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: