New Year's Eve

There was enough snow to make a delightful ride today. I saddled up Beamer and we had a lovely peaceful ride. 

Come along for the ride!

 

It was so nice riding a shorter horse! I had to get off to move some fallen branches and it is so much easier to get on Beamer than Gussie!

It wasn't a long ride out of deference to Beamer's bad knee, but enough to lift my spirits and Beamer's too- he just loves getting out. 

Oh... by the way....

 Moondance sends everyone New Years kisses!

Riding day 59

Good riddance 2020

Well.... 2020 was certainly not what I expected. My key words for the year were patience and persistence, and my patience was certainly tried with all the hoo ha going on about the virus and the unbelievable way the governments of the world handled it. And as far as persistence went.... there were lots of times when I had to question just what I was being persistent about! 

The one time persistence paid off was teaching Moondance to trailer load. He was pretty sure his little footies should not go in the trailer, but with patience and persistence, and the help of my niece Bridget, he finally figured it out , and then he owned it. 

This video was the first time he loaded- after that he flat said no for about a week, then eventually got over it with a lot of help placing one foot  in the trailer while he ate. 

I haven't actually hauled him anywhere, that will be happening this spring or maybe sooner. 

A bright spot in the year was finding Jayne. What a nice old mare she is! She is such a gentle soul. From what I have been able to find out about her she was injured in the knee about 7 or 8 years ago and then sold as a broodmare, where she didn't get handled a lot and got to be a little stand offish around people. The lady I bought her from did a nice job of rebuilding her trust and now Jayne is quite happy to get loved on and told she is beautiful. The cold weather is bothering her knee though, so that is something I will have to monitor as time goes by, just as I am doing with Beamer. 

Speaking of Mr. Handsome....

He is doing well this year, the Protandim made a huge difference for him and he is walking as sound as possible given his arthritis, which is now starting on his right knee. 

He seems to like getting visits from Moondance, who is not intimidated by Beamers very loud greeting 

Gussie's fecal water problem comes and goes, now it seems to be in remission. There is some news coming up about Gussie and Belle, but I will leave that for another post.

You gotta wait!

I plan to get one more ride in this year, either today or tomorrow, and it will be on Beamer, just a short ride to get him out and about.

I got Ted a game cam for Christmas and set it up in the barn to see who was helping the cats eat their catfood. I figured it was a feral ( or roaming domestic) cat I have seen a few times, and sure enough....

Meet Freddy the Freeloader.  He's pretty fat so I am assuming a fixed male, probably a wandering domestic instead of feral.

I think he's the reason my cats have been wanting to come to the house more often.

Tess is doing very well, she is enjoying her home made meals so much that she won't eat the dry dog food any more even if I mix it with meat. Can't say as I blame her! So I will give it to the neighbours for their dog.

I hope you, dear readers, are all doing well; I know some of you have had a lot of heartache this year with the pandemic and how much our lives have been changed. I keep in my prayers all who have asked, and pray that we will all be able to adapt as our world keeps changing. God has a plan, and I trust in Him, while doing my best to be prudent and watchful. 

2020 felt a lot like being in prison, at least I can only assume what that would be like.

My key word for 2021 is Faith.

Wishing all a Christmas blessing

Merry Christmas to all of you wonderful people!  

 That was all the snow we got; I was hoping we would have more and I could do a nice snowy photo shoot - but our little valley got 3 days of heavy rain while everywhere else got snow.

At least the view is pretty!

Wishing you all a blessed Christmas - stay safe, stay healthy, and let your light shine .

Tess update

Thanks everyone for your support and helpful tips for my beloved Tess. 

She is getting around much better now, - I am so thankful it turned out to be vestibular and not stroke. 

Now when she goes outside, she doesn't bounce off the wall as she goes out, she is much steadier on her feet. She doesn't go splat  (much) any more, just the odd time when she tries to shake her fur and loses her balance. 

