, to a respectable 15 body lengths per second for the slowest species tested.(1) Many of them can also jump very well. No wonder people feel their hearts in their throats when one of these big spiders suddenly appears at top speed.

Huntsman spiders are shy and prefer to hide under bark, logs, rocks and eaves when not out prowling. If you really annoy them, especially when the females are guarding their egg sacs, they can inflict a painful bite, but they're not venomous to humans. As hunting spiders who ambush their prey, they have excellent eyesight, courtesy of eight eyes arranged in two rows of four. Mostly they catch and eat insects (beetles, cockroaches, moths, grasshoppers, etc), plus the odd gecko, skink or other small vertebrate. They typically live for 2.5 years, which is over double the life span of the average Australian spider. Most Huntsman species are solitary, while some live together in colonies.


Hairy Meetings

I came to Australia from central Europe at age 11. There weren't any big hairy spiders like that where I was from. I had no idea of their existence in Australia either for a few months after arrival, but then... Well, my father had bought a largely uncleared 50 hectare farming block and had this brilliant idea that we were all going to clear the land using axes and elbow grease. He organised four axes for the family members and handed them out to us with various exhortations. This phase was an unpopular phase and didn't last long; our neighbours had a good laugh and before too long he bought a tractor.

It was during this early axe-clearing phase that I was chopping down some prickly undergrowth near a large eucalyptus tree with really gnarly bark - a favourite Huntsman habitat, as I was to find out. As I was chopping away, wearing shorts because of the summer heat, I suddenly felt something tickling my knee and looked down - and next thing I jumped about a mile high, because one of those saucer-sized hairy things was running rapidly upwards on my leg. On coming back to Earth, I launched myself straight into a hysterical sort of anti-spider dance, until I was rid of the beastie.

They're not dangerous, but they do tend to put the wind up people when making sudden appearances, especially on your bare legs. Many years later, a colleague at coffee-break recounted driving to work on the Perth-Bunbury Highway and having a similar experience, with the added spicy detail of travelling at 110 km/h: Dressed in shorts because of the summer heat, tickling sensation on leg, had a look and - eeeek! She told us how almost in a trance she calmly and safely pulled over onto the verge, came to a stop, exited her car and then, and only then, rapidly jumped up and down yowling and flapping at herself until she was rid of the beastie.
 
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A Spider Called Freddy

As a university student I once had a pet Huntsman, because I felt the need to behave like a sensible biologist and see these creatures through a bigger lens than mere cultural arachnophobia. The spider just turned up in my room, and I didn't chuck it out. Far from it, I bid it welcome, named it Freddy and saw to it that it had plenty to eat despite being indoors. My laboratory dissection kit had a lovely long probe which was excellent for catching flies and presenting them live as sort of wiggly shishkebabs to dear Freddy. When I had one, I located Freddy and brought the wiggly fly within about an inch of the spider's head. I always had to hold my breath and get really mentally focused so I wouldn't drop the probe when Freddy did his sudden and very spectacular pounce upon the fly.

And so Freddy and I had a happy association lasting many months. I'm sure you're interested in how it ended. Well, one morning I woke up to the sight of Freddy on the ceiling right above my bed, and initially I just marvelled at the amazing ability spiders have to cling to the undersides of relatively smooth surfaces. Their legs have some helpful structures for these sorts of acrobatics and it's all terribly admirable. But then I asked myself the question: Do they ever make a mistake and fall off? And since none of us are infallible, spiders included, I caught Freddy by means of a carefully placed huge glass pickle jar and piece of cardboard to slide between the spider and the ceiling once I had him surrounded. I then carried him in his jar out to the garden to re-unite him with the great outdoors, in which he was free to find his own prey and perhaps a lady spider. With any luck, Freddy's descendants are still out there.


Arachnophobia and Delicacies

Many people experience at least mild arachnophobia, which is why fake spiders remain effective novelty items for the young, and young at heart. Arachnophobia keeps people away from spiders, which is usually good for people and spiders alike – though many people unfortunately loathe spiders, and kill them on sight.

