Bugged

The mosquitoes that normally plague us are minimal this year- probably too hot for them. But other bugs are making up for it!
I have been bringing the horses in off pasture at midday as it is so hot and humid, and they have no shade to hide out in- except Beamer, who has trees and the side of a building. But today when I went to get him, I could see that he was pretty upset. As I was leading him in, he kept bucking at a big fly trying to land on him- until I swatted and killed it. Poor Beamer! Darn thing was huge!

Ignore all the gravel embedded on it from me stomping it! That's a matchbook next to it for size.

Then there's the wasps- darn things are prolific this year. They dive bomb me at my tackroom door because they have a nest in the tube for the track of the sliding door. Apparently they think the dog water tub is their personal swimming pool/fountain. At least they don't sting Amber when she jumps in to cool off.

The face flies are out even in the early mornings, so I make sure all the horses have their fly masks on. Everyone but Rio manages to keep their masks on- I think Kai is the culprit where Rio is concerned. Yesterday went something like this:

Turned Rio out this morning with fly mask. He rolls right away. Fly mask slips so that his ear comes out the center hole for the forelock. 

Mask gets re adjusted. Come home from work, no mask on. Replace mask. Catch Josie to bring in for a trim, get her in the stall and look back- Rio is doing perfect spins with his mask hanging off one ear. Grab camera but by then he has dropped the mask, stands there and looks at it. like "Oh, is that what was on my ear!"

 Put mask back on. Check the fit. Decide that perhaps this mask bothers his eyes so I don't think I'll put it back on him. Notice that Kai is standing there looking smug. Hmmmm. Think perhaps Rio had assistance in mask removal.

Kidz!!!

Beamer feet, and minions

Edited to add: Tara at luvmyhrs answered Calm Forward and Straight's comment about bars- very good info.


Warning possibly boring post unless you are a hoof nerd!

Beamer is walking much better today, the sprained leg is much better.. I have been working on his feet trying to rehab them from years of me not understanding proper hoofcare and since I have been following the ABC Hoofcare system, his feet keep on improving. Once in a while when I see changes  I am not expecting I get a little freaked. For example, we knew that the bar had overgrown and extended under his frog as well as pooling and growing over the apex of the frog. The other day, there was a clearly defined ridge of bar that went from the normal bar trail, all the way to the end of the frog, and I could see that it was underneath too. This isn't the best photo but it shows the ridge I'm talking about. Pink arrow is the normal bar, the blue arrow is the bar ridge that popped out.

 For perspective, this is the whole hoof with the same color arrows:

There are still issues with thrush and too deep of collateral groves- it's a work in progress. Anyway, I cleaned it up. This is after a White Lightning soak.

Tara pointed out a bar smear, and looking at the photo it's easy to find.
The bright green areas are bar smear that I removed today, and the blue outline is where I hadn't followed the bar trail with my knife quite deep enough to straighten out the bar line.

The really cool thing is that today, when I cleaned out his feet, the apex of the frog, which as you can see in the above photos is embedded, has popped free- at last!!!!

My hoof knife is under the tip of the frog. If you look at the above photos you can see that the tip of that frog was embedded yesterday, also how stretched out that frog has become; it is much more than the 2/3 frog 1/3 to the toe that it should be.

Here is the foot with the corrections done; you can see how much better the length of the frog is and where I did the adjustments to the bar. The frog on the lateral side is still embedded, so I'm hoping it will pop free soon too.
Beamer is enjoying the attention of my nieces- I call them his minions. For the sake of a little humour and because I don't have permission to post their photos on the internet, here are his minions tending to the king of the farm.

Family, and Beamer

Since coming back from Calgary it has been busy here. My sister came for a visit with her 3 daughters, so of course, they all got riding lessons on Beamer every day, then the raspberries are in full flush and need picking every day, we've been making jam from them and also had to pick the cherries and made jam with them too. 17 jars of jam put up so far! I want to get some apricots and make jam with them too- and maybe blueberry.
The kids went home - they live with their dad- and my sister is living with us now, and it sure is nice to have her here! She is my youngest sister.
Beamer had another girlfriend here, this time a Paint mare- this is Pepsi:

She has some good Quarter Horse bloodlines including Peppy San and Major Bonanza. A nice mare, who is being retired from riding because of allergies causing breathing problems when she gets to working.