Her appetite seems to have returned. I have been making her food, usually pasta, eggs, meat and whatever veggie I can find that she will eat, and lately started adding in canned dog meat, which she finally is eating again. (Her new favourite is turkey & venison) She also gets a big spoonful of canned pumpkin in the morning- that seemed to be the thing that helped her appetite. I opted to go for the simplest route first instead of buying stuff from the drug store to help the nausea, as that's just the way I roll. 

It does my heart good to see her getting out and wandering around, even making her trip down to the barnyard when she thinks I am not looking (she won't go there with me).

Aside from the head tilt 

and that she won't walk on the bare floors in the house, she is almost back to her old self! I indulge her by putting old towels down for the areas she prefers- mostly under the kitchen table, it has become her den. We usually eat in the living room anyway, and don't entertain any more. 

Meanwhile, the winter solstice is coming in as a very soggy, wet, muddy day! I'm hoping to get a few Christmas photos with Moondance over the next 2 days, but meanwhile here is my yard décor 

and my tree.

I rode past that tree several times this summer and finally it was time for it to grace my home to celebrate the birth of Christ. I will try for better photos of it but with it against a window it is really tricky to get a daytime photo with my cell phone, and my big camera only has a zoom lens. We shall see what I can come up with!

Things

As the mild weather continues, and the sun was shining, I took a quick little ride on Gussie, just enjoying the late fall scenery and marvelling at how each season has it's own beauty. There was a little bit of snow left from a few days ago, what the rain didn't melt away; just enough to cushion the rocky ground along the top of the dyke.

Then there were the rocks-  I marvelled at how life can grow on pure stone.

Around here there is a painted rock meme going...

Apparently you are supposed to turn them over to get the cute message on the other side, but since I was riding bareback that wasn't an option.

The river still runs clear and cold....

Our long shadow from the late afternoon sun....

Ponderosa pine with water droplets caught my eye.....

as did the way the sun highlighted just two tree trunks.

Just some of the things that delighted me on our ride- as well as how easy it was to guide Gussie with just a light pressure from the calf of my leg. I'm sure she was enjoying it as much as I was!

Riding day 58

Some thoughts on horse breeding

Let's talk about horse breeding in this post. 

On so many of the Facebook pages I used to follow, whenever this subject came up the general consensus was that a person should only breed their mare to the top stallions whose get were bringing in the most money, or stallions who had the most money earned. This, because of the cost of breeding and the small time breeder wanting to be sure to have a marketable foal to get a return on their investment. Of course, with AI it's possible to breed a mare to any stallion if you have enough money. 

While financial concerns are important especially these days, for me the betterment of the breed is more paramount. 

Creating the best individual horse should be the focus of breeding, to my mind. I'm only a small time breeder myself, and keeping within the confines of my income meant having my own stallion. I was fortunate to have a mare in Coyote Belle who is unrelated to Beamer in 5 generations, hence a good example of hybrid vigor in their foals. That being said, I am not against line breeding, as it has served to produce excellent horses. Drifter was a line bred Driftwood horse, and Driftwood breeders have done an excellent job of line breeding and keeping the best individual horses in the breeding pool.

 Check out this link to an email from AQHA explaining hybrid vigor.

For me, the success of my breeding program, small as it is, is in the quality of the foals Beamer has sired. They may not be many, but they are all good individuals, and Moondance is as good a representative of them as any foal I have raised.

Who, me?

I don't know what his future holds, but if possible and the world doesn't go bonkers, the plan is to show him, find out where his niche is, and stand him at stud. I may be whittling down the number of horses I own but sometimes you have to keep the good one(s)!

Tess

Tess turned 14 on October 26th. I figured she would be like her mama Reba who made it to 15 and a half. Now I'm not so sure. You see, she had a stroke nearly a week ago. At first I was puzzled, as in the middle of the night she was having trouble getting up and kept falling down. It happened overnight. I thought she maybe had a pinched nerve or something as the only symptom seemed to be her hind end was wobbly. She would try walking and go splat. But the next morning, she was worse.... and her head was tilted off to her right. That's when I knew it was a stroke, which explained the sudden onset from perfectly healthy old dog to  not being able to walk properly. 

