News from the thriving metropolis of Wittmann, AZ

I sputtered to a start this morning and coasted slowly to the coffee pot, let the little dogs out, let the little dogs in, and headed to my computer to read the news while enjoying the first cuppa caffeine of the day. This is my morning routine. It's the only time when my needs come before those of the perpetually hungry critters. If I don't have my relaxed time with the cup of coffee and get my brain cranked up by reading Google News I stand a good chance of totally hosing up the horse feeding.

Today I hosed up the horse feeding. Blaze got what baby Godric gets, Blondie only got hay, Desi darned near didn't get anything and finally got breffast as a hurried after thought. Why? Because I got to my desk, double-clicked my Internet icon and got the dreaded "Internet Explorer cannot display the web page" message.

I rebooted computer. I unplugged everything and let it all sit for 20 minutes then plugged everything back in. After 30 minutes of trying to figure out what was wrong on my end, which entails a great deal of crawling around in the cat hair under office furniture, William called. What the heck is William calling me about? He hardly ever calls me. He emails me.

"Are you awake?" He asked.

"Oh god yes, I'm awake. I'm just unplugging everything in the office trying to figure out why I don't have Google News to go with my coffee."

"Umm well, that's what I was calling about." He paused.

I waited for the other shoe to drop. Many things were running through my brain at that moment, ie. unpaid bill, cat sabotage, dog sabotage, size 14 shoe thrown at cat that somehow destroyed the DSL box, cat murder by electrocution that took out our Internet service, and, at best, some fool with a tractor plowed up the phone lines. I at least knew that the horses weren't involved in whatever disaster had befallen our connectivity. Their barn is an acre away from the phone lines. The most they can do is sabotage their own water and fencing.

"Okay. What happened?" I asked, with my eyes squinched shut as if not seeing would make hearing easier.

"Someone must have taken the corner too fast onto Lone Mountain, spun out and literally crashed and burned into the telephone pole. I mean the whole pole is blackened and the wires have been melted into a ball of black spaghetti. Must have been a big fire, all the brush on the corner is burned and the car is burned down to a nickle."

"WHOA dang!!! Well alrighty then I'll cease the search for chewed wires here."

"Yeah, I think this time we can safely assume the problem is on their end. You really should jump in the truck and go see. It is a most impressive wreck."

My morning was momentarily saved. This was much better than Google News for getting the brain in gear. I fed the horses, hurriedly and ineptly, grabbed the digital camera, and headed up the road. Not much excitement happens in Wittmann, AZ. When it does, it attracts spectators. Some savvy entrepreneur, with more guts than ethics, could make serious money charging admission to highway stops, fender benders and brush fires out here.

By golly the wreckage was indeed as bad as William described on the phone. In the words of a friend who watched his first bull riding event last weekend "I hope he's okay. I hope he's okay. I hope he's okay." Even as I was sending positive thoughts to the driver, I was staring at the 4 closed doors, caved in roof, obliterated front end, evaporated interior and a 20 foot, black ring of charred brush surrounding the car, the telephone pole and our wiring. I thought "If someone walked away from this wreck he needs to stand like Ho Ti and let people line up to rub his belly for good luck, because no mere mortal could have survived."

I don't know if the tape on the telephone pole is to hold the pole together, which would not surprise me, or if it's there to mark which pole needs to be replaced, which also would not surprise me. For one thing, QWorst is known for shoddy fixes and, for another, the people that perpetrate those shoddy fixes may well not be able to distinguish a giant stick of smoldering charcoal from any other telephone pole.


Just in case anyone has forgotten, or there's anyone alive I didn't whine to, it took the phone company FOUR MONTHS to run a phone line 5 acres down the road from the nearest house, to our house when we first moved in. I'm sitting here, gloomily checking for Internet every hour or so, knowing that phone company history has a tendency to repeat itself. It's any one's guess how long it will take them to replace the pole and the melted line.
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OOOh update! As of 9:00 this morning there were no vehicles on the corner other than the burned out car. By 11:30am, when John and I went by to take pictures, there were about 15 other vehicles, mostly QWorst along with one Sheriff's Office car, and an APS truck. They'd managed to get a new pole up already. The stick of charcoal was still there, as was the charred car. Who knows? Maybe they'll get every one's phone and Internet restored today? We can hope.
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Update 2: Well, some of us lucky folks have phone and Internet tonight. My friends the next street over are still incommunicado. A ridiculous number of official vehicles are still camped out on the corner. It would not surprise me a bit to learn in the morning that several other wrecks have prolonged the repairs. Because of all the large camper-like QWorst trucks parked all over the intersection, it's impossible to see oncoming cars until you're t-boned.


