Simply Me

Patience has never been my strong suit

But, I guess I'm learning a little here and a little there. First, we had to wait 3 months for Baby to come home after we bought her. At least with our newest baby, I only have 2.5 more weeks. 

I got word from the breeder today that we're looking at October 9th for delivery. Wooohooo!

Guess I'd better place that order for a new halter :)

Ooops...we did it again :-O

Please let me introduce you to....Little Miss Sunshine:

Actually, she's currently called Buttefly...we'll have to decide if we'll keep it or not. Remember, Baby was supposed to be Fantine...LOL!

This little girl is posing with her daddy. If we were setup for him, I'd bring him home too. Incredibly sweet boy he is! They're a bit messy and the baby still has her baby fuzz coat. She'll keep that through next spring when we'll clip her. I think I will probably at least trim her 'beard' though.  It's hard to see it under that beard but she has a sweet, small ittle head.

The baby is the full sister of our yearling, Izzy. Same dam and sire. We have been so happy with Izzy that I had said that if we found out Izzy's mom had another filly this year, we'd have to seriously consider buying her. And that's exactly what happened. Tom found the Craigslist ad on Tuesday and I went to see her this morning. We have the opportunity to buy the dam too, but we just don't have the space for 5th horse yet. We seriously thought about it though. If a couple of grand were to fall into our laps right now, we might just buy her  yet....but I don't expect it to happen.

We don't have a firm date on when she'll come home. She's too young right now. Sometime in October is what we're thinking. I cannot wait for Baby to have a buddy! They are going to look so cute together!

Two more:

She's so bright in so many ways

But sometimes, my daughter seems to hide her intelligence.

Tonight's evidence? She decided she needed to know how the horses' pelleted feed tasted like.  So she took a pellet and bit into it.

Apparently, it's not tasty at all.  I wonder if she'd like to try some moistened beet pulp tomorrow?

Checking In!

Between work, horses, kids, school, softball...things have been completely crazy around here. I can't believe we're alredy in June. I'm switching to a Typepad template for a bit until I have a few minutes to work on a new banner design.

Yesterday I attended a great clinic at Valhalla Minature Horse Farm.  It was a introduction to driving a miniature horse and cart. I had a great time and learned quite a lot! The other attendees were really friendly and welcoming. I learned about the Mason Dixon Miniature Horse Club and their upcoming events. I cannot wait to learn more and meet more of these great miniature horse people. We're going to go to the show in Thurmont, MD next Sunday to get taste of what that's like!

Much thanks to Kathy and Linda for their great information! Can't wait to learn more from these fabulous ladies :)

And what would a visit to a miniature horse farm be without a couple of pictures of the babies? Here's just a couple of my favorites:

 

 

Here's the first pic with a cool effect from Picnik!

Some Izzy Time

Tonight our friend (and former babysitter) Katie came over to give us some lessons in horse care. Her friend Dave came along too. The idea was to give Izzy a bath, trim some of her mane, give me some pointers on hoof cleaning and anything else she could think of.

It all went pretty well. Katie even worked with Izzy and some lead training. Definitely gave some things to work on myself now that I've seen it done by someone used to working with horses.

We do have our work cut out for us! Here's an updated pic of the little girl. She's still a bit of a fuzzy-wuzzy but little by little the woolies are coming off.

Its official...we ARE certifiable

It's all my husband's fault.  He's the one who found the ad. He's the one who insisted I call.  And after I called, he's the one who said we should go look.

Well, that's what Sarah and I did this afternoon.  We went. We looked. We are now hooked.

May I introduce what I hope will be our third (and FINAL!) horse for now:

IF we do get her (and it's not a done deal), she will be named Fantine. Why Fantine? My daughter was in her high school's production of Les Miserables last fall and she is head over heals in love with the whole story.  It's her turn to name the next unnamed animal that comes into our family.  We agreed that Fantine would be a great name. It's prounounced "fahn-teen". We'll likely call her "Teeny" for short.

Again, it's not a done deal.  We'll know something tomorrow evening. And it would be a few months before she came home because we'd have to wait until she's weaned from her mom.

So...that's it.  We are truly, and honestly, certifiably insane at this point.

When someone tells you "it's contagious! you can't just have one!"...LISTEN TO THEM!

We pulled the trigger

On what? On getting Izzy a buddy! Sometime this week (hopefully), Izzy's new sister will be delivered to her new home. Her name is Cha Cha. She's a 10 yr old brown and white paint mare. She's from the same farm as Lexie, the girl we looked at about 3 weeks ago.  We looked at a couple of yearlings today but after much discussion, decided our best choice was to stick with adding an older mare to our "herd". The idea being that the older mare will help Izzy learn how to behave like a good horse :-)

Speaking of Izzy, she's doing really great.  Now if only the dogs would settle down! I think having a pasture buddy will do her a world of good.  Her woolie coat is slowly but surely shedding out.  This darn endless rain we're having around here is making grooming her quite difficult.  Brushing a wet, woolie horse is not an easy task.  In fact, it's basically a waste of time to even try.

Here are some photos of our new girl.  The first two are from the website of her current owner. The last one is one I took when we visited. She was one of our favorites from that visit and I cannot believe she's coming here to live with us.

Isn't that forelock hysterical?  A small trim and some braiding will be in order, I'm thinking.

For those of you in the know...what "color" is she considered to be?

P.S.  As I feared, the blog went through the entire month of April with March's banner.  Hope you enjoy the new one for May.

She's home...for real this time!

