Today’s Pictures

That’s Chance tugging on my hood to get my attention!

Yes, he’s too big to be nursing, but she hasn’t weaned him yet.

And here’s a mud-free Niki!

Growing by leaps and bounds

I walked up behind Natty and Chance this week while they were side by side licking their new salt block, and Chance is a good 3 inches taller than Natty now, wowza! I’m not sure when my sweet little baby grew up. He’s starting to fill out, too. Here are some new pictures trying to show the size comparison between the two.

Cute little pink tongue:

Winter coloring raccoon mask. Chance’s winter coat is really thick plush and soft like a bunny – love it! Impossible to clean, though.

My beautiful girl:

Chance has the most amazing mane – so thick, long, and soft.

I have been working on trimming Natty’s feet myself, and she is being very tolerant. I’m hoping not to have to sedate her for trims anymore, and I’m not sure I’ve kept up well enough for that yet, but I’m on my way. I’ve been a bit distracted because Chance has been struggling with diarrhea since early this month. I’ve been struggling to get him to eat yogurt or probiotics, and he hates them! I don’t even have to halter him to give him a tube of dewormer, but put yogurt in a syringe and all bets are off! I managed to get a whole quart into him in 2 days, but I literally had to stick it in his mouth a little at a time on 2 fingers and the scrape it off on the roof of his mouth. I’m lucky I still have all my fingers! Both Billy dog and I both have yogurt in our hair… Both Billy and Natty were kind enough to lick Chance’s face clean for him afterward (pretty darn cute, I can tell you, but I didn’t have the camera). I am trying a new probiotic in his grain in hopes that he will eat it and it’ll help. I’m also trying a larvacidal dewormer and some diet changes, so cross your fingers this will help the poor little fellow out. He feels fine, he’s just filthy all the time. I had to wash his tail in a bucket the other day, and he was not a fan. He actually reared up at his stall window (gee, wonder where he learned this little trick). He was still a little soapy, but cleaner than he started. Poor sweet fellow!

Introducing Niki

This is Niki. She is a grade Belgian mare from a former PMU ranch – the same ranch Natty is from. She was placed by The Animali Farm in December of 2007, and her original listing said she was born in 2001, had not been used in the pee barns, and was halterbroke but had no other training. Niki was not thriving in her new home, and her adopters were not able to make any progress with her training, so they decided it was time for her to go to a new home. I’ve been working with her since early October to try to be able to halter her in anticipation of moving her. We were making progress, but I still had not managed to get a halter on her. I was able to find a temporary home for her with a friend of mine, and we picked her up and moved her last weekend. She is settling in very well. She seems to really enjoy having a stall and spends a lot of her time hanging out inside, although she is free to come and go from a nice pasture with grass. Niki is still very hesitant with people, but she now lets the ladies of the household touch her. Yesterday, I finally was able to get a halter on her. I just left it on briefly and took it right back off, but it’s a big stride forward with her. Also yesterday I was able to do a little bit of grooming, which she desperately needs. She’s still a work in progress, but she’s a little less muddy than she was before. She’s coming around a little at a time. Here are a few more pictures:

Belgian with just a hint of Saddlebred?

And here’s a short video from her second day in her new home:

WordPress is being video-dumb again, so here’s the website where you can view the video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jamiemcneill#p/a/u/0/w3xTHX3Ay8I

Training Update

I realize I haven’t put a training update on the blog in a long while. I wouldn’t want anyone to think we aren’t progressing!

First, the horses’ free lunging is improving dramatically. I was having problems keeping my in-you-pocket horses away from me and moving in a nice big circle, so I put four barrels and poles and had the horses work around the outside of those. Chance picked this up right away, as usual, and I was able to move all the barrels and poles out a few feet at a time until he now works in a good lunging-sized circle. He will walk and trot both ways, although his counterclockwise needs more work because he tends to cut inside the circle. He picked this up all in his first lesson because the next time I turned him loose in the arena, he started trotting around the circle on his own. He is so smart! Natty is learning also, although a little more slowly. She is getting pretty good at walking the big circle but still wants to cut in on the trot. She’s a work in progress.

The good updates continue concerning Natty’s riding skills. She now steers pretty reliably so that we can do some patterns, circle barrels, weave through poles, etc. She also finally consented to trot in the arena. She will trot once around, and then she’s done! But it’s a start   Big girl has such a funny attitude, she makes me laugh. The only thing that needs some work is her stopping – she’s great about it until she wants to go somewhere, then she totally ignores me. For instance, she’ll stop every time while working in the arena, but once she got the gate open, and she was leaving no matter what I had to say about it… Still needs some work there (and now I’ve been trained to latch the gate!)

Speaking of the gate, these two have been really pushy at the gate recently when I only want to take out one horse. I had them both turned out in the arena this week, and Chance pushed his way through the gate when I went to take Natty out. He walked over to the hay in the barn, which is stacked on pallets, and climbed up on the pallet so as to better reach the hay. I was sure he’d get a hoof caught in the pallets or something. I rushed Natty into her stall and went after Chance. There is a table set just behind the pallets, so there wasn’t room for him to turn around, so I needed to back him off the pallets. Well, he decided he would just make a tight turn, and this is when the boards in the pallet started breaking under his weight – I for sure thought I’d have trouble then, but Chance was cool as a cucumber and didn’t spook a bit despite having snapping boards under his feet. He turned around and walked calmly back into his stall. Little rascal! He gets into these situations that really scare me, but he never seems to spook and always gets out safely. Sheesh! I need to be more careful, that’s for sure.

