Bringing Donut Home

The day before I was scheduled to pick up Donut, I brought my trailer home to do a much-needed cleaning and reorganization.  I hadn't even looked at the trailer since I'd hauled Nimo to the hospital, so I wasn't sure what I would find.  As it turned out, I would find a lot.

Nature had moved in a very real way.  As I cleaned, I found a snakeskin, some kind of insect hive, a bird's nest, and evidence that mice had been making themselves at home for awhile.  Thankfully, I didn't find anything alive to go with all that evidence (if I had, there would probably have been a lot of screaming and running and I would have had to borrow a trailer to go pick up Donut...).  There were also dried leaves, old hay bits, a manure bucket with manure in it, garbage, and dirt.  So much dirt.

First, I hauled out the trunk I used for my tack, and then every other thing.  Assorted buckets and lead ropes and hay nets came out.  There was something that looked like it might have been a petrified sponge (or maybe some kind of dead body - I'm trying not to think about it too much), plus lots of hoof boots, a manure bucket and manure fork, and a bucket with first aid supplies in it.  It was like unloading a lifetime of stuff.  All the things I kept handy for the conditioning rides Nimo and I went on.  I wouldn't need most of it for a long time, so I moved those things to the garage until I could figure out what I wanted to do with them.  (I assured my husband it was temporary, but we both knew that was probably a lie.  I have a tendency to hoard horse-related items and they are present in the garage and several rooms in our house.  I may have a problem...)

Then I began sweeping the big bits of nature out.  After a while, though, it became clear that a broom was inadequate to the task, and I dragged the shop vac out of the garage.  Up to that point, my daughter had been diligently helping me, but the level of dust in the air had gotten intense, so I sent her inside to get cleaned up.

I turned my attention to picking up the mats.  They were much heavier than I remembered them being, so I didn't get them lifted up all the way.  But I did check as much of the floor boards as I could as well as any metal parts I could find.  I determined that one board had minor termite damage and probably would need to be replaced at some point, and there was some rusting that could use some professional attention.  I made mental notes to have those areas checked out when I took the trailer in for an inspection.  It also needed new tires and a couple of other maintenance items.  At seven years old, it was getting to the age where it needed some TLC.

Finally, I got the trailer cleaned to the point that I felt comfortable putting a baby horse in it.  And then I headed in to the house to wash what looked like a year's worth of dirt off of my person.  I kind of wished I could have hosed out my respiratory system too, because I breathed in a lot of crap.

And then it was time to head out to pick up Donut.  We (yes, my daughter was coming with me - she would have been horrified if I had suggested she stay home!) were supposed to get to my friend's house at noon.  In hindsight, that may not have been the best plan, but I had been thinking that I wanted to give Donut the opportunity to hang out in her stall a bit before going out to the field in the evening.  However, it meant that the temperature would be close to 100 when we got to my friend's house.

The first part of drive went as planned.  But traffic came to a grinding halt on the state highway we were using.  I assumed it was yet another accident, because this particular stretch of road has serious accidents all the time.  Often, the road is simply closed for hours at a time.  Which is nuts, because it is a state highway with few options for detours.

In this case, after waiting for a few minutes, it became obvious that whatever had happened, it would be enough to close the road.  I'd have to find another route.  As luck would have it, we were stopped right at the intersection where I would normally turn to go to my barn; otherwise getting turned around with a horse trailer would have been a bit tricky.  (I've done it before but sometimes it is nice to push the Easy Button.)  I wasn't quite sure how far ahead the accident was, but I was positive I could use backroads to get around it.  

I headed out in a new direction and engaged the navigation app on my phone just to see what it came up with.  I knew one route that would work, but it would take us farther out of our way than I wanted to go if I didn't have to, so I was hoping there was a better option.  According to the app, there was.  Although I was pretty skeptical at a couple of points, we did finally emerge back on the state highway and past where the accident had shut down the road.  So we were back on track without having lost much time.

I wish I could say the rest of the trip was uneventful, but there was one more "incident."  As I was fuming a bit and wondering how people could have so many accidents when they were driving, the universe decided to help me understand.  As I was driving about 60 miles an hour, I caught a glimpse of a spider falling from the ceiling of the truck out of the corner of my eye.  Where did said spider fall, you ask?  Well, it fell down the front of my shirt.  I mean, out of all of the places to go, why?  This was not good.  I'm not particularly fond of spiders, although I try to respect their right to live and I don't usually kill them.  In fact, I'm happy that they are part of the world, as long as it isn't in close proximity to me.  As it turns out, being down the front of my shirt counts as being in close proximity.  I'm trying very hard not to panic and I'm reaching through my shirt to find the spider and I can fell it crawling around and I'm trying to stay in my lane and I'm looking for a safe place to pull over.  Which is really too many things to do at once for me.  I ended up really focused on the Get The Spider Off Of My Person Plan and somehow I did manage it without killing the spider, although I suspect that when it was flung across the truck, it probably didn't feel any better about the encounter than I did.  I was hoping the experience discouraged it from any further attempts to get close to me.

