While the remaining headers were lifted into place, Wayne's son, Zack, worked on bracing the walls. By the end of the day the back wall was essentially done, but the last of the headers still needed to go up on the pasture side.
Overnight we got more torrential rains, and this time the building site was not spared. But the gravel did it's job. We were surrounded by mud. At the barn where my horses lived, the driveway was essentially a duck pond, but on the gravel pad the water had drained away and everything was dry - everything that is except the electrical system of the forklift. The lift still worked to go up and down, but the motor that drove it wouldn't turn on. So again they had to practice those horse training skills of ingenuity and persistence. Both the mini digger and the forklift were called into duty to move the lift along and to keep it level as the tires sank into the soft ground around the poles.
The morning was spent, stop and go, lifting headers up, and then pulling the lift out of whatever ground it had become mired down in. The last header went up mid-day, then then the work continued on framing the sides.
They used the building itself as a ladder. Rung by rung, the structure was taking on more of its final form. The back wall was fully framed up to the headers.
On the front wall, overlooking the horse's pasture and the hills beyond, the framing only went up two tiers for a total of four feet. The rest of the space was going to remain open to the sky. This got more confused comments from people visiting the site. They just couldn't understand why we were leaving the front open. They kept telling us how we could get curtains to close it off. We had our set answer ready for them: "We can always close it off later, if we decide to, but we really do want the arena to be open." Indoor arenas are not warm, even when you have them all closed up. If you are building an indoor in the Northeast because you think you're going to be warm and toasty inside in the winter, you are in for a rude shock. Yes, they keep the wind out, but they are still ice boxes. Ice boxes with very limited airflow. I want the open sides. I want the air flow, and I want the beautiful views.
Digging out the side of this hill to create a building site may have its problems, but it has created an amazing setting for the arena. It feels as though we are up in the tree tops looking out. As I watched the framing go up and spent time in the space, visualizing how the arena was going to evolve, I knew the decision to have open sides was very much the right one.
More preparation followed the framing and bracing of the walls. Each of the trusses had to be measured and marked so they would know where to place the cross bracing. This was a tedious process that took up a good part of a day.
The following day the first of the trusses went up. They brought in a long metal brace to keep the trusses from bending as the crane lifted them. I watched each step of the preparation. They had to get the straps even on the brace. And then they had to lift the first stack of trusses to the ground to get to the gable trusses. The lumber yard had stacked these trusses in the middle of the pile instead of on top. That brought some grumbling from the crew for the extra work that created. They took great care pulling the stack of trusses down onto the ground. The last thing they wanted at this point was to damage any of the trusses. They dragged them across the gravel into the center of the building, ready for the crane to lift them up onto the headers.
They normally would have taken the gable truss outside the building to lift it up, but the space around the building was too tight for their equipment so they had to bring it down the middle of the building and out through the gable end. Only it didn't really fit through the gap between the posts. They tied a rope to one end to guide it through. It started out looking like the gentle guidance you'd give a boat as you tried to nudge it through a lock system. But it ended up looking more like calf roping as they wrestled both with the truss and the wind.
The truss could only take so much wiggling. Something had to give and it was the gusset plate joining the two halves together. Oops! They did a temporary fix to keep the truss from falling apart even more while they somehow squeezed it through the opening. They set the truss back down on the ground and hammered it back together. By the time they were done driving in extra nails it was stronger than the original.
The truss was raised back up and worked into place. Again there was the attention to detail, to getting the truss exactly set to the marks they had made. They nailed it into place at the ends and then nailed it more solidly to the gable end posts, checking again and again the placement to make sure the building was truly square.
The next truss went up and then the two trusses were tied together through cross bracing. The process was repeated three more times that afternoon for a total of five trusses. More braces were added, then the whole building was chained. This was the vulnerable stage in the building. Until the roof was up and the whole building was wrapped in steel, a strong wind could take it down. So at every step in the process they would pause to set the cross bracing and to add more chains. The chains kept the building from twisting out of square. Inside it was like walking through a giant spider's web - one that kept growing as they added more trusses.