My last bit of training news concerns hooves, and we all know how much Natty likes to have her feet worked on. I started trying to rasp Natty’s hooves a little a couple of months ago with the idea of either stretching the amount of time between trims or even getting her to the point where I could maintain her feet myself. She didn’t like the idea so much and starting snorting and backing away from me when she saw the rasp, so we weren’t making much progress. Enter role model Chance… My angel baby couldn’t care less about having his feet worked on, so I started rasping his hooves out in the paddock and rewarding him liberally with magic berry treats for his good behavior. Natty stood back in the horse equivalent of hands-on-hips watching all this, and I could hear the wheels turning in her head, “hmm, the kid doesn’t seem to mind all this, I don’t think he’s being hurt, he’s getting all the treats! I better move in for a closer look…” Pretty soon I felt a gentle nuzzle at the waistband of my pants, and after Chance’s next reward, I picked  up Natty’s foot and gave it one gentle rasp and then gave her a treat. I switched back and forth between the horses every other foot, and now they’ve figured it out to the point that I have to separate them to work on feet, but Natty’s tolerating it wonderfully. So proud of her and so thankful for my good little role model!

And finally, if anyone needs and Natty and Chance merchandise, I’ve taken over running the CafePress store for The International Blessed Broodmare Project. It’s still a work-in-progress, too, so these products will be improved as I figure out how to edit and compile and all that jazz, but here’s the store site if you’re interested: (all proceeds go to horse rescue)

http://www.cafepress.com/TIBBP

Today’s Property Hunting – ho hum

This first place is pretty darn cute, but a big-time fixer. Have some more questions for the bank that owns it… The second place was just ok – it is bigger but mostly steep, dense forest. The barn was pretty dark and depressing, but the house had no visible wiring and a good roof (both pluses here lately, believe me!). The third place we just drove by – the house is super cute from the outside, decent looking land, but some sketchy home/barn creation in a great state of collapse. Pretty area though! The fourth place was another bank-owned home. This one had the best barn and a ton of fruit trees, but it was really far out and the house was kinda creepy – the only picture from that one is the skull-shaped wasps’ nest.

Anybody need a horse?

The rescue I got Natty from has a bunch of horses listed right now that will go to auction next weekend. Some of these horses, the Quarter Horses, have been listed for the last couple of years. The rancher who owned them never threatened to send them to auction and patiently cared for them while looking for good homes, so there were always horses who needed help more urgently, so they got homes first. Now there was a bad year for hay, and the guy with the QHs can’t feed them through the winter and has no choice but to send them to auction. It tears at the heart strings to know that the people who threatened their horses early on while charging a small fortune for them made out like bandits, but someone who keeps lowering his prices and taking care of his mares will have to let them all go to auction. If anyone needs a horse or can even donate a little to help out, please visit http://www.theanimalifarm.com/

I can certainly vouch for the joy one can find by taking in one of these beautiful mares! I wish I could take even one of this guy’s horses because I can tell how much he cares about them and wanted them to find good homes.

The dapples are back!

Action Shots

Hmm, I seem to have lots of pictures of Chance and very few of Natty… He’s much more active, so I tend to take more pictures of him. My pictures of Natty always show her either grazing or following me around. These are more exciting, although a little blurry because that Chance is just a perpetual motion machine. Enjoy

Wowza, isn’t he gorgeous??? And huge and powerful looking too?

When did Chance get so much bigger than Natty, you ask? He didn’t – he’s just very far off the ground in this picture!

Trying to get a picture of Chance’s beautiful face is a challenge – he closes his eyes, makes funny faces, puts his ears back…

And this one is from last week when they were waiting for me at the gate when I drove up – too cute!

Chancey Chameleon Again!

Big boy is getting his dark winter coat now, so he has lost his blond shoulder patch and there is what looks to be black showing up in all his reds. Plus, his dorsal stripe is back a bit. Here are tonight’s pictures:

And here’s all 5′10″ of me barely peering over the big ol’ butt of my yearling…

All this affection is exhausting!

My sweet angel coming for her turn:

The property where Natty and Chance live is rectangular, and their barn is in the back corner. They have a winter pasture next to that, and then the big summer pasture stretches all the way to the road. This evening, they were hanging in their winter pasture ready to go inside for dinner, and I walked down the driveway to the apple tree at the front entrance of the property. I picked up a few apples, turned and whistled for the horses. They came flying across the entire length of the pasture – Chance is fast! and Natty, well, she’s a big girl, and she can still move out but isn’t what I’d call light on her feet. They were so beautiful to watch. I’m going to try it again tomorrow and take my camera with me. They ran back up to the barn, too, with a little kicking along the way. Chance does this little bouncy stop like PePe Le Pew the cartoon skunk – legs straight and all the feet hitting the ground together and then UP! bounces the horse. Too cute, and I need pictures of that, too. I was so proud of them for coming when I whistled They are such great horses.

Chance’s New Friends

Chance really likes these little goats. He keeps trotting up to the fence wanting to play with them, but they don’t pay much attention to him. They watch my dog more carefully than they watch Chance, but they don’t seem afraid of either horse or dog. I’m glad Chance is being exposed to lots of other animals in his young and impressionable time!