Julian & Friends

[Callistemon]

Because we've been talking about mortality here and there on this forum recently, I thought I'd post something I wrote the first autumn after we adopted Julian. Living so intimately with nature for the last ten years and so consciously part of the ecosystem, I've learnt a few things about love and death that have been comforting to me, and may be comforting to others.


FLOWER MEMORIALS

May 2018

The week after the chestnut mare was put down last November, the veterinary hospital sent a card and a packet of wildflower seeds – now that was a great idea. When my Arabian mare was buried back in 2014, I'd wanted to plant a beautiful tree on top to mark the spot, but the cattle found any human attempt to grow a seedling tree irresistible and promptly removed anything like that. We considered rigging up a small temporary electric fence, but then needed the back-up energiser unit to do exactly that around our new solar bore. What to do?

Wildflower seeds – so obvious in hindsight! So when they sent that packet of Australian Everlastings, I planned on splitting the seeds between the two grave sites when the winter rains set in. And now they finally have.

So yesterday was Flower Memorial day. In the early afternoon, I packed the old dinner fork I use for planting out seedlings and seeds in the vegetable garden into my pocket, along with the seed packet, and told the dog we were going for a walk. This is when a lovely thing happened.


Julian, first morning at Red Moon Sanctuary, November 2017

Julian, who had been grazing with his herd, saw we were leaving and made a beeline straight for us. He and I greeted each other, and then he decided to tag along! He simply came walking with us, at liberty, away from the pasture and the other horses, around behind the house and onto the central sand track that leads through our bushland conservation area and down to the gates with our southern neighbours.

Jess on the main track leading into our nature conservation area

It's a really special thing when a horse just decides to go for a walk with a human and a dog. Julian, of course, loves to explore and at 17 is the youngest member of his herd – and with a lifetime of being locked into his loose box and small sand run by himself day in, day out until he came here last November, he has a lot of lost time to make up for. When he first arrived, he fell in love with all the space of his giant natural playground, and thrived on being social in a herd – but would leave the grazing herd to walk here and there and sniff this and that and do big exploratory loops around the place, looking with great interest at various things in succession. If I came out of the house to do some work in the treeline, for instance, and the herd was a collection of little dots grazing at the far end of The Common, pretty soon a bay horse with a blaze and socks would be heading in my direction to come and see what I was doing, and just to have a “chat”.


Jess, Julian, Sparkle, Mary Lou hobnobbing

It's moments like these that I have treasured since we bought this place in 2010 – horses very much set free at our place, with 62ha to roam, watching them enjoy this and each other day in, day out, and that they are always choosing to take the time to come and touch base with me. If I want the horses and they are far away, I just call them, and then come sounds of distant thunder that soon distinguish into hoofbeats, as the group comes running up like a bunch of racehorses, which of course they all are. It's a spectacular sight to see them running like this.


Sunsmart, Julian, Romeo, Chasseur AKA Mr Buzzy, Christmas 2017

 

[Callistemon]

So today, Julian accompanied me halfway to my first destination up the central sand track, and I was chatting to him and showing him bush grasses he could eat, and he was looking at me and sniffing things I held out to him and putting his muzzle softly against me from time to time, the same way a friend might put his hand on your shoulder occasionally. I explained that I was going to put flower seeds in the ground for the girls, whom he both knew by sight from back in the old days. It doesn't matter that they don't get all of what we say to them, because they get so much from it – and they learn so much about you when you chat to them. They enjoy it anyway, playing their ears at the sound and looking at you with those little pleasure crinkles around their eyes, so I tend to tell them things.


Sunsmart as a newborn with his mother French Revolution, who was one of the two deceased horses I was taking flower seeds to in this story, with me as a 20-something.

Halfway to my first destination, there was a sudden and alarming ruckus coming from the local access road, and Julian took to his heels. He wasn't particularly alarmed – this horse was never very spooky – but racehorses seem to enjoy having excuses to run, so off he went at speed, back down the sand track to the pasture. I was left with a smile on my face at this little interlude.



