Just chillin'

 Some days it's all about just remembering to breathe and enjoy the blessings God has given me. We have had some good rainfall for the last couple of days, so that will help the fire situation, locally at least. 

No better way to relax than to head out to the gazebo and stop, look and listen. Oh, and take photos 😁

The squirrel was scolding me. So I shot him (with my camera!!!)

I wasn't about to leave, so he did. 

Next up was the Mallards. They came a cruisin' upriver, ducking for food. Is that why they are called ducks?

They look just like the rock!

It was awesome to just sit there and listen to the birdcalls, and watch the thunderheads building in the sky. 

About then the thunderheads started rumbling so it was time to head in. Right, Thumper? 

Umm, Thumper, you coming? 

I ground worked Ruby in the round pen, now that we have finished the set up on it. I will do a separate post on that. The horse dentist is coming today to work on her, so after that I will be riding her. 

Thumper sez: Yeah get to work Ruby and keep your nose out of my barn!

Sunday Silence

 

That moon and camo

 The full moon on Sunday was clouded over, but I did get a Monday photo. The moon seemed small so it must be around it's farthest away from the earth cycle- but no worries, here it is all up close and personal!

I love it when the moon set happens around the time I feed my horses, cuz well, you know, I'm camera happy!

There's nothing like having a special moment with my girl Ruby just enjoying the beauty of nature. 

Having horse ears in a photo always makes for a better picture!

How about that- it's shedding time! Beamer is the first to start slipping hair here. I'm sure the girls won't be far behind, we have nice longer days now and above freezing days... so far. 

Here's another set of photos where a close up is helpful. 

Excellent camo, it's those ears that gave her away! 

See 'em?

 

They were singing pretty loud yesterday when I went down to feed the mares. The mares were spotting them across the river to the north as I was preparing to go out, I thought it might be deer or the neighbor's horses. 

Until I heard them sing, that is. 

Critters

 I had a nice visit with Shayla the other day- and I got to see her new baby dwarf goat!

He's pretty darn cute!

And tiny! 4 days old in this photo. 

The cold snap sent me into hibernation, didn't do much except watch the Fort Worth rodeo on the Cowboy Channel and watch all the deer in the yard. They come right up to the house and clean up the spilled bird seed and check for sidewalk salt. 

They are into the hay now too, I had to cover the back side of the bales in the stack . The couldn't get into the bales I feed from so they headed over to the stack yard. Brats. 

The coyotes are pretty vocal lately. We have spotted them several times in the same area, just across the river from the mare's pasture.

We figure they have a den down there.

Velvet's (assumed) baby belly

I decided not to blanket Beamer for this cold snap- which only lasted 2 days- and he did very well. All haired up and not shivering. Yay, he has finally climatized to these Alberta winters again!

At least we have pretty skies in the morning and January is almost over. 

But that means... the dreaded February Blahs are coming!

Jupiter! and bandits

 Did anyone get to see Jupiter? I managed to get a quick shot this morning just before 7 am . Not the best as I didn't have time to set up the tripod, but there she is an all her gas giant brightness along with 2 of her moons. 

After chores I was blessed to see this lovely sunrise- what a great morning!

Unedited photo

I had the game cam set up the last couple of days to see who is eating the cat food again. 

This is the feral mama cat who is supposed to be eating the food....

and these are the bandits who are helping themselves! So I'm back to only putting the food out in the daytime. 

I got the horse trailer moved into position today for trailer training. Leading them up to it was pretty much all we accomplished, so I turned them loose and let them graze the grass in the entrance as well as help themselves to the hay I placed in there, which they nibbled but didn't go in for the stuff at the back. 

Nope nuh uh not going in there. 

That's close enough!

It's ok that they didn't load, there's lots of time. This isn't my normal program; usually I feed them grain for a week or so then introduce them to eating grain at the entrance to the trailer, then further in etc. but with these two we aren't feeding grain so hay it is. Their daytime hay will be in there, so they will get used to it eventually. It's a little tougher with 2 foals instead of dealing with them one at a time. So it's easier to just allow them to self load. 

Quiet week

 Not a lot going on here this week. We had a snow squall blow through, followed by cold sunny days and apparently we are getting back into wet weather starting late today. 

The racoon (s) is back, so far it hasn't been a pest and I only know it's here by the tracks in the snow. 

The neighbours have seem 2 very large ones recently, however this was a solo set of tracks. 

The horses are all shedding now with Sophie being the slowest. Probably because she's a prairie horse and hasn't acclimated to our milder climate here in the Creston Valley.  I am starting to wonder if I was seeing things with her belly as she has not gotten much larger in the last month. But with maiden mares it's hard to tell. 

Beamer is getting *ahem* fluffy now that his teeth are done and I had to take him off his grain/alfalfa pellet supplement. 

Those poor knees 💔

He is 21 this year. It makes me sad to know that his years grow short. I couldn't have asked for a better stallion. He has the best disposition anyone could ask for. If it wasn't for those knees I would still be riding him. 

I am hoping that the rest of March will be warm enough to melt the snow so I can get back in the saddle. However, I probably won't be doing solo rides through the bush here for a while as the bears are starting to come out of hibernation, and a grizzly does live in this area. So I will stick to a less wild area when I start riding Sophie. 