Spiders though, like sharks, are far more frequently harmed, and even eaten, by humans, than the other way around. There have been no confirmed deaths from spider bites in Australia since 1979.(3) Also, few of us personally know anyone who has been attacked by a shark, but virtually all of us have eaten shark in the form of fish and chips. Spiders were firmly on the edibles list of nomadic hunter-gatherers throughout the world, and in South America and Cambodia, deep-fried tarantulas are still eaten as a delicacy. And why not, considering that spiders are closely related to lobsters, and few Westerners would think twice about tucking into those. Deep-fried tarantula fans describe these beasties as wonderfully crunchy on the outside and delightfully chewy on the inside; a texture contrast us ordinary folk enjoy in potato croquettes or falafels.

While researching this topic, I came upon a delightful story from the 18th Century. French astronomer de Lalande used to visit the naturalist d'Isjonville each Saturday, and there, to eat such spiders and caterpillars as he could find in the garden. Eager to be a good host, Madame d'Isjonville began to collect them beforehand so she could serve them to him on his arrival. Monsieur de Lalande, like many other spider-eating enthusiasts, reported that spiders taste of hazelnuts.(4)

I used to have this amazingly realistic fake Huntsman spider to put in people's coffee cups, until a colleague I pranked stole it and said that was the tax on pranking him. (I also had a fake rubber snake that was ultra realistic. It was a loan for a year. The replacement I bought only fools people at a distance.) The spider came with a magnetic backing so you could hang it onto curtains - very handy. When putting it in a coffee cup, the best thing was to put it in so that the front legs just hung slightly over the rim of the cup.

Huntsmen are harmless, but they still provoke that primal arachnophobic response. I have no issues with them when I know they are there, and was indeed often the person called upon by others to please remove that Huntsman / goanna / other creepy crawly to the outdoors. But the big hairy Huntsman spiders can still get to me if they surprise me - when I didn't know they were there. And so I scared myself more often with my own fake spider than I scared other people with it - because I kept it in my stationery drawer and would forget it was in there...


REFERENCES

1. www.businessinsider.com.au: Everything you need to know about Australian Huntsman spiders, April 2017

2. Wikipedia: Huntsman spiders

3. www.abc.net.au: How your worst fears stack up against reality, January 2018

4. Encyclopaedia of the Animal World, Bay Books, Sydney, 1982; p1709
 
Sure Australia looks all fine and dandy on the surface, but I have two words for you; huntsman spiders! :eek:

Dear @Forest Cat, you Scandis sure are fine fishermen. Look at the fish you catch! :innocent: :tropicalfish::tropicalfish::tropicalfish::tropicalfish:

:) I'm just kidding, I want all the land and horses and donkeys in this thread. I'm working on my own property here but now I want all that Australian stuff. Except the spiders.

You could maybe favour us with some piccies of what your area looks like, that would be fun! :) Have you got lots of conifers nearby? What's on your land? How did you end up on this land? What are you hoping to do?

The biggest problem with land is always not enough people to do the work. We struggle with two of us, no wonder you aren't seeing as much progress as you want with one person. I've talked to other smallholders about that and it's always the same. We don't have big armies of Oompaloompas to help us do things like wash the windows, fix the fences, do the interminable weeding, tie up the berry brambles, maintain the fire breaks, trim back the bushes in the garden, etc so we can get on with some real work. ;)

I once had a young woman from Myanmar stay with us, who was working near Perth and had come on an eco-holiday. Since the animals liked her and she looked athletic, she was a candidate for offering a horse ride to and I asked if she'd ever done that before. No, she said, but she had ridden on an elephant. I asked if she wanted to ride a horse - before Sunsmart died I lead-lined beginners on a lap of our bush tracks, nice and easy, they didn't have to worry about the reins or the horse running away, they could just relax and get used to being on the back of a 500kg animal, up in the weather forecasting zone, and acclimatise to a horse's walking motion. When I got about 500m down the track with her, she smiled joyfully and exclaimed, "Sue, you're so lucky to live here, it must be like a holiday every day!"

Bwahahahaha. :smile: I left her to her delusions about this matter - it was nice to see her so happy. To tell her about the reality of our to-do lists would have been unfair, sort of like telling a pre-schooler that Santa isn't a real person who actually has a reindeer sled that flies etc. :)
 
That's a nice life you carved out for yourself there. Sounds challenging, but it must feel real good being so close to nature. I know nothing of horses. My grandfather loves them though. He was a jockey in his youth. Actually rode them at races. Really into horse racing. Followed it all this life. (I never asked him about it...so I plead ignorance on the entire subject.)

