Gussie and Ruby

 Last time I visited Shayla, I took a couple photos of Gussie. 

Her filly, the lovely Huckleberry (Pie) was weaned in January and now Gussie is living in the mare herd. But not for long!

Hey, Gussie-

I have news for you!

Umm, Gussie? Hello?

Well, I guess she will find out soon enough. 

She is coming back to live with me! Hopefully this week. Big Red will be reunited with her bff, Belle.

Gussie is 21 this year, and I will be using her as my main riding horse. I have no plans to get any more foals from her- she should be carrying a Beamer baby for Shayla as she was bred last September. If so, I should be able to ride her up until July. I'm pretty happy to get her back! Yes she does have some issues, but I know her so well that it isn't really a problem. 

Of course, you are probably wondering, what about Ruby? Well, I have decided to put Ruby up for sale  after she foals. If she has a colt, I would let her go with the foal at side, but if it's a filly, not until weaning time. Much as I like Ruby, I just don't connect with her. She needs someone to give her more consistent riding than I can, whereas Gussie will be fine with the light riding that I do. I like horses that like people, and Ruby just tolerates people. Unless of course, food is involved!

 She can occasionally be helpful

I have done some research on her pedigree, and she is a nice cross between cutting blood on the sire's side, including a NCHA Derby champion, Docs Lynx, and on her bottom side several versatile show horse champions, so her foal should be pretty handy- and being a Beamer baby it will be good looking too! 

So those are the main changes happening here at Diamond Lazy H Quarter Horses this year. 

Beauty full

 Painted by the Master's Hand. 

One of my favourite things is to watch the sunrise skies. These wide open spaces allow for some spectacular and awe inspiring views as the colours slowly appear, come to their full glory in the east and glow in the west. I am blessed to live here; our last place had such a small section of sky that we rarely got the full morning glory. But we did have those amazing mountains! There is always beauty wherever we are. 

Smudge and Misty remind me that not all beauty is in the skies! They took full advantage of the straw bedding I put out for the mares. 

Yes, I get an eyeful of beauty every day!

Some horse updates

 Well that 10 days went by fast! Since I last posted we had major temperature swings in the weather-  cold nights, warm days, then cold days, then warm days- gah! But we are on the upswing now. 

Beamer and Belle got their blankets off a few days ago; I'm sure they appreciated that!

The short portion of her mane is how much it has grown since September, that was all rubbed out. I love all the colours she has in her mane. 

Yes Velvet, you also have a beautiful mane. 

One of the reasons for my delay in posting is that I planned a trip up to see Shayla and take photos of a couple horses she is selling. First up is her paint colt, Zipper. 

Speaking of manes, his is sure colourful!

Zipper is a really good minded colt who is going to be really, I mean really, big. 

He's a weanling and is already up to Shayla's shoulder! I didn't get a lot of photos of him because we wanted to concentrate on Boe photos. Yes, he was put up for sale. We took him to the round pen for the photo session. 

He's literally the spitting image of Beamer only in red. He carries himself beautifully, and even yawns like his daddy!

We took some video for his sale ad. This was only his second time of being worked in the round pen; he was very good. 

We also worked him in hand a little. Just following the feel of the lead rope, and he was beautifully soft. 

I'm pretty proud of the quality of foals Beamer sires off different mares. They are all good horses!

Anyway, our work paid off; Shayla posted him on FB and he was sold within a day and a half!  He will be going to a working cattle ranch only an hour from here. 

Beautiful boy

He might be leaving but I think we will be able to follow his progress as both his owner and the lady who will be starting him are on FB. The trainer's page is Anchor S Equine.

Is it really done?

 Well, after a week of the arctic vortex stifling us, we are back in more seasonal weather. It warmed up by 30 Celcius degrees to -12C!

 I took advantage of the cold frosting on the windows to capture a few shots of what I call, frost flowers. 

To me, those ones look like they are dancing. What else is there to do at minus stupid weather!

I await the coming of spring when I can grow real flowers!

The mares shed their snow blankets as of last night- I guess they figured the -25C was pretty balmy.

 Compared to the last photo of Velvet, this is all that is left. Ruby too has normal looking hair, not all frost covered and making her look like a roan. 

For the discerning eye- yes she does have a capped hock, I almost didn't buy her when I saw that; she had a scrape on that leg that told me she had kicked something and probably got the leg stuck somehow. However, it is a blemish and not a lameness. 

No Ruby. I don't have any treats and you are still too frosty for kisses!

I found this photo of Mesa on the FB page of the lady who owns her now (she calls her Mindy) ; looks like she also handled the cold snap well. Not hurting for feed that's for sure!

We are getting snow, the kind that is like a drizzle if it was rain. We do have more in the forecast, but at least it's warmer! I'll take it! Actually, southern Alberta has been in a terrible drought and with heavy snow predicted for them, it will be most welcome, I'm sure. The last week of the month, we will be in plus temps, so I bet a lot of it will melt. 

Officially stupid cold!

 

'Nuff said. We are about 10 miles from there and were a couple degrees "warmer". 

By the time I went out to do chores it was -38 here, at least no wind. I had fed everyone extra last night, so the horses (and barn cats) were just fine. The 2 pregnant mares don't hang out in their shelter so I feed them on the leeward side of the top barn, and I put a bale of straw down for them to lay on if they felt inclined (they weren't) . They had white mascara on this morning though, and heavy snow blankets. 

Where does the ground stop and  the horse begin? 

During the day I saw Ruby keeping an eye on something going on south of us. There is a big hayfield, bordered by the now frozen river, and on the other side of that is a feed yard for cattle so I thought maybe she was listening to cows. (There were no coyotes to be seen. )

That is, until I did my evening chores and both mares really were on high alert. 

What's out there, Ruby Roo?

Turns out, there were 3 moose making their way along the river banks to the hayfield . The mares gave them the hairy eyeball until they were well out of sight before they relaxed enough to eat their evening hay. 

Tonight we are supposed to go down to -45Celcius, and 2 more days of this weather before it starts moving off and warming up, which of course will bring on the snow. One thing I have to watch our for is if today's sun melts the snow on the mares backs enough to make ice- if it does, I will have to scrape them off and blanket them. 

Wordless Wednesday

 

It's here....

 The first cold snap of winter has hit. I'm thankful that it waited until January! We were -28 C  (-18.5 F) overnight, and expect down to -41C overnight on Thursday night. 

We had a heavy fog the first day of the cold snap, it lasted the whole day and the next morning it was c-c-c-c-cold! But made for good frost photos. 

Chore time in the mornings is nippy! Brought out the big down work coat today. 

The mares and Beamer were a bit frosty but seemed to be plenty warm enough. I blanketed Belle yesterday as she doesn't move around as much as the other mares. I tried out Beamer's Weatherbeeta blanket on her and it fit better than the one I had on her earlier in the season. 

I can always use the other one on Beamer if needed; actually most of my blankets were his anyway! I don't think Ruby and Velvet will need blanketing- although maybe Velvet when we hit that -41. 

I have considered buying a Back on Track winter blanket for Belle- but the one I want is over $400... so maybe a liner to put under her regular blanket is a better idea. I do use Back on Track products for myself, in particular the "dog bed" which is just a pad of the right size for lying on and helps greatly with my bad back and even rolled up and put around my neck and shoulders when I get a headache. We also have their gloves, both dress style and the fleece fingerless ones. 

Hang in there Ruby, this too shall pass!

2024

 Well here we are at another new year. That last one went by fairly quickly- is it just me or is time speeding up? Overall it was a fairly good year- I got to visit with family, at least some of them, and Ted got to spend time with his family too. One of my sisters moved close to here so it's wonderful having family that close again. 

We are slowly getting this place set up to our liking; we signed a 5 year lease so that helps us to want to get a few projects done. The big one for this year is setting up some kind of hay shed- I really dislike having tarped hay. Too much goes to waste no matter how rigorously you tarp, the Alberta wind  has ways of rearranging things! And with hay this  last year averaging $200 for a 1200 to 1400 lb. bale, wasting any hay is not an option. I'm hoping this won't be a disastrous year for hay production. 

Speaking of the hay burners...

Did you say hay? 

Velvet is getting to the wide load stage....

Baby on Board

I saw a post on FB where someone was asking for old wives tales about predicting foal gender. Some folks swear by the one where if the mare is carrying low it's a colt, carrying high it's a filly. Hmmm... Belle always carried low and she had mostly colts. Velvet appears to be carrying low, so maybe a colt for her? 

Ruby is carrying high and tight as can be expected for a maiden mare. Filly maybe? 

Shall we sing, I want a hippopotamus for Christmas? 

Sing it, Ruby!

The weather has been just lovely! Above freezing during the day and not too terribly cold at night. The wildlife have started coming back around. A small band of deer were investigating the spilled birdseed outside our living room window, and didn't mind me spying on them. 

And Humphrey is back!

When I turned the outside light on he fluffed up his quills but kept on eating the birdseed. We make sure he gets some if the deer don't leave him any. 

I took a sunrise photo the other day and was delighted to find a smiling face in it.

Can you see it?  Nice omen for starting off the new year.

 This is Misty, the female barn cat.  I saw Bandit breeding her just before he went missing in mid November and it looks to me like she may be carrying a kitten or two in there- due in a couple of weeks. In other barn cat news- Smokey has stopped hissing at me and has become quite friendly, even lets me pet him before and during feeding time. Progress!

Every year, a key word comes to me right at the beginning of the year. This time, my word for the year is Patience. Especially with myself, as I navigate the changes in physical and spiritual life that aging brings. But also with those around me both human and animal, and with all the things that I will be dealing with this year that may not be pleasing to me. 

Hope you all have a good year, and don't forget to always look for and find the beauty surrounding us.