Side arms and heeler dogs

Zip just made Maxine cry and she took her own time out on the back porch. Sometimes my baby boy can be a real bully. But it ain’t as if Max doesn’t usually give as good as she gets. The little darlin’ got her first bath today, after returning from the manure pile with streak of green like racing stripes down both sides. I don’t even want to know where the green goo came from, let along what it was.

It’s a beautiful day in southern mid Michigan today, if a little windy. The ferrier came and trimmed the horses. They all behaved well. And Maxine got to try horse hooves for the first time (Nummy, nummy). It’s nice having two heelers around, almost completing in some way. I must have lived very close with dogs in a past life as well as in this one :-).

Zip almost killed me the other day though. I went to get my big paint horse, Sonny, out of the slip stall. I didn’t see Zip, but Dad said he saw Zip running away as Sonny reared up and kept rearing up, with me in front of him in the stall. The theory is that Zip heeled the horse, causing the otherwise low-key Sonny to start pitchin’. No, I didn’t get hurt, just a little bruised when the Sonny came down on my toes. The chains we tie the horses to the mangers with didn’t give, as Grampa intended, but since I had Sonny on a rope and couldn’t get out of the stall, I had to wait for him to stop rearing up long enough to unchain him. I think Dad freaked worse than I did. I don’t think Sonny wanted to land on me or hurt me anymore than I wanted him to. In Zip’s defense, he’d been cooped up in the house with me, hadn’t gotten enough exercise, and lost what little heeler brain he’s blessed with. That wasn’t Zip’s first or last fuck up of the day either. We moved bulls and steers across the road and a dog that doesn’t listen makes loading a trailer that much more difficult. By the end of the day, Dad and I realized why farmers don’t carry side arms. The black steer and Zip would have been in the stew pot.