Stories From Fish Hatchery Road

Treats that help your horse's medicines go down!

When I began baking low sugar horse cookies, I looked forward to feeding them. But I never actually thought I would need them.

Then my Shetland pony, Harley, needed his antibiotics to treat his auto-immune disorder and my horse Sunny, was diagnosed with Cushings. Suddenly, I was faced with the challenge of figuring out how to get my horses to eat their medicines. Syringing them in felt traumatic -- the horses would jerk their heads away, paw at the ground, run away.

I knew they loved their  low sugar cookies and brownies. So I began experimenting with stuffing the medicines inside of those. For this, I had to have a much softer product than what I baked for Skode's customers (soft, "wet" cookies spoil much faster than dry, crunchy cookies). Besides, you can't poke anything into crunchy. 

"Well, what about selling a mix so people can bake the cookies to whatever consistency works for them?" my friend Claudia asked.

Claudia is not really a horse person. The fact that one of Skode's best-selling products came from a woman who doesn't have a horse is ironic. I had never considered a mix. But Claudia did. And the idea really works!

When Skode's low sugar cookies and brownies are home baked and soft enough to poke medicines in, just about any medicine you can imagine goes down like a dream. Harley preferred his pills in super soft Nutty Seed cookies. Sunny enjoys his Advanced Protection Formula and Pergolide pills poked in Minty Rose Brownies. 

You know that cliche -- "Necessity is the Mother of Invention." Well, that has certainly held true for the birth of every single recipe developed at Skode's.

So to little Harley and Sunny -- a big thank you from your human!

"SKODE"

Living the Unknown -- Together

We galloped across the sand, played with the waves, teased the wind.

Some horses are afraid of the ocean when they first meet it. Vashka -- Russian translation "Prince of Kings" -- was instantly home.

I told my friends he must have known the importance of this day to me, and therefore acted the perfect gentleman: Galloping with the herd, but easing his speed when asked, playing with the tide, but never to the point of unsettling me in the saddle.

One woman said no, it probably wasn't about me at all. My horse was grateful to be there in the sand that reminded him of his first home in Florida. He got to have a stretch of flat land to run on, she said, instead of having to work so hard in all those Oregon mountains through which he usually travels. Maybe, I told her. But deep down I believe my horse and I shared something deeper the day we went together o the California coastline. Deep down, I believe Vashka and I connected in that place we humans call Heaven.

It is a place without fear. A place of total gratitude. Vashka and I worked very hard to enter its gates -- three years ago he was pronounced lethargic, lame and completely unrideable. No one around me seemed able to help. And so three years ago we began a journey that took every ounce of determination and faith I possessed. Three years ago my life changed because I thought I might loose this creature who has been my best friend since the moment I first laid eyes on him.

Back then I did not know that that lost, hellish place we entered when Vashka was sick, was the place of transformation. I only knew how helpless I felt. I asked the Higher Power of my understanding and my horse's understanding for help. All that seemed to happen was loss. Loss of everything familiar: My job, which I quit to devote my time to learning more about the art of truly holistic horse care. My money, which I spent buying consultations with veterinarians, nutritionists and trimming professionals to save my horse's life. Many of my friends, who for the most part had no idea why I would be so obsessed with a horse. "Come one Lori, he's just a horse," they said as they watched my life falling apart.

"I miss my horse's spirit," I sobbed.

Who knew that during that time of groundlessness, deep transformation was taking place. In me. In my horse. Who knew that today I would trade my job as a traditional newspaper reporter and magazine writer to specialize in the realm of the equine. Who knew that I would start a low sugar horse treat company named after the spirit my late father sang about me, his little girl.(Please visit this website at www.skodeshorsetreats.com) Who in a million years, would guess I would become a professional barefoot horse trimmer. Not me.

I know now, that all things shiny and new, usually appear when I least expect them. I understand the importance of the dark spaces in my life. That doesn't mean I like them -- I hate them. But I know now, that they always hold something sacred. Something waiting to be born that can not be born at any other time or in any other place except for that exact, specific dark space.

That void that Vashka traveled through is hard for me to understand. I do not see why anyone as innocent as a horse would have to endure anything other than joy. Yet he did.  I think this horse and I have a pact. Somehow, someplace, he agreed to teach me about horses. Somehow, someplace, I agreed to do whatever I could to do the best I coiuld to give him the life he needs to thrive.

Turns out Vashka's problems included a severe magnesium deficiency,  Insulin Resistance, and arthritis. All have been successfully managed through a low sugar, low carbohydrate diet coupled with as much exercise and as little stress as possible.  I continue to learn. Vashka continues to teach.

And so it was obviously meant to be.

The smell of homebaked horse cookies fills my kitchen as I write this post. Deadlines for horse magazines loom -- deadlines I can't wait to meet because these days, I love what I write about. People tell me I help them and it humbles me. Years ago, my best friend, Claudia, had a dream about Vashka and me. She said he and I were napping together in a grass field and she saw my life manifesting itself through his heart. I love that.

Lori -- aka "Skode."

Why a City Girl Moved to Rural Oregon

I remember the first the time I set foot on my ranch in rural Oregon. I was traveling with a good friend, whom I was arguing with for no particular reason, and a talkative realtor who was truly on my nerves. I hate house hunting. It feels so overwhelming, especially when one is considering moving from one side of the country to the other.

However as I stood there, a feeling of serenity filtered through the stress. And one word kept repeating itself in my head: Fertile.

"This land is fertile," I said in the middle of the realtor's sales pitch about the "cute house that didn't need too much work."