Once upon a time, it wasn't as bad as it often is now that it's mostly about money for various "stakeholders" - and it's become, at least in Australia, mostly driven by remote betting, rather than the attendance of a local crowd which once upon a time actually contained a subset of people who just enjoyed being near these big beautiful animals and watching them run, as people watch Olympians run. Of course, the Olympians have free agency, and tend to have a good life after they stop performing at their athletic peaks. Money has this way of wrecking everything, it seems.


Oh so thats what you look like Cali...I see you in those photos. (That's funny, you don't look like an E.T. to me.) Yeah,not only good hearted, good lookin too! good on you. I envy those who live in such places. But it has it's own set of problems. And I'm sure I would miss the lack of conveniences. (It's very easy going here in UK.) Being out in the middle of nowhere.Things can be more tenuous. I imagine. They say more risks, more reward. I see you are living life on your terms. That's always admirable.

I don't look like ET, but you never know what's down the track! ;) We're both holding up pretty well for our advancing age, and I used to think we'd be more decrepit at the half-century mark. But hair dye is quite helpful, and the other thing is, we've really lost visual acuity in the last five years in particular, so now I can hardly even see my own wrinkles anymore, or my husband's, unless I look with a magnifying glass, or with my reading glasses on - and maybe it's better not to! ;) But we both do look at the photos of when we began at this place these days, and say, "OMG, we were so young!" - hahaha. :mask:

But you know what they say - the best facelift is a smile. :)

I think you're right that each circumstance has its own advantages and challenges. But yeah, we do enjoy living out there, and now I spend time on forums to compensate for the lack of immediate community. Because living in rural Western Australia isn't exactly like in Anne Of Green Gables...


This thread is amazing. Horses are probably my second-favorite animal, second only to dogs, of course ;)
I worked with horses for many years. I live in an area with a lot of horse farms and dairy farms.

These photos and stories are beautiful, @Callistemon and have brought tears to my eyes :)

I hope that someday I'm able to find a husband who shares my passion for animals too.

I find it's enough if he's supportive, without necessarily sharing my passion. It's OK to have separate passions/interests and also shared passions/interests, as long as you're both happy and supportive. Unlike some of my horse forum friends, I'd never felt that my life would have been improved if Brett had been a mad keen horse rider. He wouldn't have been any more interesting for that. :)

I didn't know you worked with horses! Do tell! :)

Glad you're enjoying the stories. Since such a small amount of people actually do truly rural things anymore, there's usually an interest from others - who may also be inspired to do a leap of their own into something they always really wanted to do, rural or otherwise. I don't think we'd have done this without the many things we read when we were young about people doing unusual things.
 
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED? QUICK SADDLE TRAINING UPDATE

Well, just reporting I've finally sat on the back of that horse. Got on and off him twice this afternoon and that's enough for one session. But wouldn't you just know it, the second time I got on him, a huge branch came down with an almighty crash in the forest behind us and startled him, so he got very toey because unexpected noises are his prime "scary monster" - danced around a bit, and I reassured him and slid back off him to calm him down.

All this was at the tie rail, which is where I've done all the first mounts on ex-harness racers so far. In contrast, with my Arabian mare, on January 26, 1985, I just spontaneously got on her back after a lungeing session with the saddle on one day, and rode her home from the field where I'd worked with her. Just like that, because it felt right, and she acted as if she'd been a riding horse all her life.

With ex-harness racers, I've never bothered lungeing - they've got equivalent preliminary work with harness training and are already mature and ready to work. They're used to having all kinds of gear on them and pulling a cart, now they just have to get used to the idea of carrying someone on their back. So with each of the half-dozen harness horses, I've done some leading them around with a riding saddle, and making noise with the saddle, dangling stirrups around their ribcages, leaning up against them, jumping up and down next to them, pulling on the stirrups, putting weight in the stirrup with a foot, standing up in the stirrup leaning against the horse, etc, and if that's all OK, you just get on the horse and then get off again almost immediately, before anything untoward can happen. Go chat to the horse, say how clever they are, etc, rinse and repeat, end lesson.

Next time, if you get on and the horse seems unperturbed, you get a competent horse handler to lead-line you away from the tie rail at the walk - or alternatively, you lead-line your horse while someone else is the saddle monkey. Just walk for five minutes, and if the horse is cool, end lesson, come back and do more another day. By day two usually the leader unclips the horse and rider within a minute, and they continue on a track they know well on their own - once around, then back home.

