Donkey protects horse (from dog)

You think you know your animals, after 13 years. 

Nothing could have taken me more aback, when yesterday I learned something new.

This month we learned we have wolves again in our area. People are worried, cuz there are so many sheep and livestock that can be easily taken. 

I thought, at first, "How cool, again, wolves in Deutschland, like the fairy tales."

Then I read an article about a rider being followed by 3 wolves for 20 minutes. For me, that is about 15 minutes too long. 

I'm from the PNW and I know a bit about predators, mostly black bears who are nothing unless they have kids. Like here in Germany - wild boars abound, but they won't gorge you to death with their tusks unless you annoy their kids.

When the wolves came to our village I thought I would just stay alert to their location via the news. But I know I have a twitchy horse, likely to take a fence down in panic. Actually that's a typical horse.

Although not completely removed tonight my fears were reduced by a dumb dog. 

I'm not a hater of dogs, just most of them. Cuz most of them bark at me when I am invited into their homes, and most of them jump on me, repeatedly lately, over and over.

This Monday our farrier arrived and out of his van, for the first time, popped a Dachshund. And what did it to? It ran to me and barked at me in my front door.

My farrier asked if I was scared of dogs.

I said in frank German, which is always frank, "This is extremely rude behavior." 

He put the dog away in the van and trimmed my horses. And the next day my husband helped me formlate an eloquent response, about how leashed dogs are welcome here, as well as dogs who do not bark at the house owner.

***

Yesterday I was doing my chores and the Dachshund next door started barking at my animals who were hanging out by the shared neighbor fence. This happens often, my animals are used to being barked at by that dog. I've even had the dog come into my yard and bark at me up close in my garden. The dog barks like crazy at every person who walks up our street, and of course the mailman, so no one can move in this neighborhood without a very very loud announcement. 

I looked over and saw that Mag was standing right next to the fence, with the dog right there on the other side. 

He had his head down, ears pricked at the dog as it went, "Rahrahrahrahrah, Rahrahrahrahrah, Rahrahrahrahrah..." There is nothing like the screeching voice of a Dachshund.

Then something happened and Mag spooked. Perhaps the dog lunged at him? Mag spun around suddenly on his heels and bounced a few strides away.

At that same moment, the donkey rushed over to them. She brayed full volume at the dog and stood sideways between the dog and the horse, blocking them. 

I couldn't believe it. I was certain, at that moment, that if there had been no fence, the donkey would have made contact with the dog. 

Until this I'd only heard donkeys bray for things they want/need like food or friends. Just like horses. Never in aggression. But since the arrival of the wolves I'd read that donkeys will bray to intimidate a wolf. 

Wow. 

I went to Bellis' side and started rubbing her, massaging her, praising her, and the entire time the dog went Rahrahrahrahrah, Rahrahrahrahrah, Rahrahrahrahrah....

Bellis did not leave the fence until the owners finally called their dogs in. 

Bellis got lots of carrots and much much love from me. 

I'm so pleased to learn that most likely, Bellis will protect herself and Mag, and us, from wolves.

Here she is, this week she spent a few afternoons soaking in the sun in below freezing temps: 

Hartmut

The old man who suffered a stroke 3 years ago still walks our hill every day and waves and greets Mag. He loves Mag. 3 times per week his wife Simone joins him. 

Recently Simone asked if it's OK if Hartmut gives Mag some snacks. Of course! I just wanted to show them which snacks are best, so I saved up a while. 

Today was the day and I had a big bag of carrots, apples, bananas and 8 slices of bread that I'd dried overnight on the radiator. 

As they made their daily trek by my house, I stopped them, "Hey Hartmut, I have something for you!" and gave him the sack. He was overjoyed!

As we made our way to the pasture along the street, Simone said that he really needs this today, his cousin died in a surfing accident in Austria today.

I said, "IN Austria?" Yes, they surf in rivers there like they do in Munich!

I guess people surf in rivers everywhere.

Harmut was so happy, as Mag made "giraffe" faces/poses to beg for treats, and how Bellis cleaned everything up that Mag bit into in tiny bites. 

His wife was so happy. I should have done this 2 years ago. 

I told them if I'm not there, to whistle for them, they'll come. Simone said, "They usually come to us anyway." 

Well that's great.

I am so thrilled that these good neighbors can find happiness in giving treats, and not just Hartmut waving hello to Mag. 

Ever since Hartmut had a stroke and moved to the nursing home Mag has been very special to him - his wife said he has a photo of a filthy Mag on his nursing home wall!!! Oh my. 

Today she said, "Oh no, I should have brought my camera, this is so wonderful to see."

Hartmut had a great experience and I hope his wife brings him horse treats regularly (in the nursing home he cannot horde food, so his wife would have to bring bread and carrots). 