I left for my next clinic having seen the first five trusses go up. When I returned five days later, the roof trusses for the indoor were in place and the first three trusses for the section of the building that would eventually become the barn were up. It was looking more and more like a building!
I sat on the stack of remaining trusses and watched as the bracing was put in place. I was feeling stiff after a long transcontinental plane flight. Watching the crew maneuvering in the trusses made me feel even stiffer. As the crane lifted each truss into place, I couldn't help but think of images of a ship's mast. The trusses sailed up into the air and were swung around with a rope to bring them into place on the headers. Each truss meant more bracing. By the time they were done with each section, there was a huge amount of wood holding that roof together.
I'd missed seeing the holes dug for the posts, but now I got to see the final holes dug for the gable end. They weren't nearly as impressive as the ten footers they'd had to dig at the opposite end of the building where the fill was even deeper. These only had to go down about four feet into the ground. They brought the big, stegosaurus truck in and lined the drill up over the marks they'd painted in the gravel. The drill bit through the layers of gravel and dirt and had the hole dug in minutes.
They got the posts in the ground and then decided that after all they had put the shorter poles in the wrong holes. Rather than leave it looking not quite right, they brought in the forklift and used that to help maneuver the poles back out of the ground and into the right holes. The posts were now as they wanted them. They lined them up and leveled them, and when they were satisfied with the placement, they poured in a bag of dry cement, and then backfilled the holes. With the gable posts in place the framing of the building was almost complete.
I loved how the building looked at this stage. I loved the openness of the space, and the shadow patterns in the gravel formed by the roof. After the work crew left for the day, I would stand under the canopy of the open roof and visualize how the barn was going to look. For the first time ever I understood modern architecture with all of its glass. Standing there in the bones of the barn, looking out at the sky framed between sections of the roof, it seemed a shame to close it in. It was such a beautiful building just as it was.
To get to the barn I drive past two other construction sites. Both are building large multiple unit condominiums. Perhaps if I stood inside the framing as I was able to do for the arena, I would see the same beauty in form, but I think not. The large arch of the arena creates an amazing space. One thing the builder had talked me into was using scissor trusses instead of the more conventional flat trusses. I'm so glad I listened to him. They make the building. It's a beautiful roofline. Especially with the open side, they make the building seem so much larger and more open.
The last trusses finally went up. These extend the roof another eight feet beyond the end of the building. The stalls for our five horses are at this end of the barn. Each stall will have a dutch door going out into a small turnout run. We needed some form of protection for these runs so there will be a deck above them, and protecting the deck will be this additional eight feet of roof.
Once all the trusses were up, they spent another couple of days adding even more bracing to the roof. They were racing to get the metal on, both so they could secure the building, and also so they could free up their crew and equipment to go work on their other project which was beginning to kick into high gear.
The metal had been sitting down by the road since early spring. Now the fork lift retrieved it and brought it lumbering up the driveway. The forklift could just manage to squeeze it's way down the back side of the arena, but there wasn't room for it on the bank side. So the sheets of roofing were carried up one side of the roof and slid down the other. The men made it look as though they were carrying sheets of tissue paper up the roof, but this was steel they were lifting - hardly a feather weight!
They took great care over the first section, making sure it was absolutely square to the building. Any hair off here would effect every sheet of steel on the roof. Wayne oversaw the process from his vantage point on the peak of the roof. What a view he must have had of the surrounding countryside. I climbed up the side of the building before it was closed in, but I never went up on the roof. I'll leave that to others!
