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*

Baby #5

When Dahlia first arrived, she was ribby and thin with a bit of a pot belly.

When Doc first examined her shortly after arriving here, he felt her udder and thought she might foal within a month.  But there was a lot of edema in her udder and he couldn’t tell for sure without palpating her.  Since she was far from friendly at that point, palpation was out of the question.  

This was what she looked like on 5/4. 

After I moved her here to the farm, her tummy tucked up even more, she muscled up, and the edema in her udder went down.  She has the hill of death to thank for the muscle tone!  Doc took another look and agreed that her original pot belly must have just been worms and she didn’t even look pregnant any more. 

Just a few weeks ago, the pot belly returned, but she was still very small.  If she was pregnant, she didn’t look that far along.  Then her udder started filling up with milk shortly after...  here we go again!

Cadence was born early this morning out in the pasture and is doing just fine!

 

Of course, she’s adorable.  Aren’t all foals adorable?

 

Check out those long legs!  Cadence is going to be a pretty good sized horse.  No pony here!

Because of her color, my guess would be that Don Juan is her sire, but there’s no guarantee since we don’t know what other stallions were at that hell hole that died before we were able to save them.

I’m glad little Cadence has finally been born.  This means she and Mariah are only three months apart and can grow and play together.  Poor Mariah hasn’t played much at all for lack of a play mate.  Hopefully that will change soon!

All sorts of stuff

First, I have pictures of the play time before dinner tonight.

Blondie and Riley, doing what Riley loves best. 

 

Jubilee running past the camera at breakneck speed (or at least top very pregnant pony speed).

 

Another video of Tootsie.  Because you know you want it.

 

Then I have updates on some of the larger Fairmont horses.

Dahlia has gotten so much friendlier and will walk up to anyone out in the pasture and stand there to be petted and admired.  She’s quite the little attention hound now, and looking more pregnant every day.  Ugh.

 

Poor Chester.  His skin is healed and his hair is finally growing back, but that doesn’t make him any less fugly.  At least he’s sweet.

 

Apollo would like to be groomed now.  Would someone else please take care of that?  Every time I do it, he looks like this five minutes later.  So I give up.

 

Quarantine is just about over so the big mares and geldings are moving to my farm on Thursday.  Hopefully, they’ll all jump on the trailer like they did the day we rescued them.  Cross your fingers, please!

Xena is my favorite dog to take over to the quarantine farm.  She does her herd dog thing and just lies in the grass and watches the mares and babies while they are out.  If one strays away from the others, she quietly gets up and follows them.  She knows she’s supposed to do something like that, and sometimes she even manages to gently push them back to the rest of the herd.   Tootsie has taken a strong interest in playing with Xena, but Xena tucks her tail between her legs and scurries off.  Who would have thought that little Tootsie was scary??

 

Finally, a picture of Willow’s filly.  She really deserves her own blog post, but I swear she’s camera shy.  Every time I break out the camera she either lays down, or gets right in my face and follows me around so I can’t get a good picture.   Little hussy takes after her mother!  The GBH named her Mariah. 

Sleeping In

I wish I could.  Every morning when I arrive at the quarantine farm I’m greeted by something like this.  The horses don’t even bother to rise until they see me come in the gate.

 

Approaching them with the camera doesn’t even wake some of them up.

 

Awake, but not ready to roll out of “bed” yet.

 

Apollo was not amused at having his slumber in the sun disturbed. 

 

Matlida and Sierra jumped up as soon as they saw me get out of the truck.  THE FOOD LADY IS HERE!!!!

 

Matilda is getting so much better!  I no longer have to trap her in a corner with a bucket of food in my hand just to catch her.  Tonight she lost her halter and followed me around the pasture while I looked for it.  When I found it, she let me put it back on her then followed me back to the barn for dinner!  Progress!  And… the big news… Matilda has been in serious heat the past couple of days, which means she’s probably NOT preggers!    I say “probably not” because when Semi was pregnant with Kita she still acted like she was in season whenever something upset her.  So I’m not getting my hopes too high yet, but I am optimistic.  She’s been trying desperately to get Chester to “help” her out, but the poor guy doesn’t have a clue what to do for her. 

Their quarantine period will be over next weekend so these five will be moving here to the farm.  Dahlia and Matilda will be going into the quarantine paddock after I move Willow and Kita back in with the main herd.  Willow’s foal will also be a month old next weekend (and I still haven’t blogged about her… so sorry!), so she should be more than ready to assimilate into the herd.  Apollo, Chester, and Sierra will also go in with the main herd. 

Molly, Lakota, and Genesis should be headed off to their new homes soon and have I mentioned the really bad news?  I mean, the horribly awful news that I don’t even want to discuss?  Maverick has a new home waiting for him to go on a couple of trail rides, which is why he wasn’t on the list of potential horses to take to Farm Days.  The day he leaves, I’ll be holding a sob fest here on the farm if you’d like to attend.  Free admission, just BYOK (Bring Your Own Kleenex).

Introducing…

I promised introductions to the new horses tonight, so here goes.   Anne and I made notes about gender and personality and named everyone on Sunday.   The horses really didn’t look as bad as I thought they would, but the sheriff said the owners had been feeding them alfalfa and letting most of them out to eat next door at the quarry since Monday.  He said they looked a lot better in just a week and were no longer eating their own manure.   Bonus.

We named this gelding Chester.  He’s the friendliest one of the bunch and is more than happy to stand around and be loved on.   He’s a little guy, only around 14h tall.  He’s missing a bunch of hair thanks to the lice and being chased and chewed on by the bigger stallion.

 

This Tennessee Walker mare is Dahlia.  The neighbors told me that they used to see her being ridden up and down the road, so I assume she’s broke.  But like most the others, she would prefer not to be caught.  I was able to catch her tonight while she was eating and get her wormed.  She wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t fight me about it.

 

This is Don Juan, the Buckskin (Dun?) stallion.  Of course he was running with all of the mares, so let’s just hope Don Juan didn’t impregnate any of the mini mares!  He’s also got a lot of bald spots from lice, but his hair has started growing back already.  He’s getting friendlier by the day and I was able to get my hands on him to worm him tonight.

 

We named this little girl Sierra.  She’s also very shy, but once in awhile I can sneak up behind her and scratch her butt without her taking off.   She seems like a youngster, but I haven’t had a chance to check out her teeth yet.

 

This is one of the two yearling(?) colts that have obviously never been touched before.  They were both extremely difficult to catch and had no idea how to lead.  They are still very skittish and are terrified of us, even when we have food.  We named this one Fraggle.  I can’t tell you how much I just want to tackle him and take a shedding blade to him!

 

This is Apollo, the biggest surprise of all.  He’s a palomino AND he’s gelded!   Unbelievable!  He’s a long-legged boy who has been catchable since being rescued.  He loves a good scratching and was more than happy to be wormed with apple flavored ivermectin tonight.

 

That’s it for tonight, I’ll introduce you to more tomorrow!