I did my online research and the type of stroke she had is hemorrhagic. It said low dose aspirin to prevent or remove blood clots so that's what I have her on. 

My biggest problem is getting her to eat. She won't touch the food I had been feeding her, so I found some frozen turkey meat and got her to eat that, then went and got her some raw food dog food. She ate that for 2 meals, then started to refuse to eat again. If I can get her to eat once a day I call it a win, but it's about a quarter of what she used to eat. 

I sure hope she pulls through. 

Update in comments!

We saw

Busy place around here with the sawmill going. Took Gussie for a little bareback ride to check it out in action

.

The guys had cut down a few trees that had fallen with a bit of debris on the dyke so I rode up there to check it out, and look what we saw. 

Wait for it....

Pretty cool for this time of year!

The other day when they first set up the sawmill I took Beamer down to check it out; there were a couple of little kids there with their dad and the girl got to get her first ever time on a horse and ride on his handsome self. I didn't get a photo but her dad took a few. The little boy was funny, he declined to ride, saying "maybe when I'm 9 I'll ride ".... hahaha his sister is 9.

Beamer, of course was perfect for the little girl.

Riding day 56 & 57

Winter projects

It's kinda nice that December is starting off mild. Since I am not using stock tank heaters at this point, I don't have to deal with a lot of ice on the water tanks yet. I have been trying the salt water bottles with limited success.

I have been using pop bottles, I think they are tougher plastic than the milk jugs. I started putting them in before it got to freezing hard because I wanted to see if a certain little busy body would think they were toys and try to grab them out and play with them. But to my surprise he didn't. 

I was visiting a friend and here is what her winter set up looks like:

The tank is inside one box and surrounded by styrofoam, and then a larger box built around that with spray in insulation. You can't do a spray insulation around the stock tank itself because you need to be able to remove it to clean it. She does have an electric heater in hers, and this set up would probably reduce the amount of electricity needed to keep the water at the temperature of the thermostat on the tank heater.

Ted picked up some plywood to start this project, hopefully he will get to it soon. He has a few other things on his agenda right now. We have a friend with a portable sawmill and they have been busy falling danger trees at a friends place as well as a few trees here to be cut up for lumber. We will get some of the lumber for a few projects. 

I rode Gussie down to where they felled the danger trees- check out the size of these cottonwoods.

They have been cut into 16 ft. lengths. That should be some nice lumber! 

Riding day 55

Contemplating this changing world

It has been a bit since I posted, because I am trying to figure out which direction my journey with horses is going given the current world situation. Economic collapse, social upheaval and persecution… it's enough to make your head swim. 

How can I justify breeding more horses if there are no buyers and I don't have a huge ranch to let them live out their lives? 

So far, I have one concrete decision- I will not be breeding the mares back next spring. These 2 foals on their way may well be the last Beamer babies to be born. He will be 20 next year, and his arthritis while seeming to be at bay, has now started to appear in his other knee. I have no idea how long he will be sound and happy. So it is one season at a time with him. 

My mares have some age on them- 17, 18 and 19 next year. I may try to rehome the 2 broodmares and just have Gussie to ride and Moondance to be my replacement riding horse when he is old enough.

Gussie's health is an issue; she has fecal water syndrome and I am thinking it is because of a hind gut issue related to fresh grass and what little alfalfa is in the hay I have- she has always been sensitive to both fresh grass and alfalfa. I wasn't able to buy straight grass this year. This issue has caused another issue with her- a heavy vaginal discharge which is probably because of the fecal water entering via the vulva. I'm pretty sure she is no longer pregnant to Drifter. A blessing in disguise.

That is 2 days from the last butt wash I gave her. Poor Gussie... I have to braid her tail otherwise it gets really dirty. I sure hope it goes away soon. It seems to come in cycles, has been going on since spring so I am wondering if it is related to her heat cycles too.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying a warm November- it is the nicest November we have had in a while- our grass is still green and growing and to my surprise my magnolia bush decided to start budding out. I hope it will be ok next spring. 

