Gladiatresses

Monday January 18 2010

Tonight's the night. The ultimate Thoroughbred racing showdown. It won't be on the racetrack, but in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

It's the Oscars of Thoroughbred racing.

Year-end Eclipse awards will be announced, including Horse of the Year.

Both mares will undoubtedly be champions of their divisions, but which will be Horse of the Year? Will it be the freak 3-year-old filly Rachel Alexandra, winner of all 8 of her races in 2009, including the Preakness, Haskell Invitational, and Woodward Stakes (first filly to win it) against males?

Or will it be the freak 5-year-old mare Zenyatta, winner of all her 5 races in 2009 (to remain undefeated in 14 starts), including the Breeders Cup (first mare to win it) against males?

In addition, Zenyatta's owners, Ann and Jerry Moss, who had announced her retirement after her historic win in the Breeder's Cup Classic in November, have returned Zenyatta to training. A huge gamble for the now-6-year-old mare, with a 14 for 14 record. It's doesn't get any easier for the older horse on the racetrack, facing those fresh youngsters.

Now, whichever mare is named Horse of the Year for 2009... there is still a chance they will meet on the racetrack.

By 10:30 PM (eastern) tonight, it will be all over but the weeping and cheering - for the people. The horses won't know or care one way or the other - they both know they are great.

Steve Haskin of The BloodHorse.com has a usual excellent article summing up Rachel's and Zenyatta's accomplishments for 2009 here.

Bass-Ackwards Badlands Trail

Sunday January 17 2010

Normally we ride the Badlands loop counter clockwise.

"Let's do it backwards today."

We headed out to the east, along Dog Trail (dogs used to spring out here and surprise our horses) to Four Corners (four trails intersect), down Blond Cow Wash (saw a blond cow in there once, among a herd of red ones), cresting Tamara's Hill (we took Tamara this way on her first ride in 10 years),

and took the back road to the Badlands. We call it the Badlands loop, because the eroded hills are the feeble Owyhee imitation of the Badlands of South Dakota.


Steph's horse Rhett LOVES to gallop up this dirt road; we had a nice trot and canter down it

to the fence along the potato/corn field. (Some years it's scary corn, sometimes it's potatoes.)

Lots of goodies in the fallow field to tempt Ravens. Lots of rice grass along the trail to tempt Jose and Suz to stop a spell and dine. Lots of enticing scenery to occupy the eyesight. Some mysterious dried flowers we don't remember seeing before popped up in bunches along the trail.

New hills seem to have grown in these Badlands - an entire trail, when you are used to riding it one direction, looks like a whole new trail when you ride it the opposite direction.

The Badlands Trail skirts the base of the low eroded bluffs; today, for the first time, we rode right up into some of them.

Miniature hoodoos stood where the bluffs had eroded away. A weathered mound of a different type of dirt/clay/sand indicated what once must have been a geyser.

Miniature gullies showed the ultimate power of water that has done so much to carve this high Owyhee desert.


Jose, who has Elf Eyes ("Legolas. What do your Elf Eyes see?") - he can spot interesting things far sooner than I do, and he really does seem to appreciate views - paused to look at the hoodoos

and the take in the sweeping views over the Hart Creek drainage.

We meandered back along this low ridge, the Owyhee mountains a beacon ahead of us under low gray skies.

The horses trotted back all the way up Blond Cow Wash, finishing with a good workout and a little sweat.

It was a good ride in the Bad Lands of Owyhee in the dead of winter.

Bath Time

Saturday January 16 2010

When do you like to take your bath? Morning or evening?

Some of the horses here like to take their dirt baths in the morning, some prefer them in the evening.

Stormy gets the dirt rolling this morning.




That was great - gotta have another one. It looks so good, the others line up.



Next?

Mac follows.





That was so good, he has another one.


Dirty enough?


Huckleberry's turn.




Mac has a third bath, in a different spot, while Jose watches.



And a fourth one!




Now the morning bathers are ready to face another Owyhee day.

It Was a Good Day

Thursday January 14 2010

From orange sunrise to artist's sunset, it was a pretty awesome 'winter' day in Owyhee - which is saying something, coming from someone who craves MORE SNOW. (Another way of describing today might be "ridiculously mild.") Temperatures in the (gasp) 30's, sunshine warm, air sharp and clear, breeze minimal, horses enthusiastic.

Jose and Suz had a nice ride together, and Kazam performed admirably well on his own (an update on him a bit later). Nothing like a couple of good rides to make you feel satisfied.

The sunset was one that actually punched you in the stomach, snatched your breath away when you first saw it. A screech owl hooted his approval in a cottonwood by the creek as Nature's fireworks framed Jose and the Owyhee mountains in a fitting farewell to the day.