Really looking forward to seeing that baby! I had to list Beamer with the Paint Horse association as a breeding stallion so that the  foal can be registered.
Meanwhile, Beamer sprained his ankle- I think he either laid down too close to the fence, or caught it when rolling, I could see a diagonal mark on the outside of his cannon bone. Cold hosing, essential oils and standing wraps and he is much improved today; he could barely put weight on it 5 days ago. He's on stall rest too, but he can move around as his "stall" is 20 x 40. The kids will be back this week so they will be disappointed that they can't ride, but I will teach other horsemanship stuff with them. They were doing great with haltering and leading Kai and Josie, so more of that, and I am teaching the oldest one how to longe- using Kai, who is such a sweetheart.
We worked an auction on Saturday and I came home with a brand new still-in-the-box ice cream maker for $20, we are making ice cream today! and we also bought a car, a 1978 Oldsmobile 98 in excellent condition: one owner and never winter driven. I love those big cars! Here she is:

She drives like silk! :)

A morning at Anchor D Guiding and Outfitting Ranch

The day I left Calgary to come home, I stopped for a quick visit at Anchor D Ranch- the place Ted and I got married, on horseback, in 1996. Dewy Matthews is the owner, and a long time friend. As I pulled in I could see that they had a big ride lined up as there were over 40 horses saddled and waiting for their riders. I had breakfast with them eggs benedict!!!- and did a photo shoot before I left.

The gorgeous log house

Snoozin' while he can

Dewy and his saddle

There's one in every crowd

This lady is a wrangler and a farrier

Saddled and waiting. How do you like that for a tack room?

Some lucky small child will get to ride Skookum

The horses that got the day off were napping in the sun

I'm pretty sure this young fella was posing for the camera (grin)

Peering between the logs of the round pen

When the sun goes down in Calgary and the wagons start to roll.....

Wow, the last week just flew by. I had full intentions of posting the Stampede Chuckwagons a week ago, but didn't have the time to edit photos. Got 'r' done now though! The evening show always starts with the National Anthem and a military helicopter flying the Canadian flag over the grandstand, and it was cool that I could get the moon in the photo too.

One of my favourite wagon drivers is Colt Cosgrave, and since we were able to stand near the fence I was able to get some close up shots. Here is his outfit:

The heat he was in had a wagon with an equipment failure during the practice turn, it looked like the pole came loose and the right wheeler stepped over it:

But in true wagon family style a bunch of people stepped in to help and got the team unhooked...

and another driver who was running in a later heat (Jamie Laboucaine) lent him his wagon and theey hooked up the team and ran the heat.
Anytime you work with horses, there can be mishaps as we all know. The next day after I took this photo of Tim Haroldson, he was injured in a morning practice run when the wagon he was riding in (not driving) caught a ridge in the barrel turn and flipped over, throwing him out. He was in the hospital for the duration of the Stampede but will be allright. He had actually planned on retiring at this Stampede, and auctioning off all his horses and gear, which they did although Tim wasn't able to leave the hospital to attend. They raised nearly $300,000; a nice retirement sum but not quite the way he wanted to go out- so this is probably a pic of his very last chuckwagon run.

There were a lot of good races, some exciting finishes and I just love the thunder of all those horse feet and the rattle of the wagons!

Kelly Sutherland turning the barrels:

A good clean turn off the 2 barrel with the outriders in perfect position:

Speaking of outriders....

I do like a grey horse, and there were a couple of them used by the outriders, as well of plenty of them on the wagons.
4 across coming out of the infield!

Jason Glass's lead team:

All in all it was a pretty good finish to a wonderful day at Stampede spent with my lovely daughter. The next morning I headed out and spent an hour or so at Anchor D Ranch, where Ted and I got married. But I'll save that for the next post! 

Calgary Stampede.... part one

Sunday I travelled to Calgary to spend time with my daughter who came all the way from Ontario- family stuff on her dad's side.  It was totally wonderful to get to spend Monday at the Stampede with her- more my thing than hers, but she is such a good sport!
One of the highlights of the day was the finals of the Cowboy Up Challenge, but before that we watched some other events like a demo of mini Chuckwagons- such cute little rascals!

 Some colourful teams too!

