I can't believe it's already fall.
You certainly can't tell by the weather, we're still hitting 100 some days. But I can see that autumn is really here by a few little things that bring the season home to roost to me.
Coming home from work last week, I saw what I thought was a chicken beside the road. But when I got closer, I saw it was a female pheasant and a bunch of half-grown chicks. I thought about all the fall rides we took back in the rolling rangeland behind my friend's house, and how many pheasants busted up right under our horses' feet.
Even though those big birds scared us, our horses got used to it after about the sixth pheasant. So I like to see the birds, especially when they have babies.
Then, this week on my way home, I saw the other half of the family. A huge pheasant rooster flew in front of my truck, from the same area that the hen and her babies were hidden. I don't know if he's the dad, but he sure was pretty.
Another way I can tell fall is here is our foals are almost all weaned. We still have two with their moms, but they only have a couple of weeks left and they are getting weaned too. They were born later, so they got to stay a bit longer.
One of those foals is Mary's baby. This little bay baby wasn't supposed to be, even though we had bred Mary to Willy. After all, Mary was 22 years old, and my friend had tried for three years to breed the little brown mare, but Mary was having nothing to do with it.
So when we found out that she was bred, she only had a couple of weeks to go. That little baby, who is the carbon copy of her mom only with a cuter head, is a miracle as far as I'm considered. She will be Mary's last baby, and she's definitely a keeper. Not that Mary or I had any choice. My friend told me we were keeping little Itsy forever when she was about 1 hour old.
Itsy and the other filly are the only babies we have left, the rest were sold. It's hard to sell something that we stressed and worried about for so long, but that's the horse business.
And although fall is really here, my dogs still think its summer. I fill water buckets to the brim every day in Moss' pen and every night they are dumped and dry. I tried tying them to the fence, but that was no problem to him, he just scratches out the water. I keep telling him that he's going to get me in trouble, someone is going to turn me in because my poor pitiful dogs have no water.
Jan and Peg have big water buckets in their kennel, big enough for them to get into. That means they get really dirty really fast. I have gone outside when the dogs don't realize I'm there and I've caught Peg asleep in one of the water buckets. She dunks her whole body in the tub, with just her head resting on the rim. She does this even though the kennel has shade. I guess it's cooler in the tub.
I like the fall, at least I like it when it cools down some. We haven't gotten there yet, and I remember when the Fresno fair, in the middle of October, saw temperatures of 100 degrees. But I also remember going to the Mariposa fair, on Labor Day weekend, and getting rained out.
I hope that we have a wet winter, we all need it. Even though a lot of rain means a lot of mud at our house, I still want a nice wet winter. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
And I know that my dogs are waiting for that cool weather too. Len thinks the heat is personally out to get him, and he spends his days hunkered down under the back porch, keeping cool.
So as fall slowly rears its head, the horses are growing their winter hair and the dogs are seeking out the coolest places, waiting for some cool weather. I wait too, and enjoy the last days of the summer. I just hope we don't have too many more hot days, I'm tired of it. And so is Len.
Reporter Carol Reiter can be reached at (209) 385-2486 or creiter@mercedsun-star.com
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