Wildflowers at Red Moon Sanctuary

Five minutes later I turned left onto a little bush track. Soon I was on charred ground with large bones scattered around. The fire came through here in May when it flared into the swamp, but you can still see the spot where we laid the chestnut mare on the earth the day she died. Where her belly was there is a flat patch of manure, and into this I planted some of the flower seeds. Most of them, I planted in a number of scattered clumps around the area where she had lain. And as I was making the little grooves with my fork and scattering seeds and tamping moist earth back over them, I talked to the mare. Obviously she couldn't hear me, but that's not the point. You know how they say, Write a letter to someone who has done bad things to you expressing all you feel and then don't send it, this was for you? It was kind of like that, but also a nice thing to do in her memory, to tell her what I would tell her if she could hear me.


Sunsmart with his mother French Revolution and her full brother Chasseur in the background, 2016.

So I told her I was glad I knew her, and glad to look after her for the last three years of her long life. Glad of the freedom she had here, and the friendships, and the room to roam. Glad she was re-united with her only foal here for her last three years, and their enjoyment of that reunion. I told her how she'd helped Sunsmart over the loss of his first best buddy, the Arabian mare, whom I was going to bring the other half of the seeds. How it was the grey mare's passing that made the room for us to retire her and her brother, and how her own passing had made a space for a horse who really appreciated it – Julian, who'd come halfway to her grave area with me just then and who is now walking where he chooses and no longer lonely in his new life. How death was sad but made room for more life, and how she was going to make flowers bloom, and if this seed packet didn't take, I'd bring out more until they did. How she had made the birds fly when she died, and stopped living things from being hungry.


Sunsmart, Julian, Chasseur the day Julian joined the herd in November 2017

And I thanked her for looking after the herd as lead mare after the herd was bereft of their original lead mare, and for producing Sunsmart all those years ago and looking after him, a wonderful horse who takes me places on his back and has had all sorts of adventures with me in the wider world for nearly ten years. How I was taking good care of him and always would. And that I missed her, and her lovely personality and her friendly cuddles and nuzzles, and scratching her itchy spots.


French Revolution with me in 2016

How I missed the grassy smell of her breath when she sniffed my face, and her bright chestnut shape so like her French grandmother's, and that floaty trot and the way both of them dropped their hindquarters and went base wide when really gathering speed. How I'd loved to watch her doing that in the paddock, and how it had reminded me of my first horse whom I had lost in great sadness and much too soon a long time ago, but whose death had allowed them to live in turn. And how there was always life, and how even in death you are part of that life, a physical part of it in other living creatures, in birds and flowers and butterflies, but also in all the legacies you've left behind and in the minds and memories and lives of those who knew you, whom you are still affecting. How she had contributed even to the culture of her herd and changed it in ways that still persist with her gone. How her friendliness and affection towards others had softened the whole lot of the boys I was left with. And how when I was thinking of her, I was thinking good things.


Sunsmart and me, 2015

I then took my leave and continued on the central sand track to the back of our property, and turned left along the boundary, and left again into a little area where we had buried the Arabian mare. On a patch of raised dirt there, I made her a sort of headstone of flowers while I talked to her about her life and times, and life in general, and thanked her for being my childhood companion and being my friend right through to middle age, my longest-standing continuous friend, over three decades of friendship and adventures that had given me such freedom in difficult times, and that I was so glad to have brought her home for her last three years, to freedom and friendships, and if I had to bury her, to have buried her at home, where I would always live and where I'd like to be buried myself alongside them.


Snowstorm, 2009 - the mare I got as a starved yearling in a drought in 1983 and who was the first horse I saddle trained myself

Then the dog, who'd been watching me planting, wagged her tail and started digging a hole, which made me laugh. She also does this in the vegetable garden when I'm planting out, or harvesting potatoes. “Look, I'm helping!” And when I laughed, she wagged her tail more and started digging very theatrically, with sideways glances in my direction, and I laughed even more, and she started making assorted growly noises while digging furiously. I went over to her and thanked her for her contribution, let her sniff the seed packet, which she did with great interest, partly backfilled her crater, and then scattered the last of the flower seeds in that loose earth before covering them lightly with more earth. The dog and I had a cuddle and an impromptu game, and then we both went on our way, walking a loop of bush tracks and enjoying each other, the sun and air, the ground beneath our feet and the sky above and the life all around us.


Jess on a walk with me in our nature reserve at Red Moon Sanctuary

Australian Everlastings

To see the other forms of life to which our girls are now contributing out on the conservation reserve, here is a selection of beautiful flora and fauna amongst which they now are:

Red Moon Sanctuary Flora and Fauna

A song which conveys what I wanted to with these words.

