We Learn To Read Merlin’S Body Language Before He Quits Eating

Merlin keeps us humble. One quiet morning on our Colorado mountain ranch, Alecz finds him down in the early light and has to make a fast call: let him rest, assess what’s happening, then step in with the safest help possible. We talk through what we saw, why a senior rescue horse can get “stuck” even when they’re not panicking, and how a couple of lead ropes, the right angle, and a calm plan can help a horse get their feet back under them.

From there we get practical about equine care and animal behavior. Merlin is sensitive and disruptions can shut down his appetite, so we share the tiny body language cues that tell Alecz he’s struggling at the bucket, from face rubbing to that unmistakable feed rattle. If you care for an older horse, a hard keeper, or any rescue with a complicated past, you’ll recognize how much progress depends on routine, observation, and staying present when they eat.

We also zoom out to the broader off-grid ranch life we love: our hands-on kids ranch camp (horses, chickens, goats, farming, and safety), wild turkeys that surprise us with how smart they are, and the joy of spotting newborn elk and antelope. Finally, we get real about Colorado wildfires and why evacuation planning is different when you have rescues, limited trailering options, and animals that mirror your stress.

If this feels like your kind of real-world horsemanship and off-grid living, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review. What part of animal care do you wish more people understood?

Transcript

Welcome To Life Off Grid

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello and welcome to another edition of Off Grid with Horses. I'm Russell.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

And I'm Alex. Russell and I are going to share two life adventures of our lives with horses on our Colorado mountain ridge.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

We live way off grid at 9,300 feet above sea level, high in the Colorado Rockies.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Where the air is thin.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

But the breathing is easy. And life is hard. But the living is good. Welcome to another episode of Off-Grid with Horses.

Merlin Found Down At Dawn

SPEAKER_00 0:43

We've had some events occurring with Merlin. As you recall, he's had uh some ups and downs over the past six months or so. Alex, why don't you tell us the latest?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Well, Merlin update. It's Merlin, off-grid with Merlin, I feel like. He's such a wonderful fellow. I came out just a few days ago to do the pre-breakfast early morning feeding that I do. And he was laying down. He wasn't struggling. First thing, of course, that I looked forward was to make sure he was still with us, and he was. And so I, you know, talked softly to him and went and checked on him. He had sweated a little bit, but not very much. It looked like he'd been down for several hours. And I went and did all the rest of the things. I got everybody else's food. I made sure everybody had water. And then I went in about 6 30, 6 o'clock, 6 o'clock, I think, and got fortunately we had Lily here as well, but Lily, fortunately, we had everybody here. Fortunately, we we had Lily here, and so I got up Lily and I got up Russell, and we all headed out to go take care of Merlin. And so what that entailed was I am kind of an expert on helping horses that can't or are having trouble getting up to get up. And that's a whole nother story in and of itself, probably a lot more than 15 minutes. But we went out and we took a couple of lead ropes and we let Merlin rest because I really wanted him to rest because he spends so much time on his feet. He doesn't lay down normally, he just is kind of, you know, on guard and making sure making sure he's okay, I guess. And so we went out and we hooked a couple of lead ropes together and put them around his butt at an angle, kind of. And I had Lily and Russell both pull on those, and uh so that shifted him. He was in a little undulation, so he couldn't quite get his feet underneath him, so that shifted him. I think we moved him 10 or 15 degrees, and so that he had a little better angle at the ground. And then he during this was began to start to try to get up again, and he got his feet underneath him, and then one of his ankles buckled, and fetlock is actually the proper term there, and he stumbled, but then he managed to get back up, and uh he ran, did his little version of trotting away, old man running off. And uh he got back up and he was pretty shaken. He's uh still getting back on his feed. Feed, not feet. But he's he's doing better, he's improving, improving by the meal at this point in time.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

And as you may recall, Merlin gets fed about four times a day, gets grained four times a day, and then he has as much hay as he can eat. But he's very, very sensitive. And so if there's any disruption, he just loses his appetite. And if Alex isn't there the whole time when he's eating, if she walks away or something,

