The weather here turned bitter cold a few days ago and Alex picked night before last to unplug her stock tank heater. By the time we noticed it last night the tank had a VERY thick layer of ice and poor Alex thought she was dying of thirst! We ran some water on top of the ice and she guzzled away and we got the tank heater plugged back in so it could start thawing from the bottom up.
It wasn't really that big of a deal until an hour or so later I remembered that we still had 5 goldfish living i…
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Added by Ronni on December 8, 2009 at 8:37pm —
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There really hasn't been much going on lately so I haven't posted but this was too strange not to share.
Yesterday morning Alex was invaded! A huge flock of what we're guessing to be at least 1000 Starlings landed in the pasture. Alex wasn't quite sure what to make of this but she did her part in trying to chase them away. She didn't succeed, they would fly and then land again. This went on for a while and then the birds all left. We saw them fly over again yesterday evening but they didn't lan…
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Added by Ronni on October 24, 2009 at 9:30am —
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Alex had a farrier appointment Thursday so Dalton and I went over a little early so he could ride her some more. It was hotter than we realized though and we were all cranky (especially Alex!) so we didn't do much. I put the bridle on her but she was annoying me with her non-stop open mouthed chewing on the bit so I took it back off and we went with a halter and lead again. I really think I'm going to find one of those new bitless bridles that I've heard so much about.
He got on her with just t…
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Added by Ronni on August 22, 2009 at 6:00pm —
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After a week of cold and rain I woke up this morning to a glorious sunny day and I had nothing that I absolutely HAD to do. Okay, so I need to do laundry and clean the house but those can wait, I couldn't pass up the chance to go play with Alex!
I've had this niggling thought that my 10 year old nephew is small enough that he would make a perfect candidate to help me further Alex's training by being the first to get on her. It also helps that he is fearless and loves horses. ;-P So I called him…
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Added by Ronni on August 17, 2009 at 2:48pm —
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It doesn't look like we're going to get anther section of wood fencing in this summer so we needed to do something to reinforce the old wire fence. We still had a bunch of green metal posts from when we took down the fence around the neighbors pasture. So today Tom and Cam went out and added a bunch of new posts to the existing fence. They shortened the distance between each post to about 4 feet and clipped the wire on. This should make it a lot harder for Alex to work the wires loose and work h…
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Added by Ronni on August 11, 2009 at 10:37pm —
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You may have noticed that unless I am on the outside of the fence, most of my photos of Alex only include her head and sometimes a small part of her body. Because she is so friendly and in your face it's hard to get good photos unless she's tied and I do most of my work with her at liberty so she's usually too close for me to get her whole body. I tried today, I even handed the camera off to mom but as usual, most of these don't include her body. They do show how friendly she is with everyone th…
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Added by Ronni on August 9, 2009 at 12:15am —
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My hay guy just called and said he'll be here between 5 and 6 this evening with 5 tons of orchard grass hay for me. They're charging me $175/ton delivered but not stacked in my barn. That sure beats what I was paying last year! I figured I'd hire some neighborhood kids to stack the hay in my barn. There are usually at least 15 or 20 teens running around my neighborhood but wouldn't you know I couldn't find a single one of them today when I need something! I finally tracked down four of them and…
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Added by Ronni on August 8, 2009 at 4:21pm —
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Briar has made drastic improvements this week. With as bad as she was acting Saturday night when I picked her up I really wasn't convinced she was even going to survive and that night was agony for all of us. But as I posted, by Sunday morning she was acting pretty normal although the wounds still looked horrific. I talked to the vet on Monday and they told me that a lot of the yelping and "out of it" reaction I saw Saturday was probably a result of one of the medications they gave her. It's a n…
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Added by Ronni on July 31, 2009 at 2:49pm —
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I'm finally home from the camping trip from h***. This has absolutely nothing to do with Alex but I needed to vent somewhere. WARNING: Long story not made short! :D
Every year we go camping with my in-laws for a week. For the last 10 years we've been going to the same lake and over the years we've had some problems but nothing like this year. Our "vacation" started Saturday night when I was trying to level the RV and managed to blow a hydraulic line for one of the jacks. We were able to makeshi…
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Added by Ronni on July 26, 2009 at 8:15pm —
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We had a tremendous rain storm this morning. It's still raining but not real hard but this morning it dumped buckets and continued for well over an hour! At least it's a warm rain. Alex tucked herself under the smallest tree shelter in the pasture and just stood there. I have no idea why she didn't go in one of the loafing sheds where it was dry and where her hay is. There's a new photo of her in the gallery that shows just how wet she was.