Currently, the only person available who's really skilled at controlling horses from the ground is me - Brett isn't a horse person and doesn't know how to anticipate reactions instantly based on body language, and forestall a problem before it really snowballs. I can counteract horses running backwards, rearing, etc, he can't. So it would actually be better if I could get someone else to volunteer to sit on him for the first lead-line session, because controlling that horse from the ground is so important for that step. We'll see how we'll solve that one. Brett volunteered to monkey up today, but has only been on two rides in his life, so he didn't really get much further than standing up in one stirrup wondering what to do with his other leg, so I just ended up getting on myself instead. It's been a while since he was on a horse!

Brett's first horse ride had been back in 2008, when I lead-lined him through the countryside on my Arabian mare for a short scenic ride. At that time, he told me that being on the back of a horse feels "like being drunk and staggering around but without the euphoria" and he expressed no enthusiasm for ever doing it again, which I respected.

However, at Hallowe'en 2010 he came home with a Nazgul costume, and as a result got coaxed onto Sunsmart for a photo session - because you can't really be a Nazgul without a horse...

So here is Brett's second-ever horse ride - and the last one to date:
brett_the_nazgul.jpg


This is the same photo after Brett photoshopped Middle Earth into it:

brett_the_nazgul_altered.jpg
 
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Once upon a time, it wasn't as bad as it often is now that it's mostly about money for various "stakeholders" - and it's become, at least in Australia, mostly driven by remote betting, rather than the attendance of a local crowd which once upon a time actually contained a subset of people who just enjoyed being near these big beautiful animals and watching them run, as people watch Olympians run. Of course, the Olympians have free agency, and tend to have a good life after they stop performing at their athletic peaks. Money has this way of wrecking everything, it seems.




I don't look like ET, but you never know what's down the track! ;) We're both holding up pretty well for our advancing age, and I used to think we'd be more decrepit at the half-century mark. But hair dye is quite helpful, and the other thing is, we've really lost visual acuity in the last five years in particular, so now I can hardly even see my own wrinkles anymore, or my husband's, unless I look with a magnifying glass, or with my reading glasses on - and maybe it's better not to! ;) But we both do look at the photos of when we began at this place these days, and say, "OMG, we were so young!" - hahaha. :mask:

But you know what they say - the best facelift is a smile. :)

I think you're right that each circumstance has its own advantages and challenges. But yeah, we do enjoy living out there, and now I spend time on forums to compensate for the lack of immediate community. Because living in rural Western Australia isn't exactly like in Anne Of Green Gables...




I find it's enough if he's supportive, without necessarily sharing my passion. It's OK to have separate passions/interests and also shared passions/interests, as long as you're both happy and supportive. Unlike some of my horse forum friends, I'd never felt that my life would have been improved if Brett had been a mad keen horse rider. He wouldn't have been any more interesting for that. :)

I didn't know you worked with horses! Do tell! :)

Glad you're enjoying the stories. Since such a small amount of people actually do truly rural things anymore, there's usually an interest from others - who may also be inspired to do a leap of their own into something they always really wanted to do, rural or otherwise. I don't think we'd have done this without the many things we read when we were young about people doing unusual things.

I’m glad people, especially young people, are still interested in animals and rural things!

I was in 4-H growing up (a program kind of like the scouts except with animals and farming) and I showed dogs and horses and worked with animals on farms!

I would elaborate more but I’m on a break between dog training classes and demonstrations right now lol
 
Where to begin.

In 2010, we were both working in professional positions and were in the process of making offers on houses in a small coastal town nearby when we had a curveball thrown at us. There was a 62 hectare rural lot in the hinterland in our price range: 50 hectares of beautifully preserved, highly flammable Australian sclerophyll ecosystem, and 12 hectares of pasture currently running beef cattle.

It was, miraculously, in our price range, because the price reflected that properly managing 50 hectares of native vegetation is time-consuming, expensive and requires specialised skill sets and a ton of passion, while providing zero economic return. It turns out that I have a science background that includes ecology and my husband has extensive experience at preventative fire management, which is totally necessary in Australian sclerophyll - and had been conducted for over 30,000 years by Australia's Indigenous people, in a very different way to the combination of neglect and overburning that has characterised post-colonial management of Australian fire-adapted ecosystems.

