Of feathers and felines

We had a lovely fall day yesterday. I trimmed Rosalee's front feet, then took her to the round pen to exercise her, she is getting quite... ahem... fluffy but we are going to blame it on pregnancy 😄
The local turkey flock left us a present.

Not used to seeing turkey feathers, mostly hawk and owl and wasn't quite sure what it was from, but Brown Eyed Cowgirl identified it for me so I checked my pics of the turkeys that have been hanging out here for the last couple of weeks and sure enough, it's a wing feather.

Getting back to Rosalee- here is what I mean by her fluffiness:

She was really lazy,and not overly inclined to exert herself. Once I get her back feet trimmed I think I'll go back to riding her- I like it that she is feeling lazy, hopefully I will get some nice rides in on her.
I can start ponying Mesa now too.

The youngsters are doing quite well with their trailer loading, so I'm giving them a week off on that and will just refresh them later, changing it up to just loading without the use of feed.

Mornings at the barn are quite enjoyable, I now have all 3 cats greeting me and escorting me to their breakfast table. They all jump up there and wait for their food, and Boo has let me rub ointment on his eye every day; it's looking much better.

I was working with Pistol at the trailer the other day, and Thumper jumped up on the tarp covered haystack and startled Pistol, so I led him over for a visit to check out that scary cat.

Thumper, the king of the castle.

Pistol making submissive mouth chewing to the cat.

Ted is supposed to finish the barn door today, and get me set up for putting up the boards on the inside of my Hideout. I've got a batch of plum jam to make, and then go trim Rosalee and Beamer's hind feet.

I must be boring....

Pistol makes progress too

The 4th day of loading lessons went really well. Mesa self-loaded, and I closed the door, she just quietly went about chowing down. No issues. Good girl, Mesa!

This time I made sure I had fresh battery so I could video Pistol, and he did super well! I think his big resistance from the day before helped him to progress to the realization that resistance didn't get him anywhere, and it was much easier to just march on in and get his feed. I barely had time to hit record, and he was loaded!

No butt rope needed yay! I'm hoping he will self load this evening. After he was done eating, I took him for a stroll, his first real walk away from the mare herd.

Beamer is so good with the babies. He should have had a life as a pasture breeding sire. From the beginning, Pistol has always been intrigued with Beamer, always talking to him and responding when Beamer called out to the mares.
Pistol has really come a long way, he isn't nearly as flighty as he used to be. I think he will always require a lot of handling, he won't be the kind of horse you can just pull out of the pasture after a few months off and just go to riding (once he's all grown up!). I think that is because of all the hot breeding on his sire's side http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/cd+shiny+pistolena  because we know that Belle's other foals are quiet minded.

Barn and Mesa progress

First, Mesa- her second loading went well, took only a few minutes, and then yesterday her third loading went like this:

Quite proud of this filly! I left the door closed until she was finished eating, and then backed her nicely out.
I did try to video Pistol's 2nd and 3rd loadings, but both times my camera battery quit on me. But basically he is still suspicious and flighty and I have to put the butt rope on him. As soon as it's on, he steps in willingly. Yesterday he self-unloaded 3 times, so I kept bringing him back in - with the butt rope each time. At one point, he backed out fast, reared up and flipped himself over- I am pretty sure he is going to need a chiropractor now. He seems to have no ill effects but I will get him checked to make sure. Hopefully today he will behave a little better!

Ted got to work on the barn door yesterday. We had a 5 ft wide door inside the barn separating off the backroom where I store my square bales, and we took it down and installed it at the front of the barn.

Setting the first framing board in place

Framing in the gap so that it can be sheeted in afterwards.

Installing the track.

Semi-finished. Ted will be adding a piece to the bottom, and sheeting in the side opening. I think he plans on doing the traditional X on it, and I will paint it. There will be a cat door on the bottom of the side opening.
And- he installed the window in my Cowgirl Hideout!

Now I can start putting up the boards on the inside wall and get it all organized and comfy 🐎 💕

Loaded!

Trailer loading lessons went well yesterday. Yes, Lessons plural, because Pistol got a lesson too to prepare him for hauling to his new home after weaning.

I started with Mesa (video is almost 9 minutes). Overall she took about 15 minutes to load and unload.

The new routine will be feeding them their foal ration in the trailer.

Then since that went well, it was Pistol's turn. He was a little more concerned and took a little longer, but he is pretty young and I thought he did pretty good, considering that this is the first thing he's had to do without having mama close by. This video is 7 minutes, it was taken after about 10 minutes of him thinking about whether or not he wanted to load. He wasn't bad, just reluctant until I put the butt rope on him.

Since he was concerned about his mama I had him eating at the back of the trailer so he'd feel less confined.

Both foals needed the butt rope to encourage them to step forward into the trailer. Today we shall see if it is needed- I hope not!
The goal is to eventually just send them in instead of leading them in.

First day of fall

The long hot summer has ended, and we are now enjoying cooler fall weather.

We even had to light the wood stove a couple of times in the last few days. And I spent a couple of days stacking firewood in the wood shed, hopefully we will have enough for the winter now, I think we have about 4 cords in there- may need one more.

