Woodstone Prairie

…although Tilly mistook it for one the other day. 

It’s amazing how hard a donkey can bite when they think they are biting an apple.

It’s also pretty amazing how stupid I can be. It’s a good thing our animals are good natured and very forgiving of my barnyard cluelessness.

Here’s what happened…

I’d gone out to the pasture with a leftover apple of M’s. He’d taken maybe 4 bites out of it and decided he didn’t want it anymore. Rather than waste it I took it out to the animals.

Blaze and both donkeys were up at the barn, so I just walked into the pasture, held out the apple, and said “First one here gets it.”. Not they understood what I was saying of course, I just like to talk to them. (Honestly, after a full day of M’s disconnected conversations, and R’s compulsive question asking, I LOVE talking to to creatures who can’t talk!)

There was no mad dash for the apple, but the animals did start meandering down to see what I had, and Tucker, my little wild man, was the first one to get to me.

An important part of this story is that there is a definite barnyard pecking order. Blaze is on top… He can, and will, take food from the donkeys, and they get out of his way when he lays his ears back and gives them the “Look”. Tilly is next in line, and Tucker is on the bottom. Everybody takes food away from Tucker.

I wasn’t thinking about the pecking order though, I was thinking how nice it was that Tucker got there first, and that this would be a good opportunity to build a little more trust with him. 

Since I hadn’t taken the time to cut the apple first, I just held it out to him the way we do with the horses… letting him grab it and bite a chunk off so he wouldn’t try to eat it whole. 

That was the stupidity part… donkeys are not horses, and no one told Tucker to just take a bite. So Tucker bit into the apple and tried to walk away with it. Unfortunately, Tilly got there at about that same time and also reached out to bite the apple. But since it was already in Tucker’s mouth  she bit my hand instead. 

It was an honest mistake… my hand was all wet with apple juice, and tasted and smelled like apple, so poor Tilly held onto her prize. 

But that left me standing out in the pasture still holding the apple that is being tightly held in Tucker’s mouth, while Tilly is holding on just as tightly to my hand, and both donkeys are pulling away, trying to keep their treat. 

Ohhh, Tilly has a nasty bite to her! 

I was able to drop the apple, but Tilly still thought my hand was the treat and kept biting down and pulling away. I had to resort to kicking her in the shoulder to get her to let loose. It took two kicks but she finally let me have my now slightly mangled hand back.

My hand still works, nothing is broken, thank goodness… My thumb looked pretty rough the first day, it was dented in and shaped funny, but now it’s just a little swollen and bruised.

Tilly was nice and hasn’t held a grudge about getting kicked… but she must have wondered about these strange humans. They make a big deal about offering you a treat, but when you try to eat it they take it back and even kick you to get it!  

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So anyway, that’s the story of my hand being mistaken for an apple.

Stay tuned for Sweet Pea’s Tips for Staying Cool on a Hot Day!

… we finally did something we’ve been meaning to do since we moved here. We hiked up to Castle Rock. Castle Rock is a landmark around here, and the town that surrounds the rock is named after it. It’s a bit of high bluff, a ancient remnant of the high plains that covered this part of the country eons ago.

We’re only about 20 minutes away from “the rock” and have talked about hiking up it ever since we discovered it was open to the public.

Castle Rock is huge and sits up on a hill. You can hike up to the base of the rock, but not climb up the rock itself.

Here is the base of the trail up to the rock. We went up the summit trail and back down the perimeter trail. Both were beautiful…

Both kids were excited at first and I had to remind them not to run. They slowed down some once the trail started to get steep, but they both kept going with no complaints.

There are massive rocks along the trail, R liked this one and wanted a picture of it.

M saw several lizards out sunning themselves. They are VERY quick, but I did get this picture of one…  Can you see it? It’s sitting in the shady part of the rock, about in the center of the picture.

There were only a few wildflowers left along the trail… It’s been so dry that most of them are already dried up.

Finally we made it up to the base of the rock. R liked the way this part of the rock felt…

The view…

… with the town of Castle Rock down below.

Heading back down, the kids were in a hurry to get back to the car…

It was a nice afternoon. M had a very rough morning yesterday, so it was especially nice to spend fun time together after struggling our way through his rough spell.

