It really is the little things

I try to recognize and savor the good things that I am lucky enough to experience.

 

Enough pasture?  Ya THINK?  Or is that a whale in the surf?

Many times, it’s little joys, such as hearing the first trill of toad song in spring, during those amphibians’ brief couple of weeks of mating season, or having Hudson come up and rest her big forehead on my back while I’m standing quietly in the paddock.  It might be the way my husband can smile at me using only his blue eyes and not changing the rest of his expression, or being able to ask my mother about something she experienced during the Great Depression or World War II, or even the day before.

So it’s not surprising that I am relishing the joy of something else that seems so simple, but was not at all simple for me: Owning three horses.  Regular readers will have followed the long, difficult and sometimes expensive path I took to decrease from five to three. 

I feel a list coming on.

Why having three horses is better than five:

1. It gives me enough time and space to ride two out of three (instead of two out of five.  Well, it’s not perfect, but a much better ratio).
2. Those two are the ones I want to ride, as opposed to the ones I feel I have to ride to be able to get them ready for sale.
3. I don’t have to be quite as miserable about hay, because there is much less hay being consumed.  That means, if the weather this summer only allows us to get in one of our fields (which literally can happen in the Twin Tiers, if you’re goal is to make good, dry, horse hay), we will still have plenty of hay for the horses and the sheep this winter.
4. A total epiphany: We finally, for the first time ever, actually have ENOUGH pasture to feed all my horses during the grassy seasons (with proper field care and rotation, of course).
5. This one I realized recently and it caused me to write this post: We can easily close these three in the run-in during bad weather without worrying about crowding and panicked injuries.  I did this the other night after a day of rain.  Two of the three were shivering after coming in from grazing in the cool rain and high, wet grass (not Hudson, of course, who, I have decided, must have a beluga whale mixed into her genetics, with that large amount of white and nice, squishy, insulating layer of fat).  Since the weather was going to be the same, but now with a cold north wind added to the mix, I shut them all in the run-in, brushed the excess water off the chilly ones and watched as they stopped shivering and calmly settled in together for the night, comfy and dry and out of the elements.
6. This one is contrary: I feel I can splurge a little on them, now that I have fewer.  For instance, I always wanted to get Summer Whinny leg socks for them, to protect them against flies, but I couldn’t justify the expense.  Well, I can’t really justify the expense for three, but they are in the mail to me as we speak.
7. Having fewer means that each gets more individual attention, grooming, examination, exercise.
8. I can shove them all on the stock trailer in case of a tornado.  OK, that’s a stretch, because if a tornado suddenly started our way, I doubt I would have time to do this, but it’s good to have that possible option.

Hard to see, but it's DeCato, chasing the sheep.

There's nothing earthshaking in that list, but it's an opportunity to say, “Yeah!  This is GOOD.”  

Our days are made of little things, so when the little things are good, the days are good.