With the first section of roofing on, the inside of the arena changed dramatically. It felt so much darker and less open. But it also gave me a huge umbrella over head. Now instead of working down in Mary's house during the day, I could bring my laptop out to the arena and sit under the protection of the new roof while the men worked on the rest of the arena. I have no idea what they thought of this arrangement, but it did give me time to experience the arena design and think about what we really wanted. I was loving the openness of the space. I loved the arched ceiling trusses. I loved the open front wall, and I wished we could keep that same open feel in the back. The compromise was putting in clear light panels along the top of the gable end and the back wall of the arena. I'm writing this now, sitting in the arena, looking up at the light panels. What a perfect choice. They let in so much light. Even under the lean to, it's remarkable how much light comes through the panels. The extra height, the scissor trusses, the open side down the front, the light panels, all make the arena seem so much bigger that it actually is. Everyone who comes remarks on the same thing - how big the arena is, but at 60 by 120 it is really a small arena. Most indoors are much bigger to accommodate larger groups and jumping. For me this is the perfect work space for clicker training.
It was now mid-May and I was getting ready to head off for five weeks of teaching. Wayne had originally thought he could have the initial work on the arena finished by June 1. It was clear that that wasn't going to happen. They did get most of the roof finished and the first section of steel hung on the back wall before I had to head off, but nothing was done in the barn. The doors and windows weren't up, the poles weren't set for the interior stalls, and the hay loft and deck weren't built. We also didn't have the lean to or the composter, and the site work still needed to be finished. The plan was to move the horses as soon as I got home at the end of June. That gave them five weeks, plenty of time to get the critical things done that we'd need for the horses.
It was clear that the barn was not going to be finished in time. That was okay. We could house the horses in the indoor and let them finish the barn later, but we would need water, electrical hook-up, footing in the indoor, the composter, the ramps down to the field and fencing. Fencing meant the basic site prep needed to be done. A couple of days before I left, Ann and I met with an electrician and went over our needs. That piece seemed well in hand. As soon as the excavator was finished at the other project, he'd bring his equipment back to finish up the work that still needed to be done here. I left thinking that we were in good shape for a July 1 move.
At first the reports were I got were of progress progressing. Mary sent me pictures of the arena as the doors and windows were hung and the steel was added to the sides. I had so enjoyed the openness of the space, it was just as well that I wasn't there for the closing in of the sides. They finished the lean to, and put the posts in the barn in preparation for building the loft.
Mid-way through June Ann met with Wayne for a progress report. I'd gotten pictures from Mary of the barn interior, but it was Ann who spotted the problem with the interior posts and with the doors. We'd designed the barn with five twelve foot wide stalls facing out along the gable end. Those posts were fine. But across the aisle, the various utility rooms were different sizes. When the crew put the posts in, they went on auto pilot. The norm was to have the posts match on either side of the aisle. They didn't check the plans to see that we had ten foot rooms, not twelve, to give us enough room for an aisle into the arena and for stairs up to the loft.
The dutch doors were also hung wrong. They needed to start at the opposite end of the building so every door would swing open and hinge against the wall of the arena. The way they were hung, the end door had nothing behind it. The doors would all need to be reset.
The misplacement of the posts triggered many emails back and forth between Ann and myself. Could we change our floor plan so they would not need to move posts? We tried many different configurations and finally settled on a plan that meant moving only one set of posts, but adding in the missing set that they hadn't yet used.
I kept hearing that the excavator was going to be there next Tuesday, then next week, then next Thursday to finish the work. Time was running out and we did not yet have a composter. And we also didn't have arena footing. Wayne's dump truck was out of commission. They'd had a road accident with it, and it had hit a tree, so he couldn't bring in stone dust for the arena. We couldn't house the horses on the gravel. Something had to be done. Thankfully a friend of Mary's, Marty Gibbons, came to the rescue with his dump truck. He brought in and spread load after load of stone dust. This was after Ann and I had many email exchanges about what to do next with the surface. The gravel had churned up into huge drifts by all the heavy equipment that had been on it through the spring. There were places where the underlying fabric was showing through. Wayne's crew leveled the gravel and tamped it down. Should we add another layer of fabric to keep the gravel from working up? Or would that layer of fabric also work up to the surface and create it's own problems. We simply didn't know. I've been in so many arenas, and no one seems to have a good consensus on how best to build a good surface. Even when they've gone strictly "by the book", people aren't always happy with the end result.