Getting Merlin Back On His Feet

SPEAKER_00 3:45

he loses his appetite. And Alex is so in tuned, she can tell when he's having some distress. Why don't you tell us about that, Alex? How do you know when he needs to have his food stirred or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Well, he has very subtle body language that I've gotten attuned to over the years, and like it does change to some degree, but having decades literally under my belt of having watched body language and assorted things with with horses and other animals and people, it is a little bit easier for me, I think. And so, like, for instance, if he he tends to stand so that he has his butt towards the the young large horses that tend horse and mule that tend to pick on him. And so he'll stand with his butt towards them and his bucket is there on the side right there, and so he'll be able to like look over his shoulder, kinda, to make sure they're see if they're over there about to bite him in the butt or try to tease him about getting his hay. But and he'll look if he turns his head away and rubs the space between his mouth and his eye on the side of the bucket, that's an indicator that he is trying to stir the bucket up himself, and that if you don't go and help him, he is going to walk away from his food and stop. That's one of the indicators. Another one is when he starts making his bucket rattle, he sticks his nose in it and tosses it. That's him trying to get the grain off of the sides, and that means it needs to be stirred.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Now, here at Off-Grid with Horses, we obviously have our horses here that we care for. And as you can tell if you've been listening, some of these horses have some issues and it takes a lot of time. But we also do things that are not only on our property, but Alex goes to another property and puts on a camp, and she will be gone next week. Alex, tell us a little bit about what you're going to be doing next week.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Well, we are with a dear friend of mine who actually has the same birthday as you. We did this last year, and it's not either of our first camp experiences, but it's the first one that we did together. And we bring kids out, and we have a small group of up to 10 this year that we have come out to her ranch. She has 38 or 40 acres, and we have them come and learn about horses and learn about chickens and learn about goats and learn how to handle them, and they learn about farming, like growing vegetables, and they

The Tiny Signs He Stops Eating

SPEAKER_01 6:35

learn about caring for animals, and they learn about safety around ranches, and they might go on hikes with little stick horses so that they can learn how to look around without being in a whole lot of danger and learn how to start experiencing that. And the kids are eight years old, 16 years old, and it'll be a week long from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in 90 degree weather. And wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Now, next week, of course, is is sold out. It's a little late to sign up, but you're going to do another one, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 7:06

We do. We have another one August 10th through the 14th that we do out there. I think we have a couple of spaces left for that one.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

So if you're in the Colorado area and you have someone that's between what did you say the ages were? Eight and 16. Between eight and 16, and they would be interested in learning about horses, about farming and ranching. It's a different kind of camp. It's not just a horse camp. It's certainly not like a YMCA camp. It's a little bit different type of camp because it teaches people or kids a little bit more about the land and a little bit more about animals and caring for them. But if you're in the Colorado area or will be in August, give us a call or send us an email at info at offgridwithhorses.com. That's info at offgridwithhorses.com and we can send you a little bit of information. Or if you're listening to this podcast and it's wintertime, because although we've make these right now, it's in July when we're making this one, but people listen to them year round. So if it's in the wintertime and you're interested next year, we don't have dates yet for next year, but send us an email and we'll send you some information. One of the things that we really love here at Off-Grid with horses are all of the animals and not just our horses and our little white dog, but we have almost like a zoo here. We have so many animals. And one of the animals that has been hanging out, we've we talked about the bear last time. We have a new bear. She's smaller. I think she's a probably a two-year-old, smaller than we had last year. But we also have lots and lots of

