Guest Post by Bubby

The horses don't seem to realize that cats rule- even in the barnyard.

They get a little annoying,

They are kinda pushy, you'd think they are the bosses of the barnyard!

But I'll show them......

That you are nothing until you've been ignored by a cat!

Just Chillin'

Again today Belle was sweated up, and knowing that she doesn't care for being sprayed, I haltered her and took the hose into the horse pen. Once I sprayed her legs, she decided that this wasn't so bad after all, and the next thing you know, all of them wanted to be sprayed! I was happy to oblige.

Velvet even let me spray her face today, and Kai thought since the girls were all having fun, he wanted in on it too; check out this video.

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.

Heat and flies

It was plenty hot and muggy here yesterday, and since Velvet had sweated up a little when I brought her in, I decided it was time for her first bath. Shower, actually. When I'm filling the water troughs, Chickory and Kai will come up to be sprayed, but Velvet is fearful of the spray. So I tied her to the hitching rail and slowly and gently introduced her to the hose. Surprisingly enough, she liked it!

The only time she really objected was the first time it hit her face- just like daddy, she wimped out on that, but was willing to stick her nose in the spray.

I'll have to do her more often, next time I'll get out the shampoo for that thick mane of hers.

I know that garlic is good for combating mosquitoes, but since I usually add it to grain, I haven't been feeding any- they really don't need grain right now, fat little things!- so I thought I'd see if they would eat it by itself. I buy jars of crushed garlic. I held out a spoonful of it, and Chickory ate it like a kid eats candy.

Kai and Belle had a little, and Velvet had some too; today Belle and Velvet weren't too interested. I hope they will continue to eat it like that, anything to help keep the bugs off. I'll be picking up another sulphur salt block for their pasture too.

Time to hook on to the trailer and go get some hay, it will be this year's crop. And I get to visit 2 of Tess's pups while I'm there!

Sunny Sunday drive

What to do on a sunny Sunday? Go for a Sunday drive! After Mass I loaded up the dogs and went for a drive along the eastern shore of Kootenay Lake. I didn't go too far as I"m battling a chest cold so I don't have a lot of energy. The dogs were full of energy though! I found a spot to park and took the dogs down to the water, accompanied by a few thousand mosquitoes. It was swat, throw stick, swat, throw stick, etc. but after 10 minutes I'd had enough, and we headed back.

I grew up on the other end of this lake and have many fond memories of summers spent swimming, and soaking up the sunshine on the beach. If I had driven a little farther I could have found a nice sandy beach, but at least there were no other people here.

I also found the spot where the oil tanker truck that I mentioned in this post crashed and burned. He went over some pretty high cement barriers, down a very steep embankment that has train tracks below it. Burned some nice trees too.

Sunday Stills

The rule of thirds is the challenge today. I believe these shots qualify.

A little fun

Beamer was getting bugged by the bugs tonight, so I thought I'd play with him to take his mind off his woes.

So I chased him up a little, in the glorious evening light.

He obliged, as always with one eye on the camera....

and gave me his patented suspended leap....

and made sure I caught a rear or two...

and his "OK, I'm all done now " look.

Love my B-Boy!

Go west part two

This morning I loaded up a bag of hay, some salt, minerals and grain for the mare, Chevy, and since Dirk is a vegetarian- information I found on his website- I made him a cheese, tomato and lettuce sandwich, some hard boiled eggs, a bag of nuts and a lemonade. I headed up the pass till I found them, then visited while Chevy contentedly munched hay, right on the shoulder of the road with traffic whizzing by at 6o MPH. I found out that she is 15 years old, a registered quarter horse, and that after this ride is complete she will be for sale as Dirk lives in Toronto. This is a seriously nice mare folks, tall, sound, and really good minded. She is sired by a grandson of Impressive and Two Eyed Jack, with a little Jet Deck thrown in. The ride should be about over in two weeks.

