Monday, April 19, 2010

Will ride tomorrow!

I swear I was going to today,but it was cold..... And Doug looked to frisky to have me anywhere near his back.

I am going to lunge him tomorrow and maybe work on the ground driving a bit. I am telling myself I need to do at least 15 min in the saddle a day just to start working on my nerves again.

I think the for rent sign is about to go back up next door. Which could be a blog of its own. You need good neighbors when you have horses/any animal really. We live in the country and have nothing against renters in general. But I have many things against the renters that have lived here next to us. Blowing up gas cans,having them land in my pasture, and threatening me are probably the top two. I have thoughts of putting up a ten foot privacy fence and while our zoning is lax I do not think they will go for that. Not to mention the cats could just go around it. And they always have multiple unfixed cats and I end up paying to alter thirty a year. I bet the next ones will breed dogs. Ugh! The last ones did not even have a car and we are at least thirty minutes from a store/food source(unless they were living off all the cats). I really do have the sheriffs number in my phone and until the last neighbors moved it was called frequently. To bad it takes them forty minutes to get here!!!!! Good thoughts for good neighbors,good thoughts for good neighbors...................... One day I will live in the middle of forty acres. Thinking of how a moat with alligators would work out?



It will have trees like this all along the property line. And this is a real tree I ran into,literally. It has a face!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Fly predators.....

I received my fly predators in the mail last week and finally after four or five days some have emerged. I guess its a good thing they waited since after weeks of eighty degree weather it snowed here Saturday! I am really hoping these will work well. We are lucky we do not have a horrible problem with mosquitoes here,and the horse flies and deer flies are not to bad. If I could get rid of a lot of the flies I would be happy. No other large animals to close to us and no chickens to eat them, although I am thinking all the bird feeders/houses may have been a bad idea now.



Even though I know people have used them for years I still have this large fear they are going to take over and be the superpest here now.

I have a little paranoia at times!

I saw all the pics of them on pennies in the adds but did not really get how tiny they were till I had to put my glasses on to really see them. So I guess the good thing is even if they swarmed and attacked it would take hundreds to notice!




Maybe they are kinda visible there. My camera did not want to cooperate.

Tomorrow should be warm enough to release them and hopefully not worry about the cold killing them again.









And just cuz I have some, cute Blitz pics from tonight








Blitz was a good boy and actually ran straight to chaz,not to chaz the way of chasing three horses and then a bird a field over.






I was going to complain about the poor starving lame thourghbreds on craigslist I have no room to help,but since the add is down, I am hoping someone went and put the owner in a pen to starve and took the horses. Ugh! It is not JUST the economy that has horses in horrible situations. There are people out there who are that stupid. I wish I would have saved her rebuttle post to people complainig about her horses spine sticking out and being able to clearly see every rib. Of course they want like 400$ for them each. Hopefully someone in her sheriffs/police/animal control office knows something about horses.


Am I crazy to think about painting the inside of my tack room? I don't know why that has popped into my head all of a sudden but the same thing happened with the kitchen a couple hours ago and now thats done! I was thinking white, but I like pink.................................. Probably a good thing I have to work tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Doug was not to thrilled with me tonight. Really did not do much with him anyway as I brushed him for an hour,got him in the round pen,hair everywhere, so brushed him for another hour.

This is his unamused look.



The third or so patch of hair laying around now.



And morie was her usual mare self squealing in the pasture with doug away from her. But she did slow down for this kind neat looking pic.

I have been toying around with teaching my gelding Doug to drive for a while. I joked all winter that we have these horses lounging about in the snow so we should put them to work moving the feed, hay, whatever else needs to go to the barn. I feel like I need to do something new with him anyway and since you will never catch me showing this seems good!

I found this
http://www.ehow.com/how_2067855_teach-horse-long-line.html
Seems to simplify it to stupid like I need.

We are looking out for a new trainer as the kid that we worked with last summer moved and trailering them is not an option at the moment. Hoping I can find someone who knows a bit about it. I figure I can at least get the ground driving down on my own. I bought the surcingle and caveson at equine affaire last week.

I was going to go to a continuing education thing at work tonight but seeing as I was stuck there last night and work tomorrow am at 7, I think I will stick around here. Doug is so unsuspecting out in the pasture. Only problem is that the round pen was my winter sacrifice area and it looks horrible. Might have to end up working him in the pasture.

Had a problem with the baby the last few days bolting while I am leading him. Right now I am able to keep him within our fenced area around the barns and pastures but that will not last forever. So now I am leading him with the lunge line and just reeling him back in. I think I have been lucky so far he has been so well behaved,but now I am paying for it.

Charging the camera now so pics later.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010



I originally set this up a couple days before my appy weanling arrived in late 09 and meant to chronicle his adventures. Well..................now he is a yearling and I am finally at least going to put some pics up.

A little on me first I guess. Crappy pic of the bf and I,likely the only one you will ever see of me LOL! I have always been horse crazy. My first horse was a arabian who I had no business on but we had a lot of fun times. I ended up getting hurt fairly bad on him though and killed my confidence. I was horseless for more than ten years and got my gelding about three years ago now. I still have a lot of confidence issues and my body has changed a lot since I was younger so my balance is nto what it used to be. My days or riding bareback for hours are definately over! I work as an RN on a local psych ward. Do rescue whenever I can,mostly dogs. took in some cats last summer and have never felt so helpless-they are not easy to care for when young! I would rather bottle feed a puppy any day!

We currently have three horses. (and 5 dogs,5 cats, 2 sugar gliders,and 1 goldfish)

My gelding Doug is around eleven. The story I got when I bought him was he was used as a track pony and then sold to the amish. Supposedly he had paint papers but they were lost when he went to the amish. He has a white mark on one side but I have had a couple people tell me they thought it was a botched brand so who knows. He can be a handful but he is my boy. Not what I should have gotten just getting back into riding-but then again I can be on the most broke horse in the world and still have a bit of anxiety!





His mustache



Then there is our twenty year old mare morie. She is double registered paint and pinto and has show points but no idea from what. She was bought as a youngster for 25,000 back in the days of OMG paint is so cool! Oddly enough my boyfriends dad dated the women who originally bought her and was thrown from her a couple times. We did the math on that though and chaz would have been around 5-8 at the time,chaz is 29,paretns married 30yrs. The old owner claims chaz used to love her when he was little but he has no memory of it! She was sold a couple times for less and less each time after some break ups and when we got her she was in pretty bad shape. Skinny and slow. But with some weight on she acts like a five year old.









And here is our appy yearling. His registered name is something like zips hukleberry fin but I forget the spelling. We call him Hukk. We had boarded a mustang over the summer and when he left I felt down a horse. The transporters bred appys which I loved as a kid and they had some of the bloodlines the horses I rode when I was little did. So he made the drive from Kentucky last fall.














And my baby Lord byron



I love dobes. Can't get enough of them. Byron is getting up there but has livened up a lot since we got our new cattledog pup Blitz.



Hope to keep this up with new pics and how the babys training is going(I will always refer to hukk as the baby-I just can't stop!). Also hope to keep up with riding my gelding more this summer. I no longer work evenings so I have no excuse to not ride every day.