A Ranch Camp For Kids

SPEAKER_00 8:55

turkeys. And this morning we had the largest we've had in a flock. How many we have? Seven this morning? We're not sure if it was six or eight. Six or eight, well, seven's an average. But we had a lot of, we have a lot of turkeys. And they come and they they hang out underneath the bird feeders. We have several bird feeders, three bird feeders set up, and the sunflower seeds will fall down to the ground, and and they just love that. And so they'll they'll eat the leftovers from the other birds, and occasionally I may throw them a few sunflower seeds just to be nice. But they will hang out and they're much smarter than I ever realized. They're they're very smart. I always thought turkeys were kind of idiots, but they're not. They're they're they're smart. And we have a couple that come to us all the time, and if they see either me or Alex, especially Alex, they will literally run, they'll see see Alex, and they may be a hundred feet away, and they will literally run full speed up to her. They recognize her, they know that she's friendly, they know that she loves them, and they'll run up to her. It's just quite amazing. It's one of the things that I really like living up here. It's a hard life up here, but we have so many things that are just wonderful, and the animals are just incredible. We saw something today on the way home. Why don't you tell them, Alex, what we saw?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Well, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit to about a week ago for myself, maybe a little more than a week. And I was driving home and I saw at dusk a whole herd of elk that had all literally just dropped their babies. They were tiny. They were like, they weren't even two feet tall at the shoulder. God, that's tiny. And dark, dark brown. So I thought they were just so, I was like, oh, I was so tickled I got to see them. And so on the way heading into town today, we saw a little, one of the little baby elk, I think probably one of the ones that I saw because it was right in the same area that was on it, had gotten on the roadside of the fence and it was running along and it had spots. It was still so little, so it was only a week old, but it was literally three to four times the size of it when I'd seen it just a week or so before. Amazing, just so cool. And what happened on the way home? On the way home, we got to see

Turkeys And A New Bear

SPEAKER_01 11:25

some antelope that had also just had babies, and the little babies were running around, headbutting each other, playing in the field as they ran away from the road. It was so cute.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And both Alex and I just adore animals. We love them very much. So when we get to see things like this, it's just really wonderful for us. It's very heartwarming, and it makes all the hard times, the winter times and so forth, just really, really, really worth it. One of the things that's difficult up here right now are the fires. If you follow the news at all, you'll note that Colorado has a lot of fires right now. However, fortunately for us, none of them are close to us. Fires for a horse ranch are well, for us, they're just terrifying because we have enough horses that have issues because they're rescues. They they're not they're not the type of horse that you just put them in a trailer. You know, on TV you see they open up a trailer and the horse just walks in. That that doesn't happen really unless you're trailering a horse a lot. And a lot of our horses, they they never get trailered because of their like Merlin. Merlin doesn't get trailered because it just wouldn't be good for him. He would have a hard time standing up. It might actually hurt him or kill him. So he doesn't get in a trailer. So if we have a fire that gets close, if we get evacuated, that creates some significant

Baby Elk And Antelope Joy

SPEAKER_00 12:55

issues for us. We have some other horses that are rescues. Fern, for example, which we hope to talk about in one of the next few episodes, she has some issues with her bone structure. So she has a hard time walking. So she doesn't get trailered because for the same reason. If we were to trailer her, that just wouldn't be safe for her. So getting her in a trailer in an emergency can be quite a task. And if there is a fire, we don't have a whole lot of time. So it's terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Do you want to add anything to that, Alex? All I'm gonna say is that actually those two horses that you happen to have mentioned, both of those would actually get in the trailer and have no problem.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Other ones wouldn't, but yeah, bear would probably have a problem, he's our giant mule, and shaman would probably have a problem, he's our giant Mustang.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

The biggest problem that the horses would have would be our panic. Because if if they the way that we work with horses is we ask them to look to us and to trust us. And if our vibration gets all out of whack and we're

Wildfires And Evacuating Rescues

SPEAKER_01 14:05

really upset or moving sporadically in ways that they're not familiar with seeing us move, they're gonna trust us less. Even though they love us, they're gonna realize that something's wrong, and that's gonna make them worried.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

So if you'd like to see more about the things we do at Off-Grid with Horses, we're setting up a YouTube channel. So you can go on to YouTube and look up Off-Grid with Horses and see some videos. You can also look at Alex Adams YouTube channel. So Alex has her own YouTube channel. She has a lot of videos on that. We have videos of the turkeys, of the horses, of the bear, all kinds of things. So you can look up either Alex Adams or you can look up Off Grid with Horses and see some videos. Also, if you'd like to contact us, contact us at info at offgridwithhorses.com.

YouTube Plans And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_00 14:56

That's info at offgridwithhorses.com. We had some problems with our email. So if you've emailed us and you didn't get a response, send us another email at info at offgridwithhorses.com. Well, we are about out of time. So until next time, thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you later.