Ayup. A busy day in Wittmann.

Why We Love To Watch Bull Riding

Our fascination with bull riding has grown to the point that it's almost the only thing I'm willing to sit down and watch for 2 hours and is certainly the only thing on TV I'm willing to sit through a ton of commercials to see. We may well be the only couple in the U.S. that has never seen a single episode of "Survivor", "Dancing With The Stars", "American Idol" or more than 2 minutes of any given NASCAR event. We are not the only couple in the U.S., however, that can hear the names of 45 PBR cowboys and be able to say "Hey, that's a new guy." Not even I completely understand why we've come to love the bulls, the riders and the eight second clash between them, but there was a progression during which we moved from amazement that anyone could be so foolish, to admiration.

At first, we called them The Darwin Award Tryouts. It's not pretty, but there you have it. Fellas, if it's any consolation, I'm sorry about that initial impression. We can understand the roots of many of the rodeo sports. Calf roping, saddle and bareback bronc riding, team roping and penning, cutting, etc., would have all been typical cattle and horse ranch work. Bull riding, on the other hand, seems like a sport that got it's start with the phrase "Hold my beer and watch this!". Whether it was by drunken bet or some cowboy that got his bluff called after claiming he could ride anything on four legs, seems to be unknown. The only information I can come up with on Google is how rodeo itself got started during a friendly competition between neighboring ranches to see who performed ranch tasks best. This does not explain how bull riding came to be since there'd have been no ranch use in breaking a bull to ride.

One of our earliest impressions of bull riding was the iron muscled riding arm of Adriano Moraes. We started watching bull riding off and on in 2004. Adriano was one of the first cowboys we began to recognize. We'd see that arm and know what rider was attached to it. In close up shots of a cowboy getting set up on a bull, we'd see the hands, arms, or boots of the cowboys standing by the chute. "There's Adriano!" we'd cry out as a massive arm reached over the bars to grab a cowboy by his vest to keep him from being injured by an overly eager bull. Because of that ever ready arm we began to see bull riding as something more than just something you'd do on a dare.

At 38 years old, Adriano Moraes is one of the oldest riders in the PBR. The young Brazilian cowboys who are making big splashes in the world of the Professional Bull Riders, are likely where they are today because they were inspired by Adriano. On the Built Ford Tough Series PBR circuit, he has become the father figure to many. He's been riding professionally since he was 22 and he has both seen and experienced what can happen in a chute, on or under a bull. Adriano is retiring from bull riding this year. There are going to be a lot of young cowboys in the chutes who will miss that strong, quick and loyal arm.

The following photograph taken at this year's Glendale PBR event, captures what we have grown to admire about these men who choose to ride dynamite. Young Pim Rosa of Brazil has just been rescued from the chute in the arms of Adriano Moraes. Directly behind Adriano, his face partially obscured, stands Guilherme Marchi who is the number one bull rider in the country and is stepping into the boot prints of Moraes. The concern, caring and strength on the faces of these young men is why we have grown to admire them. The fatherly strength this photograph captures on the face of Adriano Moraes is why so many young bull riders will miss his presence next year.

Photograph used by generous permission of

The Arizona Republic Newspaper

and Photographer David Kadlubowski

I write because my soul would shrivel if I didn't. Putting bits of myself on a page may seem scary to me at times but I only risk emotional injury. I may never understand why these young men put their lives on the line for their professional sport but I no longer think of them as foolhardy guys with more machismo than brains. These are good men, iron men, forged to maturity through facing their own mortality each time they buckle on a pair of chaps.

Live from Baton Rouge

I'm here at the home of my best friend Daph and my new friend Allison, aka Nice Lady. It is here that I have come to heal through laughter therapy at the end of each day since Wednesday this week.

It's been a tough week. Even tougher than I expected in some ways. I found things out this week. Things that the living never tell. Things that only the belongings of the dead can reveal. If you've ever had to clean out after a death, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. There are things that lie concealed in everyone's past. Some of which are best left concealed.

There are also things found in the belongings of the dead which serve no other purpose than to give us something to do that takes our minds off the grief. Did my mother know that by saving every grocery, drug, and bill receipt from 1962-1983, every Christmas present tag, every letter from every kid off at college, and every shot record and report card from each of us that by sifting through these useless records for at least 8 hours a day for a solid week I'd have a break from the grief of being completely without parents for the first time in 52 years?

What the hell are all these keys for? Are they my mother's keys as well as keys my mother inherited from her mother and was afraid to throw away for fear that whatever they unlocked will show up? I am now the keeper of the keys. I couldn't throw them away either Mom, so I'm going to make a wind chime out of them. Until whatever they unlock shows up, they'll tinkle in the breeze.

