Back from the trip.
Apr. 4th, 2005 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumAll did not go as planned.
Maia and I got out late. Driving north, to Calif. 58 and across toward the Carrizo Plain (which one sign listed as Carisso, go figure).
The drive was pleasant, a winding road, flowers, trees, some cows, a mule, two donkeys, some horses and a llama (llamas and donkeys make great sheepdogs. Where a pack of coyotes might manage to cow a dog, or even two, the donkey or llama will go into overdrive and start stomping. The coyote are not large enough, in size, or number to bring one down before at least one of them is pounded to death, and the rest take the discrete path of valor).
Saw a Gobbler Tom with his harem. Maia stopped to let me snap a couple of pictures.
Right turn onto Soda Lake Road, just as the gloaming was fading. The map lists a town. What we found was a burger stand/small grocery (call it dry goods; cans, cereals and packaged cakes, etc., with beer, yogurt and some other refrigerated goods) which was opening the next day. They were kind enough to give us directions and sell us some ice cream. There was a lodge/restaurant (which seemed to have a dozen people in it) and a Calif. Dept. Forestry fire station; where we filled the horse-trailer's water tank. That was it.
Ten miles down the road, and into the BLM Camp Ground. Set up, and went to sleep. An owl was whooting through the night, and the early morning was full of birdsong. One of them made me think there was a pond nearby, as it sounded like splashing water. The bird with the cry of a squalling cat, angry and near its mortal enemy was less pleasant, but at least it waited until everyone was well up to start. The "Pik..pik-pik" at 0700 was less well received by me. Had I been asleep, I’d not have noted it, but as I wasn’t I arose.
I got up, and wandered about. The posted rules said no recreational target shooting, so I have to assume the holes put in said sign were done in self defense. I found seven different calibers of spent shell (including the not so common .22 short) and three live rounds of 30-30, loaded for deer.
I also saw a hooded oriole, in mating plumage. A yellow so bright it hurt to look at, and so swift near the ground that the only shot I could get was on a gum tree, at 100 meters.
The Carrizo Plain is a depression (well maybe the only topo map I had to look at was on a 300 meter interval, so I'm not sure I'd really say it is, so much as a very flat area between two ranges), about 30 miles by 15. From the KCL (Kern Cattle and Land) campsite (so named because it has the last remaining building from the KCL Co.) one can see a great way, to the far mountains, and some lesser way (but sill a fair piece) to the near mountains, and ride right up the adjacent mountain.
This being a "Wolff Family Enterprise tm" we were on "Wolff Standard Timetm". This is like Navajo Time, but less rigidly defined. Which means the tacking up was started at 1030 and we were mounted about 1515. To be fair there were two mules with pack saddles (in part we are training the horses for a ten-day trip to the Parilla in Utah) and the rigging, loading and balancing are not trivial. For the trip this summer, however, it needs to get faster.
I was less happy than I ought have been (and minor grumbles about the lateness of the hour were not really a factor though Maia and I were looking at a two-three hour trip for supplies, since there had been some miscommunication about who was bringing what for food, and we had none. Two dutch-ovens, a cast-iron griddle and tripod with chain, but nothing much to put in them) because no one had thought to ask me how I felt about ponying a horse.
WE had four riders, and eight animals. It was decided (and had been sort of planned) the oldest mule would be allowed to walk free, because she is very herd-bound. This only mollified me a bit. I wanted to take pictures and if she wasn't able to go unheld, there was no way in the world I could really do that. Managing my horse, and the camera is just doable, but add a hand for Murray (who used to be called Margeurite, but Pat thought that to hard to say, never mind animals named Sienna, and Zatzke (whish ought to be spelled Tchotchke. This might not be so annoying if I'd not been asked how to spell it, and then over-ruled because she thought it had too many letters, but I'm whinging, and I'll stop).
Mounted, Umber and the two babies in hand we headed for the gate. We goofed. Murray (who was muzzled, so as to prevent her finding toxic plants, of which there was an abundance, of at least one, and who knows, perhaps some Yellow Star-Thistle [sometimes fatal to horses, and bad for people. Even small quantities leads to slow neural degeneneration. A single bite might go unpunished, a good mouthful can provide a fatal dose) was loose, and excited. Sienna wanted to eat some tarweed (mildly toxic, but she didn't seem to find the taste unpleasant). Pat lost her grip of Cavort.