I'm so happy this worked out so well. If  Mag can make a senior citizen happy on a daily basis...

Mag

Aarene asked how Mag is doing so I went out with my camera to catch a picture of his fluffiness. 

I sent her a few pictures:

I said, "Don't touch me, you're gross."

10 minutes later I went out and had to send her more pictures:

 

 They had both rolled in the same place, but you don't notice much with the donkey.

In this photo you can see my Wasserkocher - I thought I'd at least work on the tail, and I'm nice so I only use warm water to do that.

A visit to a local German barn

My good neighbors' daughter has been looking after our animals since she was a teenager. Now she's a young lady and still takes care of my animals and our house to give us the chance to see my parents in America. 

Isabel has an elderly black Hannoverian mare that she keeps in a village 20 km away, despite the fact that she lives next door to a boarding stable. I always found that sad, that she cannot look out her window at her horse, but she says they are all messed up there. She would never put a horse there, and I learned long ago that they don't want anything to do with me. The local farriers call it a goat war barn. 

It was wonderful to get to see Isabel's boarding barn, finally! A typical barn in Germany, built into the available hillside, in layers, terraces. There were normal homes scattered between the horse farm property, just built around. With the stench of the manure pile, I feel bad for those people.

I got a tour of the place, as we caught Arabella and this other big dark mare from their field.

It was so muddy, already, and the horse fields were full of manure, I don't know if they ever remove/spread it. 

The mare stable was an odd structure with 4 stalls and a tack room. There was a faucet with hot water for making mash!

The stable stank like....well, have you ever been in a 200 year old horse barn that has never had the stench of urine and feces cleaned out? It's the kind of stench you get used to if you're there every day. I'm sure the boarders don't even notice the smell, and I know I went home with it on my clothing. 

Isabel admitted they shut all the windows and doors in the Winter to keep the horses warm and the automated waterers from freezing. Her mare was kind of nasty, she snapped at me and pinned her ears while being groomed.

Isabel said that the barn would be busy because the horse scale was coming. 

I couldn't help myself, I laughed and said how stupid I think that is, the practice of paying someone to weigh your horse regularly. I asked, "Let me guess, you even have a horse weight passport?" Yes. 

No kidding. 

The reason I think this is stupid is because horse owners have eyes, they can look at their horses. If they're not sure, they can look at the girth hole/blanket fasteners or even use a weight tape. 

They say it's critical to know how much wormer to give the horse. I give the entire tube every time, based on my vet's recommendation (it's always better to give slightly too much).

 

What a beautiful view the horses have!

In all these years I've never needed to know exactly what my horse weighs. Vets learn this on their first day of school, so they can give the correct amount of medication.

 

I found it weird that someone put their  horse on the scale with a soaking wet Winter blanket on. Wouldn't that weigh something? The horse scale team, the people who bring the scale from barn to barn, didn't even say anything, they just wrote down the number. 

Also, some of the weights were off by a suspicious amount based on how the horses looked and their last weigh-ins. Some boarders were discussing that and I said, "When you noticed this, did anyone test the accuracy of the scale?"*shrug*

Anyway, the people at her barn were nice;  they invited us to join them for coffee and it was a great experience to just hang out and talk horses. It's been a very long time. 

I told them that I finally understand why she drives so far to see her horse. That little community is worth it.

TP's secret farmer

Our hay farmer canceled on us this year and we had a field full of hay.

J called everyone we know who might help, and as a last resort, called TP, my acquaintance I do not call a friend anymore.

Remember when I told her I'd spend the day helping her at a horse show? When I arrived and asked how I can help she said, "It's best you don't speak to me, I'm trying to concentrate."

So I helped her in silence all day. At one point I started to remove a lump of saddle wax from her saddle and she said, "Don't touch my saddle!" OK then.

Due to her strange behavior I have avoided going up to her lovely arena to ride, also, she has a lot of boarders now, and dogs, and it's just no fun. And the arena is enclosed by electric wire that is always on, so that resulted in a shocking experience for Mag and I.

I have to mention that not long ago her sweet husband Charlie hit her and left her. She was surprised, I was not. She abused him terribly. He built her a horse boarding farm with his own hands exactly as she wished everything built.

I couldn't believe he didn't leave her sooner. He's in the process of suing her now, for the money she's making in her horse boarding business. I know it sounds cruel of me to say this, but if you could have heard how she spoke to him like a child...or a lackey....

***

So we ended up contacting TP as a last resort. I asked J to do it because I wanted to be sure the communication was free of language barriers.

She said she would call around and find someone, but we were not allowed to continue our search, because she didn't want to have to cancel if she found someone. That's understandable.