 

[Callistemon]

TRAINING SESSION ON SUNNY AUTUMN DAY

Today is a me-day to make up for the weekend. We spent most of Saturday shopping for various items, which is not what I would describe as fun (see profile page entry for today) - the best part of it was doing a 45 minute high-impact hike on Mt Melville, with lots of steep uphill-downhills and incredible views, including of town.

I can't believe so many people love shopping. The only kind of shopping we love is looking at books and stationery. Everything else is a necessary evil, to be done as efficiently as possible.

By the time we got home late afternoon on Saturday, we were useless and after putting everything away, feeding the animals and feeding ourselves, we vegetated in bed reading online newspapers etc for the entire evening, to decompress. The following day we had to clean the house top to bottom and prepare various things because guests were due in by afternoon - so that ended up another mostly-work day. I'm delighted to say that the guests are lovely - they are outdoorsy self-described refugees from the politics in America, hail from Portland, Oregon, are the same age as us, in equally good shape (mutual remarks exchanged because it's not usual for people to look after themselves well physically), and we all had a ton of fun around the dinner table last night.

The menu - tacos, which tend to look like this at our place - we've dispensed at decorating the shells with salad, and instead present everything on a mountain of salad...

The guests also had zucchini and lemon soup for first course (we'd had it for lunch), and we all had freshly made apple and cherry brioche pockets for dessert - the apples having come off the tree the same time the guests had arrived (and the cherries in summer - we freeze lots). Super conversation around the table and then a replete retirement of everyone in our respective food comas.

This morning was finally sunny, after three days of rain and dark clouds. I made eggy pancakes with a berry/citrus/brandy sauce for all of us, then Brett went off to work and our guests to hike Mt Hallowell in Denmark on our recommendation. (Fabulous hike, wonderful tall Karri forests, caves, granite monadnocks, breathtaking coastal views - we did that hike again for my 50th and it's worth looking at the photos in our hiking diary - scroll down to "Mt Hallowell Circuit" and you will also be rewarded with a gravitationally rearranged birthday cake. )

And then I had the day to myself. Did a couple of chores, some reading and eating, and after morning tea, went out and did another training session with Julian. I really will need to take a camera with me in future if I'm going to write this up. Meanwhile, I have two clips from about a year ago. The first is Julian at liberty.

The second was from my birthday last year, when Brett caught me going for a bareback loop with Sunsmart, who was well and happy and in remission from the Cushings that sadly took his life later that same year.

So that's why I am now saddle training Julian. He's a lovely horse, a younger half-brother to Sunsmart, and I now have time to work with him.

Today I tried out a bitless bridle on Julian, which I'd bought to give beginners lessons on Sunsmart - while riders first develop balance, they shouldn't, in my view, have a bit. One reason for the gear change is that Sunsmart's "normal" bridle that the now-deceased horse is wearing in the clip above is causing discomfort behind Julian's ears. It's a common problem these days that standard browbands are too short for horses with deep foreheads, and I'm actually unable to purchase anything longer, I'd have to have something especially made. The problem when a browband is too short is that when horses turn their ears backwards to listen to something you're saying or to something else behind them, the ear cartilage can chafe against the poll strap of the bridle (which sits behind the ears). Julian doesn't have enough room in the old riding bridle, and Sunsmart only had barely enough.

The poll strap on the bitless bridle is narrower, rounded in back, and much softer than the 40-year-old bridle. When I tried it on him today, it was very comfortable for him - so after the session, I decided to convert it from cross-under to simple sidepull. This means I have to sew a buckle to a strap I've repurposed from elsewhere to make a proper throat latch - between that and superglue I should muddle along. I promise I'll take pictures if I'm going to keep this up.

Today we enjoyed the lovely crisp and sunny weather, with a long walk around the valley floor. We practiced stop-starting, standing still while I was heaving myself up above the saddle with one leg in the stirrup (I swear he's thinking, "Stop it and just sit on my back already!" - as I did for the first time last weekend at the tie rail with Brett present), transition to trot and back to walk. Leading him off a bitless for this, I noticed he was only trotting, his beautiful big floaty ground-covering trot that I can't keep up with at the speeds he is capable of doing at that gait (harness racers typically sprint at 48km/h - which is a mile in 2 minutes - and that's at a square gait, i.e. trot or pace; they can gallop even faster). With a bit and working off the ground, half the time he paces, half the time he trots.