Izzy is finally at home...our home.  We cannot say enough in the way of thanks to our neighbors, Tracy and Dan, for allowing us to use their barn and pasture for the last two weeks.  Tracy made sure we had water every day.  Dan put up additional mesh wire fencing to keep Izzy secure after her Houdini imitation that first day.  Not to mention finally caught her when we were ready to put her in her stall for the night.

We put the final touches in place on Saturday.  Then we went down, all 4 of us, to our neighbor's place to walk Izzy back home.  Tom and I both had a lead on her and walked on each side.  We got a lot of curious stares from passersby!! One couple even stopped to joke about our "big dog".  I was quite happy that she took the walk with hardly any fuss at all.  I was really concerned about how she'd respond to cars/trucks driving by. Thankfully, nothing especially noisy came our way.

She took to her new pasture area with no problem.  We introduced the dogs with limited initial success.  Boo, our Golden, was very excited and very happy to see her.  We kept them separated by the fence and they nosed each and smelled each other...ran a bit too.

Then I had Sarah bring out Hermione, our miniature Dachshund.  Well, Boo turned into Mr. Protective at that point.  Hermione was still on her lead but he was absolutely not letting her between him and the horse at all.  Hermione, as is her favorite thing to do, barked herself horse...pun totally intended. The horse wasn't terribly bothered as the dog was outside the fenced area.

Later though, Hermione escaped out of the kitchen door and ran straight for the gate and under she went.  Her barking like mad did NOT please Izzy and she made it very clear.  Hermione, not working at her smartest level, wasn't getting the message.  It finally took a light kick for her to finally see the error of her ways.  I pretty much had heart failure at that point.  But, we were all very lucky in that the horse was only giving the dog a warning.  As another neighbor, and former horse owner, pointed out...the horse definitely could have kicked a whole lot harder if she felt the need to.

Hermione now stays outside the fence.  She only barks when if someone is down by the barn, fence or in the fenced area with the horse.  Or watching from the deck.  If no one is paying attention (as far as she can tell), she just sits by the fence and watches.  Izzy totally ignores her. 

Because we're gluttons for punishment, we let Boo inside the fenced area this afternoon.  He and Izzy came to a quick settlement that neither was terribly interesting and should be ignored.  Boo, though, loves the 50 gallon water tub that's in Izzy's fenced area.  We may have to buy a similar, but smaller one for him to keep outside instead of a standard dog bowl that we generally use.

 With that, it's now 11:11pm and I'm already likely to regret staying up this late.  I'll end this by asking the following question:

How did we get from here:

To here:

So darn fast??????

More on that tomorrow.  Or sometime this week anyway :)

We're still here!

The fence posts are in. The pad for the shed is ready. I'm waiting for the shed people to call me to setup a delivery time.  We have a lead on mare to be Izzy's companion. 

The weather here has turned cold again. Which wouldn't be so bad but the wind is blowing pretty hard too. I have awful wind burn and chappend skin on my face. Need to find a solution for that.

The fact that I have to do what amounts to actual manual labor meant that I had to have my acrylic nails removed. I will miss them :(

I need to find time to make an April banner.  Hopefully before May rolls around :)

Our first day as horse owners

Yesterday was the day.  We were out of the house by 8:30am. Yeah...we were a bit anxious to get this show on the road!

Getting her loaded onto the trailer and driven home turned out to be the easiest part of our day. In fact, I should have known it had gone too smoothly!

We arrived at our neighbor's house (the ones keeping her while we finish our fence and get our barn) and got her out. They were out waiting for us...just as excited as we were!  We put her in the pasture with no problem. Introductions were made all around.  We chit chatted for a bit.  Then we decided that she had had a good bit of excitement and it might be a good idea to leave her to settle. We had to get our daughter to an appointment and a trip to HD was on tap to get more fence posts.

We had be gone about 30 minutes when my cell phone rang. None of us thought to double check and see if the electric fence was on. While it doesn't take an engineer to see that the she could easily get through the widely spaced vinyl wire of the inner fence, we were all flumoxed at her ability to get through the much more narrowly spaced outer fence.  Dan (neighbor) was a total hero and chased after her. She froze when she came to a stream and went to step into it. This allowed him to catch up with her. Unfortunately, she wanted to stay frozen to that spot.  It didn't help that I had taken the lead rope with me. So they found some other straps and started practically dragging her back up to their field. She spooked at the houses/sheds along the way not to mention the driveways (especially the gravel ones).

The good news is that Dan and Tracy (the neighbors) didn't seem upset at being put into the starring roles of this particular exciting adventure. It was decided she would stay in their backyard area that is fenced with split rail and chicken wire that keeps their Chessie dog secure. The paddock area behind the barn was already partially covered with chicken wire as it shared a fence with this backyard fence. I went to get a couple more rolls to cover the rest. This will be where she will be put out until we get her home.

For most, this would have been enough excitement for one day but it wasn't over! We got the chicken wire in place and decided we'd move her into it.  She had other ideas.  Catching her it turns out, is not as easy as one might believe!  It took us a full 90 minutes...and then she went into her stall for the night!!!  There was no way we were going to have a repeat performance a couple of hours later!

I went down there this morning @ 7am.  I spent an hour feeding her and brushing her out.  I led her out into the paddock but kept the lead on. It's supposed to be a pretty rainy and messy day today, so I wanted to keep her in the stall.  My daughter ran down (literally...it's only 1/2 a mile) and spent about 20 minutes with me. She brought her camera with her so I was able to snap a couple of shots. The quality is a little to be desired though.

The first of many to come. :