Things That Scream in the Night

Last night was absolutely bizarre.  I've been having problems with my dogs going nuts every time I let them outside.  I used to be able to let them out into the backyard and they would get right down to business and maybe sniff around a bit, and then they would quietly return to the backdoor to scratch it or bark once to let me know they were ready to come back inside the house. 

Now literally every time I let them outside, they find something to bark and howl at.  They get themselves worked up into a frenzy, and I have to chase them into the house.  During the daytime I can usually see what got their hackles up, and it is almost always my nosy neighbor lurking a little too close for comfort or her dog doing its business on my lawn.  However, at night they bark in the opposite direction and I can't see what it is they are barking at.  It usually turns out to be deer, but they have a deer bark and then they have a neighbor bark and then they have a completely different bark that is more aggressive and frenzied.

Last night they were doing that aggressive, frenzied bark and I could not chase them back into the house.  I became aware that there was another noise rising above their barking, but I couldn't pinpoint what it was.  I kept trying to shush the dogs so that I could hear it, and from what I could pick up, it was totally unfamiliar to me.  Either it was a person screaming, a cat in heat or injured, or a unique coyote sound I haven't heard before.  All I knew was that something was out there in the dark near my new neighbors' house.

Since the dogs wouldn't go inside, I had to reach down and pick them up one by one and carry them into the house.  When I reached for Scrappy, he thought a predator had gotten him from behind and he snarled and whipped around to bite me.  Once he knew it was me, he stopped biting and I was able to pick him up.  Once inside the house, I became worried, thinking, "What if that was a person screaming and they were in trouble?"

I didn't want to call 911 and then have it turn out to be a coyote, so I tried to sneak out the door without my dogs seeing in order to listen closer to the sound, but it had stopped.  This morning I looked out in the direction of my new neighbor's place and saw that they now have a trailer camper parked on the property and I wondered if someone was living in there.  Maybe another person moved onto their lot and brought an animal with them that makes an unfamiliar noise? 

I really don't know, but I'm getting tired of my dogs being riled up all the time.  I wish this neighborhood could just settle down.  When I was growing up, we had pretty much the same set of neighbors for 20 years and our dogs were familiar with them and their routines, so we never had any major barking problems until new neighbors moved in behind us.  In my current neighborhood, it seems like we're getting new neighbors every other week, because people keep letting extended family members and friends move in with them.  Obviously, the economy is still suffering when you've got so many people jam-packed into one house or one lot.

This wouldn't be going on if we had our usual snowy winter, but we've had fall and spring-like weather all throughout this winter, so there's a lot of activity.  I guess there is some redeeming value in snow, besides the water it provides, and that is the quiet that it brings when it forces both wild animals and humans to hibernate.

The Hunt

After soliciting the help of a real estate agent to assist me in finding a home I can live with, she was only able to find one home that fit my criteria, and it's a short sale.  It was a newer, really nice little horse ranch that looked awesome until I saw the taxes and the fact that it is in a flood plain (which means expensive flood insurance) with a huge natural wash running through it. Also, it is set up just like my current neighborhood.  This house is the first on a dead-end dirt road, so all the other neighbors on the street have to drive right past the barn and horse paddock to get to and from their houses.  It's not a problem if they just go to work and come home and go to the market, but if they are hyper drivers like my current neighbors, coming and going every five minutes, then it's a pain.

The agent altered my criteria to show me that I can get more hits if I'm willing to make some sacrifices.  She increased the price (to an amount I can't afford), included a pool (something I'm not willing to maintain), decreased the number of acres I want (the need for more outdoor space is the whole reason why I'm moving), and removed the horse facility requirement (which is not an option).  Sigh.

I just don't think that we are looking in the right area, but my husband wants to work in Phoenix, and since he's the main bread winner at the moment, I have to do what he wants.  If I can some day make more money than him writing novels, then I can live wherever I want.  I'd really love to improve my lifestyle, which is something I cannot do with the neighbors I currently have.  The thing is that if we are going to spend every penny of my inheritance and go through the huge hassle of moving, it had better be to the right home.  I do not want to end up in the same situation or a worse situation than I am in now.

