Horse Hair

I have problem hair. It's frizzy and dry and gets tangled into a horrible bird's nest at the nape of the neck. It gets so tangled so quickly, that I am afraid to brush it because it breaks and a handful of hair invariably appears in my brush after I'm done. Although it looks thick because of all the frizz and knots, it's actually quite thin from all the breakage. I've been trying to grow it long and it's doing quite well, but I always look awful because of my unsightly horse hair bird's nest. Everyone who knows me can testify to my passion for animals, but there is a limit.

You can well notice the striking similarities between this fella's hair and mine. I need some help.

Well water is very hard, filled with minerals, and leaves my hair looking even worse than chlorinated city water did. In the summer, I spend long hours in the sun tending to my garden, which leaves my hair dry and scorched, while in the winter, wood heat leaves my hair extremely brittle. Last summer, I even caught my hair in a power drill in an embarrassing moment of what one could label slapstick carpentry. My girlfriends are all aware of the love and hate relationship I have with my frizzy, matted horse hair.

In walks my beautiful, silky-haired, farm-raised friend Leslie, who despite having been a blonde, a brunette and a redhead within the past year has lovely, silky, shiny and fragrant hair. "Why don't you try Mane 'n Tail Conditioner? They sell it at the Feed Mill and you get a huge bottle for only $10!"

I laughed out loud. Horse shampoo? Up she goes to fetch her bottle. I was very surprised to read instructions for both human and animal use on the label.

Original Mane 'n Tail Shampoo and Conditioner was originally conceived for horses' manes and tails, obviously. Some smart lady must have tried it one day and discovered that it was just as good for her horse hair, than for her horse's hair. I was very surprised to find out that this is no well-kept country chick's secret. Both Jennifer Anniston and Sarah Jessica Parker,  are rumored to swear by it.

This morning, I went to our town's Feed and Seed Mill to get some turkey grower, cracked corn and layer's crumbs for our flock and treated myself to some Original Mane 'n Tail Shampoo and Conditioner (I am told you can also find it in city pharmacies). Tonight, I shampooed with it and used the conditioner as a leave-in treatment, as instructed on the bottle. I can already see a difference (my hair seems heavier, less bushy/frizzy, although it looks a bit greasy, an effect my friend Leslie says happens when she uses both shampoo and conditioner as opposed to conditioner only together with a regular ladies' shampoo). I guess we'll have to examine the long-term effects, of which I will keep you posted periodically over the next few months as I use up my new-found beauty product. It can't get any worse, really. Hopefully though, I'll end up looking more like this graceful-yet-strong-looking horse than this sad-yet-slightly pissed-off-looking young lady:

"Rain is Good"

Country folk often affix decals on their pick-up truck windshields. Some are obviously for business advertising purposes, but others are just for fun. For example, one flat-black beat-up pick-up truck that I often see around town proudly announces that "Ladies Love Country Boys". I've noticed various ones, such as "The General" and "Bad Group" (yes...), but the one I love the most is "Rain is Good!".

When I lived in the city, I reveled in a good hard rain. If I was at home, I'd hurriedly put on a raincoat and call my dog for a trip to the dog park. It meant that I'd finally have a moment alone outside of my apartment. It made the exhaust fumes and garbage smells disappear for a while. Torrential downpours made everything seem so "quiet", with the sound of the falling rain silencing all of that dreaded noise pollution. Suddenly, there would be just me and my thoughts, my poor wet dog, the feel of my rain boots sinking in the mud and the tapping of the raindrops on my head.

Most of the time however, the city rain will catch you on your way to a job interview dressed in your fanciest clothes, or happily enjoying a brew and burger on a pub terrace, or worse - painfully riding your bike home from the grocery store with way too many bags hanging on your handle bars. Then you've got to either run and hide and wait for it to be over or get absolutely drenched. Damn rain! It will be like a spoke in your wheel and wreak havoc with all your best-laid plans. Yes, it might be good for the garden, but you can also water it yourself with your garden hose - after all, it only takes a minute.

There are only a few good reasons to complain about the rain in the country:  when your baseball game gets canceled because of rain, your 150-year-old foundation is caving in, or there are holes in your ancient tin roof. Another good reason to complain is when it rains during the winter and the water has nowhere to go because the ground is frozen. Most of the complaining however, gets done when there is no rain. When we encounter a dry spell and are forced to perform rain dances in desperation. Aside from that, "Rain is Good!".

Rain gives us a bit of rest from the sweltering sun (believe it or not, the sun is stronger out here in the country). It replenishes and cleans our well water. It refreshes our lakes, rivers and ponds. It increases crop yields for farmers. It feeds our vegetable gardens. It reduces the risk of forest fires. It cleans off all that dust that accumulates on our trucks from driving on dry dirt roads. It makes our lawns green again. It cools down our panting chickens and amuses our ducks. It allows us to sing in the rain. It provides us with puddles to clean our bare feet before coming into the house. And it gives us a bit of time to update our blogs.

"RAIN IS GOOD!"

Be careful what you wish for

The biggest mistake I've made since moving to the country was making a plea to the weather gods for "lots of snow this winter".