Despite the traffic and spider issues, we managed to get to my friend's house just a minute or two after noon.  We followed her out to the remote field that Donut was living in, and I got the trailer parked in a half-way decent spot for loading.  (And I was so thankful for all those times Nimo and I had gone to hunter paces and endurance rides where the parking was in a field on the side of a hill - or a mountain.  Otherwise I might have been a bit intimidated.)

Now we had to find the horses.  It was definitely hot by that time.  Just standing outside for a minute resulted in profuse sweating.  So the horses were taking shelter from the heat...somewhere in a 20+ acre field.  We started walking and my friend called the horses.  No response.  She sent her teenage daughter out ahead to scout for the horses - after all, what is the point in having children if you can't get them to do the dirty work sometimes!:)

Finally, the horses heard us and we could see them moving in some trees.  And then out they came, with Donut in the lead, cantering toward us.  The horses gathered around for a quick snack to reward them for coming.  I haltered Donut and my friend caught another horse, so Donut would have a buddy for the trailer loading experience.

We walked the horses to the trailer without an issue.  First, my friend loaded her older mare, who walked in without a problem.  Her daughter stood at the front of the trailer to hold her head because I had left the middle divider out.  I figured it would make it easier to load Donut if we had to get in there with her.  Plus, I didn't want to have to back Donut off the trailer until I'd had a chance to work on it with her.

Then it was time to load Donut and we hit a bit of a snag in the plan.  Donut had loaded many times on a trailer before.  But it was a trailer with a ramp.  My trailer is a step up.  She would walk up to the edge of the trailer and stop, not knowing what to do.  We tried for a few minutes to get her to step on, but we could tell she just couldn't understand what to do with her front legs.  She would walk up to the trailer with her front legs basically touching the edge of the floor and then move her hind legs as close as she could get them, looking like she was trying some kind of horse yoga triangle movement.  

So we did what any rational horse person would do.  My friend got behind her and pushed and I picked up her left front leg to place it in the trailer.  There we were, sweltering under 100 degrees of heat and probably an equal amount of humidity, with the sun beating down on us, basically trying to pick up a 700 pound animal and put her in the trailer.

Both my friend and I were in precarious positions and if Donut decided to act up or freak out, one or both of us was vulnerable to getting hurt.  We'd relegated both of our daughters to the front of the trailer behind the front divider so they would not be hurt if things went horribly wrong and to help with holding the horse already loaded plus Donut if she got on.

I picked up Donut's front leg and put it on the floor of the trailer.  She moved it back down.  I lifted it and put it back.  She put some weight on it and then moved it back to the ground.  We repeated that a couple more times and then she had the leg on, but didn't know what to do with her other front leg.  So I moved around and picked up that leg, putting me right behind the other horse on the trailer (I was pretty thankful for the extra two feet I'd had built on the trailer's length right then).  My friend kept encouraging/pushing Donut from behind, and after a couple of tries, we had both front legs on the trailer.  

Now, what to do about the back legs?  Would Donut figure out she could pick them up and put them on the trailer too?  It turns out she did.  With just a little more encouragement, she loaded the rest of herself on the trailer.  And I was pretty impressed with how quietly she had handled the whole loading experience.  I'm not sure how many older horses, much less younger ones, would have tolerated that level of handling during what can be a stressful situation, especially involving a person they didn't know.  (I silently thanked my guardian angel for once again keeping me safe during what may possibly have been another instance of my poor judgment skills.)

We got Donut tied and then we unloaded the other horse.  And I felt so bad about that.  I wish I could have hauled the other horse with Donut, but it was probably better for the other horse that I didn't.  It was a hot day, and she would have been in the trailer for quite awhile (much longer than I would have expected, as it turned out...)  So Donut had to be in the trailer by herself and she was clearly worried about that.  She whinnied and stomped a little to show her concern.