Which is to be expected - when he harness raced, he was a pacer (he won his fastest race in 1:59:04 for the mile) - so although he's "ambidextrous" in the paddock, like another horse I rode in my 20s called Chip (whom I trail rode and even did an endurance ride on in-between regular metropolitan assessment harness engagements at Gloucester Park with his owner), the moment you put a bit in his mouth he associates it with his racing days and working at the pace. So with these horses, when re-training to saddle, you teach them different cues for trot and pace and then, as they say, Bob's your uncle - and I don't know why so many people seem to have such difficulty with that when re-training a harness racing horse. They're forever complaining they can't get them to trot. It's all in your communication with the horse and the cues you set up to distinguish between the two. People like that typically think the horse is stupid, but in those scenarios it's always the person.

I'm actually really looking forward to riding this one now. He's quite unflappable with his groundwork - the dog typically races circles around him while I'm doing mounting exercises (see also in the above clip with Sunsmart), because she is so excited about the idea of the horse going faster and she knows it won't do that while I'm on the ground. And today Nelly and Ben turned up on the bush tracks five minutes after we started our work - decided to catch up with us, and hung around observing.

Nelly & Ben - intrepid adventurers - their story here

After training, everyone else then present wanted me to brush them. Chasseur AKA Mr Buzzy queued up and got lucky - wiggled his nose ecstatically at the thorough job he got. Then Nelly and Ben and Don Quixote began sidling in and getting turns. Julian wasn't bothered - like Sunsmart, he's ticklish.

Not a bad way to spend a good chunk of a day off in lieu. I was going to garden this afternoon but tomorrow is another day; tonight I'm making calzones for us all and still ruminating on what will be for dessert...

PS: Especially for @crewlucaa_ and @maycontainthunder - a clip with dog antics. Jess and us at a hiking hut, with Brett's inimitable commentary...

That is one crazy dog - Julian has come to terms with it I think...

 

[Callistemon]

FIRST RIDE ON JULIAN

We had planned on doing this before, but the weather, lack of energy and other projects had interfered. However, after a weekend of plastering all Saturday and recuperating all Sunday, we were able to do the first riding session this morning! Brett has a late start on Mondays and doesn't have to leave here until 9am.

So we had breakfast and then I tacked up Julian and we took him down the sand track together - the main track that leads into the nature reserve behind the house. I had Brett stationed on the lead rope and myself on the reins and I did the same things with the horse as I have for a while - stop frequently, mess around with the saddle, put weight in the stirrup, stand up in the stirrup - except this time I got on his back instead of only doing those preliminaries. And then we asked him to walk on with me on his back, and that was the first actual ride I had on him.

He wasn't fazed; and I didn't think he would be. A bit surprised maybe, "Well, this is new!" and quite attentive, and he liked being talked to while this was going on. In keeping with Tom Roberts' guidelines of ending the lesson before it goes wrong, I halted the horse and hopped back off him after about 10 seconds of riding, walked beside him for a bit, and then we stopped and I got back on him. This time the ride was longer. Stop and off again, and then back up for a third time. No worries, and we turned him back towards home and I rode him a bit longer still.

I haven't ridden since last August, and nobody but Sunsmart since at least 2014 (when my Arabian mare died). I don't have any photos of today, but here's a photo of Sunsmart from the very early stages of riding him back in 2009:

That was my first short trail outing on him after I adopted him and brought him down to Albany, where we lived back then. A neighbour and her horse were also floating around on the street leading to the Stidwell Bridle Trail. I remember this ride very well because Sunsmart was ultra spooky after moving to his new home. I'd done his riding preliminaries at his old home, where I'd ridden him around the training track he used to be driven on as a harness horse, and also on some local trails. He'd never seen bitumen before though, and he was a bit toey because of the echoing of his footfalls, when this photo was taken. Also the old saddle I had for him then didn't fit as well as the one I bought for him later and got specifically fitted to him, so I was actually slipping around on his back here, which is why one of my feet ended up lower than the other in the picture.