Still think it may possibly be a baby belly!

Deer spotting

Really enjoying the sunny days we are blessed with now. The pattern is melt down during the day and freeze up at night, which makes the driveway look like this:

But it sure is pretty, with the half moon in the sky every morning.

Sophie had a hair appointment with Jack Frost.

I'm working on catching Sophie every day even if I don't do much with her once she's caught. It's the catching that is the project. 

I got the usual runaround, but it was a little more half hearted. 

Today's evasion ended when she spotted deer on the hillside. At this point I walked up to her and caught her and we stood together and watched the deer traverse the hillside. 

She likes it when I check out what she's focused on. I bet she was a good horse for hunting, she sure can spot even the tiniest movement. 

I worked her for a few minutes on just circling and moving her hip over as well as roll backs to change direction- she was light as a feather, but seems to want to quit a bit when working to the right so I just have to be ready to drive her forward when she hesitates. 

We are in for another week of this weather, with a little rain mixed in- sure hope it melts that snow pack. I had to move Jayne completely out of the foaling pen as it is flooding the stall with the run off and then freezing it . But she and Sophie are getting along pretty good. With both pens open they have a lot of room to move around.

Whassat?

What has the horses all curious?

This morning, there was something afoot in the neighbourhood.

Jayne giving it a thorough inspection.. You never know if it eats horses!

Not sure yet...

Then Jayne says, it's ok....

It's only bacon seeds.

But we will keep an eye on them just in case!

The neighbours brought home 5 piglets last night. The horses are separated at night now, with Jayne in the foaling pen, so she didn't realize what was going on until this morning. 

Drifter day 11 and trail time

A while ago I read something about the Sun Frost horses, that they don't like to be nagged, just give them a job let them figure it out and then leave them alone. So, with that in mind, we came to the conclusion that Drifter was bored with being led around his small pen. So, we changed it up and took him into the adjacent pen, where Rose lives and put Rose in his pen meanwhile- and he led like a champ!

Shayla did some work on asking him to back up, and picked up his feet too. Later on in the day, we decided that he was good to take his first walk out of the pens. He got to go explore a bit, greet the mares who bothered to come up and visit, and even posed for a photo for his registration papers.

Not the best photo, but since I broke my big camera cell phone pics will have to do. Now if only his ears were forward.... may have to take more to get a better photo.
I have had a couple more rides, one was just the trails out back on a pretty fall day.



We found a nice spot down by the river for photo ops.

I think the horses enjoy the view as much as we do!

The next ride was all about ponying Mesa saddled.

She's just one of the girls now! Stands for saddling, is mostly good about standing tied although she does test it a time or two.
 This was her first time ponying saddled and I wanted to take her through all the trails in the bush to get her used to the sound of brush on the saddle.
However...
Gussie went on high alert as soon as we went near the pond. I pushed on, and big Red was still on high alert, and then Rose was too. As I tried to branch off down a trail, Shayla spotted what the mares were kerfuffled about. In my defense, I had my hands full with Gussie and Mesa so I wasn't looking around much!

Can you see it? (Love the double ear cam! Rose and Goose)

How about now?
A cow moose and her calf - we decided they had the right-away and retreated.  We headed back through the yard and off to the trail that leads to the swimming hole and then back along the dyke and home again.
No wild life, but there were people with dogs, and a quad with a dog, so lots of things for Mesa to look at. She did pony really well, I'm pretty happy with her.

Riding day 77 and 78

Down the trail and up a tree

After a few days of rain I got in a nice trail ride on Gussie a couple of days ago. I had given her some time off partly because of the rain and partly because I just trimmed her front feet and had to take them quite short to get rid of the lingering hoof wall separation. I ride her barefoot and it is fairly rocky here, but she seems to be handling it quite well.
I took Tay with me- she is a pain in the butt,  because she  circles the horse and takes little dives at her- Gussie kicked out at her once. But Tay loves coming with so I am hoping we will sort  that out.

As we rode along the dyke I saw the raccoon crossing in front of us, it went up a tree and I got a cute picture of it.

He has been leaving the barn and cats alone so I'm leaving him alone.

The river is staying within it's banks so far, however we are in sunny weather now so I think a lot more runoff will be coming. I think the river will be ok but there could be issues with some of the creeks.

During high water you really get a feel for how powerful water is. This is the same spot where I took the video the other day.

There are lots of areas where the water table has risen enough to be standing water on the trails- not flooding, just high water table as we are so close to the river. 

I think Gussie is really enjoying getting out on the trails, she even volunteered to lope on a nice section of the trail. Big smile!
I had a really nice ride on Gussie yesterday. Everything is clicking and falling into place now.
She stands still when I get on.
She is carrying herself in frame in circles much better- only one time when she got heavy on the forehand and dove into the bit on the right circle.
She has the dwell down pat.

In this photo, Mesa was calling to her but she didn't move at all. I was just sitting there soaking up the feeling of the nice circles, and how she stayed in frame and guided with the lightest of touch of my legs.
I took her down to the bottom trails, most of which are under water now between here and the dyke, we checked out where the pond overflow streams onto the neighbour's property and found a nice branch of blossoms to bring home for Ted.

Riding day 26 & 27