I have to say that at 25 years after my mother's death, I didn't expect to find so many of her things in Dad's house. Her entire vanity area was as if she'd only stepped out for a moment. Even her makeup case was still there. The vanity must have been a sort of memorial since my father had placed her final notes to him there, her final scribbled wishes in case anything happened because of the surgery, which it did, and the kind note from her surgeon who seemed genuinely stricken by her passing and wished to let us know that she was unconscious and unaware as she passed away so there was no fear or pain in her final hours.

Then, to stir up the emotions a little more, I found out that my father felt guilty because my mother was terrified of the coming surgery and had asked him to do something simple to comfort her. She'd asked him to crawl into the hospital bed with her and just hold her. My father was so uncomfortable about being seen in bed with his wife, in public, that he would not do that one simple thing. Yet, years later he prominently displayed on his night stand the photo he took of his girlfriend clad only in a flimzy teddy, attempting a pin-up style pose. Perhaps in heaven or wherever, there are large, cast iron frying pans and perhaps the only pain is when dead wives clout their dead husbands with them. We can hope.

Then there is my eldest brother who looks so grief stricken and sorrowful at times that I'd just like to hug him tightly until he cries. I'm sure he has some rather conflicted emotions as well, although probably different than mine. I'd give just about anything to save him the pain he's in.

Thus, with my brain clouded with grief for the father that wasn't, grief for the mother that was, anger at the injustices, guilt over the anger, and worry for my brother, I have stumbled gratefully through the door on Vicksburg St. and into the healing company of women who care and laugh and lighten my heart and spirit.

I am lucky to have three of the most wonderful women in the world as my friends and they are all right here in Baton Rouge. Becky, my absolutely crazed friend that is known for picking up sea shells, shark teeth and missiles on the beaches of Pensacola, Allison my new friend and truly Nice Lady, and Daph my soul friend who lifts my heart even if I simply hear her laughing on the other side of the house. These are the kinds of women that make having women friends such a special experience. I thank all three of them for helping me through this week.

Norman Caldwell Scaife

Gone Fishin'

July 13, 2008

'Nuff Said

One picture worth at least 500 words

2nd picture, a close up, worth the next 500.

Farmer's Note:

Okay. I guess pictures aren't enough and a bit of explanation is necessary for Zonkster pals and others.

We do know the importance of our prey animals. All the gods know how I wish I had more king snakes, more bull snakes, more coachwhips, more coyotes, more hawks and falcons. I have to draw the line at snakes that will kill my animals, my family, my friends and me. In a much much earlier post I go into some detail about the effects of having put 1/4 inch wire mesh around the entire horse facility in order to discourage the rattlesnakes. The coachwhips can zip over that stuff like it wasn't there and they're welcome in my barn and pastures. We keep our mouse population under control with traps. My barn dog keeps the squirrels and rabbits out of the barn and pastures quite handily. None of the snakes kill the adult rabbits and only prey on the very small young ones. The snakes can eat the squirrels and I wish more non-lethal snakes were here to do so. It's never with "glee" that we dispatch a rattler so we work more to discourage their presence. When we're forced to, however, we do without hesitation and that's just how it's gotta be.

A Day in the Life...

Dad, this one's for you:

Here at the miniature horse farm we rise at around 5:30-6:00 each morning, creak our way slowly out of bed and stumble toward the coffee maker. We wake up via caffeine I.V. while checking email and reading news on line, then we head for the medicine cabinet and hit the dated, categorized, carefully compartmentalized pill boxes that we're told keep us living. Then we dress and sit dumbly on the edge of the bed, as if our boats fetched up in mud, while our engines try, re-try and try again to turn over. Mostly what we get is that "tick, tick, tick" sound of a bad battery. Eventually, however, we sputter to a start and mosey out to the barn to feed the horses around 7-ish.

Sometimes it's good to be short.

Then we feed horses. Horses who today are standing out there, tapping their toes, and not at all happy that breakfast is late. Rowena is determined to chase William down for her bowl because as you can see the poor baby is emaciated. Handsome is turning himself into a giraffe trying to inhale his feed straight out of the scoop before I can dump it in his feeder.

William and John handle the heavy chores around here, lifting those bales, toting that poop and such. (Imagine Green Acres theme playing in the background)



John also handles the WHW (Wittmann Horse Wrestling) duties whenever anyone gets out of line.







While the horses eat we check the garden for ripe veggies so the rabbits and squirrels don't make off with them first. The rabbits have finally gotten desperate enough to eat zucchini. Looks like we've been raided over night AGAIN.