The cats at the barn have settled into an amicable agreement with Boo, he is now a part of the cat pack 😃.

I love this time of year even more than summer, the temperature is more agreeable to me and it is just as beautiful. I did have some lovely flowers in my new gardens this year, and they are now beginning to shut down as the days grow shorter and cooler. But the asters are coming on beautifully.

Beamer is starting to get his winter hair, he looks like velvet at this time of year. So soft and fuzzy!

Pistol is handling the pre-weaning program well- most of the time! Yesterday he decided to perform a little before settling in to eat his foal ration.



Love the little grunts and squeals! He is getting to be a big strong boy at 2 1/2 months.

Today I  will be working on teaching Mesa to trailer load. Hopefully it will go well!

Standing tied lesson

Mesa is finally gaining weight post weaning.

Today, I decided it was time to work on teaching her to stand tied- prior to teaching trailer loading I like to have them to have a bit of understanding about restraint and give.

I like to make the right thing easy, so while she is quietly eating her foal ration, I had her haltered and loop the lead rope around the corral panel.

I am also keeping her haltered at feed time so that she doesn't chase Pistol out of his ration, as his weaning time is rapidly approaching.

After Pistol was done and I put him back in with his mama, and Mesa was done eating, I hung out with her and let her feel the rope holding her in place. She did very well, I love the calm mind on this filly. I let the rope run out as she moved, and also used it with the rope around the butt lesson that she learned as a wee baby to encourage her to step into the pressure and give herself slack. All in all, a good lesson .

A visit, a work, and kitty progress

My sister Mary visited on Wednesday, she is handicapped and wheelchair bound; she always seems to enjoy visiting the horses. (She doesn't talk).
I brought Beamer out first.

He is so sweet with her, very quiet and calm. After she visited with him for a while, I took Mesa out too, she is the only other horse I have that I think would stand quietly and just visit.

She was so good, just stood quietly and sniffed Mary.  Mesa is so much like Beamer.  After that we went to the house and Mary had ice cream while her care giver and I had tea. It was a good visit, especially so since it was on my mom's birthday, she would have been 87.

I had planned on riding Rosalee today, but she was so dirty that I ended up giving her a bath. Since it is much cooler now, Rosalee was shivering afterwards, so I put a cooler on her and hand grazed her for a while, but she was still cold so I decided to warm her up by longeing her.
Rosalee hasn't had to work for a while, and she was not enjoying the mindlessness of being longed.

I ended up not riding- I worked her some more after I videoed this and she got pretty silly for a while; must have been feeling fresh after her bath.  But I'm calling it day 32, because she did get worked.

I am preparing Pistol for weaning by penning him separate from his mama while he eats his foal ration. I put him and Mesa in the foaling pen and they each have their tub of food. Mesa has decided that Pistol is not allowed to eat out of the same tub as her, so he is discovering that you don't mess with mares!

Pistol getting the stink eye. Though she be little she be fierce! 

Actually, that is the first time I have ever seen Mesa asserting herself. Guess she got tired of being at the bottom of the pecking order.

He is also being submissive to Rosalee for the first time- here he is doing the submissive foal mouthing.

Other things going on here- I have made great progress with the feral cat, who now goes by the name of Boo (short for Kitty Blue Eyes). He knows his name and seems to like it. I have been able to pet him every day for the last 3 days .

He likes his pets and back scratches. Tonight, he even let me pick him up for a few seconds, long enough for a quick pet around his head and then I set him down next to the cat food. My goal is to be able to treat his pink eye, I should be able to rub some ointment on it soon. I'm pretty happy about that!

Mesa at 4 months

It has been about a month since I started the weaning process with Mesa. She turned 4 months old today, so I spent a little extra time with her today. She is doing quite well, she has the sweetest disposition you could ask for.

Look at that big soft eye 😃

She has shed all her baby coat now and is a neat rich brown, with tan coloured  britches.

I think her right front is toed out a bit, we'll see how it comes after her chest fills out some more. She did lose some weight during the weaning  process, but I finally have her enthusiastically eating her foal ration now and she is starting to gain again.

It's time to start teaching her to trailer load, so as a precursor to that, I figured I'd see how she "loads" into the barn.

Notice that she takes everything calmly, even lids falling and pails bumping her, and kitties jumping down. Sure do love the mind on this filly! Please pay no attention to the messy barn, working on it got put on the back burner this summer.

I'm waiting for the frost heavy frost to do my fall deworming. But I am planning on giving her a dose of a mild wormer this week so she doesn't have a massive load later on. I just trimmed her feet last week, and got Pistol done too.

Update on Loretta

For all you folks who were wondering whatever happened to Loretta, my silver buckskin aged mare: I have her out on  breeding lease to a friend who has silver bay stallions. He bred Loretta to his homozygous silver stud, Silver Assured, in hopes of getting a homozygous silver filly that will not be homozygous for bay. Here is a photo of the stallion she is bred to, he is the one on the left:

 She is due to foal June 16, and once the foal stands and nurses, Loretta will be considered sold as per our agreement. She will be 24 years old by then. I am really looking forward to seeing her foal. I originally found Loretta on Facebook, a ranch in northern BC had put her up for sale before running her through a sale where she probably would have gone to a meat buyer since she was 23 yrs old and open. They had no idea that she was the rare silver colour. I could see from her photos that she had  high probability of being a silver buckskin, so I took a chance and bought her, paying twice the purchase price to get her shipped down here. Genetic testing confirmed the silver gene and that she was not homozygous for agouti, - double win, as it means she has a chance to eventually produce or be the grandma to a silver black, which is very rare in  quarter horses.
So why did I not just keep her and breed her to Beamer? A couple of reasons- I didn't like her dominant behaviour in my small herd ; I only keep the sweet ones (hence Coulee being sold) and the other reason was that I need to keep my expenses down. 2 breedable mares is plenty, and all I have room for.
 This is Loretta in her new home- lots of room to roam much better than the confined quarters I have here.

Pistol at 2 months

The li'l rascal is 2 months old today. He is much less flighty and is now easy to catch. With help from a friend to hold him, I got his back feet trimmed the other day and will get his fronts done next week.
Here are his official 2 months photos.

Still a mama's boy- I separated him for a few minutes the other day, had him in with Mesa to eat foal ration and he didn't take long to go looking for his mama.

He's a nice well balanced boy, and has good bone.

Plenty of muscle.

And he is getting much friendlier. He is pretty bossy with Mesa, will just walk up to her and chomp on her, poor li'l girl is at the bottom of the pecking order.
Pistol will be with me for 2 more months before he leaves for his new home. I can't wait for him to shed out his foal coat and show off his black legs!

Wordless Wednesday

(Updated) All I need is the air that I breathe....

to be a lot less smoky! Had to cancel my plans for giving Mesa her first ponying lesson today.

If I can't breath right in it, I am sure not going to ask my horses to work in it.
EDITED:
This is what it looks like this afternoon:

Unreal. I'm getting cabin fever from having to stay inside so much this summer. I feel bad for the horses having to breathe this and hope it doesn't give them any lasting respiratory problems.

A website worth checking out.

I have been following a page on Facebook called Intended Horsemanship for a while now. The horseman is David Schumpert, and I really like his take on horsemanship.
Here is a link to their website: http://www.intendedhorsemanship.com/
It is a new site so it will be fun to follow it as they go along.

This too shall pass

We are in trying times here. The fire season rages on, and there are evacuation alerts and evacuation orders within an hour of us, the closest being about 45 minutes drive from here. I have listed my availability to haul or house horses, dogs and cats with the local evacuation pages on Facebook. My friend Janice is very close to a fire that has both an alert and an order in areas close to her. There is an evacuation order between here and Cranbrook, the nearest large city to us, and I sure hope they don't shut the highway down through there; so that people from there can come south to safety if needed.

Meanwhile, life goes on here, I got all my winter hay in and now I am hoping like crazy that the fires won't hit this area.

That is a well house just behind the bales, if I had to I'd soak the ground around them, as well as everything within reach. I do have an evacuation plan in place if need be, but living this close to town and between 2 very good fire departments I think our area is in good hands. We also have an airport and the huge Kootenay lake for air support.

The foals are getting along well, Mesa doesn't seem to miss her mama at all.

Look how big Pistol is, he is 2 months younger than Mesa and he is at least as tall as her already. I think he will finish out around 15.2 hh (or more) like Belle's other colts. Mesa will likely be around 14.2 or 14.3 hh. The perfect size for me!
I heard back from Coulee's new owner, she is quite happy with her.
Once the weather settles down here, I will start riding Rosalee again, and I want to teach Mesa to pony, which I'll do within the paddock. Just short sessions at first. She already leads well and is buddies with Rosalee so I think it will go well.

Pistol has mellowed out quite a bit, I can catch him easily now anywhere and he isn't as bitey/flighty/strikey as he used to be.

He is very helpful too!

Anyway, we are trying to keep alert and ready here, and our hearts and prayers go out to the people of Texas and Louisiana for the devastation from Hurricane Harvey. Some of the heroic stories coming out of there show just how strong and resilient people are in the face of disaster. There is one cowboy on Facebook, Chance Ward- if you are on FB check him out, he and his family and friends are riding and swimming their horses through the flood to rescue horses and cattle. And there are so many images of people of all kinds helping each other. There is no division, no hatred, no politics, just people helping people to survive this disaster. The way it should be- the goodness of heart triumphing.
Also the fires in the northern States are so similar to what is happening here, but not as present to the media as the hurricane is. It would take the evacuation of a major city for the media to even care about the devastation caused by the raging fires that are destroying rangeland, livestock, lives, homes and livelihoods. Over a half million acres in Montana alone.
This has been a terrible year for natural disasters, one after another relentlessly. On the other side of the world, monsoon season is taking many lives too.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. God bless us all and I for one am not afraid to pray for Divine intervention. Because it really does feel like a chastisement this year.