Man’s Relationship With the Horse

I can’t even begin to imagine that it is almost Christmas again! Admittedly, in Arizona we are spoiled by almost constant good weather, which is not all that cold except in the early mornings, and the time between turkey day and the New Year seems to whiz by with the speed of light. The Christmas cards are coming in, and it’s hard to believe that this will be our second one celebrated in the new Longhorn Room. Soon the tree will go up and some of the decorations are being installed already, a bit at a time. So let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a great New Year, and we hope to see you here, if not this year, then surely in (can you believe it!) 2010.

And the big news of the day is that we are having another film shoot here, this one with a well known English personage, Martin Clunes. The show is about horses – man’s relationship with the horse over the ages – a segment of it was shot in Mongolia (with the ancient Przewalski horse) as well as in other interesting places. Of course, here, as always, the co-stars of the show are the cows, and I hope that they behave with the decorum which befits bovine movie stars!

Naturally, things don’t always go as well as they might in round ups. I remember one year when we were gathering the Cochise Pasture, which, those of you who have been here may remember, has some very steep, rocky outcrops on the west side of it. At the very top of the steepest, craggiest rock there was a single cow, happily munching away, and showing no interest at all in coming down to join the herd. At the time we had Border Collies, so Gerry sent one of them- I believe it was Molly – up there to change that cow’s mind. Molly did just that – she flung herself over the edge of that rock like a projectile, going full tilt. The cow threw her head up in amazement, and, not pausing to evaluate the situation, legged it down the slope – except that, instead of taking a reasonably civilized way down, she took the shortest route and hurled herself down what was almost a cliff face. At one point I was sure that her back end would outrun her front end – that she would flip over, back legs over horns, and end the trip in a mangled mess. But, no! Cows are remarkably agile creatures, for all their bulk. In spite of her momentum, the front end managed to keep ahead of the back end, and she actually reached the bottom of the rock pile not only in one piece, but on all four feet and in a very disgruntled frame of mind. You could almost see her planning the fate of that dog. Molly, of course, didn’t wait around to be horned, and the cow, still fuming, joined up with the rest of the herd. Anyway, we hope that for the movie sequence things go better, and that the bovine stars behave in a manner suitable to their exalted role!

And many of you will be happy to hear that Bonnie, our erstwhile front office person, that cheery voice on the phone, and the efficient presence behind the computer, is returning to work at Grapevine once again. This will be a great relief to all of us in the office, as when Bonnie was here, all those little details, which tend to overwhelm less efficient persons, were attended to, and I never had to think about the front office at all – and this, as Shakespeare said, “is a consummation devoutly to be wished”. The less I see of the front office, the happier I am. She is returning to work on Monday, and I’m sure she will be glad to hear from you!

On another note, we are having problems with the reservations system on the computer, and, in fact, with our computer system as a whole. Unfortunately, we were talked into replacing our office computers with new HP’s, and these have not lived up to the hype at all, as they came installed with the dreaded Vista operating system. And dreaded is just the right word for it, too. I can’t imagine what convoluted mind put that one together, but I will tell you one thing – if there is an easy, intuitive way to do something, Vista will do it the other way, the confusing, the crashing and the hateful. We have decided now that we will muddle our way through a few months with these monstrosities, but will replace them with Macs in the very near future. I guess that the reason for this outburst is that if you are trying to make a reservation and are having problems, then please phone us, and make it the old fashioned way. The phone number is 1-800-245 9202 if you are calling from within the US, and 520 826 3185 if you are calling from out of country.

And now a word from the horses. As some of you may know, our horses conduct a spirited communication with their fans, and they tell me that this also has been slowed down because of the computer problems. So – if you have written to one of them, and have not got an answer yet, please be patient, it is on the way. As Comanche says, the organization around this barn is exceedingly slack, and he doesn’t know what the world is coming to!!

So with this I will leave you for another week. Keep in touch with us, check us out on the Grapevine channel on You Tube, which now sports ten videos, and send Bonnie a tweet!!

Eve