Rants, and other stories

At first sight, the new worker looked like at most a volunteer. She was standing at the backdoor of the big house, bulging through her big cotton red tshirt, her short, bright white hair in vague disarray. Turns out, however, she was a temp worker. A few days later, she was hired. Now, I have a housemate.
I write this not in the best of moods. One, most immediately, is that the Prescott library is far from the haven I wish it were. I guess I’m spoiled by Dartmouth. Needless to say, I have suffered, so far, through a small children Halloween parade, where small children screaming thronged through the library in outfits while the oh-so tolerant librarians smiled at them while the other patrons glared. Then an old man sat himself down to do some sort of figuring, chomping away so furiously at his gum that I could hear every chew ten feet away. Finally, he left. Except he was replaced, in an even closer-proximity, by a man with a bag of crunchy snacks he’s assiduously working his way through while listening to a book on tape. And I forgot my headphones.
Crankiness of the moment aside, I have decided that, despite everything, the moving-in of my new housemate is quite possibly contributing to my inability to shake a bad mood for the last week and a half. Her presence is unavoidable. Her cheerfulness and pragmatism are evident. Her stories have already become old.
Kim—old Kim, as we call her, since young Kim is the current dog manager—is a large, ebullient woman in her sixties. She is from the Milwaukee area, a combination of outer-city roughness and Midwestern forwardness that is friendly and assertive. The first story she told me, as she sat at the kitchen table while pushing the dogs away with her feet, was how she lost the two teeth on her upper left jaw from taking a rough shot of Tequila in Mexico. Slammed the glass right into her teeth. (The cabinet above the now broken fridge was designated as her alcohol closet). She is an ex-Harley biker. Tatoos everywhere. Has a daughter and a husband. His name is tattooed on her hip, but she wants to make it so it says, “In Memory Of ______”—“Not that he’s dead,” she assured me—“but he’d be better off that way.”
Man to my left is now ripping foil off of more food.
The whole process of gaining a housemate was a little sketchy, considering I wasn’t told she was moving in until they hired her. But, young Kim assured me, she’s “like everyone’s grandma,” and it wouldn’t be a problem. I guess, not like everyone’s grandmother, although acquiescent in the best ways—respectful about personal space and everything. But she is innocently self-centered, and this is where the problem lies. I used to be here in isolation. I used to wish for people. And I still do, of a sort. But old Kim has no problem with plopping herself down, even if I’m obviously doing work, and she’s on the clock, and talking about the dogs, or telling some story that goes on for minutes. She doesn’t have any world opinions, and here I go being a snob, but I’m sorry. If my space is going to be invaded, I’d rather be enlightened by it. Then again, if you count meeting a “character” as enlightenment, this is it. This whole experience would count towards that, if you look at it in the best humor. I miss my solitude, however.
Anyways, for all my insistence at being coherent, I’m apparently struggling at it myself. Either way, I haven’t had any time to myself. The wireless works in the kitchen, but then, here comes Kim, plopping herself down and then young Kim comes in and all of a sudden, all the dogs are barking and chaos reigns. Then another dog person comes in, sees a “gathering” and all of a sudden they’re rehashing the last week and the stories have all been told before (no one really likes to work, not that I blame them for a break, but does it really have to happen in MY kitchen?)
I guess I’m just miffed that I have been reminded forcefully how little space is actually mine. Everything’s dedicated to the animals, but it’s that whole vegan mindset that turns this place into chaos. I guess that’s been on my mind too, so here goes.
Vegans believe that animals should never be “used.” This means, they are considered complete equals. This extends from pets to farm animals to wild animals to silk worms. True vegans won’t wear wool or silk because you’ve “used” an animal to get it. Look how far society has come. If you ask me, that’s pretty stuck up in regards to our roots, but hey. They think they’re doing the right thing. You can go off and have an argument about animals and souls, I don’t care. But sticking to the facts, animals are animals, and get confused when they don’t know their place(this will be repeated by anyone who knows animals, any professional trainer, anything). Meet the animals on the ranch. Deb the owner, the vegan, couldn’t care less if any animal is adopted out, as long as it’s being fed and thus is “happy.” And here is the fundamental flaw. Horses and dogs each respond to owners in their own ways. What is true for both of them at the ranch is that they are afforded hardly any individual attention, because there just isn’t time. They are kept in some sort of enclosure and fed, and watered, and petted when they’re near to whatever job is at hand. Horses that were once perfectly manageable now don’t allow humans near them. And sure, it’d be one thing if they were turned totally loose and allowed to establish, in lieu of human interaction, their own packs. But instead, they are kept in a charade of “care,” where they are given their way, their every ‘need’ attended to, and let go without any sort of discipline.
This man has an incredible amount of foil-covered food.