After visiting a bit, I found out that they were intending to camp at the summit, 20 km. up the road, a steep 8% grade on the last 6 miles of it. I took the horse feed up and left it in the camping area by the lake for them- on the way back I stopped to let them know where it was.

If you want to check out the website, it's called Go West Young Men.

Dirk plans to avoid the highway between Salmo and Christina Lake by taking a backroad that parallels the US border. I know that there is some lovely country down there along the PendOrielle River.

Hope they ride safe and sound!

Go West, Young Men!

As I arrived to work today, I saw a horse and rider preparing to head down the road. I talked to the fellow a while and found out that he is riding across Canada on his Quarter Horse mare, Chevy and has been three months on the road. His mare looked to be in great shape, she was busy grazing the lawn as we spoke.

He averages 30 miles a day with her has had her reshod 4 times, and had her vet checked recently with a clean bill of health.

Originally there were two men travelling together, but one dropped out for family reasons. This is Dirk Pfau.

Ahead of him is about forty miles of the highest mountain pass in Canada, the Salmo Creston Skyway. At the summit there is a rest stop, I'm sure he'll make use of it! There is a lake there, and some grass for grazing. I intend to take a drive tomorrow with some supplies for them.

A short time after he rode off, there was a storm front roll in with high winds and driving rain, strong but short-lived. I hope he made it to some shelter before it hit! I asked if he has a tent, he said he sleeps where the horse does, only underneath a tarp. He also said he'd never do this again!

An almost perfect evening

Life

Is

Good

Especially when I have good company to share a good meal with and a beautiful evening; my ex-sister in law and her family are visiting overnight.There are only two things to mar a perfect evening- my husband is working out of town so he couldn't be here, and then we saw this rather ominous cloud of smoke to the north:

Turns out it is an oil tanker truck burning , probably crashed on one of the really tight corners near Wyndell. Haven't heard anything about the driver yet.

Update:

I found out that the truck that crashed and sent up all the smoke was carrying transformer oil, which contains PCP's, and that all the oil burned up. The driver managed to escape, just in time, although he did get some burns. The corner he crashed on is an S corner near Sirdar that has claimed more than one rig, the second part of the curve doesn't have the right superelevation and so it's posted for a very slow speed which some truckers ignore to their peril.

Wordless Wednesday

Fire on the mountain, and run girls run!

We had a thunder storm last night, just enough rain to get rid of the dust and help control the forest fire you can see on the mountain in the photo above. It's still smoky today, but not as bad, I'm sure the suppression crews will have it out quickly. The horses could feel the energy building for the storm, and all the kids had to play a little before being brought in for the night.

Hat tip to Cowboy Celtic for the music!

While Reba and Tess don't like thunder, so far Sammi isn't bothered by it.

Janice has posted some photos of the area for our Blogger Trail Ride, head over to Own a Morgan to check it out. the photos don't show the trails, but rather the rugged beauty of the area.

I couldn't resist this photo of Kai's shadow, it was the type of photo I wanted to do for Sunday Stills Shadows, but I never got home from work in time to capture the right moment in the setting sun.

Sunday Stills-Summer

Today's challenge is to portray our summer in photos; I haven't gone on vacation or attended any events, so my summer is all about every day life, doing the things I love, like growing my flowers,

and doing chores early in the morning and being rewarded with shots like this one of Velvet on the dirt pile, with ravens in the background:

Spending time with my dogs is important, so Sammi got to go on her first outing with Beamer and the other dogs, an easy trail ride around the hay field to make sure she would heel and not get distracted- she did really well.

Speaking of dogs, a big part of our summer for them is going to the river and swimming after sticks- Tess just loves it and will swim out and wait for you to throw a stick for her.

Since we are talking about Tess, that leads to another thing I love about summer- afternoon siestas in my hammock. Tess seems to think that anytime I'm in the hammock she should get to come in with me, so we had a nap together.

Such a dog!