It was off-grid, with nothing but bushland and mostly bare, wind-blown pasture. It also turned out we were bloody-minded and into DIY, nudging 40 and able-bodied. So what we did is buy the place, put in the necessary amenities, plant shelterbelts in the pastures by hand, and design and owner-build our own eco-house on a shoestring budget we firmly stuck to (we're neither of us high-income earners, nor did we rob a bank or win the lottery or come into an inheritance - we just know how to do frugal in order to save up for things). This is what it all looked like coming up to ten years later - in the middle of a summer drought, after three years of getting less than 60% of average annual rainfall:

Kindly provided by a guest with a drone

We've since had an apocalyptic winter that flooded much of the South Coast, washed away bridges and roads, gave pasture animals footrot and killed some of our fruit trees and tagasaste hedges.

It's been quite a journey. Looking at the clip I can see why we've been so busy since we bought the place. We're now downshifters living off-grid via solar panels plus four bottles of camping gas a year for cooking, and we grow much of our own food (F&V, beef, honey - and getting pastured eggs and milk from neighbours). My husband works in town four days a week and I run the smallholding and an eco-farmstay, and write. We'd never have imagined we would end up doing this, but here we are. It was our chance to save 50 hectares of native ecosystem that goes all the way back to ancient Gondwana from being cleared for "development" or overrun with goats or otherwise degraded.

Here's some of the flora and fauna in the area we are stewarding:

Red Moon Sanctuary Flora and Fauna

Because of the pasture, I was able to retire an old mare I'd had since childhood at our own place for the last three years of her life, and keep my (ex-harness, DIY re-educated) riding horse here too. The Donkey Society got in touch with me about a group of donkeys with special healthcare needs (two obese, one blind) and we adopted those in 2012:


Don Quixote, Mary Lou, Sparkle

...and another two from a neighbour three years ago (and now we don't need any more, thank you very much - I trim all the horse and donkey hooves every 4-6 weeks and have enough arthritis already).


Nelly & Benjamin on wash day

I also had the chance to retire some old harness-racing horses I felt sorry for, that I'd known since they were young and had helped to educate in my summer breaks. (I really loathe horse racing for all sorts of reasons, but enjoy working with horses and being around them, and going on adventures with them, and maybe doing a bit of "ballroom dancing" with horses that enjoy it.)

These adopted horses went from living in dry lots and stables with hand-fed hay and concentrates, most of them solitary, to living free-range in a herd at our place, with a WIWO shelter and rugging during wet, windy, cold conditions. It's been really lovely to see them enjoy their golden years here.

At various stages we had to put old horses down.

My mare (cancer, 32) - 27 in this photo:



...and on a special beach outing when she was 27:


Romeo (34, no molars left in lower jaw, geriatric), who spent his last five years with a free access pass to our garden, photo at age 33:



Another mare (28, pituitary tumour) who was the dam of the ex-harness horse I had adopted to ride, pictured here at our place in 2016 with her chocolate-coloured son Sunsmart (named for his habit of always finding shady spots to rest in from when he was little) and her full brother in the background:



This was Sunsmart and me in 2015, when we were still in the middle of building our farmhouse...



And this is a photoessay of a ride with him through the Australian sclerophyll, with ecological commentary, from 2019:

Aussie Trail Outing With Camera – Sue Coulstock

Late last year I had to put this horse down two days shy of his 25th birthday, after a three-year war with Cushings. He was put on medication after an early diagnosis to try to curtail the development of symptoms, and initially it seemed to work, but the following summer he rapidly started developing serious problems with electrolyte balance and thermoregulation and dropped weight rapidly. We tripled the medication but he kept falling down into a hole, and then, incredibly, after looking absolutely terrible, he recovered five months later, and even got back to 95% of his previous physical condition and levels of fitness. We were riding again with the dog and him chasing each other up the hills at rocket speeds. That lasted about a year - and then he went downhill again. This time he didn't recover and we called time for quality of life reasons - he'd had enough and it wasn't fair to keep trying and hoping.

I found out the morning after he died that Australian Indigenous icon David Gulpilil had died on the same day, also of chronic illness in advanced years. It was sad and yet strangely comforting that they went together. I wrote about that here:

The Kingfisher, the Horse, and being on Country – Sue Coulstock

In the next post I will introduce Julian.