It was such a nice day that I saddled up the ole red mare and ponied Moondance. 

Off to the river we went- Moondance didn't want to go in at first but finally I tricked him into it and he was fine. 

 Lovely setting sun highlighting Gussies carrot top mane

The river still runs clear, not a hint of ice now. But with December almost upon us I expect that will change soon.

Riding day 54

Happy happy

One of the good things that has happened this year is that Beamer's soundness has improved. He is no longer foot sore, and his arthritic knee seems to be holding it's own, no further advancement in the calcification. The biggest improvement came when I started him on Protandim, aka the Little Yellow Pill aka Nrf2. Literally within 2 days there was a marked improvement. Before that I was trying Prevacox- and y'all know how much I distrust pharmaceuticals; but I was at the point that something needed to change. 2 weeks of that treatment did absolutely nothing, so I switched to Protandim. I had been taking it myself for a couple of months and was pleased with how it helped my overall wellbeing, so figured I had nothing to lose.  I am so glad I switched! Other than Protandim he also gets 2 ounces of Camelina oil on his morning feed, and as a topical dressing on his knee I mix 4 drops of Clove essential oil with about 2 times as much of my homemade sticky bud oil. (The sticky buds of poplar trees mixed with Camelina oil or olive oil for a couple of weeks and then strained). All of these have anti inflammatory properties. 

Anyway... here is the proof about how good he is feeling.

This is the river crossing that I took the girls to on the beginning of our last ride. I didn't want to overwork Beamer's knee, so I kept the ride short. Probably about a half hour. He was happy, I was happy and it was a great day!

Riding day 53

Another autumn ride

A couple of the girls hauled here and we went for a ride to show them where the river crossings are and where they can access them from the other side. I live along the Goat River, on the north side of us is a high bank that divides us from the town of Ericson/Creston and across the river there is a climb that brings you up onto the hayfields and orchards of Lister. Accessing these crossings from there wasn't always possible because of the landowners, but they have recently put in a gate at one of them and allow horses to cross through- we are all appreciative! This allows me to ride from my place to a couple of friends places in about 15 minutes or so without having to hook up the trailer and haul. And now they can ride over here too. 

Happy smiling faces high above the first river crossing

Coming down the hill to the second river crossing, We usually stop here to take a photo, in case it looks familiar.

Once back on my side of the river I took them out on the lease ride, and at the end of it I had cleared the way through the narrow gate and placed some rocks in strategic spots so we could ride down across the rip rap that lines the dyke; there was one spot where the rocks were small and made a narrow path down to a rideable area, but there were a few holes that could trap a hoof so the day before I filled them all in. Just beyond this gate is a huge mudslide from a few years ago that obliterated any trails, so now we were exploring.

We rode as far as we could  between the high bank and the river, with the idea that we were looking for a way to scale that bank on horseback so that the lady who lives in Erickson (on the blue roan) cold ride down from her place. We had to turn back at one point or ride through the river to continue, so we called it. On the way back we did some bushwacking closer to the high bank to see if we had missed any possible trails. 

The turnback spot

In this photo you can see the mudslide in the background. One of the riders had scrambled up a little rocky draw to see if it was passable on horseback; it wasn't.

Over all it was a great ride, lots of fun and adventure. First river crossing for P, the lady on the blue roan, who is my barefoot trimmer and moved out here from Quebec.

A note about that blue roan, it's a lovely quiet mare, about 18 years old (all the horses pictured are `17, 18, and 18). 

An interesting thing about that blue roan- it's a Nokota Horse Check out the link, it's an interesting story.

Riding day 52

Fun with Moondance

Now we enter into the fun part of working with Moondance. Let the sacking out and obstacle courses begin!

One of my tools is a raggy old white tarp. You may remember past posts like when I was working with Drifter with this tarp. It's one of those tarps that has a fibre woven through it so it doesn't easily get holes in it, like for example from little hooves! Perfect for little creatures to stomp, chew, and drag.

First I drag the tarp into the pen while leading him, to gauge whether he is curious or fearful.