I was raised in Montreal, Quebec, where weekly 30 cm snowfalls are a common occurrence. I even spent a part of my early childhood near Quebec city, where I can remember lovely winters with snowbanks towering over houses. The joys of winter... skying, snowshoeing, building forts and making friendly snowmen, slipping and sliding, tobogganing, examining the magical intricacies of snowflakes, getting your tongue stuck on the chain link fence, losing your boots in the snow to joyfully find them in the spring when the snow melted...

Ever since moving to Ontario I've missed the good old snowy winters of my youth. Back in Toronto, on occasions where I voiced my delight about the few and far between snow "storms" that would blanket the city, my happiness was met with bewildered frowns of disapprovement by my fellow Torontonians, who absolutely abhor the white stuff.

Snowy winters in the country... beautiful and magical, right? An absolute winter wonderland...

Let me tell you that I will never wish for snow again (except for a few flakes on Christmas Day - maybe.)

This winter brought us a fair amount of snow. Nothing like what I was used to back in Quebec, but enough to turn me into one of those people who have a deep-founded hatred for the stuff. Sure, it looks pretty for a minute. But it also makes your duck pen cave in onto your ducks. It leaves you stranded at home for fear of ending up in the ditch (see earlier post). It makes your piles of firewood wet and difficult to burn (unless you spread two layers of tarp over your stacks, which you then have to manoeuvre under like an idiot to collect armfuls of wood). It prevents you from going for walks in the forest because you can't afford snowshoes. It fills the ditches and covers the shoulders so that you can't walk safely down the roads. It makes your barn doors difficult to open and close. The horrid stuff covers your roof and then falls on your head in a big sheet of ice when you decide to finally venture out on a sunny day. You have to plow 100-feet of driveway over and over again. It also provides a wonderful cover for mice, moles and rats, allowing them to multiply happily and readily while they run amok in little snow tunnels, safe from hawks and other predators. Your small Jack Russell terrier doesn't even want to perform his ratting duties anymore because going outside means being swallowed in snow as though it was a big blob of quicksand. Shall I go on?


Okay, I will. The worst is when spring thaw is on its way and you breathe a sigh of relief, imagining how it'll soon be all gone. Then, 20+ acres of snow melts from the neighboring fields and heads straight for your old house in the form of lakes and giant spring rivers. This means you have to spend days digging trenches in the rain to re-direct the nasty stuff away and dig holes in your dirt-floor basement to collect the water that's seeping in through your 150-year old stone foundation. All your boots are so wet that your wood stove can't dry them in time for tomorrow's efforts. Your toes get that crinkly look like when you spend too much time in the bath except they're numb from being in freezing water. When the awful stuff melts, it also heads straight for your chicken coop and floods it, so that when you happily go feed your critters one morning, you find them walking in a stew of chicken poop and floating straw. All you can do at this point is add some more straw to the mess to soak it all up. Then, when it's all gone and some blades of grass are eagerly starting to turn green and you tentatively put a smile on your face, you wake up one morning to an ugly, cold, bland and bleary white landscape.




It was a hard winter in the country. This week is the first week of Spring and I should be overjoyed but I still can't find it in my heart. Maybe it's post-traumatic stress.

From now on, I shall be careful what I wish for.

"The Ditch"

Since we've moved out to the country, I keep hearing all these stories about people driving their cars into ditches. The way I understand it, it happens constantly. Especially in Winter, for obvious reasons.

When you live in the big city, there are a lot of driving hazards - and that's why car insurance is so darn expensive - but one thing you never have to worry about is... "The Ditch". There are cyclists right, left and center, wanton pedestrians darting from between parked cars, escaped dogs running wild, a myriad of confusing and often conflicting traffic signs, enraged drivers and countless other distractions.

By comparison, country roads offer only two dangers: ditches and animals (even domestic ones - cows, goats and chickens often do escape).  When you drive on a country road, you're mostly in a very calm state of mind, especially when driving at night in a snow storm, when snow flakes shining in your headlights transport you into an hypnotic voyage of intergalactic dreamy relaxation. And even more especially when you're driving The Spaceship, which is what we nicknamed our comfortable silver minivan. I can see how easily you could lose sight of the road edges during this kind of absent-minded traveling or even have to suddenly react to a night prowler running across the road and end up sliding into the ditch.

Last night, I was invited to a Tarot card reading with the gals and was asked to be the driver. On the way there, when I was cautioned to slow down on a sharp curve, I proudly expressed my confidence in The Spaceship and our expensive snow tires. Once inside and sitting around the table eating munchies, someone mentioned "The Ditch" and I innocently asked if everyone ends up in it at some point or other. Wylene laughed when she said "Well at least once, my Dear!". I suddenly felt a strange feeling of false confidence that I would never be one of them. You can guess what happened next.

The end of the night brought with it one of my country "christenings". As we were pulling out of Jenny's driveway, Terri yelled out "Watch out! You're gonna end up in the culvert!!!" I,  so innocently again, asked "What's a culvert?" when the right front end of the car dropped two feet down with a big clunk. I spun my tires and muddy water flew up into the air and Terri yelled "Don't spin your tires, we're gonna get stuck! You've got to rock the car back and forth!" So I did, or at least tried to. All that did was send more mud flying twenty feet up in the air. We were stuck.