In the end we decided to seal the gravel with the stone dust only, no fabric. We'd put that layer in, let it settle and then decide what we wanted to do next. So Mary's friend brought in truck loads of stone dust and spread them six inches deep across the arena. And Wayne's crew put in kick boards in the area where we'd be setting up the temporary stalls. All that was good preparation, but we still didn't have water, electricity, the composter, or any way to get the horses down into the field. And there was still a huge pile of brush making the field unusable.
They tried burning the brush pile. They waited for a rainy day to set it ablaze. In theory it should have been the answer, but they neglected to tell the town they were going to be burning brush. When the state troopers across the road saw the flames, they thought the barn was on fire. They called the fire department and the rescue squad. I heard about this via email. It's something else I'm glad I missed. Apparently, it was perfectly okay to burn the pile. They just needed to let the town know that's what they were going to be doing. When the fire department arrived, they decided the arena was getting too hot, and they put the fire out. So we were left with a half burned, but still enormous pile of brush and logs.
So that's what I came home to. We did have temporary water. They had hooked up a line so we could use Mary's well water, but it was looking very doubtful that we would be able to move horses. I flew home on Wednesday, June 30th, and Thursday I stood in the arena surveying one incomplete unit after another. There was so much to be done, and no one was on site getting anything finished. The parking area in front of the arena was cluttered with rolls of fabric, unused steel, lumber and equipment. Even if the barn had been ready, there was no way we could bring a horse trailer up on the pad.
The 4th of July weekend was coming up. This was the weekend we had to move if we were going to move at all, and nothing was ready. Every now and then you have to be a squeaky wheel. I started calling. The messages I left were polite, but clearly not happy. They got action. Chris left the other building site and came and cleared the parking area so we could at least get the horse trailer up to the arena. There wasn't much else he could do at that point. We went over what we needed for the horses. We needed the ramps, the composter, the brush cleared away. And we needed water and electrical.
I know from experience this is how construction projects work. The initial phase goes so fast and then things slow down. Builders have to keep their crews and their equipment in use so they never have just one project going at a time. We'll see lots of progress for a while, and then the crew will get called to another site where something equally pressing needs to be finished. I understand the process, and I can flow with it - up to a point. But my own schedule locks me into certain constraints. I thought five weeks would give them time to get done the basics of what we needed, and perhaps if the dump truck hadn't broken down, or we'd had a little less rain in the spring, we would have been on schedule, but I also know with construction, there is no such thing as staying on schedule. There is simply working with where you are and what you have.
So on Friday we began the process of setting up temporary quarters for the horses. We had given our thirty day notice to the barn owner where the horses were. She had already rented out the stalls. We could delay for a couple of days, but not much longer. And I was locked in by my travel schedule. I had given myself most of July at home. After that I was away almost every weekend. If I didn't move the horses now, we would have to wait until November. I wanted to get them settled while the weather was still good. So Friday we went shopping. We bought extra round pen panels and floor mats and hauled them into the arena. We set up five stalls along the back wall. Four of the stalls were made out of the John Lyons round pen panels that I already owned. Only one stall had to be made with the new panels. These new panels are not as safe as the others. The spacing of the rails, for one thing are not as horse friendly as they should be. We lined them with the plastic fencing I use to keep the deer off the evergreens in the winter which made me feel better using them.
We also ran panels across the opening for the back door and across the near end of the arena. So once the horses were in the arena, they were in a safe, fully enclosed space. Even if we forgot to close a stall door properly, they would still be in a fenced area. I used my extra light weight panels to create an ante room beyond the first gate, so again, even if we forgot to latch that gate, they were still contained.
