Danny Boy - Eric Clapton (EN VIVO)

My friend, Doug Presley, shared the video below with me on facebook. I think it is one of the most beautiful renditions of Danny Boy that I've ever heard....and it's Clapton!

Wild Hair Days

For those of you who have never experienced life with a foal, I will give you the same warning I was given four weeks ago: colts are drastically different from fillies. It isn't just the obvious differences between boys and girls; colts are far more aggressive. I will think that I have this aggressive behavior under control because for several days, Danny will be sweet, calm, attentive and obedient....and then he gets a "wild hair" as we say in the South. 


Wild hairs are basically an ingrown hair which, if you've ever had one, you know can be irritating and grating on your nerves until you pluck it out. Just so with someone getting an emotional "wild hair" They have to act on all of that pent up energy or they feel like they might explode. Young colts, like young boys, seem to get more than their fair share of these and then the energy and mischievousness just seems to burst from them. 


Today appears to be one of those days because Danny was determined to exert his presence on both Steve and me this morning. Heaven forbid that you ignore him when he's like this because then he demands attention. He nipped me more than once during our visit. And, even though I immediately corrected him each time by inserting my fingers in his mouth and pressing into his soft palette, it did not deter him from doing it again usually immediately after my correction as if to say, "There! That's what I think of you and your rules." He also kept pushing us if you could call it that. It was more like slinging himself against me with as much force as he could muster. Again, I pushed back with Steve behind me, saying, "Don't let him do that to you." Steve says this to mock me for always saying it to him, the "good parent" who lets Danny get by with far too much (because he wants him to like him the best.) When Danny gets that proverbial Southern wild hair though, there is no plucking it out. You just have to ride out the storm until the calm, sweet Danny returns and the demon child hides from view for a few days at least.

Flying Horses

I need to get some good shots of Danny running. He certainly lives up to the name Huston gave him, Fly-by, because he literally appears to be flying at times. I'm amazed by both how fast he is and also how graceful on those overly long legs. Steve came home last night talking about seeing Danny running solo and making sweeping circles of the pasture like his mom loves to do. At thirteen, you'd expect Mouse to become laid back and slow but she still loves to let off steam occasionally. When she was eight months pregnant with Danny she was making her runs around the big pasture, hills and all, with Django, her first born son, by her side. The two of them would jump over the fallen logs and a large pipe/conduit that Steve is planning on using as a culvert for the road run off. Like Danny now, the two them did this for entertainment and the sheer enjoyment of it. Sometimes, Mouse takes Danny running like that. At first, she'd run slowly and let him run beside her. Now, she doesn't hold back at all and Danny really has to stretch out to try to keep pace with her. That has to be good for him and being the good mom that she is, I'm sure Mouse is aware of that. I will do my best to capture his youthful equine exuberance soon. The only problem is, it is very hard to capture on film because neither Mouse nor Danny move around much in the heat and humidity brought about by the high noon sun on these Southern Summer days. It always seems to be in the low light times, very early morning or very late afternoon, when my camera just refuses to cooperate and put in the effort needed for a good shot that the two of them take wing.

And Time Marches On

So hard to believe that four weeks ago, we were just welcoming Danny into the world. He's grown so much and learned so much in one month. It makes me look forward to the future even more just to watch him develop into a young horse. I forgot to add earlier that Danny got his own food bowl last night and he thought that was something. He liked even more the handful of food that he didn't have to steal from Mom;-D

We did a pasture shuffle last night because the oats in Mouse's pasture had headed out and were too rich for my easy keeper girl. She's not very happy about being in the poorer middle pasture but she should be glad that she's not on the hot hillside pasture where I had to move other horses so that their usual pasture could be occupied by Mouse and Danny. No one was pleased with me this morning.

I'm surprised that Huston is still answering my calls. I had two long conversations with him yesterday, one to catch him up on Danny's latest antics and the other seeking mucho advise. I told him that I don't know what I'd do without him. He's been involved with horses for his entire 86 years and he is just a wealth of knowledge and "horse sense." I'm so grateful that he's willing to help us out or we would be so lost. It seems whatever problem or question I come up with, he has been there and done that a hundred times. Thank you, Huston!!

Stepping Back

I wanted to share this photo from ten days ago. Mouse is "herding" Danny away from the "big boys." You can see Django and Riley looking on from the round pen. A prime illustration of good horse mothering.

Another image from just a few days ago of Danny and Brandy getting acquainted. Although Mouse is now letting Danny wander further afield, she still quickly spirited him away with a screaming rebuke to Brandy right after this photo was taken.

Comical Little Guy

Photo thanks to Paula Price (excuse my pudgy, pale hand but he wouldn't turn his head to the camera:)

I realize that most "grandparents" are a bit biased when it comes to their little ones. So, it may be that no one else finds this story as amusing as I do but if so, I'll add, you had to be there.

