80 Minutes of Sun, Sky, Dog and Tiny Pony

I have a friend, also an artist, who lives on Cape Cod. Every day, she spends an hour or two on the beach, day in, day out. She posts photos on her Instagram feed. I like every one of them. When I think of Mary, I think of her on the beach. I love that she gives herself and her followers this gift of going to the beach with her, if only in our minds.

It's not that hard to do, to take a little time for ourselves. I work like a demon all day, saving the gift of beauty for a couple of hours in the afternoon before I pick Liam up at the bus. I work toward it. It's my carrot, my ice cream. I look at my watch and say, OK. I can run 40 minutes out, and 40 minutes back.

I pick a beautiful dirt road, drive well past the German shepherd who'd happily shred cheeky Chet Baker, park and off we go. Oh, what Chet and I can do with those 80 minutes in the sun!

We visit Nostrils and the minidonks. I don't know their real names, but that's OK. Nostrils just got a fabulous hair and tail cut. She also got her hooves done. She looks so cute with short bangs I can hardly stand it. Soon it will be a year since I discovered these sweet little animals. They are a major destination for me and Chet.

I love the way the sun plays on her Chincoteaguey hide. Here is an earlier photo of her right after her grooming session. She is about the cutest thing I have ever seen.

 I don't know if Nostrils is a mini-horse or a tiny pony, but she's about the right size for a squirrel monkey to ride. 

 

She's become so much friendlier since I can reach over the tiny electric fence to pet her.

 Why do I call her Nostrils, you ask?

That horsie. She kills me. This is for Em. Em, here is a big kiss from a tiny tiny horse. Once or twice I have managed to smooch her right on the velour. A very loud smooch. This is perhaps why she doesn't come close any more. Maybe. Next time I'm putting some carrots in my pockets. If I have to buy her kisses, I will. She's that sweet.

 The minidonks are friendlier, though. They adore me and hurry up to get kisses. Their muzzles are 100% velvet.

When you pat them great clouds of yellow dust rise out of their long hair. Whew, what a mess minidonks are, always rolling in the mud. Nostrils isn't much better about that.

Speaking of electric fences, Chet Baker wanted a closer smell at the minidonks and ducked under the innocuous looking wire last week. I called him right back out.

"That is an ELECTRIC fence, Chet Baker, and if you hit that wire you will be VERY sorry. Not only that, but those minidonks might just plant a hoof in your ribs. You do not know them. You stay on THIS SIDE. (This Side is a command he knows very well from 5 years of road running. THIS SIDE Chet Baker. And he crosses immediately.).

I went on petting the animules and by and by I heard a BAROWMP?? from Chet Baker. Who had sneaked back under the fence a little ways back down the road and gotten himself zapped. I couldn't help but chuckle. He was all doubled up and bug-eyed. "I TOLD YOU you'd get zapped, Chet Baker!!"

Now he was in a terrible dilemma. That hot wire was between him and Mether! He ran toward me, on the wrong side of the fence.

"Oh Bacon just duck back under, and give yourself plenty of clearance. I hope you've learned your lesson!"
He stood there hunch-backed for a few seconds, then pasted his ears back and dove under the wire. Safe with Mether. He had to sit on my lap for a little while and get a long, tight hug until he stopped trembling.

Now when we park and start our run on that road he sits in the car and has to be told to get out and come along.
I laugh and laugh. "You are NOT going to get a complex about this road. It is one of my favorite roads and you are coming along!"

 

  So this is what he does while I pet the critters now. He stands on the far side of the road, looking away. He will not even look at the horses and minidonks. I think he thinks they have something to do with the zapping.

As soon as we're past the grave danger of the zapfence, he's happy-go-lucky Chet again.

 

Really, this November. I cannot remember a November so beautiful, so mild, so glorious. We've had one hard frost and the rest haven't been enough to kill all the zinnias and morning glories. I still have flowers blooming in the yard. Sigh. It's so, so beautiful. Well do I know what most Ohio Valley Novembers are like. So I'm rolling around in this one.

And so is The Bacon. What a lucky doggeh he is, to have places like this to run free as a bird, every single day. What a lucky dog I am, to be able to do this, too.

No One Expects a Christmas Parade!

It had been a good day. I had painted six tree swallows, which is about all the swallows somebody ought to try to paint in a day. I was thinking about going to town, and going for a run too, because the sky was just like lead and it wasn't doing me any good to sit any more. These winter days that end around 3:30 pm get to me. I'm a Leo, a sun sign. How I ended up in the Mid-Ohio Valley for life I...well, let's just say I have to work around these winters. 

Yeah Baconbuddy. I feel it too. I'd lie on her bed with you, but I don't think that would help either of us.

So I headed for town with my running gear in a tote bag, planning to re-stock the house and the bird seed bins, do something worthwhile on a dark Saturday afternoon, and cap it off with an evening run.

By the time I finished the grocery shop at 4:45 it was completely dark out. @#$@#$!!! Muttering, I decided to run the river trail anyway. Maybe there'd be some pretty lights to look at. I hoped there would be streetlamps at least. I headed for the river, my groceries in keep-cold bags in the Subaru.

There floated the WP Snyder, decommissioned, just a tourist attraction now. John Hartford once posed in her wheelhouse for an album cover. I miss ol' John. I grew up watching the Glen Campbell show, watching him tap-dance on a pallet while playing the banjo and singing his own songs, and I knew even as a little kid that he was something else.