It took us three days to get the arena set up and most of our stuff moved out of the other barn. Most boarders have only a tack trunk, a saddle, bridle and their horse to move. We had five horses, all their normal stuff, plus the round pen panels, about twenty stall mats - most of which had to be pulled out of the ground and scrubbed clean. We also had three very heavy steel stall doors which had to be swapped for the original doors that were stored up in the hay loft. We'd put these doors on our horse's stalls because they gave them better ventilation than the original doors that were on the stalls when we moved in. The barn owner had allowed the swap though she really didn't like them. They didn't match the rest of her barn, so she was well pleased to be returning to the original doors.
On Monday we were ready to move horses. That was July 4th, Independence Day - very appropriate. We moved the Iceys first. Both horses loaded like a dream. I do love good loaders! And I never take it for granted when horses load well. They travelled over with the last of the round pen panels and a load of stall mats. We got everything unloaded, the Iceys settled, and then went back for the other three.
None of them had been on a trailer in years. Magnat hadn't been on a trailer in close to fifteen years. He has a heart condition, so early on I made the decision that he didn't need to travel. And Peregrine had an early history of being a determined non-loader. I never know what to expect from him. The last few times he's traveled, he's been good to load, but I never take this for granted.
Peregrine was the first on. I love my trailer. It has so many configurations for a horse to travel in - straight load, slant load, box stall, whatever suits the horse best. Peregrine tensed up when I tried him in a straight stall, so I let him get off and loaded him up front in the slant load. That he was okay with. So next came Magnat and finally Robin. Both horses walked straight on as though they'd been trailering every weekend. Good horses!
Five horses - five easy loads. That's what I like, and I never take it for granted or fail to appreciate horses who load comfortably onto trailers.
So now the horses are living in the middle of a construction zone. And they are taking all the noise and the machinery clattering around outside well in their stride. It's amazing what horses can be totally blasé about. Loads of stone can be dumped right outside the arena door, and they don't even lift their heads from the hay.
The horses are settling well into their new lifestyle. I knew once we got them out of the boarding situation we would see changes. They are already so much more relaxed, so much less testy and fussed by people. Peregrine is the only one who hasn't settled in well. He's not bothered by the construction, but he is clearly anxious about not being in his familiar environment, so I've been camping out at the arena to make sure he's okay through the night. The boarding barn where they lived for years had set hours. I couldn't go see them in the early morning. Now I'm out there every day before dawn doing chores.
At clinics we always begin by going around the group and catching up on what everyone has been doing with their horses. People will often very apologetically say they haven't done very much. They haven't had time to ride. Well I definitely would fall into that category. At the moment there's no time and certainly no energy left to ride. But that doesn't mean that good training isn't occurring. I get to interact with the horses so much more than I did in the boarding situation. I always did all the evening chores, but now I'm there throughout the day.
One of my favorite John Lyons' quotes is "Good training should be boring to watch", meaning there shouldn't be a lot of Hollywood theatrics going on. There shouldn't be horses rearing or bucking their riders off into the rafters. Good training should look like a well run classroom. It can be a beehive of activity. There can be lots going on. There can certainly be lots of laughter, but there should also be an underlying sense of stability. I was going to write order and control, but those are such loaded words. Stability and a sense of purpose are better.
We tend to think of training as something separate, something we do after the chores are done. And I certainly often get asked how to manage all the "mother's little helpers" who hover about getting into things. How do you do chores when you've got a clicker-trained horse glued to your side wanting attention? I know some people solve this by using the presence of their treat pouch as a cue for training time. When they just want to do chores, they take their pouch off. It's a strategy that works for them, but with my own horses, I would see that as missed opportunities.
When I'm around my horses, I always have my vest on, and I always make sure there's a good supply of hay stretcher pellets in the pockets. This morning when I was cleaning stalls, Robin and Peregrine had free run of the arena. Robin had taken himself off to eat the hay I'd put out in their "grazing" area. Peregrine was sticking to me like a barnacle. Of all the horses he's the one who has struggled the most adjusting to the move. He's needed a lot of reassurance, and a lot of social time. So when he followed me into Robin's stall, I didn't send him away so I could get done faster. I let him hover around me. When he asked for social time, I rubbed his face, I stroked his neck. I didn't click and reinforce him for these interactions. But I did click and reinforce for other things, such as an offered pose. He's completely at ease with clicker training. He knows the treats are not going to go away, so he doesn't get anxious when I'm not clicking every little thing. I am always a clicker trainer when I am with my horses, but that does not mean I am always clicking.