Congratulations on your little paradise, I'm happy you could make it work and that your dreams could become reality. It will always be a lot of hard work, but it is totally worth it! Do you sell any products you produce on your farm? Do you still have another job?

I have a friend who is renovating a cottage in the woods, but that's the northern hemisphere. She had some issues with the forest as many trees fell after a storm and they had to invest in a snow-clearer. The road belongs to their land.

In Australia there is more land than people, in Europe there's more people than land. This is as lonely as they can get. They're also completely self-sustaining.
 
Dear @Aneka, thanks for dropping in. Hope you feel better soon. Are you in Europe or America? ...we buy small lots of weanling cattle and pasture raise them to age 2-3 for resale, goes for beef. Also we sell honey and host ecostay guests, whom we feed with our garden produce. Work arrangements/types second paragraph below the film clip in the first post. ;)

@Gerontius, you brought up an interesting point earlier. Many people may not be aware that the reason people have to look after horse hooves is because of the conditions domesticated horses live in, typically either in stables and/or dry lots and/or fenced soft pasture. Wild horses ranged up to 60km a day on varied terrain and this wore down their hooves and kept them cleaned out. It is the lack of wear from lack of ranging and being mostly on overly soft footings that is creating conditions where hooves overgrow and dirt is trapped in them.

This also happens to domesticated cattle - but it is not generally practical to trim their hooves. They do OK up to age 3 or 4 but older animals tend to get overgrown, malformed hooves, which is one of the reasons that most commercial breeding cattle are done by ages 7-8. Economics being what it is, they are sold then, and the prime beef animals anywhere between 1-3 years, usually 1-2 years. I occasionally help neighbours trim the hooves of pedigree animals they want to keep another year or two. They have a crush set up and mechanical restraints on the leg you're working on. I've got photos somewhere I can dig up if anyone wants to see that.
 
Depends on the eucalyptus, @Jeff T - the low-oil varieties they seem to find palatable, and they occasionally chew a bit on high-oil leaves in a similar way you might use an after-dinner mint. ;) As long as they're not eating it in big amounts because there's nothing else for them to forage at the time, they should be OK.

Are your equines maybe looking for more roughage? If they're on concentrates and rich, fine hay they may have a deficit in that direction. A lot of donkey keepers give paddock donkeys free access to straw with their pasture (and limit their pasture). We have fodder acacia for ours, and also they pick the rough bush grasses. Donkeys need lots of roughage. Mules probably too, and a lot of domesticated horses more than they get.

The house walls are plastered straw bales. Our building photo album is here - when you go to individual photo view, it has captions explaining everything. We set it up as an owner-builder resource.

Strawbale House Build

It's not green all year on the ground - we have a Mediterranean climate with a 4 to 5-month summer drought - but we don't have native deciduous trees here, so the trees and bushes stay green-ish all year round. More of a fresh green during the growing season, and more drab during the summer drought.

I spy a horse on your avatar photo - and a dog. Will you tell us about them? And the mule! (Photos always great! :))

I have to say I'm especially flattered that after setting up my horses to be super-independent and not need me for their survival and everyday food, socialisation and exploration, they still want to come and hobnob with me now that they no longer depend on me not to be miserable. :)

I'll start a thread with my critters- otherwise I'm hijacking your post.

Good to hear that eucalyptus isn't that bad. Maybe because the leaves are dead and brown perhaps they are less toxic.

My sister really liked the straw-bale house photos. Myself I had wondered about the straw/foundation contact- the breathable gravel was a revelation. Hay often rots atop concrete.

Sorry for late reply, sometimes I can't figure what to say in my reply/too brain-tired to try.
 
Dear @Forest Cat, you Scandis sure are fine fishermen. Look at the fish you catch! :innocent: :tropicalfish::tropicalfish::tropicalfish::tropicalfish:



You could maybe favour us with some piccies of what your area looks like, that would be fun! :) Have you got lots of conifers nearby? What's on your land? How did you end up on this land? What are you hoping to do?