Both kids enjoyed our little hike (and both were proud of themselves for continuing on even when the trail got steep and they started feeling anxious), so I told them we hike again soon. I’d like to hike at Castlewood Canyon next… We hiked there a couple of years ago, and it was beautiful…. I’d love to go again.

I finally heard back from the pdoc who did the consult a few weeks ago with M. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much in the way of suggestions. She thought of a couple of long-shot meds that might help with mood, but had no ideas for anything to try for the psychosis. She asked how M was doing, and I said he was having good days and bad days. She replied by saying, “You know, he’s always going to have some symptoms…” 

Yes, I know that M’s schizophrenia is never going to go away. He’ll always need to take medication, and will always have bad spells. But I’d been holding on to the hope that he’d be more stable, at his “baseline”, then he is now… 

There is no sense going into the details, but, for many reasons, her comment was hard for me to hear… especially coming from someone I barely knew. It seems like M’s regular pdoc should have been the one to initiate that kind of conversation. But she isn’t good at things like that… She is great at medications, side effects, etc. and she is very kind and personable, but over the years I’ve gotten the message that she’d really rather not talk about the really tough stuff. Things like what the future is likely to look like, how can we as a family live with this level of instability, how can we help him to grow and be as successful as possible, given the continuing symptoms…

I suppose the pdoc’s call just came at a bad time. It was a difficult week, knowing that Christiana was holding onto life by the slimmest of threads, dreading being told that she was gone and yet, at the same time, knowing her release from life would mean healing and peace for her.

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 Ah, well, it’s time to shift gears… there have been good things going on here too.

We visited Longhopes, the donkey rescue, the other day and had a wonderful time!

 We spend several hours out in the HOT sun, watching the director of the rescue working with the baby donkeys.

This woman is just amazing…  I learned so much from watching her, and came home energized and feeling hopeful about gentling our little wild man, Tucker.

Here are some pictures of M and R at Longhopes.

Since our visit, I’ve been working with Tucker for a little while every day… I’ve made some progress, he will allow me (when he has absolutely no other choice!) to “pet” him with a towel attached to a broomstick. (This enables me to get close enough to touch him without being close enough to be kicked.) Unfortunately, he’s also threatening to kick me fairly regularly… so I’m not sure how far I’ll be able to go with this on my own. Longhopes has a trainer that will also work with Tucker if I need him to…

Tucker and Blaze are getting to be great friends, which is wonderful to see…

Yesterday, for the first time, I saw them grooming each other. Blaze is a wonderful horse, I’m glad he’s found a friend.

My friend Christiana is no longer sick and hurting…

She passed away yesterday afternoon.

Please keep her family in your prayers.

I know there are probably plenty of people who wouldn’t understand or agree with what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it anyway.

 Sometimes one of the best things about having kids who are developmentally delayed is that they are, well….developmentally delayed.

So while most kids are growing up WAY too fast, wanting boyfriends and girlfriends at 7, asking to wear make-up at 10, and considering themselves grown by 13… my kids, at 11 and 15, are still happily, with no embarrassment, just being kids.

They are on the s-l-o-w path to adulthood, which has it’s challenges (obviously) but also has it’s joys.

Like not being too big to cool off by running through the sprinkler on a hot day.

 Yesterday was a hot day, here’s how we cooled off…

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They discovered that there are many interesting ways to cool off in a sprinker…

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….and all of them are fun.

(Yes I ran through too, it felt wonderful!)

 Happy 4th of July!

I can’t believe it’s been a week since I’ve posted… We’ve been keeping very busy, the days are just flying by.

 It’s been an up and down kind of week, but that seems to be the norm for us. On the “up” side, I had the vet out last night to give Blaze his shots and take a look at the donkeys… and everything looks good.  We’ve finally decided on names for them, by the way… they are Tilly and Tucker. What do you think?

I think Tucker is especially photogenic…

Anyway, the vet was out last night and the farrier was out a couple of days ago. Tilly’s hooves are trimmed, she’s walking better and no longer having to stand in the mud. I’ve also been able to stop the anti-inflammatory medication. I was told that she is about 9 years old, and Tucker is her “baby” and is probably about 2. Believe it or not she still has milk, so Tucker was only recently weaned (or is still weaning, I haven’t actually seen him nurse, although it looked like he was hinting around to nurse today… ). I guess it’s not that unusual for a donkey to nurse her baby for that long… especially if food is scarce.