There's so much good training that can be done while you are doing chores. When I needed Peregrine to shift out of the way of the wheel barrow, I asked for backing, or for lateral shifts of balance. We wove in and out of the stalls with Peregrine making way for me as I needed to move the wheel barrow or bring in water buckets. Who would have thought cleaning a stall could be such a dance!
At the boarding barn the horses couldn't be loose in the aisle while I worked. That's something I missed. In some of the small barns where Peregrine has lived, we had the luxury of being able to let the horses wander about as they pleased. That's been something I've been looking forward to being able to do with the horses. It's so clicker compatible. If we want thinking horses, we need to give them an environment in which we can give them choices and some degrees of freedom.
Now my training time just looks like stall cleaning. Those maneuvers we've been practicing in our formal training sessions to build good balance are just as needed here but for very practical reasons. So the training session that I would have had in the boarding barn, out in the arena, in a formal work session, asking Peregrine to back up, to yield his hips, to step over laterally, I can now have cleaning a stall. Next time I work formally, I expect I'll find I have a tuned-up horse to play with, not one who is stiff and stale from too much time off during my travel season.
I'm enjoying these small interactions. I get to check in on manners. When I bring the hay cart into the arena, are manners preserved? Can I walk down the row of stalls passing hay out to the other horses without Robin or Peregrine creating a fuss. Can I bring the buckets of grain out and have the horses go to their stalls? We hear so much about "respect". Here in all the small interactions of chores I get to find out what that really means. The horses came into this situation with lots of good training, but definite boarding house manners from years of being fed by kids who just wanted to get the hay and grain passed out as quickly as possible so they could get back to their friends. Now I get to shape better manners. It's nothing fancy. If you came to the arena, you wouldn't see horses doing "circus tricks". Instead you'd see them accompanying me through the flow of the day's chores, backing when asked, maneuvering out of the way when needed, sharing my time and attention with the other horses. It's just quiet training that anyone can do, and that has such good ripples into the everything else I'll want to do with them.
While I'm in the arena with the horses, I can hear the work crews outside. The excavator is back on the job, building the composter and the ramps. I was impressed by how well the horses handled having the work going on immediately outside the arena. They had one day to settle in, then on Wednesday the excavator arrived with his heavy equipement. With the open wall on the front side the horses can see the bulldozer as it trundles along back and forth across the front of the arena smoothing out the top of the hill and pushing the excess dirt over to build the access ramps. Out the back door they can watch as the back hoe tears down even more trees to punch an opening through the hedge row into the back field. They didn't mind at all when he dug a deep trench for a culvert pipe or brought stone in to cover it up.
I'm writing this on July 23rd and the front still isn't finished. The brush is still there, but it's been consolidated into one pile. The ramps are shaped, but not surfaced so they still aren't really usable, and without the final finishing work, we still can't fence the field, so the horses have been confined to the indoor for almost three weeks.
The composter is almost finished. I've been bagging all the manure into trash bags so we don't attract flies to an unmanaged manure pile. It's a huge bother, and I now have a line of trash bags several layers thick lining the long side of the arena. I tell myself they serve as temporary kickboards. I shall be very glad when the composter is usable, but I am glad I got to see how the foundation for it was built. It's much more of a foundation than anything we've done for the barns. They dug out the bank and put poured concrete frost walls.
It's all a work in progress. And it is very much an exercise in using clicker training principles outside the training arena. I've heard so many stories about construction projects, and they all seem to include a stage where things get behind schedule and are held up. We're in this stage now. The builder can't leave his other project to come work on ours. We've been promised a full crew in August. So I'll end this report here and pick it up later when more of the work has been done.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
July 23, 2011
