Property Hunting Again

Well, here we go again… how great is this place?

Busy Day

I had the vet and farrier out today, and I always like to give them a run for their money… so today I had them do teeth, sheath, microchip, and feet. We started with Natty’s teeth. She’s 9 years old now, and they had never been done. I got to look inside her mouth before they started and see the sharp points, hooks, and scarring on the inside of her cheeks. Poor girl – now I’m sorry I put this off so long (althouth I really think she needed to get used to being handled before she would have tolerated it so well). She did a wonderful job, and all her teeth were polished right up in short order. The only slight problem we had was that she started to back up as far as she could at the beginning, so they gave her a little of a drug that makes horses move forward for some odd reason. It didn’t make her move forward, but it did stop her from backing up. Good enough to get the job done! She was so good that we got done in no time at all and had 45 minutes before the farrier was expected. We still had Chance’s microchip on the schedule, but that was a 2 second job. She did it soooo much faster than the vet who did my dog’s! I was amazed! So then we still had 45 minutes left… so I asked her to check Chance’s sheath. He had some crud in there, but never having had a gelding before, I didn’t know how much was too much. He did need to be done, so they took care of that as well. He wasn’t horrible, but he was trying to kick despite being drugged. Oh well. Nobody got hurt at least. Last but not least, we got all the hooves trimmed. This is no small task – their feet are really dry and hard like rock right now, so they are difficult to trim under the best of circumstances. Add Natty’s struggles to that, and it’s tough. Bless my farrier for showing up for our appointments! After all that, I left to go look at another property – loved it! Anybody know of any grants to restore historic barns?

Here are today’s pictures – floating teeth ain’t what it used to be!

Putting the speculum in her mouth before lifting her head onto the chin rest, which is on a nice pulley so they can raise and lower it easily:

In this one, she is turning the handle to crank open Natty’s mouth.

Head up and getting right to work.

Inside the big girl’s mouth.

Power tools make quick work of things. I think this one was the “PowerFloat” and had a little paddle-shaped file on the end.

Big girl feels a little funny… but we won’t have to do it again for a really long time, I promise!

Sleepy girl – our sweet vet tech braided her forelock and mane while we were waiting for her to fall asleep.

Little Pipsqueak checking out the table full of supplies to see if he can help with anything. Little does he know, she is getting ready to clean his sheath in this picture…

This one is to show that Chance is getting a buckskin stripe down his cheek now too.

Bath Day

Natty and Chance had their first hose baths today. They did very well. I have tried to hose their legs before and never had much luck, so I tried something new today. I took a bucket of lukewarm water and sponged them off, then I turned the hose on very low pressure and held it in the palm of my hand. I rubbed the horses with my hand with the hose in it, so they just felt the rubbing but were still getting wet. It worked pretty well. Natty sure is a filthy dirty girl after 9 years without a bath! Of course, she rolled in the dirt immediately after, but oh well. At least I think they were a little cooler for the afternoon.

Here are some new pictures:

New video of the big girl rolling after her bath – for some reason, this isn’t showing up. Try the following link at youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jamiemcneill#play/all/uploads-all/0/IUtjnGSdWto

Visitors!

Janice and Michelle came to visit this weekend. They are famed members of The International Blessed Broodmare Project, a dynamic group of artists who raise money for real horses in need. This group raised a ton of money for Natty’s herd when her rancher decided to dump 90 pregnant untrained draft horses, and without their help I would never have been able to buy Natty. I think she must have recognized that they are special because she took to them more than I’ve seen her do with anyone else. She walked up to Janice several times and let both ladies pet her – very unusual for Natty. Chance of course acts like an overgrown puppy dog, so he is thrilled any time somebody gives him attention. He’s such a sweet little horse. Janice and Michelle looked him over carefully, and here’s the final decision: we have no idea what color he is, but he has neat odd markings, and we don’t see any Quarter horse in him (another Equistone baby maybe?).  Here are my pictures from the wonderful visit we had:

Chance’s color is still changing

Chance is getting to be a mighty big boy. He is taller than Natty now at less than 14 months old (and she’s about 15.3) and outgrew his “average horse” size halter. I need to get him a new one, but in the meantime they are using Natty’s for both horses. Yikes, when did he get so big? His left front “quarter panel” for lack of a better term continues to look more and more buckskin. His neck is lightening now, too, under his mane. So fun to watch! He’s the sweetest baby horse and comes trotting to greet me every time he sees me. What a love, and so rewarding.  Natty is looking quite plump again, just the way I like her, and she is shedding out more. I think she did this last year, too, and I expect her to be very white soon. She’s such a good girl. She usually just walks to greet me, but she calls to me while she’s on her way (has to follow the fence line and can’t see me the whole way).

