Holiday is over-back to business

It had to end eventually. After a family breakfast Saturday morning at a local cafe, we had to do serious business at the farm. The farrier and his assistant were there, and we had more than enough horses to trim. We may have set a land speed record for getting things done--we trimmed 18 horses in less than 4 hours, with both of them working. All of those horses got groomed really well, cockleburrs pulled from their manes and tails until my hands bled, they were dewormed, and trimmed, and got whatever other sort of maintenance they needed. It was actually pretty fun, but even when I am just the step-and-fetch-it girl, that is hard work. You have to catch them and put them in stalls, and keep them moving so that there are always a few in line and ready to be trimmed when it is their turn. Add in all that other stuff, and my incessant chart-making about what happened to whom, it was a very busy day!

But of course, you know I was also taking a bunch of pics.
Marvin was being particularly handsome. Marvin the ass, not Marvin the farrier, but I am sure he was lovely too. I just do not think about things like that. At least not about the farrier.
He is however, exceptionally good at his job. This is where non-horse people might tune out for a bit--I have to document this stuff somewhere so I can track recoveries etc, so feel free to scroll down to more interesting stuff. We found some issues--Squeaklet had a blowout of some sort. There must have been an abcess and it busted out through a crack in her hoof. I am sure this is my fault, at least the crack itself was, since she was entirely too long as she had slipped through the cracks on the farrier schedule (look, I made a pun. I am such a wit). This will grow out over time, but since the crack is all the way through the hairline, there will likely always be a scar on her foot, but she is not the least but sore, which is what matters.

This is Midget's front right--who knows what she did here, it looks like a hole an alien might have burst through. Who knows. She may have just clipped herself in some sort of freak manner, but it is odd. She too is perfectly comfortable, but has some hoof issues in that her heels are growing funky. Corrective action is being taken.
This is Hammer's foot rear right, I think. Earlier this year, he damn near cut his foot off. I mean OFF. The only thing we can figure is that he kicked through some metal, which is the only reasonable explanation--except we cannot find where, and all the metal on the place that is in kicking range is lined with wood to make sure these things do not happen. That is a horse for you though. From looking at the scar, you can see where he did the damage--his heel bulb was sliced really deeply and ugly. He also cut it high up where you can see the hair doing something goofy. It is amazing to me how it healed so well, and now there just has to be some remodeling of the hoof to get it back in normal condition. He too is sound as a dollar, and thank goodness this happened when he was just a year old, as young ones heal so well and go on to be perfectly normal. In his case, it may have been the best thing that ever happened to him, as he had to put up with treatment every day and he turned into such a sweetheart over it.

That is the end of injury pics for the day--aren't you glad?
This is Vixen, who has been hiding in the hay field behind the ponds. I have not spent any time with lately. If she has not grown up, I do not know what has happened. I did not recognize her at first, which is not uncommon as she and Riot look just alike. She is a year and a half old here. I really liked her when I was playing with her Saturday and I am going to focus on her some more in the near future. Her mother, Foxy, pictured below, has an unattractive head, and we prayed Sly would trump it--he did on Voodoo, the 2 year old, and clearly he did an even better job on this one. Now if these babies are half the horse their brother Chief (who lives in Arkansas) is, we will have hit the jackpot.


Foxy brings a lot to the table to make up for that head though--brains, athletic ability, she is ate up with cow, and pedigree to name a few. She has earned her spot in this herd. After all, pretty is as pretty does.Xan had her hair in one big sheet of cockleburred mess--it took forever to get them all out, and the efforts of three people. She was glad to get away from us--look how frizzy her hair is from being aggravated by us.

I realize Gypsy was just featured on here, but she looked so pretty after her work got done, and she just kept posing for me. Besides, I was trying to pretend that I did not see Barry working on fence repairs--we are in a constant state of standoff over fence boards, and I was afraid that if I called attention to the fact that he was working on it, he would either stop or make me help. I sure did not want to be a part of that. So I just kept taking pics and looking busy.

That scheme worked--he replaced boards that were ugly or broken, or that had just been slapped up in a quick fix situation that never seemed to get revisited. Quite often his fix for a broken section of board fence (which really is the bane of my existence, the wood fence) is to put a corral panel in front of it. I say that is no fix and we need panels for other things. Finally, several of those were liberated from their too-long-to-be-temporary homes, and put to use in other more appropriate places. Not only did the bull shed area have repairs done, so did Squeak's sand pit---she even got a new section added to it so she can travel more.

We attempted to move horses from the middle pasture to the back pasture and hay field where they should live for a while, but they were not particularly cooperative. That is how I got away with taking all these pics, I was trying to do the transition.

Barry also moved hay all over so they will be set for the week while he is gone again. He even brought a round bale over to the house (which is about 2.5 miles from the farm) for the boys, who have not moved since--they like it much better than the round bale they had. They are more than a little spoiled, and it keeps me from having an asthma attack by handling square bales every day.

And guess what I did? I took a nap! Surprise, surprise, I took a nap. It is my favorite thing, and I needed it. He went on a boy outing with Mike, Rusty and Hutch, and after my nap, I took him to dinner and a movie because I was so grateful he did all that work. The craziest thing happened there- we were close to on time, and the movie was sold out! In a town with 8 theateres for 17,000 people--explain that to me. To spend time for a bit before going to dinner and a later movie, we went to TSC and got a new battery for the Gator who has been kaput for two weeks--that makes things a lot harder than you would think. We then had good steaks and swordfish for dinner, and still had time left over, so we picked up a few gifts at WalMart and went to the movies. We were too early for what we wanted to see, so we saw Twilight. It was okay. We forgot the groceries in the car though--as well as his credit card at the bar where he had the boy outing, and of course, they are not open on Sundays so he will be out of town without it. Oops.

I stayed up until 4 am, reading and doing laundry. No wonder my nights and days are mixed up.

Today, we got up and he went to fix the Gator, got the horses moved around and Squeak moved to her new paddock, while I worked on house stuff. It was gross weather, so we went to ANOTHER movie--Four Christmases, which was very cute. Then guess what I did? I took ANOTHER nap. It was swell. While I did that, he tracked down straw for the pig and dogs, and now they are happy, too.

So here it is Sunday nite, and Mandy, Edward and Gabi are now back in Houston, so these are the last of the pics there will be of her for a while. I love these pigtails.



It is so nice to be caught up on things for the week to start. It is even better that he did all the work! Most of the world thinks he does it all anyway, but since he is gone during the week, I do everything then. The weekends are for catch up--and since we are booked solid until the New Year, it is vital that all this get done this weekend.


I am ready to start the week. I am hoping that everything at work will relax a little so we can get back to the business of representing people instead of defending ourselves. I am going back to the gym as I missed every day last week due to everything else that was going on, and I feel kind of gross as a result. I have to order some Christmas presents or no one will be getting anything.

It is supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow, but I will believe that when I see it--it is mostly just sprinkling enough to make things icky.

In some good news though, the NCHA futurity is spinning along and the second round of open competition has ended. Justa Lil Scoot, the son of Justa Swinging Jane, made the semi-finals! He has the highest score of any horse in the limited open as well, which is also very cool. Jane is my Snap's maternal sister, so yay for the family. We will get to see him show when we get there in 12 days, I am excited about that.

There is a lot to look forward to around here in the near future, I just hope nothing disastrous interferes with it. I always feel like I get a little bit ahead and then slammed backwards a few more steps, and I am bound and determined to get through all this to a more secure frame of mind.

Hang in there and surely tomorrow, I will me more interesting in my posts. I hope!