Ivory Caps

From the beginning: As I've outlined in previous submissions, with pictures, the installation of the base for the barn and dry paddock is a Geo-textile material, also known as 'cattle carpet,' from the front edge of the fencing, completely under the barn and past the overhang's pillars and into the far side of the barn.

On top of the cattle carpet is several inches or feet of #2 stones to level, topped off with several more inches of stone dust or 'fines.' What wasn't covered in carpet and fines was left to go to dirt. We even pulled the weeds. This truly is a 'dry paddock,' devoid of any greenery.

Some months ago, along the barn doors facing the pasture gate, I found a strange looking stone, squarish, ivory-colored, with almost coral-looking indents. Because the dry paddock is so clean this object stood out like a bad tooth. I knew it was bone-like but had never seen anything like it. At the time I figured a Crow had dropped it there.

At our old house we have a pond. Routinely I would find pork-chop bones in the pond, left by Raccoons or dropped by Crows. I showed it to him, he couldn't tell me what it was. Like everything else I find I kept it.

When feeding on Thursday night I discovered another of these 'stones' in Sprite's feed bowl. Eureka! It's a baby tooth. To prove it I had to Google the answer and sure enough, I WAS RIGHT!

These are called 'caps' and are dislodged by the permanent teeth pushing up. Sprite is exactly the right age to be losing her baby caps. Usually these are impossible to find because they are lost in the pastures, resemble stones and are easily overlooked. Because the dry paddock is a controlled environment and the minis are not allowed anywhere else I had the rare chance to find two of them. I'll keep them forever.

On Saturday the weather man promised another nice day, for mid-winter. The weather forecast is not always what actually happens, but Saturday did turn out to be a delightful day.

We met friends at the horsey club and took a much longer ride, the ride we should have taken a couple weeks ago but the weather turned for the worse and then hurried home in the rain.

I needed the coat and chaps I had on, but the sunny skies and light breeze made the day a true gift. Some areas did have frozen puddles, still frosty in the shade, but the trails were in fairly good shape.

We headed down to the river, past the archery club, meandering down the trail to the rail road tracks. As luck would have it a train was coming and we didn't have enough time for all of us to get across the rails. We 'parked' at the tree line, still in grass and let them put their heads down.

I waved at the Engineer, he did not sound the horn. At that time Blackie decided to take a leak. He got all stretched out to do just that, completely relaxed, peeing, while the train went by, and when the wheels screeched, Jake spooked and rear-ended Blackie, literally running him over.

I honestly don't know what happened in the next nano-second, but when I looked up Joan was coming off of Blackie, who was running after Jake, who was riderless at that point. Joan held on to Blackie long enough to break the reins, both horses running up the hill, through the woods.

I kept KC spinning circles. Tom wanted to go after the horses, but I thought it better to just wait; sure enough they circled back to us in the next minute.

Martin said one of his New Year's Resolutions was to create a saddle bag with emergency equipment. He was able to fix Joan's reins in less than a minute. Maybe I need to get one of those, too.

When we finally got to the Woodstock Inn the parking lot was pretty full, except there was not one single motorcycle, on this beautiful Saturday. The hitching post was parked in with cars again. We haven't made a sign that says 'horse parking.'

We got situated and walked into an empty restaurant. There were two guys at the bar and the usual barkeep, Cynthia. Boy, was she glad to see us! A train went by while we were eating and Martin flew out to the hitching post, but not a horse moved. I think they were sleeping.

By the time we got back to the trailers it was getting fairly close to twilight. This was a beautiful day and surprised to see so few out in the park on this delicious day in February.

The forecast for Sunday says 4 - 5 inches of snow. I'm not in the mood for that.