I love summer evenings, except for those pesky mosquitoes, and we have been blessed with some beautiful weather lately so I leave you with the man in the moon.

We've set the date

Janice and I have got our heads together and planned the date for the first Kootenay Blogger Ride. All those of you in blogland who want to come ride with us in the beautiful mountains of the East Kootenays, the date is the weekend of August 21 and 22. The ride is planned for Gailbraithe, and Janice is going to do a post showing the area. There is a good campground there, and we will be following the ethics of the Back Country Horsemen, of low impact on the environment. Sherry and Crystal, if you are still interested, make some plans now! We could arrive Friday evening to set up camp, have a good long ride Saturday and a shorter one Sunday to give everyone time to travel home, or do another long ride, stay over, and travel Monday. Bring friends! I'd also like to invite CCC and Linda, and anyone else who wants to take a weekend to just enjoy a quality wilderness experience with their horses. Janice says she could supply a couple of horses if someone who doesn't have a horse, or doesn't want to haul their horse across the border etc., wants to come and ride. Ed, we don't have a wagon, but we can put you on a good horse!

Friends, an award, and third ride

Friends are such a blessing, and I seem to have a good bunch of blessings lately. Through my blogs, I have been in contact with some fine folks, many of whom I would dearly love to meet. One of them is Cowboy Coping Cowgirl, and if you haven't visited the blog of this true cowgirl, head on over! She was kind enough to pass on this award to me:

Thanks! You know I love Teddy Bears! Here are the rules:

1) make a post about the award, mentioning the person who gave it to you
2) put the award on your blog
3) Give award to 10 sweet bloggers

Since I would like to pass it to some of the same bloggers that she did, I 'm not sure I can do ten, but here goes:

1. Carson at the 7MSN Ranch- I love her photos and her burros are such characters, but my favourite is her cat Deets.

2.My friend Carol aver at All These Pretty Horses. She is a true friend, always there for me, generous and willing to help. She has a hunk of a blue roan stallion, and some fine babies from him.

3. Lisa over at Home on the Range; this lady finally moved onto her dream acreage where she can have her horses, host barrel racing, and live the country life- and keep working at her family Greek Restaurant in Saskatoon; next time I go that way I want to try their cuisine!

4. Karen over at Life at the Rough String. Living on an Alfalfa producing ranch, with a few cows and some darn fine horses, like her horse Colt that she is doing a 5 year project with.

5. Diane over at Retired and Loving it; this is Ed's mom- Ed who encouraged the inner photographer in us with the Sunday Stills Challenge.

And that's all for now, there are many more deserving bloggers, but time grows short- on to the rest of this post!

Today was my third ride on Chickory, and I changed it up a little. I am now using my Al Grandchamp bosal on her. I had my friend, Bobbi, lead me for a couple of minutes then turn me loose.

Chickory walked around slowly and carefully. She reined fairly well, and had a real nice stop and backup.

She stayed relaxed , I'm real pleased with the progress we made today. Next step- the trot.

Afterwards I went over to Bobbi's to help her get her first ride on her filly, we are following pretty much the same program.

Looks like we'll have a couple of nice fillies to hit the trails with next year!

Sammi and Kai

I received Sammi's registration papers in the mail the other day. She sure is a bright pup, and is showing a great deal of desire to work. She is very endearing, and a busy little girl. She is so busy working the other two dogs that I have to take her out by herself to do her business!

The cats have learned to ignore her, with true feline superiority.

Foose shows off his version of black and white.............

Meanwhile, Kai is nearing three months old- another week and a half- and here is what he looks like now:

He is a chunk! We trimmed his feet again yesterday, it's only been a couple of weeks since he was done but he had a lot of growth and the baby foot was at a bit of an angle compared to the new growth, so we will be keeping him squared up with regular trimming.

He continues to have a sweet disposition like his daddy,

and he's not too hard to look at- also like his daddy! I am eagerly awaiting the report from U of C Davis on his color test.