He wandered into the cattle guard.
A cattle guard, for those who don't know, is a device meant to keep cattle from leaving an area, while keeping the way open for cars and trucks. It's a set of rails, with gaps between them, across a hole; perhaps three feet deep and eight feet across. He, perforce, missed his footing and fell in.
Horses and cattle guards are a bad mix. In the first place they can't easily get there feet out (it's kind of like a monkey trap, the angle the foot goes in will let the foot come out, but that angle only exists because the horse slips. On the way up the coronary band of the hoof catches. Since horses are prone to panic they have been known to do themselves fatal damage trying to escape, even with human help.
Thankfully mules have small feet (this would have been true were he a horse too, because at eight months he still would have been small enough to not catch, and he managed, against all expectation, to extract himself not merely from the hole (he was body deep) but to stand on the rails, and pick his way to dry ground.
In the meanwhile, however, Sola had lost grip of V'misht, and I managed to make my mistake. Forgetting that horses are possessed of elephantine memory I was on the outside of the cattle guard, lest Cavort decide to rejoin his dam. V'misht decided to head to the larger group of horses. She too missed a step and crashed onto the rails. I was surprised at just how detached I felt. I was picturing broken legs (and pondering the horror of having, God forbid, to put one of the babies down) and had no sense of real emotional involvement with anything. I was annoyed at Sola's keening, because it made it hard to figure out what was going on with the horses (who can whimper and scream, much as a person).
She too clambered to her feet, and across the guard.
Then came the patching. Happily I had my Combat Lifesaver Bag with me. More happily it has an eclectic mix of things, meant to patch up large wounds on people (and it's missing some things I'd like, but I've got a small and a medium trache-tube, so for the most part it will cover everything but anaphylactic shock).
We sprayed some peuracyn (sp?) on. It's a caustic topical antiseptic, and is dyed yellow-green, so one knows where it is. Then a couple of 8" squares, some vet wrap, making sure not to wrap the point of her hock (where the achilles tendon meets the top of the heel. It's that sharp angle, about two-feet from the hoof) and V'misht is done.
Cavort has some uglier looking wounds. He is also acting more lame than she is. His front right seems to have some exposed bone. He gets a gauze wrap, and a compress, and some vet-wrap (I am going to get some of this for my people kit. Sort of like a self-adhesive Ace-bandage, it comes in colors, and is more open, so one can let a wound air out, or not). His rear right has a small laceration, and some missing hair (why do horses have hair, not fur?), just above the hock. I used an army field dressing on that.
They look like they need stitches, and we are off to Bakersfield, to find an equine clinic (which we did... Panama Equine, if you need one, they are tops). No stitches. Dr. Pipkin says the filthiness of cattle guars is such that closing the wound only leads to sepsis and abscess, if not gangrene.
Cleaned, better bandaged (though she said we did well to wrap them up, and that the wrapping was well done... though I must say, it's no picnic to try and do first-aid to 600 lbs of restive beast. Somewhere I got an hellacious bruise on the middle finger of my left hand. No pain, but strawberry and swollen for three days) we hit the road for home.
In bed, in L.A. at 0300. Went riding on Saturday, and then changed the bandage on Cavort (he does have exposed canon, and some of the distal extensor tendon. He had a Kerlixtm and saline compress (drying, drawing and sealing. Kerlixtm is great stuff. The Army now has it on larger field dressings. A coagulant and vaso-constrictor it greatly reduces bleeding and shock). That dressing was 24 hours, after which it was to be replaced, and then removed in another 24 hours.
That wasn't a whole lot of fun. He wasn't happy at the vet (ignoring the trank he was given, and the second trank, at which point he was treated anyway. One can keep dosing them, and at that point they are hopped up on adrenaline so much they will shake it off until you either quit, or kill them) and we wasn't much happier at home. I took pictures, and we discovered he was twitchy as all get out, until the bandage was actually around some of the wound, whereat he went dead calm and we could finish. He did the same thing yesterday when the normal vet was looking at him.
Prognosis: Complete recovery, though he is very shy of banded color now, and may be spooky around thin streams of water. We'll have to train him out of that. V’misht seems (at present) none the worse for psychologic wear. We need to amend the aid kit for horses (to include some longitudally cut PVC 2"dia, for splints, in event of an actual break, so we aren't forced to put one down for a reparable bit of damage).