Gol-durn rabbits! We'll show 'em!!

Then it's time to ride out to check the fence lines.

Good grooming practices are part of the daily routine. Well, at least for the 4 legged residents. People wouldn't recognize me without hay in my hair.

William tries to explain the concept of rabbit hunting to Elmo and Anniedawg. They just want their bisquits and bacon thanks.



On weekends we love to watch the televised PBR (Professional Bull Riders) events after the evening chores.

And that's pretty much our day, minus the tractor work, house work, nap, and writing!

DISCLAIMER: No herbivores were harmed during the making of this blog post.

Horses, Horse Racing, Horse Lovers and Taking Responsibility

Marquet Gold aka Buster, safe at foster facility.

There's a lot of griping going on about the horse slaughter ban. Y'all know, or should by now, my feelings on that subject. A lot of the griping centers around people who can't afford to have their horses euthanized, can't sell them, can't afford to keep them, having to turn them loose in the countryside because of all of the above.


I've recently come across the Alex Brown Racing website which hosts discussion groups. There is a section in the discussion boards dedicated to the rescue of horses from auction houses that sell to kill buyers. I've learned a lot from that forum. These are not PETA people. These are not "uneducated" people who have somehow been brainwashed by PETA. These are HORSE people. These are horse owners, horse breeders, horse trainers who band together in a giant cyber army of responsible humans to rescue horses. It's one of many such groups.


How did I find out about this forum? I plugged the name of a horse I know into Google. The horse belonged to a friend of mine that breeds, trains and races thoroughbreds. I've known Buster (aka Marquet Gold) since he was a baby. Sandy kept us updated on his progress through training, his first race, all subsequent races, all his personality quirks, and I feel like I know "Buster the Butt" almost as well as I do my own minis. When Sandy let me know this weekend that Buster had narrowly escaped being sold for slaughter in Ohio when his trainer, Randy Joe Faulkner, dumped him at the Sugarcreek auction. I was horrified. Sandy had sold this horse on condition that she be contacted to buy him back if the horse ever left racing. She was NOT contacted.


Buster is one horse among thousands with responsible breeders ready and willing to buy them back rather than see them end up in a meat wagon. Yet, there they all go. Why??! In the words of one of the members of this discussion group "there are no UNWANTED horses, we just simply live in a quick disposal society."


Certainly, there are times when hard times hit fast and out of the blue. Just like rescue groups such as this one grew out of need, I feel that other groups will form to help owners facing sudden financial crises. As people who enjoy or make a living off of horses, it is our responsibility to provide a decent life and humane care for these animals. Knowing that there may be people out there that suddenly find themselves in sudden dire financial straights it should be a shared responsibility to help them do the right thing by their horses in a crisis. Rather than saying "They can't afford it! The ban hurts them! They'll have to turn their horses loose!", it's time for responsible owners and caring veterinarians to stand up and say "Together we CAN help afford these animals either a humane passing or find them a new home." It can be done. It has been done. It is being done even as I type this blog post.


Here is a link to the discussion group. Please read as this exciting story grows with each individual post and shows what this group of responsible owners and trainers went through in order to save 8 thoroughbreds in the kill pen at the Sugarcreek Auction. Then ask yourself if it "can't" be done or if people just aren't willing to put forth the effort and time do what's right. (The "FOB" refered to in this forum is the group "Friends of Barbaro".)


http://forums.delphiforums.com/alexbrown/messages/?start=Start+Reading+%3E%3E


Here is Buster's story, written by my friend Sandy:


He had scratches and bite marks all over him, he was hungry and only had one shoe left but Buster was one lucky horse.

He was alive.

He had raced on Monday, and here it was, Thursday, and he was at the auction barn in the kill pen with a bunch of other Thoroughbreds who had just been dumped. Horses were already being sent through the auction ring and dedicated rescuers were frantically making calls and emailing people trying to raise enough money to save a few of them. Twenty dollars came in from a PayPal account here, a hundred there, fifteen or twenty dollars from somebody across the country. Friends of Barbaro and Canter and volunteers were scrambling for every penny. Some of the volunteers were in the pen, trying to look at lip tattoos to help identify some of them. Many of the horses would shy away from the humans, but Buster walked right up. Maybe one of these guys had a snack, he probably thought. He was chosen as one of the lucky ones to be saved that day. His identity came back; his name was Marquet Gold, known from birth as Buster. My partner and I were there when he was born.