My closest neighbour to the east is a few thousand square kilometers of conifer. So we have plenty of conifer. I don't want to mess up your thread with pics of my stuff. But I would like to see more of those donkeys. :)

One question about the straw-bale house, have you had any problems with wolves huffing and puffing and trying to blow your house down? ;)
 
My closest neighbour to the east is a few thousand square kilometers of conifer. So we have plenty of conifer. I don't want to mess up your thread with pics of my stuff. But I would like to see more of those donkeys. :)

One question about the straw-bale house, have you had any problems with wolves huffing and puffing and trying to blow your house down? ;)

Ah, @Forest Cat, you always make me smile - so good that you're on this forum. :)

We don't have any wolves, so that's not a problem. ;)

More donkey photos here:

Donkeys

It's chronological so the ones near the top are starting in 2012 and includes horses who have since died. I actually need to update this album - been too lazy to tag anything "donkey" lately but I'll look into it when our Internet finally gets sorted out again (I hope) - at the moment loading graphics is slow (and YT near impossible).

...and ha, you can see how bare the pasture was back in 2012 - compared to the more recent photos on page 1 of this thread! :)

@Jeff T, looking forward to your thread - and @Forest Cat, would be lovely if you did one too, as it's so interesting to see other people's environment and projects. :sunglasses:
 
MORE TRAINING WALKABOUTS

Monday and today I took Julian around for more training walks in full regalia, with the stirrups down. We practiced halt, walk-on, trot-on, transition back to walk. All flawless - the horse isn't just cooperative, he's really interested in what we are doing. Of course, I don't just hold out a hoop and say to him, "This high!' - like some kind of taskmaster who believes the horse is somehow my inferior and beholden to obey. My approach to that is more like dancing with a partner. I respect the horse, ask nicely, practice with him. Even a horse knows when you don't take him for granted, and you don't think you are entitled to ask him to do things for you.



The other thing we've been practicing is standing still at intervals along our walk around the bush tracks, while I do various things like hold the reins above his withers as if to get on his back, put my foot in the stirrup, put weight in the stirrup, jump up and down next to him, move around and do the same thing on the other side, etc. All while he is standing still, and using the old Tom Roberts techniques for getting him to stand still, no stress, no hurry. Here's an except of what that author had to say about the matter of preparing to mount a horse you are saddle training, which I hadn't read in 20 years, but which was my manual for educating my mare from yearling up starting when I was 11:

TRI.jpg


TR2.jpg

Excerpt from The Young Horse by Tom Roberts, Griffin Press, 1977


It's interesting to me that many horse people seem to interpret "teaching a lesson in obedience" as an invitation to get rough with a horse, "show him who's boss," attempt to scare the horse and/of inflict pain. I think that's about the psychology of the human beings who do such things, and it is my personal observation that people who treat horses with contempt also treat humans with contempt.

I also think JK Rowling wrote a nice metaphor about all of this with the hippogriffs and the code of conduct for working with them - and what happened when arrogant people handled them. In the horse world, sadly many riding breeds are a bit like ISA Brown hens - bred for docility and low on IQ and spirit, and many of those can be bullied into submission. The intelligent, spirited horses will be the ones that will be trouble for human bullies - because you need to treat them with respect and kindness.



Anyway, Tom Roberts was an instructor of riders and trainer of horses from the time he was 16, starting in the British army. He was self-taught and I've never found any kind of instruction books on horse handling, training and riding anywhere near as useful as his four slim volumes. He always takes great care to present the horse's point of view, and to emphasise good communication with the horse and how to achieve it. It's not just that the horse has to learn to read and understand us, it's also that we must learn to read and understand the horse.

So re-reading what he had to say about mounting, I saw how much more I could do than I had already to prepare Julian for a smooth transition to ridden work, given that I won't be working with an experienced horse handler on the ground, or a competent rider who can work with me. I decided on the weekend this is going to be a mostly solo effort again, as it was with my Arabian mare back in the 80s; on balance I don't think there is anything to be gained by having an inexperienced handler or rider helping out - too many variables. Besides, I already sat on him briefly twice on Saturday, and all that was fine, the only reason he got toey the second time is because a branch came crashing down near us, and even that didn't turn into a disaster - he settled a bit and then I slid off again.

My plan basically is to keep on taking him for these walks and to continue to go further and further each time, right up to getting on and straight back off again at the halt, then keep walking him on the reins, halt again, rinse and repeat, and start doing things like waving my arms and swinging my legs while in the saddle (you must never do this kind of thing suddenly because horses startle at sudden movement unless they are habituated to it case by case), until eventually I will ask him to move forward a few steps with me on his back, when the whole thing feels right.