Here are my latest pictures:

Here is a close-up of his neck under his mane – it used to be black!

In the one above, he is saying “why do you keep trying to walk away from me? I prefer to be no more than 2 inches away from you at all times!”

And here’s my daily greeting – not very exciting, but still pretty heartwarming to me

Chance’s Coat of Many Colors

I took a bunch more detail shots of Chance’s coat today. He has so many odd little patches!

This one is a little blurry because I took it from such a distance, but you can really see his pale shoulder and also the line between his dark back and red belly/sides.

And here’s his other shoulder – more of a dark patch up top and not much of a pale area at all.

And here’s his poor tail, looking like a bad bleach job.

And in this one he’s saying, “Oooh, scratch my butt some more! Some more!”

And now I know I need to start brushing his teeth: (still hasn’t lost any baby teeth yet)

And my big girl finally wanted in on the action: (she won’t be the big one for long – I think Chance is as tall as she is now)

And finally, here’s how I know I need to keep plugging away to get my own place where Natty and Chance can live in the back yard. The place where they live now is gated, so I have to stop and wait for the gate to open right outside their pasture fence. The first pictures Are the horses standing next to my car when I arrived and then, having followed me up the driveway, Chance is coming to meet me at the pasture gate (Natty is faster and was already at the gate). The last pictures are poor Natty following me back down the driveway as I was leaving. Heartbreaking! They’ve got a wonderful place to live now with very nice people and plenty of other animals for companionship, but they still want to spend more time with me. Soon, I hope.

These girls are across the driveway, and they were too cute not to photograph today.

“Why are you leaving us again?”

Today’s pictures

I took some new pictures tonight. Chance is looking gorgeous these days – I’m so proud of him. Check out his interesting coloring on his shoulder – it’s much lighter than the rest of him. Miss Natty was sticking so close as to prevent me from getting any good pictures, as usual. I did manage to get one shot of the columbines in the pasture with only a little of her belly in it though! She is such a good girl. I’ve been riding her in a halter with reins attached. Tonight when I put her back in the pasture, Chance was right at the gate, and I ended up dropping the reins while trying to keep Chance in and close the gate. By the time I got the gate closed, Natty had managed to walk about 15 feet and get the rein behind one front hoof and wrapped completely around the other front hoof so tightly that she couldn’t even lift her head normally but was still trying to GO! I called to her to ho, and she stopped and stood stalk still until I could get to her and get her halter off – no small feat because of how tightly it was being pulled down and how stiff the leather is. Such a good, smart girl to wait for me and let me get her unstuck! This is a good thinking horse And maybe next time I’ll be a good thinking owner and leave the reins up her neck until I’s really ready to take the halter off!

Chicken Yard

My mom and I moved the chickens over to her house today and finished up the gate on their yard. They are now happily exploring and scratching around in a big leaf compost pile. Here are a few pictures:

Excitement at home tonight

Update on the house hunt: it was going to cost too much to fix the trailer on the land I want so that it could meet FHA standards.  I’m now looking into hauling that trailer away and replacing it with a brand new one. So far it looks hopeful, but everybody keep your fingers crossed!

Meanwhile, here at the townhouse where I live now, I lost a huge tree limb in a severe thunderstorm. It was really scary – I heard the cracking and ran to the nearest window to see what was happening (dumb!) and saw the thing coming down. Luckily it landed about a foot and a half away from the house and only did minimal damage to the rain gutter on the way down. Curently, half my backyard is covered by this fallen tree. Here are the pictures:

Braids and Pasture

I spent the first part of the afternoon grooming horses and braiding tails. I braided Chance’s tail first, and Natty was a big help. She stayed right at my elbow, mouthing on my arm, and finally putting her head across my arms so that I could no longer see Chance’s tail without squatting down. Do you think she wanted some attention? Is this the same horse who wouldn’t even let me touch her? I braided her tail next, the first time in her life her tail has been braided. She wasn’t too worried since she knew exactly what I was up to after watching me do Chance’s tail. Plus, she really seems to like to have her tail messed with more than any other grooming. She didn’t move away or kick me or anything. Chance helped, but her braid still came out decent. After braiding, I took Natty for a short ride, and then those lucky dogs got to go out in the big pasture. The new taller fence was just finished, and the grass is nice right now. Natty went right through the gate and out into the pasture, just eating and walking. When Chance first went out, he did this wonderful high-stepping trot through the tall grass. I wish I had my camera out, because it was lovely. The Morgan was showing big time. The two of them did a minimal amount of running before settling down to the serious work of grazing. I was pleased to see that Chance is pretty independent these days and wandered around a lot even without Natty. Here are today’s pictures, and there is one short video coming.

And some still shots captured from the video:

Ready…

Set…

GO!!!!!!!!!!!!