 He will never be duplicated.

The river trail was DARK. I mean, a weak orange streetlamp every 1/3 mile or so, if I was lucky. And too-long stretches of complete darkness along the sneaky river, slipping by. My situational awareness was sky-high. Nobody in their right mind runs the river trail after dark, I reassured myself. Oh great. I guess that's what was bothering me. 

I trotted past the hospital where both our kids were born, could see the room where it happened. And I thought and thought about them, and about all the people I have loved, some here, some not.

I was happy to turn around at the fairgrounds boatlaunch and head back toward the lights of town. Made record time, I did... I kept hearing sirens blatting and blooping. It sounded like what they do when a line of fire trucks joins a parade. Come to think of it I'd seen people setting up lawnchairs along Front Street as I embarked, and parking had been hard to find. Hm hm hm. Was the Marietta Christmas parade tonight? It was always on a Saturday during the day, before...

As I finished my fourth mile I saw a float with a giant manger, and some indeterminate object draped within. A giant baby, mayhaps. The biggest Messiah in the world. Some little kids were waving and saying Merry Christmas from their stations on the float. I was hooked.

Citizens Bank. Dunno what it is, a white Christmas turkey?

Oh! Oh! A front-end loader of presents! For me??

I stopped at Twisted Sisters, one of my very favorite boutiques, to chat with owner Becky Pritchett and she said that Huntington Bank has just come to Marietta, and they offered to sponsor the Christmas parade. And this is the first ever held at night, and there were 50 entrants, way more than ever before. A smashing success! And the clever lighting on the floats and people was delightful. 

Every float had people walking alongside it with paint buckets full of candy, which was all Tootsie Rolls, Dum-Dums and Dubble Bubble.  Not a caramel-pecan turtle or Reeses' cup or Mounds or Heath Bar in sight. They were throwing the candy on the ground, as is the tradeeshun during the Marietta Christmas Parade. It's weird the first time you see it. People get down and scramble for the candy. It would take a damn good piece of candy to get me down on my hands and knees. Tootsie Rolls, nuhh. Good thing they didn't toss out caramel-pecan turtles or Reeses' cups or Mounds or Heath Bars. I definitely would have gotten down on all fours for those.

 The Shriners represented. There were fezzes a-poppin'. 

Because obviously the best possible thing you could find under the Christmas tree is a couple four-wheelers. Vrrroooom!!  Hey. I see your roll bar, but where's your helmet?

A happy snowman. I liked this one.

I kept running, meeting it head-on, so I could see the whole parade. At the end was the best: The Marietta Wall of Sound, or The Wall for short. It's Marietta High School's award-winning reasonably flashy and very solid marching band. 

The kettledrum beat echoed in my sternum. I love that. I feel like a bird when that happens. 

The drum majors walked backwards on their tippytoes. I wondered how sore you are in the morning after you do that for an evening. I'm happy just to trot forward on my flat feet. 

Some players were individually lit. I think there were a LOT of Double A batteries employed in this parade. 

Besides the band, my favorite thing were miniature horses ridden by miniature kids, all lit up.

Oh yes I loved that.

As I drove home I suddenly realized that I was no longer sad. The gloom had dissipated. And for that I was thankful. 

It doesn't usually take a parade. But a parade works.

C'est Bonn.

Haflinger Horses

 

Haflinger (chestnut) and a possible Percheron/pony cross, Draft Horse Field Day, Adams County, Ohio.

A team of Haflingers, a six-year-old mare on the left; a sixteen-year old whispering in her ear.

Their proud owner. I was struck by the harmony (not to mention the similarity) between this gentleman and his horses. They're the two who settled out of many that he decided to keep. He said the six-year-old wasn't working out too well but then she turned a corner and is terrific. I think he's terrific, for keeping, training, and caring for them, keeping a tradition and an art alive.  Of course he also made me think of my dad, whose particular passion was antique gasoline engines. They were like living things to him. He took skids of them to engine meets in the fall; wore a straw cowboy hat and overalls, too, but his overalls were not nearly this clean.

He and an engine buddy went into a McDonald's for breakfast on the way to a meet. As they took their seats, a little girl with wide eyes whispered to her mother, "Cowboys!"

I wonder if they're making guys like him any more.

Another Haflinger harnessed up, so sturdy and kind. What a nice breed this is.

Its teammate had a blaze that reminded me of a little Dr. Seuss character. Its owner told me they called it the Upper Peninsula.

I love watching people and their animals, especially when the animals are well-loved, like this sibling pair of Goldendoodles. Designer breed, perhaps...but it combines many of the best traits of the golden retriever and standard poodle. A retriever that won't shed? That's got to be a pleasant change.

Tricia is just as animal crazy as I am, but she *has* a menagerie of hoofed stock. So I guess that qualifies her as crazier, in a nice way. It was great to see them through her eyes. I think I saw the moment she fell in love with Haflingers. It was mutual. It's a lucky horse who lives on Tricia's farm.

There were many well-loved animals at the event, some a little too well-loved. A few too many bikkits and dishes of ice cream for this little Schnauzer--we also saw a miniature pinscher that was packing a serious paunch. That's why Chet Baker runs with me!

Miniature horse, his little girl skipping in muck boots, her shirt printed with running horses, yes yes yes.