The newest development is that Deb is considering making the ranch part of things—horses and goats, etc, into a complete sanctuary. As in, absolutely no horse would be adopted out. This comes on the heels of three horses being returned in the last few weeks. The policy, not being-no-return, had a few people taking advantage of the fact this is a rescue. One person took their horse out on a trail immediately after adopting it, where he pulled a tendon. When it showed no signs of improvement in a week, they insisted the horse was permanently lame and said they needed to return it. Another was returned because it would bite other horses, and the woman had a business giving trail rides and didn’t want that, and then another one was lame as well. So fine. People took advantage of it and were ignorant—of course you can’t take a horse who hasn’t been exercised in months, and expect it to perform like any other horse. How would you like it, if you had hung out in your house for months being fed, and then told to hike a mountain with a kid on piggyback, just because you were stronger than the kid? So, Cheryl decided this just wouldn’t do. She talked to Deb, who sided immediately with the animals, thinking maybe it would be better not to adopt any horses out at all. This is incredibly ignorant and selfish. So many other horses have been adopted out and have gotten love and rehabilitation by owners who were willing to work with them. Take Roy.
Roy was a beautiful young Arabian gelding who’d been a show horse and then been abused. When we had him, he wouldn’t let you approach his sides, although he was curious and wanted to be better and would come up to you and let you pet him on his face. A woman came and fell in love with him, and within a month after adopting him was able to ride him. Roy was obviously in such a better place, than kept in his stall on the ranch, given food but living in fear. And then there was Señor, an old horse who was brought home by a family with twin 12 year old girls who loved him and are taking care of him, riding him some and making sure he’s got a good home, and is kept groomed. The horses here don’t even get grooming! And baths only occasionally, and never when Cheryl is around. Cheryl, really, is the greatest boon and bane to the horse side of the ranch.
Cheryl from Long Island apparently wore her western style clothing even back on the East coast. (And by western style, think Roper shirts, bandanas, cowboy boots, and a Stetson in the summer). She got her first horse when she moved out here. Saw goats for the first time, too. Now, she claims, even though she has no money, she “couldn’t be happier,” because she’s here, being a “servant to the animals.” And loving her goats. She is dedicated. She is persevering. She is stubborn. She is blind (metaphorically). I believe she never knew enough about animals to understand them completely, and is totally happy seeing them as perfection. She loves them indiscriminately and, while she would do anything for them, believes herself to be doing that. So they get overfed, get grain as extra treats, and they are fat and spoiled and cranky. She made friends with Bellatrix, a goat who is over 7 feet high when he stands on his hind legs, who is scared of other goats but is also moody and obnoxious. Bellatrix is kept in a stall with Hank, an old thoroughbred, and he believes, because she allows him to do so, that he rules the place. This means that entries to his stall are intrusion. Which means he rears up at you and butts you. We took off his horns, thank god, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have a knee. And yet, as I go to scoop up manure, getting manhandled by Bellatrix, Cheryl couldn’t care less. My shouts of pain go unheard, but at his first Maa-aaa when he hears the sound of grain poured out, she’s talking to him, “Bellatrix, my Bellatrix, who loves you? Who loves you, baby? I missed you Baby, I love you love you love you.”
It’s all I can do not to take the rake I was previously wielding in self-defense against the goat, and fling it at her.
So. She loves the animals. She puts in 12 hour days 5 days a week. But she doesn’t think about them. She doesn’t think that maybe, instead of harrowing the fields cause it’s on the schedule (dragging around what’s essentially a large rake attached to the tractor, to spread out manure and improve appearances, and in the summer keep the flies down), she should maybe go into the pens and handle some of the horses, so when they get into trouble and need the vet, they aren’t impossible to catch. She doesn’t think of putting that on the schedule at all, claiming there’s just too much of other work to be done. And in her mind, there is. That is the ranch’s problem—its mindset that if everything is functioning properly, animals are happy. That’s the way Dr. Deb runs it. Whereas a real animal person would think about the animals welfare, and understand them a little more. Deb, Rory, Deb’s friend who’s lived with horses, Deb’s friend who worked on a dude ranch, and some of the other people who have interviewed here, have all shared that view. Read up on animals, and it’s clear that other people would too.
So I don’t know if it’s completely the vegan attitude, or also just ignorance, but probably a large combination of both (I’ve talked to a reformed Vegan, Kat who came and interviewed for a position with the dogs, who said that’s how she viewed animals when she was a vegan, but since ‘reforming’ has seen her own animals become much happier, once she gave them a place instead of letting them have their own way).
So this isn’t just me bitching. It’s frustration at seeing such a good thing have so many easily correctable problems, but problems that will never be fixed because in the eyes of Dr. Deb, self-righteous animal fanatic, they aren’t problems. Not that she isn’t doing something incredible here, putting all her money into her cause, and it’s probably only that single-minded devotion that lets her do it—but like everything else, such a great belief can cause so much blindness.