And then it was time for us to go.  My friend and her daughter said goodbye to Donut.  I wanted to get moving as soon as possible, so she would be on the trailer for as short a time as possible.  Also, it was just so hot outside, and none of us wanted to endure the heat any longer.

I drove as carefully as I could, but there was no disguising that we were off-roading with the trailer, and it was pretty bumpy as we drove through some woods and a hill and finally emerged out by the road.  I was relieved, and I'm sure Donut was too, when we got to pavement.  For a few minutes, she seemed quiet, but then I felt a pretty good shift in the trailer.  I was worried Donut might have fallen or somehow gotten in trouble.  (Note to self, get one of those trailer cameras so I can see what is going on back there.  Nimo was always a super quiet hauler, even when he was young, and I never worried about him, so I didn't feel the need for a camera.)  I asked my daughter if she could see Donut's head through the front trailer window, and she said she could, so I kept driving.

I was thinking it was good that it was only a half hour trip to the barn from my friend's house.  So really not a big deal, right?  Except you might remember that there was an accident on the road I needed to drive on to get to the barn.  If I'd been thinking, I would have remembered to take the same backroads back to the barn that I had taken on the way out to my friend's house.  But enough time had passed that I assumed the accident would be cleared.

I was so wrong.  (I found out later that the accident involved a family traveling in an RV and a small car that had passed either in a no passing zone or just when there was oncoming traffic.  The driver of the car misjudged the available distance and caused a collision, killing the whole family in the RV.  One car ended up wrapped around a utility pole and there was a major amount of repair needed.  The road was closed for at least six hours.  That kind of accident, minus the fatalities, is common on that road.  Drivers are simply too impatient to wait to pass safely.)  We ended up on a lengthy detour that took us in a round about direction past where I needed to turn for the barn.  So I ended up having to drive about 15 minutes out of my way to get to the turn.

But we finally made it to the barn.  I opened the trailer door to find a reasonably calm horse who was ready to come off the trailer.  Because I didn't have the middle divider in, I could turn her around and walk her off.

She stepped off the trailer like a pro (whew!) and took in her new surroundings.  I gave her a couple of minutes to adjust and when she seemed ready to move, I asked her to walk toward the barn.  She led well, but slowed down quite a bit as we got to the concrete floor of the barn.  I hadn't thought about it until then, but I don't think she'd been in a barn much except for when she was born.  My friend didn't have a barn, just some run-in sheds and natural shelter, so Donut hadn't had any recent exposure to buildings, especially one as big as this one, which was probably about 48' x 120'.

She stepped in to the barn, lifting each leg up as high as she could and carefully setting it down.  (It reminded me a lot of the time I put booties on my dog's feet.  He was convinced that he couldn't walk with them on!)  She was definitely concerned about the surface beneath her feet, but game to keep going forward.  Of course, her stall was at the other end, so we had to walk nearly the whole length of the barn to get there.  With each step, she got a little less concerned.

But then we had a new problem.  In addition to not having much experience with barns, she didn't have experience with stalls either.  She froze at the entrance to the stall.  I suspected it was the change from the light gray concrete floor to the black rubber mat that was a big part of the problem.  I let her stand where she was for a minute and then inspiration struck.  My friend had said she was pretty food-oriented and almost all horses love alfalfa.  I had a whole bale sitting in front of my stall to feed Donut, so I grabbed a flake, and let her sniff it and eat a bite.  Then I threw it into the stall.  Donut walked in like she had been walking into stalls every day of her life and contentedly started munching on her hay.

I stayed with her for a few minutes to make sure she was going to stay quiet and then parked my trailer.  I also sent a message to another friend of mine - the one who has Donut's mother.  She lives near the barn and wanted to see Donut when she arrived.

It wasn't long before my friend and some of her family arrived to see Donut, plus a few boarders and the barn owner stopped by to see the new horse.  So Donut had quite an audience!  She didn't seem to mind, though.  And she got what I think must have been her first experience eating carrots.  My friend had brought some and I gave Donut one, not realizing at first that she didn't know how to eat it.  I helped her figure out how to break off a bite of carrot, and the expression on her face as she started to chew it was such a pleasure to see.  She looked like the whole world had become a better place.  Her eyes widened just a bit and got bright and happy.  She quickly looked for more carrots and figured out how to eat them in no time.

Donut was so good with Gemma

Eventually we let her eat in peace for a few hours before getting turned out.  I'm sure she appreciated the chance to decompress after all the stress of traveling and the attention.  Meanwhile, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  One step of a very long process was over.  The next step would be to make sure Donut settled into her new routine and her new herd.