That same year I also had a ride on a huge thoroughbred, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, who'd set a track record in Queensland and was "a horse no-one could do anything with anymore" until a friend picked him up and started treating him with decency and patience, and exercising him properly. He was a fabulous horse, I loved him to bits, he was very like our Romeo both in disposition and in the kinds of problems he'd had with people. Exceptionally fast racehorses not infrequently end up with greedy people and are spat out at the other end with behaviour problems... if they are lucky, they will be picked up by someone with sense, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Both Romeo and Rikki-Tikki were lucky.

Anyway, once when we were taking photos of my friend and Rikki-Tikki riding in the harbour, I was invited to have a splash on the big, solid, 17hh horse, and found that my friend's stirrup irons didn't accommodate my leg length, so I had a stirrupless jaunt on him. It was my first ever ride on Rikki-Tikki, but we already knew and liked each other well. I got completely soaked by the water thrown up by the horse legs at speeds faster than walking, and ended up looking like a drowned rat and freezing in the wind:

But my favourite photo was this:

..."it's moments like these"...

I just love how the things the photographer didn't intend actually sum up that ride so well - the tilted horizon, missing bits of person and horse, water splash on the lens as we screeched to a stop near the camera. You try riding at speed wet through and in a slippery wet saddle without stirrups... unforgettable!

Thing is, I was in my 30s back then, and I don't think I bounce as well 13 years later! I look at all of this and think it's crazy stuff I did in those days, but when you're doing this all the time it's just normal, and I never did get seriously hurt. I didn't fall off Rikki-Tikki, and even if I had, a water landing is reasonably harmless. I only fell off Sunsmart a few times in the 12 years I rode him, despite the hair-raising things we used to do, and I didn't fall off doing those, mostly just when I tried to get on bareback from the ground and overshot my target and went head-first off the other side again, much to the amusement of any bystanders.

And then there was the one time in 2018 where I fell off at a walk because I was daydreaming and the horse shied and ran backwards unexpectedly. I came off sideways and without much force, but with my foot at a funny angle, which snapped three metatarsals and had me walking around on a pirate leg for six weeks. Since that time I am aware of my own mortality, I suppose.

Julian is like Sunsmart in that he can turn on a thread and accelerate like a rocket. I had a lot of tough things to ride out during spooks the first year I rode Sunsmart, and I am actually not very keen on doing that again now that I'm clearly mortal.

There weren't any problems today, and I didn't anticipate any. Brett was there as "babysitter" and leading the horse so I didn't have to explain to him that he was supposed to walk forward at a steady pace while also sitting on his back - that comes a bit later. Avoiding misunderstandings is really important the first time you ride a horse.

We'll do it again soon - Wednesday afternoon perhaps. I'll spend more and more time on his back; I'll start asking him for a halt and walk-on when riding with Brett supporting at first. Eventually Brett will unclip him and just walk along as a proxy herd member, which a horse always finds calming. And after that I'll be on my own.

None of that bugs me. Just things like: When the first kangaroo comes out of the bushes unexpectedly, stuff like that. It's spooking that is challenging in a green horse, and usually it takes 3-6 months to get to the point where such situations aren't difficult to ride anymore. That bit I'm not looking forward to.

So what was it like to ride Julian? ...he feels like an intermediate between my Arabian mare and Sunsmart. My mare was a little smaller, and Sunsmart a fair bit bigger - taller, with a much longer neck. Even my Arabian mare had a longer neck, I think - it's prized in Arabians, but not so much in harness breeds. Sunsmart only had a neck like that because he was a French Trotter cross, which Julian isn't - although they are also both by the same stallion and both Albatross grandsons - and that line still had longer necks than contemporary Standardbreds. I rode a friend's contemporary-line harness racing rescue once, and he had the shortest neck of anything I'd ever ridden.

Julian thankfully isn't extreme like that. He's a very well put-together horse. I'm just getting used to being on a horse that's not as long as my last one, and has shorter strides too. Sunsmart had what I called "seven mile boots" - the longest strides I'd ever ridden, besides his French grandmother's.


Julian, 2022


Sunsmart, 2018

Something else that occurred to me, as we were walking down the sand track with Julian today: It's been almost exactly 6 months since we both walked Sunsmart down that track to be put down, early on Monday morning on the 29th of November last year. And here we were, walking Julian down the same track for his first ride, early on Monday morning, on the 30th of May.

I still miss him terribly, but I know he had a very good life.