A week later we heard back from her; she'd found someone to harvest our hay. 

But she was very adamant that I remove the cross fencing. Um, what? Of course I'd remove cross fencing, you can't have mowers going through fences, I'm not an idiot. It was a little bit offensive.

Then she said she walked our pasture at night, twice, and found an unreasonable amount of horse poop along one side of one fence. It's true, I am not so careful about horse poop along fencelines, because in all these years, I've never had a problem with horse poop in my hay. 

TP said, "We cannot work in this pig sty. You must clean it all up!"

So we did. 

***

We asked TP to let us know what hay farmer would be coming. 

Honest question, right? 

She said, "Don't you worry your heads about it. It's not important that you know who."

WTactualH!?~?~?She literally said "don't worry your heads"

I started worrying.... a LOT.

Why would it be a secret, who is mowing our field? We have insurance for people working here, if we know who is working here! 

It is part of the insuranc we pay yearly to own a farm, and we need to know who is here.

I could only imagine there was an illegal aspect to this situation.

We asked TP for 100Euros to pay for the part of our pasture that we lease, its yearly fee, in order to have all the hay mown and removed for "free." 

We obviously cannot have a field of hay overwinter, uncut and unused. 

TP agreed to the 100Euros for the farmer's fee. Hrm. 

Why won't she tell us who it is? 

There was only one explanation: she was getting a cut. She was getting a percentage of the money made off of our field.

Not that that is a horrible thing, oh no, it's just weird that she wouldn't tell us. If we are not allowed to know the farmer, it leads to the conclusion that she needs her cut in the deal. 

(If it's not obvious, we don't care about that. She was doing us a favor by making a few phone calls. That she is taking a percentage is fine with us. There is no need to hide that information.)

***

I watched the farmer mow our field, and turn our field, day after day, and I went across the street to our good neighbors, and asked them, "Do you know which farmer this is?" 

Petra said, "That's Muehlinghause, right?" 

Her husband couldn't confirm it. I remembered the name. 

***

The next time the green tractor with the yellow wheels was here to turn hay, I got the license plate. 

Important note: At this point, I sent her a text saying thank you for helping us, it's a relief to have our field mown.   THANK YOU TP!!!

***

In the meantime I worked as a medic with police at our "country fair" and asked if a cop would run a plate for me. haha, this is not  TV, this is Germany, of course not. 

GL MP30

***

Back at the ranch, I investedgated the name Muehlinghaus and found he's a hugely popular hay farmer in our neighborhood, one who stands for the rights of all other hay farmers, in the Bergisches Morgenpost, our local newspaper. In fact....

He's in the newspaper so often it was easy for me to find a photo of him standing next to his big green John Deere with yellow wheels with the license GL MP30.

Y E S !!!!!

***

They took 7 large round bales away from our field. Not as much as normal, but still something; the price is 200Euros per round bale.

***

I finally had the answer to the big mystery of TP's secret farmer. 

I started to worry. And fret. And shut my window coverings because I know she likes to walk by with her dog. 

I knew it would happen.

The mean thing I did was not to warn my innocent husband of her inevitable arrival.

And then she arrived. With her airdale terrier and her white Arabian horse. She joked as I answered my door, "I caught Mag on the street!" 

I immediatley ran to my husband's office and said, "Please come deal with this."

***

She laid into us with "How could you not fall on your throats for all the work I did for you?"

She actually used that particular line twice, because our lack of falling on our throats was so lacking for her.

I didn't know what that meant, but I could guess. We were supposed to thank her ....more.

My husband was absolutely taken aback by her anger and yelling, "They only got THREE bales of hay from your field!!!!!!!!!!!" (No, 7.)

He said, "We would have liked to have known, for insurance purposes, who worked on our property. For insurance purposes."

She said, "You have no need to know. Who ever knows who is actually mowing a field?"

He said, "We normally do, if that's not normal for you, all I can say is it's normal for us."

She was infuriated by this. 

She tugged her animals away from us and said, "You ungrateful people, I want nothing to do with either of you ever again!"

I was never more apologetic about anything in my life, as I realized how shook up my husband was. 

He had no idea that people could be so unreasonable, so ....crazy.

I apologized again and again, but he'll never forget how awful horse crazy people can be. And I do blame it on horse crazy people. There are none of us that are not at least a little crazy.

***

"I'm so sorry J, I'm so sorry."

"I'm calling her," he said.

Why?

Truly, a few days later he called TP, our local witch of the East, and said, "I need to talk to you."

He explained that he was taken off guard, that perhaps we should have been more grateful, and  -----ON MY REQUEST --- he told her that she deserved the 100Euros for the field rental, that we agreed to pay her secret farmer. 

