Petsitting For A Zoo

April 11, 2008

Three years ago, after graduating college, getting a full-time job, and getting ready to get married I was settling down officially in my college town. And I decided it was high time that I found some horses to ride in the area.

I managed to connect with Dave and Tracie Cross, who were beside themselves to have an experienced horse person interested in playing with their four horses. It’s a perfect situation for all sides. I get to ride. They get someone to help keep all the horses exercised and trained plus a competent pet-sitter. And we all got new friends.

Dave and Tracie have a Coverall arena with four stalls at one end. The horses come into their stalls for a few hours in the morning and evening for hay and grain. The rest of the time, they are loose in the arena. So, twice a day I go and clean stalls and pick up all of the manure from the arena, hay, grain and water the horses. Once the apple cart is filled with manure, I drive it out back and spread it in one of the fields.

They also have eight cats who live in the house. Four eat like pigs and four are a little more high maintenance. All get some dry food, a few get canned food mixed in, all get some anti-itch oil, and one gets a joint supplement morning only. Each cat has his or her own designated eating area (kennels in the basement, the laundry room, two bathrooms, and the kitchen). That wouldn’t be bad, except that a few of them are shy and won’t go to their right place when I’m there. So I have to get creative to make sure everybody gets their right food and doesn’t try to steal everybody elses. The inside kitties also have five large tubs of litter in the basement that get cleaned twice a day.

The three barn cats are probably the lowest maintenance animals at the whole Cross zoo. They get a few scoops of dry food and some water.

The dogs each get a scoop of dry food, a spoonful of canned food, a spoonful of oil, and joint supplement in the evenings (heated in the microwave to make mixing easier).  After eating, they go outside in their fenced in yard area for about 10 minutes to go to the bathroom. At night they are locked in large pens in the basement with a Kong filled with peanut butter.

This probably sounds like a lot, but once you get used to it, it’s not so bad. I can actually get through it pretty quickly and then just have to give the horses plenty of time to eat their hay.

Some of the benefits include getting up early enough to see the sun rise, seeing the horses every day, getting some extra exercise.

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law are coming in tonight, so I decided to do a little extra this morning to make my evening chores a little easier. I did all the barn work, took care of the inside animals, and went back to the barn to get ahead.  I figured that if I cleaned the stalls from the last 2.5 hours the horses had been in, I’d only need to pick up the arena tonight.

So, I picked out the stalls while the horses finished their last bites of hay. I made my way down the line and was getting ready to add some fresh bedding to each. I opened Marahute’s stall, only to find that in the entire minute and half since I picked her stall clean, she’d pooped. I ran down the line of stalls to find that every single horse had pooped and peed in a span of three minutes since their stalls were cleaned.

Rotten horses. I swear they did it on purpose. They’re probably standing huddled together in the arena having a good laugh.

Posted in Horse Care, Jackie's Thoughts