Live Performances

Every Tuesday in April (4/7,14,21,28)6-9 PM solo at The Taos Inn, Taos NM

Friday April 17 430-630 PM Solo at Embudo Valley Vineyards, Embudo NM

Sunday April 19 6-9 PM The Serpent Herders at The Taos Inn, Taos NM

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Musings – A Gentle Breeze

This guy came to live at our little homestead in April 2024. His name is Zephyr, which, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, means “a gentle breeze.” I think my other horses would beg to differ, but more on that later.

I wrote in more detail about my journey with horses in a previous newsletter so I won’t repeat all that. But I will say that my old guy is retired from riding and the middle horse has a degenerative ligament condition which also prevents him from being ridden. I want to ride, and I’m also a little crazy when it comes to animals, so I decided I needed a third horse.

I’m a firm believer in adopting animals from shelters and rescues, but figured most rescue horses would be out of my league, coming with lots of baggage that I didn’t have the expertise to deal with. I looked at a few rescue websites in New Mexico and Colorado and sent them emails describing what I was looking for. Most of them were dead ends, but The Horse Shelter, a rescue near Santa Fe, said they had a horse that might work. I scheduled an appointment for a test ride the following week.

When I got there, I met with the ranch manager, who told me what they knew about the little gray horse, which was basically nothing. He had been found wandering in someone’s yard in southern New Mexico with another horse a few months earlier and had been brought to the shelter. His mane and tail were horribly matted and his hooves were in bad shape. He seemed okay with being ridden but didn’t appear to know much.

We walked over to the enclosure where he was kept with a few other horses, and of course for me it was love at first sight. For Zephyr, maybe not so much. He didn’t want me to halter him, and the ranch manager stepped in and did it much more assertively. We walked over to the area where they groom and tack up the horses before a ride, and he didn’t want to be brushed or pick up his feet to be cleaned. But he relented a little bit, and I figured he’d come around with time. We went for a ride with the ranch manager and her horse and it went pretty well. I signed the paperwork and a week later they brought him to my house.

Just like that, I now had three horses in my yard. I kept Zephyr separated from the other two for a couple of weeks, worrying that they’d beat him up until they got used to the idea of him. Zephyr is younger and smaller than either of them. It turned out I was worried about the wrong horse. When I finally did put them together, Zephyr had them both cornered in short order and bit one of them hard enough to leave a nasty wound. I separated them again, not sure what I’d gotten all of us into. But after a couple more weeks Zeph told me he was ready and they’ve lived together pretty peacefully ever since.

We’ve had a few misadventures over the last couple of years, but overall things have gone pretty well. Its obvious that Zephyr has suffered some mistreatment in his life, but he is now trusting enough to be brushed and get his hooves trimmed. I’ve come to find we’re a little bit alike…both stoic, but lacking confidence underneath that facade. I made a deal with him early on that neither of us has to do anything that we consider too scary, and we’ll take it slow. We might never ride off into the sunset, but we can at least ride around the yard.

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miscellaney

~ recent reads (and listens) – How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery, Heartwood by Amity Gage, Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, Heart the Lover by Lily King, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer, The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, and The Horse by Wendy Williams

~ Hot off the needles – Haiku Cardigan by Svetlana Volkova

Thank you for reading! Until next month…