Her anger was appeased at the idea of that 100 bucks. (I'm still sure she got a percentage off the total harvest off our field, so...)

So she deceived us, got paid by the farmer, and got paid by us. 

And she FORGAVE us. 

***

I know who the farmer was, Torsten Muehlinghaus from Habenichts. TP does not want us to have direct contact with him. 

We might not ever need him again. Our own hay farmer might come back. But we have his name.

I just wish I was sassy enough to sent TP a single SMS message, "TORSTEN MUEHLINGHAUS". But I'm not. My husband went to a lot of trouble to stay on good terms with TP. He's the best of us.

: )

 

 

 

Yarhamuk-Allah

That's what they say to you if you sneeze in a taxi in Tunisia. "May Allah have mercy on you." 

I had written the story of our experience with TP while on duty with the Red Cross at our city's fair but lost it so I'll have to start again. It was my first time working such an event and I'd never seen people so drunk they could not actually stand up - several people had to be carried to our tent by their friends! I was happy to have some very thankful patients - one with a glass injury and one with a wasp sting on the mouth (there were lots of wasp stings to the mouth because the wasps were enjoying everyone's beers). It was a pretty exciting night for me, at one point we had to go search for someone's teeth with flashlights at the stage where people were dancing. Someone's *real* teeth, cuz they got in a fight. Since no one stopped dancing to let us search, we found no teeth. (I don't think people can have pieces of their teeth reattached so that seems pretty silly to me that we had to look. Perhaps it was a sentimental gold tooth *shrug*) 

Anyway since I wrote that blog draft, the TP story came to a satisfying end, just 2 days ago.

I have an update from Ani, she wrote me asking if I'd gotten her last two emails and repeating she still wants me as a friend. I wrote back and said it's not a good idea but I hope she'll say hi if she sees me in town, and that I stll pray for her happiness. I don't think she can have successful relationships so this prayer is for that. 

I forgot to mention something that happened in Hawaii in March. I tried to buy some food at the ABC Store and I lay out my coins on the counter. The employee called her boss, thinking I was using counterfeit money. He looked at the coins and reassured here that 1$ coins are a thing: ) 

 

 

 

 

Ani, 2 years later

Do you remember Ani? The borderline personality disorder lady I rode with twice weekly for years? Until 2 years ago when she said she couldn't be my friend anymore because I wouldn't let her ride Mag without me being present? 

She rode her bike by my car last week and I got an email that night.

She misses me, she's so, so sorry about how she hurt me, and she wants me to give her another chance. 

I thought about my reply for days and came up with this, "I hope you forgive me, too, for how I wronged you (that I ever let her think she could ever ride Mag alone, my bad!). However you were correct that we shouldn't be friends."

The next morning I got two emails from her, both desperate. "I want to start our friendship over from the beginning. You have been a great friend to me. I miss you very much. God bless you." 

(The God thing is heavy handed because when she broke our friendship, she actually used the words, "You are crazy, only God can help you.") 

The next mail said "Please be my friend. I love you."

(This was all in English, word for word.) 

I'm sitting here not sure how to respond except for giving her the phrase, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." Cuz I am totally unwilling to let any of that crap happen every again. 

Do you remember the hamster incident? The Equitana incident? The Rudi mare and her own mare Mira running off, leaving me, the time Mag got away from me and she just kept riding, not stopping, the time another rider's horse was terrified of my donkey and Ani just rode on by, without stopping, she never stopped. The time the trainer said "go from a trot to a walk" and she couldn't, she didn't even stop posting, because she didn't understand that might help the horse slow down? She never could get her horses to slow down, or walk, or stop. She was a passenger. One time she took us into a freaking Treibjagt (see Game of Thrones, episode one) where hunters and dogs surrounded us making loud noises chasing boars, I've never been so frightened in my life. And she is German, so she should know what a Treibjagt is. It was like riding with a child, and I was the one with the green horse. 

I think I have removed the most awful of our experiences from my blog, but some of them are still there. 

When a person with a mental disorder, on medication for that disorder, calls you crazy, you wonder.

No. I wish I could be so honest as to say I wish I'd never met you in the first place. 

It hurts me that she is begging for my friendship back, but I have to wonder, what changed? It has been two full years. Why now? I think she has exhausted her very last horsey contact and needs me to replace her. I'm convinced it is impossible for her to keep friendships due to her disorder. And then I drove my car by...

Two weeks ago we went through a huge ordeal with TP. My husband was pushed to the edge, he is certain that horse people are nuts. Yes, TP was always nuts. 

I have TP to my East, and Ani to my West, both 5 minutes from here. I'm surrounded by crazy people. 

The TP story is really good.......it involves her walking our entire pasture twice in the night.....more later.