Tilly and Tucker, grooming each other…

Tilly was a wild burro… adopted at some point in her past from the BLM. Tucker was born after she was rounded up and adopted out. We were a little (ok a LOT) concerned that Tucker might not be “fixed”, but the vet and farrier both agree that he appears to be gelded. Whew! (If he wasn’t, we’d have to have it done, and it couldn’t be done until I’d gentled him enough to halter him, and get him to stand still for a shot…which might be awhile!)

I called the folks at Longhopes Donkey Rescue and we are going out there tomorrow to watch their trainer work with their donkeys, and get some ideas for gentling Tucker.

The goats left yesterday for their new home… It was very hard to see them go. M fell apart for a while after they left, but pulled back together fairly quickly so all was good. It did seem funny this morning to go out to the barn and not be greeted by Betty and Rose… the barn seems kind of quiet all of a sudden. (lol, I guess that’s a measure of how noisy those goats were, if a barn that still has two donkeys and a horse in it can be called “quiet”!) Blaze seemed sad when they left… I took them out through the barn, and he stood in his stall for hours after they left, looking into the barn… Waiting for them to come back?

I caught Blaze this morning throwing his weight around with the donks. Here’s Tilly, done eating, is heading out to the pasture… but Tucker has to dart by Blaze (who is extremely cranky, check out his ears!) to get out of the barn.

Whew, he made it, Tucker’s a pretty quick little guy!!

So that’s the news from the barnyard. I was going to write more but since this post has gotten long enough, I think the save the rest for tomorrow…

 I’ll close with some pictures I took this morning of the twin fawns that are living on the hill just west of the pasture. We’ve been seeing them off and on for a few days, but they are still very tiny and keep very close to mom.

Here they are taking a break from their nibbling to check me out…

Mom was there quickly though (my cue to get AWAY from the babies!) and seemed to be checking them out to make sure they were ok.

Sorry the pictures aren’t any better… This is the best my camera could do while still keeping me far enough away from mama deer to be safe!

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And finally, and sadly, an update on my friend Christiana… She took a turn for the worst late last week, and her doctors are saying that there is nothing more they can do. She had the option of going on life-support, or going home with hospice support. She choose to go home. It sounds like it’s only a matter of days that she will be with us….

Please keep Christiana and her family in your prayers.

Yesterday was a challenge, a day of ups and downs (or more accurately, downs and ups). 

M’s been pretty unstable for the past few days. He’s going back and forth between the calm stability he (we) had been enjoying for the past couple of weeks, and the edgy, unpredictability that’s been the norm since the beginning of the year.

Yesterday morning he had a severe meltdown in the car… something that’s pretty unusual these days. After going through many meltdowns in the car when he was younger, I’ve gotten very careful about not putting us in that situation. It’s incredibly scary when he’s out of control in the car, so I learned… If he’s too edgy, we just don’t leave the house.

But he seemed ok when we left the house. Unfortunately he fell apart within minutes. I should have turned around and gone back home, but R needed to get to day camp so I kept going… hoping he’d settled down quickly.

He didn’t though, and the 30 minute ride was a nightmare… No one was hurt, no damage was done, and we got there safely, but I felt completely exhausted by the time we got to camp. He was still unsettled and disconnected for the rest of the morning but, thankfully, stayed calm after that initial meltdown.

By afternoon M was more himself again and got school done before going back to pick up R. It’s weird how he can be so incredibly disconnected and out of control, and within just  a few hours be thinking well enough to get school done. He recovers from these episodes faster than I do…

R was so excited after camp. I real hula dancer had come to camp and taught the kids a dance! (As a big Lilo and Stitch fan, she loves Hawaiian music! After dinner she brought her CD player downstairs, turned her Lilo and Stitch CD on, and taught us all her hula dance. Even dh got up and danced! R was having so much fun teaching us something… at one point she asked dh, “Have you ever smiled so much it made your head hurt?” She was having a wonderful time… It was silly and fun and just what we needed after the morning’s drama.

After dancing the kids and I went out to do the barn chores… but first M had to play with the donkeys. He’s learned that they get very curious when he sits down in the pasture (probably wondering why anyone would want to sit in that mess!), and even Jack will come over and see him.

It was good to see him connected again and enjoying life…

 So… it was a day what went from REALLY bad, to pretty good. It’s so nice when things balance out that way.

A dear friend of mine gave me a book the other day. It’s called Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, and it’s a wonderful book… I’m enjoying it very much.

