Back In The Saddle

Scottie's Abscess

Last night we went on our first trail ride in six weeks, and it felt awfully good.  I’ve been going to the barn but just not riding much. Between the awful heat and humidity we’ve been having and then Scottie’s lump issue, I haven’t ridden in almost a month. 

Three weeks ago, Scottie developed a lump on the lower edge of his jaw that sprouted almost overnight. It was hard and as large as my fist, and I suspected a tooth abscess, especially since he’d had a lump in the same spot a year ago that wasn’t nearly as big. The vet was called, and she concurred. We arranged for an equine dentist to come out this past Friday to do something about the tooth and see what else may be going on. 

In the meantime, I went to the barn twice daily to apply hot compresses to his cheek, and Scottie was put on antibiotics. The vet had tried to lance the abscess with an 18 gauge needle, but it only drained a llittle bit and then closed up. The following night, I brought along my husband the human dentist. With a small scalpel, he cut into the cheek tissue and got it to drain a little more. To our amazement, Scottie stood perfectly still for this procedure and only gave a small flinch at the first cut. After that the lump began to go down ever so slightly and has continued to drain. 

Scottie had not been seen by an equine dentist in over ten years. I depended on the clinic vet who does the Spring checkups and shots to let me know if he needed anything more than a routine float and she hadn’t. Up here in the hinterlands of Michigan, we don’t have a lot of equine specialists and no equine dentists, so we had to call one to come from downstate. As luck would have it, he was here for the week, so we got him to squeeze Scottie into his schedule. 

I was very impressed with Steve Shaver of Equine Dental Services. He espouses a natural horsemanship approach to equine dentistry and doesn’t have horses sedated unless they’re particularly afraid and unruly. Scottie was neither, even though the vet came along just in case. 

An examination of Scottie’s mouth revealed that he had no abscessed tooth. In fact, his teeth are in excellent condition for his age (26), but the molars did have sharp points on them from uneven wear, and they had worn a sore on the other cheek. Working quietly and gently, Steve floated Scottie’s teeth, removed a hook on a front incisor and removed tartar from his canines.  Scottie was an excellent patient and even seemed to appreciate the treatment to alleviate his mouth problems. 

Another view. I clipped him a few weeks ago to make him cooler so he looks a little wierd

My husband came along, and the two dentists chatted and compared equine to human treatments and kept the vet and I entertained. My husband was especially interested in the  oversized equine dental tools and remarked that Scottie was a far better patient than some of his own and that his mouth smelled a lot better, too. We got to stick our arms in Scottie's mouth to feel his teeth which was kind of awesome. 

In the end, the dentist’s assessment was that Scottie may have bitten his cheek which caused a piece of hay to be imbedded into the cheek tissue which led to the abscess.  It seems to be resolving now, and we are resuming normal activities. 

While Scottie had that lump and a possible abscessed tooth, I didn’t have the heart to put a bridle on his cheek and a bit in his mouth. But last night I decided it was time to get back to riding. Ann, Kathy and I went out on a lovely trail ride on an evening that was very comfortable. Since we stayed in the woods, the flies weren’t bad at all.  In order to stay in the woods we had to go down the steep hill, and although I could tell Scottie was stiff and sore in the hind end, he trucked down that hill with relative enthusiasm, only stopping now and then to grab a mouthful of leaves. He was obviously enjoying the trail ride as much as I was. We stayed out until almost dark, coming back up that steep hill to the barn, resting every so often, and Scottie was in good shape when we got back. 

Ahh, it’s good to be back in the saddle again!

PS Be sure to watch Steve's video!

Grass River Adventure

Grass River, Bellaire Michigan

Over the Fourth of July weekend we had a bit of an unplanned adventure that fortunately ended well. Our grown kids were up for the weekend, and on the Fourth we decided to take a boat ride up the Grass River in our aging boat which is something we only do every few years. Most of the river is pretty wild; in fact, it's part of a natural area that has been preserved from development. The river connects  Lake Bellaire and Clam Lake where we live, and it takes over an hour to traverse the whole length which is a no wake zone to prevent damage to the shoreline and vegetation. Because it connects the two lakes, boat traffic can be heavy at times, and since the river is narrow, it is tricky to navigate. 

