Sky and Mariah

 

This past summer I was allowed to bring some horses over to The Olive Branch to graze on one of their unused pastures.  This was symbiotic to both parties, as my horses kept the grass down so it didn’t need to be mowed, and it gave my pastures at home a bit of a break.  I should have taken more horses than I did, but since this was a first for me, I wanted to keep it simple.  I ended up taking three old fogies and two youngsters that were not yet available for adoption:  Semi, Junior, Stride, Mariah, and Sky. 

Semi and Junior have been married for many years so they were pretty much inseparable throughout the summer.  Stride has always been a loner so didn’t mind being a third wheel.  Which left Mariah and Sky, only one year apart in age, to become the best of buddies.

 

They didn’t seem to mind.

 

They ate out of the same tub every day.  I tried giving them separate tubs, but Mariah just couldn’t stand eating by herself, so they’d polish off one tub and move on to the other as a team.

 

When it was time to run and play the two were always within feet of each other, usually running belly to belly.

 

I originally took these pictures for the purpose of getting one or two good ones of Sky to put up on the website, but I could never get him alone!

 

Sky’s adoption is currently pending – it didn’t take long after I put him up as available for someone to fall in love with the handsome fella.

 

I know I’ll miss him, but probably not as much as Mariah will!

Baby Budha Belly

Mariah has been separated from her mother for a few weeks now and is doing great.  All the other horses in that herd just adore her, except for Tabby, and she’s got the biggest mares in the herd as her bestest buddies.  That’s Matilda on the left and Eve on the right.

 

Matilda just loves her little shadow and lets Mariah follow her everywhere.

 

Eve also loves the little tyke and will lay her ears back at Tabby if she gets too close.  Eve is a live and let kind of gal on the bottom of the totem pole, so for her to lay her ears back at someone takes a lot of gumption.

 

But really… what’s not to love?

 

There’s a 14 day Tabby update over on Rescue Recoveries for you to check out!

Hay, hay, and yet more hay

In the past week and a half, three different people have called me to donate hay.  The first had lost her last horse and didn’t want anymore.  She had about 130 bales in her barn and was looking for a place to donate it.  It took two trips, but it’s in our barn now. 

The second was a very nice couple that live about 6 miles away.  I’ve never met them before, but they called me up last week and wanted to “come out and just see what you’re about”.  So they came out a few days ago, met all the horses and we traded stories (they currently have six horses, one of them a rescue), then they said they wanted to donate a bunch of hay, but first needed to make sure I was nothing like the “so-called rescue” an hour down the road.  Apparently, I’m not.  170 bales delivered by them over the last two days now sits in our barn. 

The third is a friend of mine that is also fostering two horses and adopted Shortcake, Ginger, and Huey.  She and her husband bale their own hay and they were offered a new farm to bale this year.  I went down today while they were baling and now 82 more bales are sitting on the truck and trailer waiting for tomorrow to be introduced to our barn.  They offered more hay, but my barn is full!

 

Even though I feed round bales, I still like to have the barn full of square bales in the event that the weather is so bad that I can’t get to my round bale supplier.  I should have put “fill barn with hay” on my project list just so I’d have something to cross off!

 

I also got some training done yesterday and Mariah really wanted to hinder help!  So go check it out over on the new blog!

Thanks for the rain!

While you people out west have been flooded, we’ve been painfully dry.  So thanks for sending some much needed rain on Wednesday and Thursday this week!  I had to haul water from town to fill the spring-fed tank because it couldn’t keep up with the herd.   We hadn’t had a decent rain in weeks and it’s been so danged hot!  So two hours after I bring home water, dump and scrub the tank, then refill it (with an eager audience impatiently surrounding me), we got one hellacious storm!

Now, I’m not the type that is afraid of thunderstorms.  On the contrary, my favorite past time is sitting out on the porch watching the lightening and listening to the thunder.  However, this storm had even me a little worried!  Some of the cracks of thunder were right over our heads and made us all jump.  Stormy, Cody, and Heidi were cowering under whatever furniture they could fit under in the house.  Thor, Xena, Lucky and I were out on the porch.  Xena did pretty well with the thunder and didn’t seem to mind until this one crack that sounded like the sky was falling – she took off and ran a circle around the house as fast as she could, then came bounding back onto the porch with her tail between her legs!  After that, she hid in the house with the rest of the wimps.  Thor didn’t bother to even wake up during the storm and just kept snoring.  We should have named him Rumpelstiltskin instead!

The big problem with Wednesday’s storm was the wind…

 

 

I loved that tree.  It was the lone tree on top of the ridge in front of the big barn.  That barn you see in the background is across the road at Cattle Baron’s place. There were also trees down all over the roads and Cattle Baron lost a couple that fell across the road and took out our fence.  I was waiting to see if he’d fix it, but it was still down earlier today.  Up here, you’re responsible for any trees or limbs from your property that fall down and block the road.  But we all know that ‘responsibility’ is too big of a word for Cattle Baron.   I lost electricity for almost 24 hours, and it took DSL a little longer to come back up.  The wind took down half the roof of our first attempt at a run-in shed in the back pasture.  I knew it wouldn’t last long since we did a piss-poor job at building it, and was actually hoping it would fall down so I’d have an excuse to build a better one.  All things considered, we came out of the storm in pretty good shape. 

We just had some wet and unhappy rumps afterwards.

 

These girls were standing in the shed when the sky fell, then quickly ran out and went romping around the pasture, bucking and kicking in the rain.  Silly mares!

Speaking of silly mares, go check out Jewel’s latest update over on Training the Unwanted!

Chip off the old block (or Chunky Butt Jr.)

Little Mariah is two months old now and growing like a weed.  She’s looking more and more like Maverick every day, and her personality is certainly a lot like Maverick.  Nothing bothers her, she loves people, and not once have I seen her lay her ears back at anyone.

She and Kita are best buddies and Kita just loves the little tyke.  Mariah prefers to spend more time with Kita than with her own mother most days.  Willow is just the milk bar and Kita is the big sister that teaches her the ways of the world and keeps her from harm.  Willow doesn’t seem to mind the arrangement one bit.

 

Just like dear old dad, Mariah is stacked.  Like, sherman tank stacked.  Look how wide she is already!

 

 

 

And that butt… doesn’t that remind you of Maverick’s wide load?  It certainly looks nothing like Willow’s rump.

 

 

Little one is getting her feet trimmed for the first time next week.  I’ve picked up her feet a few times and she just stands there looking at me.  You can do anything to this little girl and she thinks it’s fun – just like Maverick.  Glenn might have to fight me for this one in a few years! :)

 

The hearing for the Fairmont horses is tomorrow!  The only word I want to hear when the judge asks for his plea is “guilty”!  I know, wishful thinking.  :(

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.