I stopped sleeping in pajamas and am now sleeping in my clothes every night, because I literally cannot step outside for two minutes without having an audience, even at 2:00 AM when I just run outside for a minute to chase the deer off.  This morning I rolled out of bed and went outside to feed the horses at sunrise.  I said something out loud to the horses, and instantly heard a noise behind me.  I whipped around just in time to see my nosy neighbor ducking down behind her car.  What was she doing outside that early in the morning?  It was freezing and she had no chores to do in her front yard.  She wasn't walking her dog.  She was doing nothing other than getting into my business once again.

The other day I saw that the nosy neighbors had left in their car to go somewhere, so I ran outside to clean the manure in my horse paddock along the fence line, and I instantly heard their engine coming back up the street.  I had to grab my wheelbarrow and run before they pulled up next to me and stared at me.  I thought, "This is ridiculous.  I'm on my own property yet I feel so uncomfortable having these neighbors near me that I can't even do my chores outside."

They make such a big production out of going places, getting all dressed up, spending hours loading their trunk with stuff, locking and unlocking and relocking up the house, only to drive somewhere and be gone for no more than two minutes.  They are so weird.  I wish they would just go away for several hours and let me have some space.

Unfortunately, because I always run away when they drive up, they are now suspicious of me and come up to my fence and look around to see what I was doing.  I think they might suspect that I'm throwing manure into their yard or something, but it is simply that I can't stand having them stare at me so intently while I'm doing my chores.  I used to run away when the previous neighbor lived in that house too, but in her case it was because she was a non-stop talker and would not let me get my chores done outside if she spotted me.  She had this urge to spill her life story to me and would not shut up even when I said I was busy and walked away.

The horses threw one of their balls over the fence months ago, and these neighbors walk past it every day, but refuse to throw it back over the fence to my horses.  Maybe they think it is theirs?  Actually, I don't think they know what is theirs anymore, because they allow so many people to store junk on their property.  I used to just get my son to climb the fence really quick to get the balls that the horses toss over, but he's not around to do that for me anymore.  I've contemplated walking over there to get it myself, but don't want to give them any ammunition to use against me.  Since I always chase them and their dog off my property, I know I can't go onto theirs, even if I'm just trying to retrieve a ball.

Sometimes I think they've got a camera pointed at my property and the ability to view the images remotely, and then when I come outside, they race home to try to catch me in the act of doing something. It feels like they are chasing me away every time I try to do anything in my horse paddock, because they come tearing up the street in their vehicle like they are headed toward a fire, and then once they park next to me, they sit there in their car forever watching me like they've suddenly got all the time in the world.  It feels like I am their destination.  It's unnerving. 

I've been having this problem in which I shut the horse trailer tack door and make sure it is latched tight, and then the next time I walk outside, it's swinging open.  I thought the latch was just getting flaky again and didn't think much of it until this morning.  You see, when the door is swinging open, I usually look around in the tack room to see if anything was stolen, and nothing ever is missing.  That's why I don't think anything of it other than that the door is getting flaky.  However, this morning Bombay kept biting Gabbrielle in the rump to tease her, and when I chased him off, he'd come right back and bite her.

I wanted make a lasting impression in him that he is not to tease his sister, so I grabbed the lunge whip out of the tack room to chase him around with it.  I got irritated, because the whip was tied in a knot again.  I paused and thought, "Again?"

Yes, each time I would use the lunge whip, there would be a knot tied in it.  Why?  I wasn't doing it.  The only other person who lives with me has no interest in horses and never goes near my tack room.  It would break the laws of physics for this whip to tie itself into a knot while it is propped up against a wall in a closed room.  Right?  I know that when I last put the whip away it wasn't tied in a knot.  I always untie the knot, because I don't want to take out an eye with it.

I know that sometimes you can tie a whip in a knot when you swing it around and crack it, but this whip was not in motion at all.  I put it away in the trailer knot-free, and the next time I pulled it out, there was the knot.