On our way up the river to Lake Bellaire,  we passed a couple of muskrat houses and almost ran down a mother mallard and her two ducklings who insisted on crossing the river right in front of the boat!  The river was quite busy with boat traffic, but at times, with no boats visible, you had the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere with no civilization for miles. 

When we were almost at the end, the boat began to run roughly, so we turned around and headed back home, crossing our fingers that we could make it. The further we went the rougher the boat ran until finally it quit altogether. After a short rest it started up again but soon quit again. This scenario repeated three more times until it finally quit for good just as we got out onto Clam Lake. Fortunately we were close to shore and were able to hail someone in a nearby cottage who happened to be a friend of my husband's. He towed us home where we were very relieved to arrive. 

Hard as it is to believe in this day and age, none of us thought to take along a cell phone. By the time we got to Clam Lake it was dinner time, and all the boats had headed back home, so we were pretty much alone on the lake. And the marina down the lake had already closed, so we felt fortunate to have been rescued.

In spite of our misadventure, we enjoyed most of the trip up the river, enjoying Nature at her finest. It was a gorgeous sunny day with perfect temperatures for a leisurely boat ride. Some water lilies were in bloom and we also saw  flowers that looked like some sort of wild irises growing along the edge of the water. I took along my cameras and got a lot of photos that might turn into paintings some day. Bald eagles also inhabit the Natural area, but we didn't see any on this day. 

Here are some more photos from our trip. 

Our boat, a 1974 18 ft. Sea Ray and my son, Dan

water lily and reeds in the river

All decked out for the Fourth of July

This family of mute swans greeted us when we arrived home. 

"Lay, Lady, Lay" or The Chicken Dilemma

Mystery Chicken - Henry? Henrietta?

For some reason, a Bob Dylan song has been running through my head all day; the one that begins,  “Lay, lady, Lay”. Maybe it has something to do with the chicken that has adopted our getaway home in the woods and the dilemma that this poses for us.

You see, a week ago yesterday we drove over to mow the lawn and found this chicken hanging around the yard. He/she was afraid of us but clearly was used to humans. Where did “it” come from? Why had it adopted this particular house that is so far from the road and on the edge of a vast woods? How long had it been there, and how had it managed to survive all the predators in the woods?

As we left, we checked the neighbor’s yards along the road but didn’t see any evidence of chickens or chicken coops and fully expected that the chicken would be gone when we returned for the weekend on Friday. Wrong! He/she greeted us not long after we pulled in and unloaded the car. Over the next two days it gradually became less wary and let us get closer and closer. In fact, it was very curious about our car and kept checking it out. That makes us wonder. Did someone dump it off “out in the country” like so many morons do with cats and dogs? And was it hoping our car would take it home?

I managed to snap some decent pictures of him/her (there is disagreement among my chicken raising friends as to what sex it is) and hope to do a painting in the near future. But, now we’re wondering what to do about this chicken who has adopted us. Should we feed it? Provide some sort of shelter for it? Capture it and rehome it?

I’m not too keen on the latter since neither of us has any experience with chickens. Perhaps I’ll consult our vets to see what they suggest. Or, we could call Animal Control, if there is such a thing in that oh so remote county. 

I had planned to do some plein air artwork over the weekend, but the weather was so abysmal that I stayed inside and went through old art magazines instead. It was cold, rainy and very dreary, but I enjoyed the luxury of having the time to read articles and cut them out to save. I’m only about five years behind in reading my magazines, you see.

flower bed, June 2011

Much of my time lately has been spent in gardening, and the yard is really looking nice this year, thanks to all the rain and cool weather we’ve been having. The new plants that were put in last year are really filling up the new flower beds, and some have already begun to bloom.  It makes all the hard work of the past few years finally seem worth it.

I will share more in future posts as the summer progresses. But, that’s all for now.

Treasures In The Attic

"Beach Run" circa 1983

This Spring has proven to be very busy. There is always lots of yardwork to do, cleaning out of flower beds and planting new flowers and moving a few which didn’t fit where they were. But last weekend, I took a break from that to do a project which has needed doing for years now.