It was just a marvelous day all around.

Camouflage

Wednesday January 13 2010

Rushcreek Mac heard about this cool trick called camouflage, so he thought he'd give it a try here in the winter desert. He had a good roll in the mud and worked on blending in with the brush. Can you spot him?




He makes it a bit easier here.

The White Horse

Tuesday January 12 2010

I watch the Lord of the Rings movies (extended versions) at least once a year, especially since I rode a horse that was in Lord of the Rings. (One of the 2-300 extra horses, but, a Lord of the Rings horse nonetheless : ).

Same goes for the documentaries that accompany each movie (about 6 hours per movie) - I watch them at least once a year, especially for the inspiration. The artistic genius of the people who put this film together is simply astounding - from the illustrators to the designers and sculptors and builders, to the director, the lighting and sound and photography. I see something new every time I watch it.

In talking about some of the cultures of Middle Earth that were created, and the accompanying incredibly detailed carvings on the buildings, and the stitching on clothing and armor of the Rohirrim (the Horse Lords) and their horses, a picture flashed on screen of the Uffington White Horse.

This is an actual geoglyph in the south of England - a work of art made from moving earth or stones around, or carving hillsides, within a landscape. It's 374 feet long, made from carved trenches in the earth filled with white chalk. It's estimated to be 3000 years old, dating between 1400 and 600 BC.

The definite reason for this horse has not been determined, but I like the possibility that it was created for religious purposes, since evidence exists of horse worship in the Iron Age.

If you have Google Earth, you can find it at
51*34'38.97" N
1*34'00.26" W

Barbed Wire: Bane and Boon of the West

Sunday January 10 1010

It's such a common sight in the West that it's hardly noticed: barbed wire. It's as much a part of the landscape as the sagebrush and the Owyhee mountains here. It wasn't always so.

Just about in tandem with the Owyhee gold rush in the 1860's, cattle became another source of gold in this region of the Snake River drainage with its rich grasslands.

Cattle were driven up from California and Oregon, and from Texas. Con Shea drove the first thousand-head herd up from Texas to Idaho in 1867, turning them loose here near Oreana for the winter. He found it so profitable he made it an annual excursion, despite the hardships, the rugged terrain, and the risk of Indian attacks.

Cattlemen ruled the rangelands in the 1870's, turning their herds loose around here to graze wherever they could find food; but by the next decade, homesteaders were competing for some of that land.

People started getting territorial. Ranchers wanted fences to keep out farmers and homesteaders; farmers wanted to keep cattle from trampling and eating their crops; ranchers wanted to keep other ranchers out when the feed was scarce.

Brush, wood, and stone fences were impractical and didn't work to hold cattle, and smooth wire didn't keep them in. Wire with barbs on it did. Though he wasn't the first to design a wire with sharp points affixed to it, Joseph Glidden of Illinois in 1874 invented and patented the barbed wire like we see today.


It worked so well that the Fence Cutter Wars erupted between those wanting to keep cattle off their lands (or, not necessarily their lands, but the lands they fenced), and those free-range ranchers who thought their cattle should be allowed to wander and graze at will. Some of the skirmishes became so violent, and ended in enough deaths that fence cutting became a felony in some states.

Since the ubiquitous cattle still roam the West, on private and public lands, the barbed wire still rules. It might not be the best fencing for horses, but then a horse will find a way to kill himself in fencing made of feathers, if he sets his mind to it. Finneas about sliced his hind leg off two winters ago on smooth wire.

It's good hard work to put up barbed wire fences properly - and it's work taking them out. Count on sore hand muscles even if you do have bolt cutters, sore arm muscles from carrying the rolls of barbed wire out,
and count on a permanent scar or two as souvenirs of the wild West. I've got one on my arm from 1998 from opening a cantankerous barbed wire fence gate.

I finally hiked up and pulled out a downed fence up the canyon that has been worrying me for two years now. A stretch of fence was undercut by a deep and newly-widened gully from a flashflood, and part of it was hanging over the edge of the gully and part of it was laying down. If a horse slipped and fell in there through the fence. . . better not to think about it and just get it out of there. I thought normally the horses didn't go up by that fence, but sure enough, as I was working on it, I found a pile of horse poop right by it. I wrestled with the rotted and downed wooden posts and metal T-posts, and wrangled with untangling and rolling up the 4 strands of wire.

I just can't be brought to throw away this genuine Owyhee barbed wire - and though it is thoroughly AGGRAVATING and ANNOYING to work with it, it makes some nice Owyhee Western decorations.

This one looks like Jose, don't you think? : )