Thursday night about 9:00pm I was checking Email when a message popped up from a nearby friend. She wanted to know if I had seen the post on Backyard Racehorse forum. Buster had been pulled out of a kill pen in Ohio. My partner and I started making frantic phone calls, googled rescue groups in Ohio, called the phone number listed on a website. An online friend in Florida alerted her parents in Ohio, and they were ready to go bail him out, or do whatever needed to be done. Another online friend in VA was ready to help get him transported to the barn where she boards her hunter until we could make arrangements. A friend in the Pacific Northwest contacted people she knew in rescue to help track him. We were frantic. This was one of our babies.


We had a couple of good mares, and might have one or two foals a year. One might sell as a yearling, or we’d send one for training. Not happy with the results, I was ready to semi-retire and decided to try my hand at training my own. I figured I could not win races cheaper than the other guys weren’t winning, and this way I got to keep my horses sound. It worked, I had some wins with my babies, and when they retired they were found new careers. People liked my retirees because they had been raced with no drugs except an occasional dose of Lasix, which seems to help in the South heat and humidity. Never did my horses get steroids or other "performance enhancers". Buster was no exception. He was started under saddle in a big pasture full of billy goats and whatever other livestock wandered onto our place. The rider did figure eights on Buster while I kept the world’s nastiest billy goat at bay with a squirt gun full of water. By the time Buster got to the track, not much spooked him.


Buster was a stone frontrunner. Try to rate him, and he’d get sulky and spit the bit. It was wire to wire or nothing for him. He was big and stout and tough, but when the Sam Houston meet ended in April ‘07, I didn’t think he’d be competitive where I was headed next, to Dallas and Lone Star Park, so the plan was to turn him out. Another trainer who had come down to Houston for the meet was going back East, and thought Buster would run well there. He wanted to buy him.


After waffling, I decided to sell him, the first active runner I had ever sold who could run as a racehorse for someone else. I pinned my card to the foal papers, with a note on the back stating there was a forever home, if needed. The trainer agreed to let me know if he ever decided to get rid of Buster so I could buy him back.


Of course I had followed him in the charts and with Stable Alert, and was pleased to see he was back running. Buster never had a sore spot in his life but injured a fetlock in the first race for that trainer, still while at Houston. Then, I noted that he had not finished in the money in his last race Monday, and wondered if he was sore. Then Thursday night I got that email.


Sleep didn’t happen Thursday night, and by Friday emails were starting to be answered. We finally got the one we wanted to see—"we rescued your horse!" Buster was on his way to a foster farm in Virginia. We phoned the farm there, and Sheila told us that he seemed to be sound. Relief. We had been afraid that he had injured himself in that race.

A flurry of activity followed, and today, Sunday, my friend in VA had commandeered a friend of hers who owns a trailer, and the trainer at her barn hopped in for the trip, and off they went to retrieve Buster. It turns out Buster had been delivered to a foster farm a mere 24 miles from her house.

Buster is alive only because of a bunch of unlikely and awe inspiring miracles. Miracles that interlocked and formed a safety net that caught Buster when he fell. The miracle of the group that calls themselves Friends Of Barbaro, in honor of the great racehorse who won the Kentucky Derby, then was injured in the Preakness and fought valiantly for months to recover. The rescue organization, Canter, whose people were there helping with the rescue. The miracle of friends and strangers across the country chipping in money and effort to save as many horses as they can from slaughter. The fact that someone who knew me through a forum scanned the pedigrees of the horses rescued, and saw me listed as breeder. This is the miracle of people like Gail and Sheila and Kathleen and Susan and Lyn and a hundred others holding out helping hands.

One miracle is wonderful. Buster receiving so many is almost unbelievable.

I wonder how many breeders or past owners would like to help these horses if they knew there was a crisis situation. The only answer is some sort of early identification so they could be located quickly. Can the formation of a national volunteer registry of breeders or caring owners help? Info on a microchip that auctions would be required to scan, and show proof of trying to contact the breeder or owner? Requiring a holding period of time before a registered horse could be sold to allow time to make the contacts? How about an additional fee for all horses, like a licensing fee, to help with the horse’s eventual retirement? Say, a thousand dollars in an interest bearing trust account for that horses as foal, for TBs deposited thru the Jockey Club, for others another applicable agency. When a horse is retired or no more useful, a licensed agency gets the horse and the money to care for it. I don’t know the answers, but if the racing industry is to survive, some hard decisions must be made. Drugs need to be banned except for therapeutic use. The crisis situation for horses is increasing and rescues are being overwhelmed. Of the thousands who weren’t so lucky, I thank my lucky stars that Buster is safe now. The scratches and bites will heal, the weight will be regained.


Buster is alive. I am forever indebted.