My kids (both in their thirties) were home for the weekend for Memorial Day, and I took advantage of the opportunity to draft some help with the job. While my son ran the Bayshore Marathon in Traverse City, my daughter, Tina, helped me clear out, clean and rearrange the attic. It’s a small space and had become so full that you could barely get through the door!

The studio full of attic discards

The door to the attic is in the studio supply closet which meant that a lot of what we took out ended up stacked in the studio and the adjacent room. Here is the studio with only a narrow path from the attic to the door. The library was equally crammed with attic rejects: mostly baby furniture, toys, children’s books and odds and ends.

Among the  treasures we unearthed from the far reaches of the attic was the painting above. It was done in 1983 when I was still in art school. I don’t remember having any help with it, but the influence of my painting courses is obvious in the  thick brushwork and unblended color. I did not have a photo to copy but made up the horse and background from memory and possibly a few reference photos to get the pose of the horse right. Well, sort of right, that is.

I’d been wondering what became of this painting, and there it was, covered with 20 years of dust in an entirely unsuitable environment for storing a work of art. Sadly, this is where many works of art end up when they are no longer treasured by their owners - or artists. Aside from the dust, it’s in remarkably good condition. It  is an oil painting on canvas board, which just goes to show that cheap canvas board is still capable of standing up to the extremes of heat, cold and unregulated humidity.

"Almost Home, Hunter Pace" circa 2007

The other thing it shows is how far my art has advanced since 1983,  and that is where its value lies. Compare it to another galloping horse painting, “Almost Home, Hunter Pace” (above) which was completed around 2007. By comparison, “Beach Run” is an embarrassment! The best part of the painting is the piece of driftwood in the foreground. For years I meant to repaint that awful sky but never got around to it. It’s just as well because it’s one of those paintings we artists call a “learning experience” which no amount of reworking will improve.

Another treasure I found in the attic was a shoebox of toy horses from my childhood. They’re smaller than I remember them; only about  two inches high; and there aren’t as many as I wish there were, but I’m happy to be able to hold them in my hands again and find them a better place to  live out their  “retirement”. Dusty and Cigarette and Blaze are now  resting on my dresser until I find a suitable spot for them. I don’t remember what I named the metal mare and her foal. Niagara, perhaps? That’s where they were purchased; at a gift shop at Niagara Falls.

After Tina and I had swept out the attic and moved things around, she and son Dan went through the toys and books and picked out what they wanted to keep for themselves. After they had left with their childhood memories, I spent portions of this past week cleaning the items to be rehomed. The Barbie dreamhouse and some doll furniture went to my husband’s hygienist’s two little girls who were thrilled with them. The baby furniture and other stuff went to Goodwill in Traverse City. They do so much good for the homeless that I’m only too glad to donate to them and be rid of what we no longer want.

I still have a bunch of toys to wash and books to vacuum before they are donated, but the studio is now almost cleared out. Before I can do any artwork, it will need a good cleaning. And once the Spring yardwork is completed, I will be free to get back to some artwork!  I have new references to work from and I will share some of those in my next post.

Art Show Online and Spring Activities

Things have been hopping around here since I last posted, but that’s nothing new. My daughter came up for Easter, and we went out for brunch to a restaurant we haven’t been to before, the Blue Pelican in Central Lake. We highly recommend it. In fact, we went back there for Mother’s Day.

I got all dolled up for Mother’s Day and had my husband take the above photo of me out on our deck.  The photo I”ve been using for publicity/promo is now over ten years old, so it was time for something more current. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so. 

If you’d like to take a look at the invitational art show where my work is in Wisconsin, the show is now online. The title is “The Horse In Art”, and it’s a pretty impressive show! I am very honored to be among such talented company and very grateful to have been invited. Do take a look. 

Two weeks ago we opened up our getaway “cottage/cabin” in the woods, and I dug up a bunch of daffodils which were hiding in an old flower bed where no one would see them. Two poppies were also rescued from obscurity, and in the following week, I planted all in various places in the home flower beds. It’s the wrong time of year to be planting bulbs, but if I had waited until Fall to dig them up, I probably wouldn’t be able to find them, so it was now or never more or less. Hopefully we will enjoy their blooms next Spring since they seem to be settling in well in their new homes.