So, somebody has to be trespassing on my property, getting into  my tack room, and tying my whip into a knot, or at least swinging my whip around so that it ties itself into a knot.  What a bizarre thing for someone to do, though.  What would be the motive? 

Because the calling card Peeper is no longer living with the neighbors, I stopped locking the gate.  It's a pain having to remember the combination and struggle to get that lock open every time I need to walk through that gate, which is multiple times a day.  So, I get lax and stop locking it.  Then these bizarre things start happening around my property again.  I know the old man is too crippled to walk all that way, and the calling card Peeper is gone, so it has to be either the woman who is always walking back and forth in front of my house or the kid she babysits.

The other day I walked outside and found the kid sitting in the dirt playing right up against my fence.  I shook my head in disgust, because he's got two acres to play on, and he always has to be right up against my property interacting with my horses.  I guess the horses on his side of the fence aren't interesting enough.  I was also annoyed that once again no one was supervising the child.  They must have seen me from the window shaking my head, because the father came out and said to the kid, "How many times have I told you not to play there?"

It makes me wonder if the kid is coming over onto my property to play.  He's not being properly supervised and obviously doesn't respect anything his father says.  So, unfortunately, it looks like I now have to start locking my horse trailer tack room in addition to locking the gate.  It's annoying that every time I have to take a new security measure to keep these freaks off my property, I end up just creating more barriers for myself as well.  I can't get around and do my chores as easily with all these locks.  I have to waste time searching for keys and combinations.  These neighbors are turning my life into one huge fiasco.

Today a man in a truck hauling an old appliance drove up to their place.  I thought, "Oh great, I guess they don't have enough junk and need more, because they are having it delivered now."

Much to my surprise, he started loading my neighbors' junk and old appliances up onto his truck and hauled some of it away.  I was shocked.  They've never made any effort to clean up their property, which now makes me wonder if perhaps they might be moving.  However, I don't want to get my hopes up, because chances are they just saw my handyman hauling off some of our junk from the jobs he did, and decided to be copy cats.  Whenever I do anything out of my routine, I find them doing the same thing a few hours, days or weeks later.  It's like their minds are blank until they see someone else doing something, and then they decide they have to do the same thing.  It's also possible that someone reported them for storing trash on their property.  I've heard several neighbors and visitors to the neighborhood complain about it recently.  One man said, "Don't they have any younger relatives who can help them get that place cleaned up?"

I said, "Yeah, and they come for dinner every night, but never actually do anything to help."

I suppose the couple could be hoarders, and perhaps their kids have tried, but can't do anything about it.

I just can't figure out why they went to all the trouble to pick up that junk, haul it to their house, unload it, and let it sit around rusting all winter only to have someone pick it up and take it to the dump.  Maybe they tried to sell it and failed.  I've been looking for a unique love seat to use as a photography studio prop and am amazed at some of the junk that people try to sell for the same price someone could get it new.  I think they are delusional.  I don't understand why so many people have a hard time differentiating between something usable and garbage.  I suppose one man's trash is another man's treasure, but someone would have to be quite a talented artist or refurbisher to handle some of the junk I've seen for sale by owner and not get Tetanus from it.

I also suspect that a lot of these pawn shop / storage auction / junk hunter TV shows are a bad influence on people.  They give viewers the impression that people are getting rich collecting junk.  What they don't show is the amount of work that goes into researching the market, finding sellers, finding buyers, finding the right people to refurbish the junk, the amount of energy, time, and gasoline that it takes to haul it around, etc.  In the end, the $200 they make as a profit was something that cost them probably months of their time and was hardly worth it.  Plus, I doubt they are factoring in all the expenses, because if they did, there would probably be no profit to report, which would ruin their TV show, which is what is really making them money.

It's just that the enthusiasm that these junk hunters have is contagious.  I used to feel that way when I was a gem hunter.  I found hundreds of crystals and other gems, all of which are pretty much worthless, but it was all about the hunt.

I'll leave you with a link to some hilarious photos taken around Russia:   http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/61YNUy/sneezl.com/only-in-russia/.  Let's just say, I'm not interested in moving there.