But I didn't get many pictures of wildflowers.
Maia and I got out late. Driving north, to Calif. 58 and across toward the Carrizo Plain (which one sign listed as Carisso, go figure).
The drive was pleasant, a winding road, flowers, trees, some cows, a mule, two donkeys, some horses and a llama (llamas and donkeys make great sheepdogs. Where a pack of coyotes might manage to cow a dog, or even two, the donkey or llama will go into overdrive and start stomping. The coyote are not large enough, in size, or number to bring one down before at least one of them is pounded to death, and the rest take the discrete path of valor).
Saw a Gobbler Tom with his harem. Maia stopped to let me snap a couple of pictures.
Right turn onto Soda Lake Road, just as the gloaming was fading. The map lists a town. What we found was a burger stand/small grocery (call it dry goods; cans, cereals and packaged cakes, etc., with beer, yogurt and some other refrigerated goods) which was opening the next day. They were kind enough to give us directions and sell us some ice cream. There was a lodge/restaurant (which seemed to have a dozen people in it) and a Calif. Dept. Forestry fire station; where we filled the horse-trailer's water tank. That was it.
Ten miles down the road, and into the BLM Camp Ground. Set up, and went to sleep. An owl was whooting through the night, and the early morning was full of birdsong. One of them made me think there was a pond nearby, as it sounded like splashing water. The bird with the cry of a squalling cat, angry and near its mortal enemy was less pleasant, but at least it waited until everyone was well up to start. The "Pik..pik-pik" at 0700 was less well received by me. Had I been asleep, I’d not have noted it, but as I wasn’t I arose.
I got up, and wandered about. The posted rules said no recreational target shooting, so I have to assume the holes put in said sign were done in self defense. I found seven different calibers of spent shell (including the not so common .22 short) and three live rounds of 30-30, loaded for deer.
I also saw a hooded oriole, in mating plumage. A yellow so bright it hurt to look at, and so swift near the ground that the only shot I could get was on a gum tree, at 100 meters.
The Carrizo Plain is a depression (well maybe the only topo map I had to look at was on a 300 meter interval, so I'm not sure I'd really say it is, so much as a very flat area between two ranges), about 30 miles by 15. From the KCL (Kern Cattle and Land) campsite (so named because it has the last remaining building from the KCL Co.) one can see a great way, to the far mountains, and some lesser way (but sill a fair piece) to the near mountains, and ride right up the adjacent mountain.
This being a "Wolff Family Enterprise tm" we were on "Wolff Standard Timetm". This is like Navajo Time, but less rigidly defined. Which means the tacking up was started at 1030 and we were mounted about 1515. To be fair there were two mules with pack saddles (in part we are training the horses for a ten-day trip to the Parilla in Utah) and the rigging, loading and balancing are not trivial. For the trip this summer, however, it needs to get faster.
I was less happy than I ought have been (and minor grumbles about the lateness of the hour were not really a factor though Maia and I were looking at a two-three hour trip for supplies, since there had been some miscommunication about who was bringing what for food, and we had none. Two dutch-ovens, a cast-iron griddle and tripod with chain, but nothing much to put in them) because no one had thought to ask me how I felt about ponying a horse.
WE had four riders, and eight animals. It was decided (and had been sort of planned) the oldest mule would be allowed to walk free, because she is very herd-bound. This only mollified me a bit. I wanted to take pictures and if she wasn't able to go unheld, there was no way in the world I could really do that. Managing my horse, and the camera is just doable, but add a hand for Murray (who used to be called Margeurite, but Pat thought that to hard to say, never mind animals named Sienna, and Zatzke (whish ought to be spelled Tchotchke. This might not be so annoying if I'd not been asked how to spell it, and then over-ruled because she thought it had too many letters, but I'm whinging, and I'll stop).
Mounted, Umber and the two babies in hand we headed for the gate. We goofed. Murray (who was muzzled, so as to prevent her finding toxic plants, of which there was an abundance, of at least one, and who knows, perhaps some Yellow Star-Thistle [sometimes fatal to horses, and bad for people. Even small quantities leads to slow neural degeneneration. A single bite might go unpunished, a good mouthful can provide a fatal dose) was loose, and excited. Sienna wanted to eat some tarweed (mildly toxic, but she didn't seem to find the taste unpleasant). Pat lost her grip of Cavort.
He wandered into the cattle guard.