Fortunately, I was amongst some very strong and independent women who knew all about ditches. It took half an hour, but resourceful Jenny got some cables from the house and succeeded in pulling The Spaceship out of the culvert with her truck. If I had been alone on a dark country road, I would have had to walk all the way home and possibly get eaten by one of our neighborhood bears. Thank you, Ladies! (Oh and I'm terribly sorry for ruining your beautifully white, postcard landscape just before Christmas time)

Now I know what a culvert is. The only problem is that I think it might be slightly different than a ditch, which means ... this story is to be continued.

Gone to the Dogs

City dogs and country dogs are two completely different beasts. Their daily lives differ in so many ways... and so does what we expect of them.  My two dogs were born city dogs, but like me, are now in the process of being countrified. It's been over a year since we've left our big city life behind and, just when I had convinced myself that my dogs are so much happier now and completely adjusted to their new freedom, something happened that made me reconsider the whole situation.














Emma was rescued from the Toronto Humane Society almost six years ago. She was a biter. Out here in the country they call biting dogs "ugly". With a lot of love and a little bit of discipline and a lot of avoidance (and some blood drawn on a few occasions), Emma became better and better over the years. And since we've moved to the country, Emma hadn't bitten anyone. Until today.

Today Emma bit "The Walker", Archie. Archie is an older man who lives down the road. He only walks during the Winter. Last year, we had a few issues and Archie had to wave his walking stick at Emma a few times until she got used to him and would only bark to warn me that a stranger was on our bit of road. We somewhat got along like that throughout the Winter months.

 
   

 

In the city, dogs are often confined to apartments all day long while their owners go to work in office cubicles. If they're lucky, they get to "own" pathetic little concrete backyards which they can protect against the occasional raccoon or squirrel. Their owners have to take them to the dog park twice a day, where they get to meet all sorts of people and play with hundreds of different dogs wearing pretty clothes who end up acting as their extended pack.

 

In the country, space isn't so limited. There's loads of it, all around. The pack is smaller - it has its main original four (Stuart, Karina, Emma and Chico) plus a few chickens and ducks. There is also the extended pack, consisting in human and dog friends, but we only see these other pack members during dinner visits, as opposed to meeting them twice a day without fail at the dog park.

Out here, there are all sorts of intruders the pack needs to be protected from. There is the rare trespassing non-pack-member dog. There are coyotes. There are wolves. There are bears. There are fishers and minks. There is a multitude of field mice and rats.  Most troubling is, there are also Winter walkers, like Archie.

In the city, your dog is on a leash until you reach the safe zone - the extended pack meeting place - the dog park. Country dogs have a different lot. Some live outside in a dog house (animals don't belong in the house), some are chained in place to ensure that hound noses don't lead them astray. Some have a job, like guarding a herd of sheep and live in the barn. A few have a similar life to that of city dogs and get daily walks on leashes. Most are free as a bird and come and go as they please. 

I should walk my dogs on leashes more often. Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer, insists that it's the best way to establish yourself as a pack leader and that walking together, exploring uncharted territory, is what actual packs do. Pack leaders don't send submissives out on their own to hunt and protect the den and surrounding territory, which is what I've been doing, I guess. When I let her out, Emma goes around the whole property and checks that everything is secure, after which she sits in the driveway and barks at the mail man's car, or at tractors that roll by pulling shit spreaders (giant trailers full of cow manure), or at other dogs barking in the distance. Once in a while, she threatens a "walker". 

One would think that all this "freedom" would be doggy paradise, but to be honest, I think my dog is bored. Last year she went on a lot of "errands" until we found her in the neighbor's cow field. This is not good. A farmer can legally shoot a dog found bothering his livestock. What's worse is that if, for example, a dog makes a cow trip and break its leg, the (likely dead) dog owner's got to foot the bill (I imagine approx. $1500 for a cow).

I'll admit that I don't walk with my dogs as much as I should due to my fear of all the animals we share this beautiful land with. The coyotes, the bears, but mostly, the neighboring dogs who are just like Emma: if you walk in front of their properties, some *will* bite you. So I sometimes walk with them to this corner, and to that corner, but it gets boring pretty quickly, especially in the winter when all is dead and still.

After Emma bit Archie this morning, I resolutely put her on a leash and went out onto the road to meet him. I figured that if she got to walk with him, he might become a part of her extended pack. Archie showed me the puncture wound on his leg. He said it was okay, that since she was a rescue dog, somebody must have done something bad to her in the past, that he understood, that he loves dogs. Archie is a very kind man. I assured him that I wouldn't let her loose by herself anymore. He warned me that if she ever bit a kid, we could lose her. I asked Archie if I could accompany him on his walks sometimes, and he said that he wouldn't mind. 

My new year's resolution (starting right now) is that I'll get myself a walking stick just like Archie's, and I will walk Emma every day. Maybe that way she'll be good and tired and won't have to protect our bit of road from walkers or even worse, from the lady who rollerblades by with her stroller during the Summer.