Sounds

This morning it started about 4:30 a.m.~~thump, thump...tap, tap, tap...thump...tap, tap...silence. Then it started again...thump, tap,tap, tap, thump...what the heck is that????!!! My guess is that it's the deer...I sneak out of bed and go to the sliding glass door (6 feet away)...sure enough...there's this cute lil' doe starin' me in the face at the crack of dawn!!! Sorry, no pic on this one!!! The deer have been devouring our lone apple tree this year for some reason; they've never done it before. This lil' doe was putting her front hooves up on the deck (just outside the bedroom patio door) so she could reach higher into the tree to get more apples and leaves...they are stripping the tree! It'll be ok, the tree will come back next year in fine shape; it's a really big tree.

So...sounds...besides doe hooves at 4:30 in the morning, there are a lot of sounds I love. Sounds of the "few and far between" cars or trucks coming down our road in the still of dawn. They can leave a beautiful hue as I watch the sunrise. That's not mist...it's dust from the gravel road hovering over the valley floor.

Sounds of hooves rhythmically hitting the ground could put you to sleep after a long day's ride. Colt and I are riding along the edge of one of the alfalfa fields...this view is of one of our wheel line movers and the line (parked for the winter) through Colt's ears.

How about the sound of a herd of yahoos, coming down the hill for dinner? They can surely create a stir of clattering hooves on rock and send a ton of dust into the air. This "herd of yahoos" includes Stetson & Catnip the burros and Duncan & Rohan, two of our mustangs. They had just come galloping down the hill for dinner.
Sounds of training in my "training program" include clucking and kissing to my horses to get a specific response...come on, take a spin on my reined cow horse!!!!



I love spinnin'...that was not quite 2 revolutions and in a competition it's usually 2 1/2 revolutions, and faster too!

Sounds can be very subtle sometimes...like the flies that have landed on my hat bathing in the sun.

Another subtle sound (around me all day long) is my lil' shadow~~Cindy Sue~~Here she's nestling in the straw bedding in for a lil' nap.

Do cats make noise?...not much that I've ever noticed...this is Tat the barn cat...observing whether I'm saddling the horses correctly or not.

Alright...my favorite sound...it's the sound of horses eating. That may seem odd to most, but they eat as rhythmically as they walk, trot or lope. It'll put to sleep if you let it. Breath in the sweet smell of hay and listen to the soft crunch of hay...heaven!

John's horse Whiskey makes a nest out of his hay pile as he finds the best leaves of alfalfa to eat first.

My 21 year old Quarter Horse, Toby, has the best rhythm of them all. Maybe it's just because I've listened to him for so long that I understand him better.

Colt is actually eating an apple here...more slobber...yum~~