A cattle guard, for those who don't know, is a device meant to keep cattle from leaving an area, while keeping the way open for cars and trucks. It's a set of rails, with gaps between them, across a hole; perhaps three feet deep and eight feet across. He, perforce, missed his footing and fell in.
Horses and cattle guards are a bad mix. In the first place they can't easily get there feet out (it's kind of like a monkey trap, the angle the foot goes in will let the foot come out, but that angle only exists because the horse slips. On the way up the coronary band of the hoof catches. Since horses are prone to panic they have been known to do themselves fatal damage trying to escape, even with human help.
Thankfully mules have small feet (this would have been true were he a horse too, because at eight months he still would have been small enough to not catch, and he managed, against all expectation, to extract himself not merely from the hole (he was body deep) but to stand on the rails, and pick his way to dry ground.
In the meanwhile, however, Sola had lost grip of V'misht, and I managed to make my mistake. Forgetting that horses are possessed of elephantine memory I was on the outside of the cattle guard, lest Cavort decide to rejoin his dam. V'misht decided to head to the larger group of horses. She too missed a step and crashed onto the rails. I was surprised at just how detached I felt. I was picturing broken legs (and pondering the horror of having, God forbid, to put one of the babies down) and had no sense of real emotional involvement with anything. I was annoyed at Sola's keening, because it made it hard to figure out what was going on with the horses (who can whimper and scream, much as a person).
She too clambered to her feet, and across the guard.
Then came the patching. Happily I had my Combat Lifesaver Bag with me. More happily it has an eclectic mix of things, meant to patch up large wounds on people (and it's missing some things I'd like, but I've got a small and a medium trache-tube, so for the most part it will cover everything but anaphylactic shock).
We sprayed some peuracyn (sp?) on. It's a caustic topical antiseptic, and is dyed yellow-green, so one knows where it is. Then a couple of 8" squares, some vet wrap, making sure not to wrap the point of her hock (where the achilles tendon meets the top of the heel. It's that sharp angle, about two-feet from the hoof) and V'misht is done.
Cavort has some uglier looking wounds. He is also acting more lame than she is. His front right seems to have some exposed bone. He gets a gauze wrap, and a compress, and some vet-wrap (I am going to get some of this for my people kit. Sort of like a self-adhesive Ace-bandage, it comes in colors, and is more open, so one can let a wound air out, or not). His rear right has a small laceration, and some missing hair (why do horses have hair, not fur?), just above the hock. I used an army field dressing on that.
They look like they need stitches, and we are off to Bakersfield, to find an equine clinic (which we did... Panama Equine, if you need one, they are tops). No stitches. Dr. Pipkin says the filthiness of cattle guars is such that closing the wound only leads to sepsis and abscess, if not gangrene.
Cleaned, better bandaged (though she said we did well to wrap them up, and that the wrapping was well done... though I must say, it's no picnic to try and do first-aid to 600 lbs of restive beast. Somewhere I got an hellacious bruise on the middle finger of my left hand. No pain, but strawberry and swollen for three days) we hit the road for home.
In bed, in L.A. at 0300. Went riding on Saturday, and then changed the bandage on Cavort (he does have exposed canon, and some of the distal extensor tendon. He had a Kerlixtm and saline compress (drying, drawing and sealing. Kerlixtm is great stuff. The Army now has it on larger field dressings. A coagulant and vaso-constrictor it greatly reduces bleeding and shock). That dressing was 24 hours, after which it was to be replaced, and then removed in another 24 hours.
That wasn't a whole lot of fun. He wasn't happy at the vet (ignoring the trank he was given, and the second trank, at which point he was treated anyway. One can keep dosing them, and at that point they are hopped up on adrenaline so much they will shake it off until you either quit, or kill them) and we wasn't much happier at home. I took pictures, and we discovered he was twitchy as all get out, until the bandage was actually around some of the wound, whereat he went dead calm and we could finish. He did the same thing yesterday when the normal vet was looking at him.
Prognosis: Complete recovery, though he is very shy of banded color now, and may be spooky around thin streams of water. We'll have to train him out of that. V’misht seems (at present) none the worse for psychologic wear. We need to amend the aid kit for horses (to include some longitudally cut PVC 2"dia, for splints, in event of an actual break, so we aren't forced to put one down for a reparable bit of damage).
But I didn't get many pictures of wildflowers.