The Training Process

In a comment achieve1dream asked how I trained Bombay not to bite, but to lick instead.
I had to think about it, because we're talking something that happened maybe ten years ago. If my memory serves me well, I offered him my hand and watched him closely. As soon as I saw or sensed that he was about to nip, I'd say, "Ahh, ahh, ahh," like "No, no, no," and pulled my hand away. I'd then offer him my hand again and continue the process until he handled it gently by either just sniffing or rubbing his muzzle on it, and then I'd say, "Good boy!" and pet him.

However, on one occasion he started licking my hand and I said, "Awww, that's nice-nice." I guess I said it in such an enthusiastic tone that it stuck in his brain, and he just got into the habit of licking my hand when I offered it, and I got into the habit of saying, "That's nice-nice."

Then when I sensed that he was going to nip, I started saying, "Be nice-nice," and he'd immediately start licking my hand instead of biting it. He's such a mouthy horse that I felt like offering him an acceptable alternative to biting was my best bet. Sometimes elementary school teachers are so busy disciplining their students for doing bad things that they forget to direct the kids toward something good that they could do instead. Kids always have to be doing something, and it's usually counterproductive trying to make them just sit still and be quiet. I didn't want to just discipline my horse for biting and leave him wondering what he is supposed to do each time I offer him my hand, so I had to praise him for doing something other than biting, and licking was the new behavior he offered.

Here's an example of how mouthy he still is...

In this picture, Bombay had flipped the latch on the gate, pulled the lever, and was now trying to unclasp the chain with his mouth in order to get into the round pen.

Lostine often lets herself into her stall at night by pushing the door to the side if I forget to lock it. That door has to have about 20 pounds of pressure, and she can still open it with her muzzle.

Rich Moments Around the Ranch

It's such a nice day, I thought I'd go outside and take pictures of the horses.  They are all a mess, but there's not much point in grooming as long as there is mud on the ground.  Here's Bombay itching and Gabbrielle taking a stroll in the background...

Gabbrielle licking a remnant of a salt lick and Lostine pigging out in the background...

This was about 30-seconds into my photo shoot, and right on time, my nosy neighbor came out to see what I was doing.

Lostine has to throw her whole body into the process of sucking up dregs...

Taking naps while lined up at the water fountain.  The bossy redhead in front always has to tease the kids in line by purposefully drinking until the bell rings to end recess...

And there's always some kid who has to cry over not getting his drink.

Bombay teaching Gabbrielle how to lick my hand and not devour it between her lips...

Bombay had to be taught the command "nice nice", which means lick, don't bite, because when he was a young colt he was always nipping at people.  Now he's very gentle.  I could put any food item in my hand and close my eyes, and not have to worry about him biting me.  However, I do have to worry about him biting my camera strap.

We got into a game of tug-o-war.  I won.

I wasn't using my good camera, but there was still no way I was going to let a horse rip it right out of my hands.  When I walked outside to photograph the horses, the man next door was looking right into my sliding glass door at me as if he were standing in his yard waiting for me.  Then his wife came out and tried to sneak behind my barn to spy and eavesdrop, but her dog shook its collar and gave her away.  So, then she resorted to her routine of frantically digging through her car in search of something she can never find.  She's been searching for it for six years now, and the number of hours she puts into searching for it correlates with the number of hours I spend outside with my horses and doing chores.  You can see her off in the distance here with her car door open...

Gabbrielle glances over with an annoyed expression...

Here she's complaining because the lady slammed her door and it hurt Gabbrielle's ears.

Bombay making faces behind the annoying neighbors' back...

Gabbrielle demonstrating on Bombay how she would like to bite the neighbor for always hovering around and making loud noises...

Note that the annoying neighbor was taking her time walking from her car to her porch throughout this series of shots.  She has this other routine of heading back to her house, and stopping every few feet to bend over and pick some invisible item up off the ground.  That allows her to loiter longer.  She keeps her back to me during the process, but her ears are in supersonic hearing mode.  Gabbrielle was so mad about this intrusion during our photo shoot that she pooped in her water...

