Kai and pups update

Theo and Manny

When I picked up hay the other day I got to see Tess's pups, Manny and Theo (formerly Luke and John) They were happy to see me, especially Theo, I used to cuddle him a lot.

Theo and Tess

They are three months old now. Theo is most like Tess, with a shorter smoother coat than Manny, who wouldn't sit still long enough for a photo.

Yesterday was our hottest day so far, 33C or 91 F degrees. When I brought the mares in, this time it was Belle who was sweating so I brought her and Kai over to the hitching rail, and Kai stood tied for the first time. He did really well, no pulling back, just tested the end of the rope a little then stepped forward. All the daily leading he's been getting paid off, because when he would refuse to lead, I'd just hold the pressure until he stepped forward, then he'd get slack and lots of praise. So that translated well to standing tied.

Belle gets panicky with spray so she got a sponge bath- I could have taken my time and used the hose on her but I wanted Kai's first lesson at the hitching rail to be a good one. Belle enjoyed the cool water, and when I finished her Kai got a sponge bath too. I spent time grooming the baby hair off, and picking his feet. He was a very good boy! He really got Beamer's personality; he loves attention. His owner came over and he got a lot more lovin' as well as his 3-way West Nile shot. He was easy to vaccinate too.

The papers came back from the vet lab, Kai is officially a smoky black. On his papers he will be listed as a black, carrying one copy of the cream dilute gene. Perhaps one day AQHA will add smoky black and smoky brown to their list of official colors.

You can see from this photo that we managed to scrub quite a bit of baby hair off him, this was taken this morning.

Coyote Belle's info came in too; she is homozygous for the black gene, she can't have red based foals, and her basic color is bay or brown, with one copy of the cream dilute gene, which means that she is either a smoky brown or a buckskin.

The evening finished off with another amazing sunset, not quite as spectacular colors as the ones over at Life on the Rough String lately, but beautiful nonetheless.