Dahlia and Cadence Go Home

A friend of mine recently had to put down her old appaloosa gelding who had gone both blind and deaf.  He was running into things in a pasture where he’d lived for years, causing himself pain and injury, besides just being very unhappy.  Her husband thought the best remedy for the heartache would be to find a foal to raise.  My friend thought it best to get a well-broke and kid-friendly horse for their many nieces and nephews.  So they compromised and got both!

When I delivered the two tonight, there was only a couple of minutes of trotting around and establishing dominance, then everyone settled down to graze in a tight knit group around Cadence. 

Dahlia was tickled to have all of that well-groomed pasture to eat and never really bothered with all that dominance nonsense.  She didn’t even seem to care when the other horses took a sniff at Cadence, as long as they weren’t aggressive about it.

 

See that paint mare on the right in the picture above?  I bet you don’t recognize her, but that’s Abby!  The first picture below was taken when we rescued her back in March of 2009. 

 

This is her now!

 

I never did get pictures of her when she was adopted last year because she was delivered on the same day that her sister, Genesis, was delivered and I used up all my memory card space on pictures of Genesis in her new home.  Oops!

I’m going to miss little Cadence.  The day she was born, I swear she hit the ground running and bucking!  She was always playing and entertaining herself and any humans that happened to be watching, including Doc.  She had him chuckling the last time he was out because she kept charging around at top baby speed and slipped in some wet hay and went down.  She hopped up and gave him a look like it was his fault, then charged right at him and swerved at the last second.  After that, her nickname became “Little Miss Assitude”!

 

Yes, Dahlia.  I’ll miss you too!

 

 

Good thing they’re not very far away.  *sniff*

Genesis, Apache, Abby, & Quest Go Home

Quest actually went home Thursday evening.  I delivered the other three today and just got home a little while ago.  The dogs are less than pleased that they spent most the day in the house, but it doesn’t appear that they took it out on the cats – just the cat food.  The bags are torn into little shreds and have been used to decorate three rooms of the house.  I’m so thrilled.

Anyway, let me tell you about a girl and her horse.  I told you last year how Meghan and Manny were in love and had many happy days to look forward to together.  Then a month later I shared the sad news that Manny had died of a heart attack and Meghan was crushed.

Well, Meghan has a new love in her life now and the two make the cutest pair.

 

The two mares that currently live with Meghan are mother and daughter, and Cinnamon doesn’t think there’s any need to share her food or her mother with Genesis.  So there was a lot of running around and pinning of ears at poor little Genesis.

 

The running around certainly did provide me with a lot of photo opportunities.  Too bad my camera and I were having a bit of a tiff today and the pictures aren’t as clear as they could have been.

 

 

I have always wanted to get a picture of  horse trotting, with all four feet off the ground at once.  I will never be this lucky again.  Ever.

 

Meghan went out into the pasture to “save” her new best friend from the Arabian mares who were so obviously PMSing.

 

Genesis ran right up to her and became her shadow for the next 20 minutes.

 

They walked around the pasture together and got a drink out of the creek.

 

I’m pretty sure Meghan didn’t drink out of the creek, but you never know around here.  This is West Virginia after all.

 

 

 

 

Rest in peace, Manny.  Genesis will take good care of your human.

Equine Photo Overkill

I have a new volunteer and her name is Amy. She’s 18 and wants to be a vet. She has long blonde hair, legs up to her neck, and if I was half as beautiful when I was that age I would have been dangerous. Glenn is not allowed to meet her.

Amy loves horses. So much so that she wants to smell like them. All the time. Except for the beautiful part, she reminds me a lot of me at that age.

Amy’s mom has an awesome camera, even better than my new toy. She even knows how to use hers, unlike someone else I know. They both came out on Thursday morning to take pictures of the horses in the rain. Not only that, she took one hundred and fifty pictures! And I thought I was crazy for taking 50 pictures of a rabbit!

Well yeah, ok. Maybe that really was crazy.

So here are the ones that I really liked. Yes, there are a lot of Kita pictures. So sue me.

Somebody help me, these mares are nothing but trouble, especially with Willow in the lead.

Beet pulp nose. Kind of like a milk mustache, but even cuter.