Or maybe that was me.  Looks like I've got some cleaning to do.

I had two sets of garnet earrings that I loved.  One was a dangling earring set, and I lost three pearls off it a few months ago.  The other is a stud set, and one of them fell out of my ear last night.  I looked all around in our bed and on the carpet, and then remembered pulling my hair back and tucking it under the hood of my jacket while I was in Gabbrielle's stall, and feeling my hair get caught on the earring.  I went into her stall this morning hoping I'd get lucky and catch a glint of gold, but I don't think I'll have much luck finding it in this mess...

If it does turn up, I'll consider it the greatest miracle this side of my water trough floater.  I'm off to drive my nosy neighbors crazy by crawling around on my hands and knees on the stall floor.  I'll try to clean it first.  I don't need to lose a perfectly good pair of jeans too.

A Follow Up

Sometimes I write blog posts and forget to mention their resolutions.  My blogger friend achieve1dream is really generous in commenting on almost every post I write when she gets time to read them, so sometimes she makes a comment on an old post and that reminds me that I never followed up on the subject. 

I'm like a rubber bouncy ball, only staying in one space or mind-set for a short period until I hit the floor or a wall and jettison off somewhere else.  Usually, before I can even solve one problem, I'm faced with the next one, which is why the same problems keep coming back to haunt me, and the same comments show up on my blog posts, and then I think, "Oh yeah, I was going to try that.  Why didn't I ever do that?" 

It's usually because a more pressing problem came my way or the other problem went away on its own, only to come back later.  In my post titled Weird Morning, I talked about how I was scared because when I walked into my house my back door was open and the dogs were inside.  I looked around for an intruder, but found no one.  Since then, I have witnessed Scrappy opening the back door by himself.  It turns out that sometimes when I close it, it doesn't latch all the way, so I've trained myself to lock it each time I close it, unless I actually do want the dogs to let themselves in. 

The creeper who had been living with my neighbors and leaving calling cards on my property at night has long since disappeared.  There is definitely a correlation between his presence next door and the calling cards.  When he goes back to wherever he came from, the activity stops.  So, I need to keep an eye out for him, and either set up a new kind of trap or contact the police early on in one of his visits in anticipation that he'll start up his usual routine of looking in my windows at night.  Also, he's definitely more aggressive in his night stalking when my daughter is home.  He seems to always show up next door when he expects her to be home for the holidays and over summer, only she sometimes does not come home for the summer, and her schedule will be completely different from now on, so he will be hard-pressed to second guess her movements.

Some people have been wondering what brand I chose for a new coat based on comments in my post, Come Register On The Coat Brag Book.  Well, I started researching the various recommendations and then told my husband about my coat situation.  He insisted that I had to be willing to pay $400 or more if I want a really good coat.  Then he started reminiscing about his favorite coat, which he got in Minnesota 30 years ago and had given to our son.  However, our son doesn't need it when he is in Arizona, so he left it here.  My husband encouraged me to wear it while I'm cleaning stalls, and I came back indoors in a sweat.  Usually, I come indoors shivering, angry because everything fell out of the pockets, and struggling to get the coat off, because the zipper is stuck.  No problems with my husband's coat.  I've even been wearing it indoors at night.  It's better than a Snuggie or a blanket.  So, I found my solution right under my nose.  It's one of these coats that has a brand that has since gone out of business.

In The Home Search, I talked about my struggles with finding homes for sale that haven't already been ruined by bad neighbors.  My new blogger friend Cut-N-Jump has been filling me in on her experiences living in Arizona and recommended some real estate agents to me.  I got really excited when she told me that one of the real estate agents is the wife of her hay supplier!  I picked that agent and called her yesterday.  I need to get those connections happening now before I get to AZ and find myself high and dry without hay. 