My day with Danny really started mid-afternoon yesterday and it was a hot one, down right scorching air that was so humid it seemed to stick to you like the flies. I was hauling water to the horses which always takes several trips since the big tank is 150 gallons and I can only haul 30 gallons at a time. Usually, this is not an unpleasant task since I just hook up the hose and open the tank spout before retreating to the air conditioned cab of my truck with a good book while the water slowly leaks down the hill and into the big water trough. It was so hot and sticky yesterday that the horses were all inside, shaded from the sun and protected from the biting flies. During my second trip, Django slowly wandered out and looked toward the literally greener pastures across the road. I let them all over to the other pasture. We've been trying to keep them off the richer grass there because the boys are getting way too fat but we also know that they eat less and stay a shorter time during the heat of the day and you couldn't get much hotter and unpleasant than it was at that hour on that day. So, across went the three big horses just as the last of the water trickled out of the hose. I decided to check the big tank to see how much more water I needed to haul.  I started walking down the hill and I spotted Mr. Danny and his sweet mama waiting for me at the fence. I decided to pay them a quick visit since I hadn't been able to spend much time with them during breakfast that morning. I'd already packed all of the horse food for the evening meal because a friend, Paula Price, was dropping by around 6:00 p.m. to visit Danny and I'd thought I should go ahead and prepare the horses' food so that task would be done and not distract from her visit. The flies were all over Mouse's face and evidently irritating. I hadn't put a fly mask on her in the morning because on Wednesday she'd removed it herself for the second day in a row. At that moment though, she looked as if she'd appreciate the mask's screening. I went back to my truck and picked up both her food and the mask. She did seem happy to see both and Danny shared her enthusiasm for the small afternoon snack I let them have from her food ration. He even got down on his knees in order to eat out of her ground level bowl.

As I mentioned in my last post, Danny and I had a bad experience with his new leather halter. I thought that this might be the perfect moment to give it another try. After two failed attempts at the leather halter however, I decided to go back to the easier to apply nylon halter. It was a grand battle but I finally managed to slip the halter over his big donkey sized ears and clip the hook closed under his jaw. Then we were off to the rodeo. I've never seen such bucking and kicking or running out of him. I gave Huston a call while all of the commotion was going on. He told me to let him run himself out and to leave the halter on until nightfall or as long as possible so that he could get use to it. I would think that all of the histrionics had finally subsided when he'd start carrying on once again with drastic movement evidently intended to dislodge this hateful contraption on his face. Finally, he did calm down and came into the barn with me. By the time Paula pulled into the drive with Steve, home from work and also from picking up his tractor, right behind her, Danny was calm and standing in the barn while I brushed and groomed him. For some reason, Mouse was alerted by Paula's arrival; maybe she thought she was the vet or someone else who was up to "no good" in her horse mind. She threw her head and ears up, gave a warning whinny and took off with Danny in tow. Since she appears to be the alpha mare of our herd, her whinny was heard by the other horses on top of the hill and they all came galloping down to the lower pasture. I'm sure Paula was standing in the drive glad to be getting some good shots of such active horses but not wanting to walk out into the pasture with them. Finally all calmed down and Mouse checked Paula out and decided it was Ok for her to be around her baby. She stood guard in the barn for a while as Danny lay down and slept. She kept checking him out and making certain that none of us had harmed him and then decided that we could be trusted enough for her to go back out in the pasture and graze.

So, she left us babysitting once again and that is where the funny part of the story begins. Paula and I were talking as I filled Mouse and Danny's water buckets and fed the other horses. Danny was vying for our attention for a while and then wandering off to explore....or else see what he could get into. When I finished feeding, I put my feed containers and the cloth bag which carried fly masks and grooming tools under the shrub by the fence. Paula was petting Django and Riley and getting some really good photos of them as she and I talked. Brandy had finished her dinner and had wandered over to the fence where Danny was playing. Danny is fascinated with all of the "big horses" but mostly with Brandy. He will throw his tail up and start prancing about and showing off whenever she comes near. Because of the wrath of Mouse if she gets too close to him, Brandy has learned to keep her distance. So, she was keeping an eye on him but an eye on Mouse as well. Danny was trying his best to get her full attention. He got into my cloth bag and started pulling things out. First came the bright red scoop that should have been in the boys' feed container. He licked all of the food off of it and then picked it up and appeared to be offering it to Brandy through the fence. I was telling Paula to look and saying it looks just like he's trying to give her a gift. I didn't really think that was what was going on at the time but when Brandy didn't notice the offered food scoop, Danny goes back to the bag and begins to pull out the fly masks. He shoves an entire mouthful of them through the fence but Brandy doesn't acknowledge the offering. Instead, she turns and starts moving away along the fence. Danny starts running after her carrying the masks with him and dropping them one by one along the way. Paula and I were both laughing at his antics by then. When he tries to shove the last fly mask through the fence and didn't get any response from Brandy, he dropped it on the ground and came back to us. Of course, after that, ever effort to pick them all up and put them back in the bag was answered by him grabbing the bottom of the bag and dumping them all on the ground as soon as my back was turned.....Ok, that's the story and I warned you from word one, that you wouldn't find it as amusing as I do:)...sorry for any disappointment or anger over wasted minutes of life, lol