Oddly, out of all of those pictures I didn’t see Jewel, Duchess, Maggie, Marbles, Frisky, or Kenzie. She did get a couple of pics of Ellie, but they were very far off. It turns out Ellie was terrified of the umbrella. Did you know umbrellas can eat small ponies? I didn’t either, but it must be true!

Horse Stories

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful horse farm, unlike any other up here in hillbilly heaven. The owners of the farm were not happy people and one day decided to sell the farm. When the farm was sold the people packed up and left, leaving behind several of their “beloved” horses. The new farm owners had sixty seven of their own horses and did not want the throwaways from the previous people. The new owners made it clear to the locals that they were going to send the horses to auction.

In steps a wonderful woman with a huge heart that lived down the road from the farm. We’ll call her Jane. Jane and her husband took truck and trailer and picked up several of the auction-bound horses that would get on the trailer. Two horses were very old (Ginger and Snow), which is probably why they were left behind by their owners. The third was Misfire.

Misfire is a 12 year old Quarterhorse mare who has supposedly been there, done that, including parades. She’s chestnut with a big blaze, and she’s built like a tank – which makes getting her on a trailer all the more fun! They couldn’t get her on the trailer and had lots of big macho know-it-all redneck help. Poor Misfire ended up walking away from the trailer limping and bleeding from all the manhandling she’d received. Jane finally decided that Misfire was going home with her one way or the other, so she walked the horse four miles down a busy road to get her home.

Jane also took in other horses that were tossed aside by friends and neighbors and eventually ended up with seven horses, one Shetland stallion, and one miniature horse. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any horse experience or knowledge and couldn’t find any one to help. She realized she was in over her head and made some inquiries at the local feed store… which led her to me.

To make a long trailer loading story short, we got Misfire on the trailer in a little over two hours with very little bloodshed and no lameness. She rubbed some hair off on one back foot, but that’s about it. Thanks to Doc being there and ready with the happy juice cocktail, it went quite swimmingly and much better than we could have hoped. She rode well, just standing in the back of the stock trailer looking out, then didn’t want to get off the trailer when she got here. She was content to stand in the trailer and take in the scenery and other horses.

The pictures I took tonight didn’t turn out very well since it was almost dark, so these were pictures that I took at their previous home. This is Misfire (on the right) and her mother, Ginger. Ginger got her teeth floated by Doc on Monday and he also found a bad heart murmur. She’s in her mid-20’s and is staying at her current home because there’s a little 4 year red head who would be heart broken if she left. Hopefully, she’ll start putting on weight now that her teeth are done.

Once we got Misfire into the back pasture we left to go pick up another three (who all loaded very well). Originally, we weren’t going to pick up the mini yet, as she’s difficult to catch, but we had a stroke of luck and we got her on the trailer as well. Mini Pearl already has an adoptive home waiting for her as a companion to another mini. Isn’t she just ADORABLE???

Prince is a Morgan cross, they think. He’s about 8 years old, rideable, but still green and herd bound. He fancies himself a real ladies’ man and keeps his mares in line just like Junior does for the big herd.

Abbi Road is a 5 year old Paint. Her and her registered full sister, Genesis, both came from a paint breeder down the road from us. This breeder has two very comformationally fugly paint stallions that she breeds to anything with four legs. Neither stallion is broke to ride and neither of them have ever left her farm to do anything useful. She has 20 or 30 horses on her place now and just keeps pumping more foals out every year. Unfortunately, she felt the need to breed Abbi when the poor girl was only three years old. The colt was still nursing and hadn’t been gelded yet when we picked them up yesterday. He’ll be coming here once he’s gelded.

Abbi was sent to a trainer for 30 days, but rather than being broke to ride, she was simply broken. She left Jane a friendly, personable mare, but came back afraid, skittish, and sporting war wounds from her battles with cruel training devices.

Abbi’s sister, Genesis, was one month old when her mother died. She’s four now and her growth may have been stunted a bit, but she’s a friendly horse that loves attention and follows you around like a puppy.

That’s the gang so far. Everyone needs their feet trimmed BADLY and we’ll be conquering that tonight and tomorrow night. I’ll give them until this weekend to settle in, then I’ll get on Misfire and Prince this weekend to see what we’ve got. I’d like to see more weight on the two paint mares before I start their training, but now that they’ve been wormed and Abbi no longer has a yearling sucking on her, it shouldn’t take long for them to become fat and sassy.

Here’s to hoping all of these horses get a happy ever after ending to their stories!