Anyway, she returned my call while I was out in the Pinenut Mountains walking an unruly hound dog from the shelter.  I was out of breath, because this dog was pulling me in all directions while I was trying to talk on my mobile phone.  It turned out that the real estate agent was out of state and out for a walk herself.  Neither of us was in a position to write down any information, so we decided that she would text her email address to me, and when I got home, I could email her my information.  I immediately clicked with this lady and she said a number of things that made me feel comfortable having her as an agent.  She thinks like I do.

When we hung up, I realized that this hound dog was standing in front of me with its front paws on my shoulders, panting in my face, and trying to get me to keep walking.  I was so engrossed in the conversation that I totally forgot about the dog.  What a character!  When I got back to the shelter and put him away in his kennel, the animal control officer gave me a funny look and said, "You know, NuzMuz, you're picking all the difficult dogs."

I scheduled a preliminary time in February to fly out to Arizona and have the agent give me a tour of the various equestrian neighborhoods around Phoenix, and show me some homes.  So, I'm making progress and feeling good about it.

My New Profession

I'm a deer chaser now, by profession.  The deer have been coming around so often that the horses complain by kicking their stall walls, which triggers the dogs to run for the door barking because they've come to associate the horses kicking with deer being in our yard.  I let the dogs out to do their business, and they can sometimes chase off the deer, but usually the deer just stand there and stare at them.  More and more people around here are getting dogs, and so there is this chorus of dogs barking at 2:30 AM, which wakes a lot of people up, so I have to chase my dogs back into the house to get them to stop barking once they've had their potty break.

However, even though the dogs were barking toward the west tonight, I didn't trust that all the deer were gone, so I grabbed a flashlight and headed out to the road behind the barn to the south, and sure enough, I flushed out a second herd of deer off my neighbor's lawn.  I suspect she left a gate open and they were probably feasting on her hay.  Fortunately the deer can't or won't jump my 5-foot chain-link to get to my hay, but by walking behind the barn they scare my horses.  As you know, my horses have been panicking in their stalls over hearing and smelling deer for many years now, so I doubt they are ever going to get used to them.  My neighbor's horses are not bothered by them, but their barn faces in a direction where they can see the deer coming.  My horses can't see anything.

So, I've just decided that since the horses and dogs wake me up each night when the deer come around, I may as well put on shoes and go outside to chase them off.  Maybe they'll eventually learn not to come back.  You wouldn't believe the amount of deer pellets I've had deposited on my lawn the past few weeks.  My husband thinks it will make good fertilizer, yet he won't let me fertilize the lawns with horse manure because he says it ruins the lawns.  The deer pellets don't break down quickly like the manure, though.  I really don't care about the lawn debate.  I just want my sleep.

We've lived in this house for 18 years and haven't had deer visitations until recent years, and the deer population is growing fast.  I guess the drought is flushing more and more of them out of the mountains into town to forage, because this is the worst year yet.  It's pretty watching them leap short fences without making a sound, and they are interesting animals to observe, but even I have to admit that they are starting to become a nuisance.  So, until they learn to stay away from the hay and lawns in my neighborhood, I'll be chasing them off.

The Home Search

Every couple of days I've been searching real estate sites for a new home in the areas my husband and I are considering, and all it does is get my blood pressure up.  I find a potential home with horse facilities on a few acres within my price range, and then I look at the aerial view of the neighborhood and see my current neighbors living right next door or across the street.

If there aren't a ton, and I mean well over 20, junk cars on the neighbors' lots, there is a business right next door that requires noisy manufacturing, like the guy across the highway who grinds granite counter tops and idles his diesel engine day in and day out.  I actually saw that one horse property had a demolition derby track right next door with probably 50 smashed up vehicles piled on the lot.  Wouldn't that be awesome to ride a horse while a demolition derby is going on next door?  And I thought it couldn't get any worse than what I'm dealing with now.

No wonder none of these equestrian organizations want to respond to my queries about the best communities to keep horses.  They've been putting up with all the growth problems I've been experiencing and don't want anymore people moving in, even if they do have horses. 

The problem is this:  The types of people who would be interested in buying so many acres of land all have hobbies or businesses that conflict with one another.  The people who typically buy several acres, especially several acres of desert land, are horse owners, people who want peace, quiet, and privacy, junk car collectors, ATV and motorcycle racers, and people who run manufacturing businesses out of their homes and want enough space so that the neighbors don't complain about the noise. 

I'm beginning to think that I'd find more peace, quiet and privacy in the middle of a city in a studio apartment.  At least I'd be anonymous instead of having neighbors who watch my every move.  I've considered just staying here and waiting for the annoying, old folks to die, but I suspect they will leave their house to their perverted grandson who leaves calling cards on my property at night while I sleep.

Also, the majority of houses on the market are trashed foreclosures and short sales.  If you have a lot of time to wait around for a committee of people at a bank to close the deal, or have the time, money and skill to fix up the mess that angry evicted people left behind, you can get a really good deal on a house.  There are 4,000 square foot homes available for $250,000 in Arizona, which is unheard of in Nevada.

I saw this one property in which the house next door overlooked the pool, so the home owners built a wall just long and tall enough to block the neighbors' view.  It's really obvious that they were trying to get some privacy, because the wall had no other function.  It wasn't like it surrounded the entire property or was trying to section off a part of the property.  It was just a small section of straight wall next to the neighbor's house.  I'm sure that if the neighbors minded their own business, there would be no need for that wall, so it spoke loudly to me about what the home owners had been putting up with.  I think that anytime you get a bunch of city people moving out to the country or the desert to retire, they get bored in a hurry and start sticking their noses in the neighbors' yards for entertainment.

The other thing about all these properties that bothers me is that no one has a fenced in area to let dogs out to do their business.  I understand why there are few lawns in the desert since water is scarce, but someone could fence off a little area for dogs.  I certainly don't want to have to walk my dogs outside on a leash every hour in order to keep them from running off and getting bit by rattlesnakes.  I want to be able to let them out the backdoor into a fenced in yard like I do now.  I suspect there will be a lot of loose dogs defecating on my property wherever I go in AZ.  Not much different from what I've got going on here.

The other odd thing is that a lot of these horse "facilities" are nothing more than a 12x12 pipe panel corral with a metal roof for shade.  There's no place for the horses to roam and get exercise, so I would have to ride all three of them every single day to keep their muscles from atrophying.  I obviously don't have the time for that.

There are a some properties with large arenas, and those are the ones that excite me.  I've never had a large, closed-in space where I could canter the horses freely.  I can't canter them in the pasture because of all the gopher holes, and my paddock is in the shape of a triangle with a round pen in the middle, which doesn't allow for smooth turns at fast paces.  I used to canter the horses in my round pen, but my equitation instructor told me the round pen was too small and it was putting stress on their leg muscles to constantly be turning while cantering.  I can't canter on the trails, because there are too many rocks, hikers and loose dogs, so the only place I can canter is at the Fairgrounds in one of their large arenas.  But there is usually someone else using the arenas, so I have to drive to the Fairgrounds first to see if an arena is available before putting the horse in the trailer.  It's a hassle.

I'm sure something will eventually come along.  The new renters who moved into my neighborhood are starting to bring in junk vehicles now and letting them pile up.  So many men around here collect old jeeps, and I suspect they are into extreme off roading where they drive up cliffs and over boulders.  So, that's the latest annoying hobby that seems to be invading the neighborhood. 

The snow we got didn't stick, but the ground is frozen.  The horses have been locked up in their stalls for the past two days, so I let them out this morning.  My nosy neighbor came out at 8:00 AM and pretended to be gardening while she spied on me.  Who can garden when the ground is frozen in the middle of January at 8:00 in the morning?  She's so obvious.  I just stared at her and shook my head until she went into her house, hopefully feeling embarrassed over her obnoxious stalking behavior.

Look What Blew In With the Storm

Really big rats.  Lots of 'em.

Ten to fifteen inches of snow is due to fall over the next few days.  It's been spitting on and off.  Thanks to those who shared the brands of their favorite coats in the last post.  Keep adding comments if you haven't bragged about yours yet.  Hmmmm.  Maybe I can make a deerskin coat.