I found this poem in the book and love it so much I wanted to post it here…

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Let Evening Come

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Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

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Let the cricket take up chafing

as a woman takes up her needles

and her yarn. Let evening come.

~

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned

in long grass. Let the stars

appear and the moon disclose her silver horn.

~

Let the fox go back to it’s sandy den.

Let the wind die down. Let the shed

go black inside. Let evening come.

~

To the bottle in the ditch, to the

scoop in the oats, to the air in the lung

let evening come.

~

Let it come as it will, and don’t

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

~Jane Kenyon

That’s how long M’s good spell lasted. If I’m remembering right this is one of the longest, calmest, spells he’s had since the onset of his schizophrenia about 7 years ago. It was a very nice 12 days… he was more stable and connected than he’s been in years. It’s been hard to go back to the edginess, restlessness, volatility and unpredictability. Things are manageable, but it’s still hard to make the shift backwards…

 Anyway, it’s a busy week this week for us! R is in Girl Scout day camp all week, so M and I are on our own for most of the day. We got some running around done yesterday morning and spent the afternoon doing school. The deal is that he does school this week, and takes next week off to balance out R not doing any school this week… M’s pretty excited about getting to just hang out next week while R has to do school! We’ve got things planned every day this week just to give us some structure… (M tends to not know what to do with himself when R’s gone.)

The donkeys are settling in pretty well. Jenny has about the sweetest, most even disposition of any animal I’ve ever seen (except maybe our Golden, Emma… she’s also pretty laid back). She is friendly, calm, and very easy going…

Jack, on the other hand, is very easily frightened, and it’s taken 5 days of work just to get him to eat out of my hand, and let me lightly touch his face.

He’s also afraid of our goat Rose, which is kind of funny… He’s so much bigger than she is, but all she needs to do is give him “the look” and take a step or two towards him and he takes off. It was hard getting him fed last night because he was afraid to walk past Rose to get to the hay!

After thinking about it, we’ve decided to sell the goats… We don’t need this many animals (lol, we don’t need ANY animals!), and hay is expensive, so I’m going to start looking for a new home for my “girls”. It will be hard, because they are both wonderful, gentle, goats…. but we just can’t keep adding animals without getting rid of some.

Most of our animals are either rescue animals or animals with special needs… Part of the reason for that is finances, we just can’t afford to spend hundred (or thousands) of dollars on pets and livestock. But the other reason is because I tend to have a soft spot for the underdog, for the “fixer-uppers”… It breaks my heart to see animals that haven’t been well cared for, and need someone to love them and given them consistent care. I love watching them becoming glossy with health and strong again.

I thought it might be fun to post some before and after pictures of a few of our animals…

Blaze before-

…and now.

Rose before (with Betty as a baby)-

I didn’t realize it until I compared these pictures, but Rose is showing her age… Look at all the white in her coat compared to two years ago!

Grant… He doesn’t look that thin in this picture, but he was pretty skinny when we got him. The dark spots on his chest are places where his hair was gone. He was also lame when this picture was taken, it took six months (three vet visits, four farrier visits, and corrective shoeing) to “fix” the problem, but he was eventually pain free and sound…

Here’s his “after” shot… He was such a great horse, we still miss him.

Jenny is also a “fixer-upper”. She is very thin and has some lameness. Her hooves look  very different that Jack’s, and are overgrown. At times she walks as though she’s in pain. The vet has me giving her an anti-inflammatory and standing her in deep mud for several hours each day.

Needless to say my pasture is a mess… I’ve been living in mud boots for days!

 So here’s Jenny’s “before” picture… a sad, skinny, little donkey standing in the mud.

Give me a few months and I’ll post an “after”…

 During this past school year I decided to introduce M and R to Shakespeare… I bought some abridged children’s versions of some of his works which they read, and we also read several books about him. I thought they should know who he was, when and where he lived, and have at least a tiny bit of familiarity with his writings.

I’m not sure if this was a good idea or not.

As we were driving to town today R asked me, “Is that Shakespeare, Mom?”.

Not sure what she was talking about (her conversation tends to jump around a lot), I replied, “Is what Shakespeare?”

R, “Those words”

Me, trying not to sound impatient,”What words?”

R, looking at the rearview mirror, ”Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”

Me, “No sweety, that’s not Shakespeare…”