Well that's good! Curious colts are much easier to work with than fearful reactive ones. 

Next step is … well a step! will he walk over it? 

That didn't take long! From there, I picked it up and bunched it up and let him get used to the sound and feel of it, before putting it on his back. 

Then it was time to see if he would walk with it on his back. 

Instinct took over.....

so I spent more time rubbing him with it, and draping it on him before asking him to move with it on one more time.  

I love how unconcerned he was when it dropped off him. He is such a good minded colt! 

We ended the session there. 

The next day, I ponied him on the trails- out on the lease, and it was such a lovely day. Being a Monday, I was pretty sure we wouldn't see anyone walking their dogs, and I was right. It was such a perfect ride. I had done the Masterson Method on Gussie the day before,- I only got to step 3, but got tons of releases- and she was really relaxed. Such an enjoyable ride. 

We went to the end and checked out the gate that leads to places I haven't explored yet, I plan to come with an ax and clear the brush to make it easier to get through this very narrow gate, then take Gussie by herself and do some exploring.

On the way back, Gussie stepped up the pace a little but, without breaking into her usual little jog. Moondance had to lengthen his stride to keep up, but he didn't trot. Pretty good for a colt who will only be 6 months old in a couple of days.

Back home, , standing tied for a while before being turned back into pasture.

Just a couple o' good horses. 

Riding day 51

In the crisp clear air

I do love autumn riding! So beautiful and crisp, not hot and not cold, no pesky bugs- perfect!

Took Moondance for a little stroll, started on the road before heading down into the brush. We had to pass the neighbour's dogs who rush the fence and yell fiercely. I kept Gussie on the dog side, she pretty much ignores them. Moondance got a little up on his toes but Gussie's calmness let him know there was nothing to worry about.

As I was taking this video I was imagining how it will be when I eventually get to ride him and look at the world through those cute li'l ears!

Next day I rode Gussie, first a bit of a schooling ride on the property- she is so stiff to the right again. I need to take the time to do the Masterson Method on her and see if I can get her to loosen up. 

Then we rode out onto the lease that actually didn't get used by the cow guy this year, and it shows. There is a lot of grass in there!

This spot is usually grazed right down

The road to the view

That is a huge cedar tree! It may not look like it in this photo but it's about 4 ft across at the base.

I spend a lot of time on this ride looking up at the trees, there are huge cottonwoods/poplar trees that draw the eye upwards. Some of them are gnarly and broken so I also check for broken branches that are barely suspended and likely to fall- widowmakers, they call them.

On my way back there were a couple with their Rottweiler dog who came up from the river and were walking back . I called out a hello but they didn't hear me, although their dog did. He was interested in us and they weren't too successful in getting him to come back to them. Gussie isn't afraid of dogs, but with a loose dog like that one thing I always do is turn my horse to face the dog as it circles us. As I told the people, (who were busy telling me that their dog is really nice and not mean at all) that one kick from my horse could kill their dog. They were quick to put a leash on him after that!

We have a couple more nice days in the forecast so I want to keep riding as long as I can before it gets rainy again, which is in the forecast.

Riding day 49 and 50

Beamer photo shoot

Beamer got some turnout the other day in the foaling pen, which is next to the mare's pen. He had a blast! Lots of hollering at first, and then the mares stood back far away from him- except Jayne who has much less drama then Gussie and Belle. She just calmly kept munching on her hay pile. 

There were several times when Beamer did his power take off and exploded into a gallop as he went from the smaller enclosure into the bottom part of the pen, but I didn't manage to capture it in a photo as I was just enjoying watching him- such a powerful horse! And a couple of times Moondance visited with him at the fenceline and they matched steps running along it. 

Lots of teeth clacking going on there

Sire and son

Digging in...

Keeping in frame....

Shenanigans...

Making sure I am getting all the good shots....

Once he wore off some of his exuberance it was posing time - and he sure can strike a pose!

He still makes my heart go pitterpat, and I still feel blessed to have him in my life. 

That's all folks!