After that, there was Cowboy Mounted Shooting, and that interests me- I can see me doing that. Once I get Kai broke!
We headed over to watch Dan James (Double Dan Horsemanship). He had an interesting demo, explaining what cues he gives his horses for the liberty work- but it's a long video and I will have to edit it and upload it to You Tube at a later date, no time right now as I am working on painting my kitchen cupboards - a good thing to do to keep me out of the heat outside.
Watched a little bit of the cutting too, but I think it was boring for Jessi so we didn't stay long at that. I did really good not eating the junk food that abounded there- I did have a frozen fruit smoothie, roasted corn on the cob, and one of those foot long barbecued sausages. Mmmmm!
The Cowboy Up was a blast! I took lots of photos of the obstacles for our local club, who are putting on a competition in August. One of the unique ones was the suspension bridge..... I thought the horses would freak at the way it moved under them but they actually all did fairly well on it.

 I took a video of the last ride, which was the winning ride. Check out the most difficult obstacle; she did it in reverse order form the rest of the riders, which was a smart move; most riders did the tetter-totter, then the water obstacle and the narrow bridge. Kateri did the narrow bridge first which was smart, because most of the horses with wet feet slipped off the narrow bridge.
* It was a lot of fun to watch, and she was so cute when she realized she had won!

That's her brother, he competed too- his horse slipped and went down galloping around a corner, but they were both fine and continued on.

I guess he really did cowboy up!


Later on we went to watch the Chuckwagon Races, and I will save that post for tomorrow.

Mr. Kai

I am slowly making progress with Kai. Slow being my fault, not his, he picks up on things quickly. My problem is that I prefer to start colts in a round pen, and right now my round pen is being used for horse stalls. However, I have a plan for that that includes buying some 2x6 lumber and hard labour.

Showing his summer colour- lots of tan like his mama

Every morning, I work with Kai on the lead rope when I take the 3 kidz out to their pasture. Circles, yielding the hip, changes of direction, and yielding the shoulder as well as lateral flexion. This will be a big help when I get really serious about his training- meaning when I set up my round pen. We usually have a pretty good session, but this morning in the circle, every time he got to the part of the circle closest to his buddies, he tried to quit- the magnet effect. So I tried to anticipate him stopping and drive him a bit just before he got to his magnetic spot. At first, it made him blow sideways towards his buddies, but a couple of spanks with the lead rope, and he started paying more attention to me than the other horses. Of course, Josie had to come and investigate..... might have to put her to work too!

Who, me?

I keep the sessions short, and quit when he does everything well. This morning I got really nice sidepasses both directions, but I noticed when I asked for lateral flexion to the right, that he considered it a bit before he gave; not so much a physical thing but a mental one, like : "I don't wanna!" But I waited and once he figured it out that I wasn't going to give up, he gave me really nice bend, equally as far as he does on his left side. 

Kai loves praise, really reminds me of Beamer that way! Rio is different, more aloof, but Kai- and Josie, really love to be loved on.

The other thing I like- when I'm done working with him, he prefers to hang with me a bit, just in case, you know, that I might scratch his favourite spots or tell him again what a good boy he is. 

I think I have found the horse that will replace Stella in my affection and as my personal horse. (insert big smile!)

Happy birthday Beamer!

Cue Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" . Yes, the mare is finally in full standing heat so Beamer will spend his birthday doing his job. He is 13 today.

Outtakes

I always try to get good photos, - you know, well centred, correctly proportioned , good lighting, interesting subject, etc.
Well I actually like some of my outtakes - the ones that don't have all the horse in the photo, or something is just a little off. Like these:
In this one. Kai's ears are cut off- but it helps to focus on his beautiful eye.

In this next one, I was focused on Kai, on the left, as he galloped away, when Rio ran into the picture, resulting in only half the photo in focus.

Here I was panning along with Josie and Rio as they were goofing around, I like the angle Josie is on as it makes her look like she is just "dropping in". I could have cropped it from the withers forward, but decided to leave it as is.

In this one, I was trying to focus on Tess as she watched the horses, but instead got the grass in focus- an interesting oops!

This photo, I was trying to get Josie and Kai in full flight; I like the stretched out photos, but in this one they are all tight and goofy- but it does express their personalities. Grab a mouthful of grass, and dance around being silly!

Had to add in one more that I took early this morning. This is Beamer's girlfriend who was enjoying the early morning rays- darned if she didn't close her eyes just as I snapped the photo- but it adds to the sleepy morning vibe.