I must have seemed like some crazy city girl with Turrets Syndrome.

But as we walked through the old house with the ghastly pink carpets stained by dirt, mud and who knows what else, peered at the barn that was leaning against the tree, flushed the toilets with ancient plumbing, and tried to figure out how much money it was going to take to fence all that land, I couldn't stop thinking about how none of that mattered because a person could grow anything here -- everything from new crops of butternut squash to new dreams. Maybe even a new me.

"I'll take it," I announced from the dilapidated attic/bedroom with no bathroom and no air conditioning.

"You will?" said the realtor?

"You'll what?" said my friend, who was trying to pull me away for a private, sanity-inducing little chat.

"Yes, yes, I'll take it!" I repeated. I felt a little too enthusiastic as my eyes zig-zagged wildly between the berry bushes, grapevines, apple trees and rose bushes.

A little perspective: At the time I was living in Miami, where I was helping inner city children write, illustrate and perform their life stories through a non-profit program my friend and I had launched. It was a grand program that was truly helping kids believe in themselves, but the money wasn't exactly flowing in and I was boarding my horse, Vashka, at a stables where the barn manager was charging a monthly boarding fee that was more than the mortgage of the house and land we were looking at (which may tell you something about the house, but I wasn't thinking that way at the time.) My friend and I had been in California talking up our program to school district administrators there, as well as looking at property. I was not able to afford property in California. At least I was not able to afford property I would consider living on in California. So while pouring our troubles out to the owner of an ice-cream shop in Arcata, California, the owner suggested we cross the border and look at property in Oregon. I had never even considered Oregon. However my friend and I had a day or two to spare before our plane trip back so we drove to Oregon.  We were in Oregon exactly 48 hours when I decided to buy the ranch.

I figured life-alterting moves are best done with a flying leap as opposed to a tentative tight-rope walk of carefully made plans. So against pretty much everyone's better judgment, I lept. The net that caught me seemed at times to me to full of some pretty big holes and I have the scars to prove it. However, I was right. This land is fertile.

I have grown many a crop of butternut squash, opened my bedroom window to smell dozens of wild roses and picked basket fulls of organic apples. But what has really grown, is me.

Lori -- aka -- "Skode."

Lori

HORSE LOVE -- THERE'S MORE OF IT THAN WE THINK!

"Now what are you doing with those horses?"

"Well, I am soaking their hay to cut down on the sugars and starches," I say.

Or:

"Well, I am giving them their vitamin E tablets because they need the anti-oxidants."

Or:

"Well, see these are hoof boots, which is something I like my horses to wear on the trail instead of shoes."

My list of explanations goes on and on. However the response is the same:

"Oh." Silence. "I see." Accompanied, of course, by the rolling of eyes, and another awkward silence in which the other person does not try very hard to hide how absolutely insane he or she thinks I am.

Usually, I am okay with these reactions as I am used to them. I live in a small, rural town where most of the horse people I meet seem to live by the tenant that "a horse is just a horse" and therefore not too much bother should be made over a horse.  I admit I let these judgments get to me and I begin at times to believe that there aren't enough people out there who really care about their horses, or who won't at least open their eyes to the possibility that perhaps the work I put into my horses is actually helping my horses.  This, of course, puts me in a self-righteous funk. In fact I was in one of these moods just the other day.

Luckily, my phone rang. It was a new customer. Her horse, Bonita, is a Mustang mare with Insulin Resistance.  The woman just recently moved Bonita form one stable to another so that her horse could be in a beautiful, wooded lot where she wouldn't be able to eat sugary grasses that made her cresty and sore-footed. Bonita was feeling better with the new changes and the woman and her new stable manager were working on ways of soaking Bonita's daily hay rations. We agreed that it is not an easy thing to figure out and it can be an exhausting chore as soaked hay doesn't have a long shelf-life -- it sours and smells and so must be raked and cleaned up. We commiserated and laughed together and when we hung up the phone I felt a lot better, and a lot less isolated.

It was a Monday, and I was doing what I always do on Mondays -- baking my low sugar horse cookies. I began doing this more enthusiasm than I had before our conversation, day dreaming about the horses around the country who would soon eat my cookies.

There really are people out there who care about their horses, and who will  do whatever it takes to make sure these magical creatures get what they need to thrive. They may not always be in front of my face, but they are there. There is my friend Claire Cox-Wilson, who lives in Arizona, and who has a herd of three horses that she centers her life around.

"Take my horses away and you might as well take away my will to live," she told me when I visited her last year.

Twice a day, Claire brings her horses' buckets into her kitchen, where she doles out chopped vegetables, hay pellets, supplements and vitamins and minerals balanced to the exact specifications to the hay she feeds. You can visit Claire on the Internet at http://members.cox.net/shotgun.ranch/
. It's the kind of website that will cheer you up if you have a day like I was having. So is this website, http://lionheads.blogspot.com/. It belongs to my friend and colleague, Colleen Carr. Carr is a horse lover and a rabbit lover. She has a pregnant Mustang/Arabian mare named Karrot, and a new liter of bunnies whom she loves so much she gives them frozen ice packs to snuggle on hot days. And then there is always The List Of All Lists -- The Equine Cushings and Insulin Resistant Group at Yahoo. At last count the had more than 5,000 members who work really hard to help their horses. When you can find one person and then two people, you can most likely find hundreds who care.

Tapping into their energy gives me a sense of empowerment that sustains me.

Lori -- aka "Skode."