And it will - he's a very sensible, very calm horse the majority of the time. Today he was really brilliant working with me, very relaxed and happy to dawdle to wait for two donkeys who were accompanying us. He's actually the very opposite of a plodder, which is why this is a big deal - the hardest thing to do with horses who love to move, and move fast, like this horse and all the horses I've saddle educated, is to get them to relax and do things slowly, instead of go haring off for fun. We can start doing that later, after we've learnt the relaxed, slow mode of operating and it's become a permanent part of the repertoire.

This clip from 2012 shows how horses that aren't plodders move around at liberty, even when quite old. This was, in order of appearance, Romeo (then 28), Sunsmart (then 16, and that was his general-moving-around trot, not his race trot - Julian is the same), and my Arabian mare Snowstorm (then 31).

One new thing we did today, just to keep things interesting, is to "bush-bash" along a kangaroo track. It's the first time I've taken Julian off the vehicle tracks, so that was a novel experience for him. Sunsmart absolutely loved going on animal trails; maybe his half-brother will develop a taste for that as well.
 
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THE EAGLE HAS LANDED? QUICK SADDLE TRAINING UPDATE

Well, just reporting I've finally sat on the back of that horse. Got on and off him twice this afternoon and that's enough for one session. But wouldn't you just know it, the second time I got on him, a huge branch came down with an almighty crash in the forest behind us and startled him, so he got very toey because unexpected noises are his prime "scary monster" - danced around a bit, and I reassured him and slid back off him to calm him down.

All this was at the tie rail, which is where I've done all the first mounts on ex-harness racers so far. In contrast, with my Arabian mare, on January 26, 1985, I just spontaneously got on her back after a lungeing session with the saddle on one day, and rode her home from the field where I'd worked with her. Just like that, because it felt right, and she acted as if she'd been a riding horse all her life.

With ex-harness racers, I've never bothered lungeing - they've got equivalent preliminary work with harness training and are already mature and ready to work. They're used to having all kinds of gear on them and pulling a cart, now they just have to get used to the idea of carrying someone on their back. So with each of the half-dozen harness horses, I've done some leading them around with a riding saddle, and making noise with the saddle, dangling stirrups around their ribcages, leaning up against them, jumping up and down next to them, pulling on the stirrups, putting weight in the stirrup with a foot, standing up in the stirrup leaning against the horse, etc, and if that's all OK, you just get on the horse and then get off again almost immediately, before anything untoward can happen. Go chat to the horse, say how clever they are, etc, rinse and repeat, end lesson.

Next time, if you get on and the horse seems unperturbed, you get a competent horse handler to lead-line you away from the tie rail at the walk - or alternatively, you lead-line your horse while someone else is the saddle monkey. Just walk for five minutes, and if the horse is cool, end lesson, come back and do more another day. By day two usually the leader unclips the horse and rider within a minute, and they continue on a track they know well on their own - once around, then back home.

Currently, the only person available who's really skilled at controlling horses from the ground is me - Brett isn't a horse person and doesn't know how to anticipate reactions instantly based on body language, and forestall a problem before it really snowballs. I can counteract horses running backwards, rearing, etc, he can't. So it would actually be better if I could get someone else to volunteer to sit on him for the first lead-line session, because controlling that horse from the ground is so important for that step. We'll see how we'll solve that one. Brett volunteered to monkey up today, but has only been on two rides in his life, so he didn't really get much further than standing up in one stirrup wondering what to do with his other leg, so I just ended up getting on myself instead. It's been a while since he was on a horse!

Brett's first horse ride had been back in 2008, when I lead-lined him through the countryside on my Arabian mare for a short scenic ride. At that time, he told me that being on the back of a horse feels "like being drunk and staggering around but without the euphoria" and he expressed no enthusiasm for ever doing it again, which I respected.

However, at Hallowe'en 2010 he came home with a Nazgul costume, and as a result got coaxed onto Sunsmart for a photo session - because you can't really be a Nazgul without a horse...

So here is Brett's second-ever horse ride - and the last one to date:
brett_the_nazgul.jpg


This is the same photo after Brett photoshopped Middle Earth into it:

brett_the_nazgul_altered.jpg

You're married to a Nazgûl???????
 
How cool, @Magna, you even put the little squiggly accent in the word! :sunglasses:

In the room I'm in I'm just hearing, in a laryngeal kind of hiss, "Shiiiire! Baaaaggins!"
 

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