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Added by Ronni on July 13, 2009 at 1:49pm —
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I finally got some daytime photos to share with you! I've added them to the gallery, they were all taken this evening. Alex has reverted to her old ways and now spends much of her time playing with the deer and fox, you'll see some of her deer friends in the photos. Sometimes she ignores them, sometimes she plays a form of tag with them, and other times she plays queen of the pasture and refuses to let any of them enter. All day yesterday she was running them all out. Every time one would try to…
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Added by Ronni on July 12, 2009 at 12:45am —
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As expected, Alex settled in to being alone remarkably well. She doesn't seem to mind being by herself at all and is back to playing with the deer and fox. We spent a little time just loving on her today and at one point she just draped her head over my shoulder and stood there while I hugged on her neck and smelled that wonderful horsey smell. It was a wonderfully relaxing break from trying to get the RV ready for camping. This is the first time in a long time I've been able to just stand quiet…
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Added by Ronni on July 7, 2009 at 7:51pm —
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Sally went to her new home this morning. I gave her to some wonderful people who have around 3000 acres and about 40 other horses in East Glacier, MT. It was by pure chance that I even met them yesterday and found out that they were in the market for another mare and when I took them to meet her they loved her immediately. They made arrangements to pick her up this morning.
I did warn them that she was very attached to Alex and we might have trouble getting her up to the trailer and loaded so t…
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Added by Ronni on July 4, 2009 at 2:12pm —
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My pasture has not grown in like it normally does. It must be something about the weather this year because the garden and yard aren't growing well either. This means that where I would normally be able to let the horses graze through the summer and save some money to buy hay for the winter I am instead still throwing out a bale of hay every 2 or 3 days. Granted, the horses (especially Alex) are on the pudgy side but if I don't throw hay out then Alex pushes her way through the fence, more on th…
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Added by Ronni on June 29, 2009 at 8:54pm —
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I've been putting off giving the girls their spring shots because I honestly didn't know how Sally was going to react. She's such a basket case about everything, especially when compared to the totally laid back Alex, that I just never know. So I decided to wait until it was time to have their hooves trimmed and ask my farrier to hold her for me since he's stronger than I am and both girls respond well to him.
Both girls did excellent with their trims. I think Alex even dozed off at one point.…
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Added by Ronni on June 23, 2009 at 7:17pm —
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Most horses will move somewhat away from their food to go to the bathroom. Not my girls, they go right in their food and then trample it. Over the winter the poo in the loafing shed and feeding area freezes so solid we can't get it out. So it builds up and come spring we end up with an 8-10 inch thick mass of trampled, hard packed hay and poo. In the spring we borrow a tractor and scrape the area down to bare ground again.
Yesterday was a lovely spring day and nobody had to work so we figured w…
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Added by Ronni on May 26, 2009 at 9:30am —
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It took a few days longer than expected but the greenhouse is finally done! It's far from professional looking but should meet my needs since I really only wanted it for tomatoes and strawberries. Last year my strawberries grew great but unfortunately the birds got to them before I did, they won't be able to do that this year!
While Henry and Jim were anchoring the greenhouse frame I was also able to get my flower bed finished up. I had a little company while working on it. A cute little Lazuli…
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Added by Ronni on May 21, 2009 at 9:30pm —
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May 15th has come and gone. That means it's past the traditional "last frost" date for our area and safe to plant the garden. Gardening was something I always wanted to do but never had a place to do it until we moved into our current home 3 years ago.
The first year here I had a 12' x 12' plot. It was crowded but I managed to grow a few pumpkins, a bunch of radishes, peas galore, a few cucumbers, and so many zucchini that my neighbors were running when they saw me coming! Last year I expanded…
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Added by Ronni on May 17, 2009 at 11:04pm —
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Irrigation for the pasture has always been a problem. The pump that feed the spigot for the water trough doesn't have enough pressure to effectively run a hose and sprinkler in the pasture so Tom decided to have my brother-in-law tap into the larger, separate pump that runs the underground sprinkler system in the yard and install a single sprinkler that will cover the whole pasture.
They put the new sprinkler in yesterday and it immediately became clear that Alex had a new favorite toy. She lov…
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Added by Ronni on May 16, 2009 at 9:37am —
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Since I use Ning for another group and like the features I have decided to move the girls blog to this page. The old blog on Wordpress will remain active for now, at least until I get all of the old blog posts moved over, but I won't be adding new posts to it. This new site will allow you to subscribe to updates, post comments, and more so browse around and have fun! You will need to become a member to view anything other than the main page but membership is free and you will not get spam!
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Added by Ronni on May 6, 2009 at 10:00am —
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Fish sticks?
