An interesting day

My husband recently joined our church choir, and last night was his first concert. Just as we were about to leave, the dogs set up a ruckus, and I looked out to find...... an old grey mare, walking into the yard. I mean. old. grey mare; I think she was about 28 or so.

She headed for the horse pens, and Beamer was givin' her kisses by the time I got a halter and walked over to her- cautiously, because mares that have a stallion talking to them can strike unexpectedly. But the old girl stood quietly and let me halter her, so I put her in a paddock, gave her hay and water, and called the police to let them know I had a stray horse, gave them her description, and the info that she was looked after for the night, and headed out to the concert. I videoed the performance, but the sound quality isn't great.

That's Ted on the left of the Choir Director. Even though it doesn't sound as good as it did live, I can say that they were the best choir there!
This morning the police called and put us in contact with the owners of the old mare, it turns out that she had escaped from her pasture that she had been kept in for a short time and decided to head for her old pasture- about 15 miles away! The place she came from was about 10 miles from our place, and she had been travelling for about 4 or 5 hours. She just wanted to go to her old familiar home.She was a real sweetheart to handle, and it's fitting that our Christmas guest was a snowflake Appaloosa. We hauled her to her old home for the owners.

The shortest day of the year was beautiful and clear here, and the setting sun lit up the Skimmerhorns.

Tomorrow is all the last minute things before Christmas, and Thursday I pick up my daughter in Spokane. It seems that this year I'm really not ready for Christmas!

What a morning!

The Beamer photos will have to wait for Wordless Wednesday: This morning we found an injured Barred Owl; it had most likely been chasing a mouse and got it's wings tangled in the bottom strand of barb wire(I hate that stuff!). In this photo I'm pointing to the injury.

I brought it into the house and made a whole bunch of phone calls, but unless I want to drive for a couple of hours, there is no one who will take it, so guess what- we are in the rehab business as of today! One lady brought me a couple of mice in live traps, but the owl wouldn't eat. I think it got really stressed, and I was told that their normal eating times are dusk and dawn, so we will try again this evening. I put it in a portable dog kennel for today, with a dish of water and if it eats and drinks I'll move it to the Canine Hilton where it will have plenty of room to move- and when it can fly it will be able to fly out of there.

Ted was overwhelmed; he loves owls and when he walked in the door and saw me holding an owl he was so excited he could hardly talk.

We consider it a honour to try to help this beautiful bird.

UPDATE: The owl ate some raw chicken, and drank some water. It wouldn't touch a live mouse, or a dead one. We think it's a juvenile. It flapped it's wings today, so the damage can't be too severe. It may be able to fly in a day or two. Meanwhile, it will be developing a taste for chicken....

Horse Rescue

Mikey, I'm posting this story for you, because I know that you will appreciate the effort these people put into rescuing these abandoned horses.

Just before Christmas I was following a news story about two horses found in the mountains of B.C. who were trapped in 6 feet of snow. I lost track of the story, so I googled it and here it is:

MCBRIDE, British Columbia

Two frostbitten, emaciated horses were recovering inside a warm barn on Saturday thanks to volunteers who spent the week before Christmas digging the animals out of snow in the mountains of northeastern British Columbia.
Birgit Stutz said Saturday that she and other rescuers cheered when they finally finished digging a half-mile escape route through the snow for the animals. The horses had been abandoned by a hunter and faced almost certain death.
Stutz said the horses eagerly accepted being bridled and seemed to know they were safe as volunteers led them on a seven-hour hike down the mountain in freezing temperatures on Tuesday. She said about 40 or 50 people took part in the rescue over the course of a week.
"It was a big effort," Stutz said in a telephone interview.
She said the horses were discovered on Dec. 15 by two local residents. They were above the tree line and had no shelter at first.
Logan Jeck and a friend stumbled across the horses while out looking for some snowmobiles left behind by tourists who had gotten stuck during a trip to the back country on the side of Mount Renshaw - about 750 miles northeast of Vancouver.
At first, the young men thought the most humane thing to do would be to shoot the emaciated horses to put them out of their misery.
"They went up to assess the situation and to decide whether they were going to shoot them or give them hay. They decided they had enough life in them so that's when it all started," Stutz said.
Over the course of a week, a growing number of residents trudged up the mountain with shovels in hand to dig out an escape pathway through six-foot-deep (two meter-deep) snow. Stutz said the volunteers had to dig a trench just over a half a mile long through the brush along the mountainside.
On Dec. 19, the local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sent up a couple of officers along with a veterinarian to consider whether the animals could be lifted out by helicopter.
Shawn Eccles, an animal-protection officer, said on a scale of 1 to 9, the horses' health rated about a 2.
The horses are now under a veterinarian's care and are being carefully fed and watered.
"They're doing well," Stutz said.
Stutz said she and her friends spent so much time and effort on the rescue that they really didn't have time to prepare for the holidays. Her family did not even put up a Christmas tree, but no one is complaining.
"This is probably the best Christmas gift a person could have, to be able to get these horses out of there," she said. "Just knowing that we managed to help these poor creatures out there in the cold and get them to safety, it's a better Christmas than you could have otherwise."
In this picture you can see that this horse has no tail hair left; I'm assuming that the other horse ate it in an effort to survive.

This is how they got the hay to them while they spent days digging through 6 feet of snow.

I love a happy ending. Bless these folks for their efforts! And shame on the person who abandoned these horses.