Meanwhile back at the barn, we have resumed our weekly trail rides. So far Scottie has been doing very well and is obviously very happy to be going out again. On our last ride Thursday night, I took some photos and will share a few with you here. The leaves had barely begun to open up, but the air was fragrant in some areas with what we think were wild honeysuckle and at others we could smell wild leeks. Trillium carpeted the forest floor as well as other Spring flowers.

It was a very nice ride.

Day Two; Ancient Egyptian Chariot Horse Sketch

Just a short post today to give proof that I actually did a little art yesterday.

Having wasted most of the day on Facebook, I didn’t get to any art until evening. I wanted to sketch an Egyptian chariot horse since I’ve long been fascinated by that ancient culture. I spent about half an hour looking through a thick book on ancient Egypt that I picked up from the bargain table at Borders, but only found one picture of chariot horses, and it was too small to see many details. So, I just went with memory of other pictures I’ve seen.

The sketch took another half hour or more with lots of erasing to get proportions right. I didn’t worry about being accurate with tack and just enjoyed the process of sketching like I used to do as a kid. Obviously, I’m a little rusty so a lot more sketching is in order. But, it was fun, and that’s the important thing; learning to just enjoy the process again instead of enduring the drudgery of getting the image “just so”.

For now that’s enough.

Cat Painting Update and Ice Bergs

ice remnants on the lake

 Isn’t it marvelous that Spring is finally here?! The ice went out of our lake yesterday morning when there was a stiff breeze, so now we have open water again. Actually, the ice is usually broken up on a windy day or two in the Spring and just blows east down the lake from us. The marina to the west helps the process by going out in boats to make waves. This year they posted a short video on their Facebook page showing them using a boat as an ice breaker in the marina area. The ice was pretty thin by then so no danger to the boat.

The first photo is of an “ice berg” out in the lake in front of our house. I took the photo early this morning while the lake was still. It won’t last long with the warm temperatures as the lake waters warm up.

I feel so lucky to live on a lovely lake with all of its wildlife!

Now that gardening season is back, I decided that it’s time to get back to exercising; something I’ve managed to neglect all winter. After walking on the treadmill, I did my “legs and back” exercise routine, and later in the day went for a short spin on Scottie. This morning I had a hard time getting out of bed! Ack! But, if I keep it up, the stiffness will go away.

In addition to exercising daily, I’ve set a goal for myself of doing some artwork every day this week, even if only for an hour. This is in hopes that both goals will become established habits if I keep them up long enough.

"Annie", 6x6 gallery wrapped canvas oil painting

I managed just an hour yesterday on the little cat painting I started a while back of our kitty, Annie, when she was young. Most of the time was spent setting up and deciding what colors to use and then mixing paint. So, I was limited to working on just one ear and the forehead markings before it came time to clean up and leave for the barn. Otherwise, I would have painted longer.

Please note my painting setup here. I came up with this brilliant idea a while back when I noticed some scraps of pegboard out in the garage. Even though I’ve looked at those scraps for years, THAT day the thought struck me that they would be perfect to use on the easel to hold small paintings and paintings whose edges need to be painted. I’d been trying to figure out a solution to this problem for a while now since I’ve been working on smaller canvases lately. How DOES one paint the edges of those gallery wrapped canvases without getting your fingers in the paint?

I had my husband cut a couple of pieces to fit on the easel and cleaned off the garage grime. Yesterday, I used one of them to hold the Annie painting, and it worked great! As you can see, the painting is resting on pegboard hooks. It can be moved from side to side to get at the bottom of the canvas, and I can set the painting at a comfortable working height. In fact, I might just expand this for use with larger paintings, too!

Now, why didn’t I think of this sooner!?

I’ve just had a chat with my gallery owner (Adams Madams, Central Lake, Michigan) who has requested that all her artists replace their pieces which have been in the gallery for a long time with new artwork. She is readying the shop for the coming summer season when the summer residents and visitors will be returning. She tells me that she gets visitors from the Horse Shows By The Bay people each summer as they explore the area when they’re not showing. These people have money to burn, so that gives me incentive to get some horse show pieces done to put in the gallery during the four or five weeks of the show. A series of small paintings of horse show dogs would be perfect as well as some leadline class photos of toddlers on cute ponies.

Ah! I’m getting super inspired!