Muddy but a great night!

What a night! I had to get some stuff done at work this afternoon, so skipped lunch and took it at the end of the day instead, so I got to leave 1 hr early. That gave me extra daylight to play with, and it was such a beautiful day in spite of the mud pit of a pen! Ya know, if we had pigs they would be happy campers!

Here are 3 of the donks. From left to right: Jester, mini in front is Summer, and Zjax in the back. Ajax was hiding behind the corral panels - he gets tired of the paparazzi! :-) Jester is a character. I have a donkey hee-haw for my cell phone ring, and when I am out at the barn and Brian calls me, Jester will answer back, then the dogs start howling, and then the turkeys start gobbling and the guineas start going off. Quite the musical entourage.



Spring is in the air...the Tom's are feeling their stuff. They each have two hens, and I thought that would be enough to keep them happy. Apparently it isn't! They have been fighting and the other night I was trying to break up the fight and get them into the chicken house (keeps them safe from coons), and one of them grabbed the front of my jeans and held on, and the other one grabbed a back pocket and held on, then they hit me! I am surprised Pimp Daddy has his snood because Vanilla Ice is always grabbing a hold of it. I didn't realize how much he was bleeding until Brian mentioned the blood on my jeans. It was all over the place! If they keep fighting, we might have to make a choice of who stays and who goes. :-( In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy having them around. I think.



I spent this evening playing with Wyoming. Here is a very nice portrait of him. He sure is a purdy boy, isn't he? Remember, when you adopt him, you get to name him whatever you want! I am calling him Wyoming because that is where he is from. :-D



I took out my cotton lunge line and my goal was to get it looped around his neck and I would have both ends to hold on to. Before I tackled that task, I just hung out by him and he started playing with the rope, and nosing around on my shirt. He is very nosey and quite a character! He is going to make someone a heck of a horse!



Tripp used to love to sniff my hair in the mornings when it was still wet from getting out of the shower. Wyoming was sniffing my hair today - several times. He gets closer and hangs around longer every day. I LOVE IT!



I had my pink stick out there - I usually use the longer buggy whip as my stick, but the string is longer on my pink one. I did touch him with it but he doesn't like it. We went round and round and he finally decided it was not going to hurt him. When he stopped, I tossed it down on the bridge and started working on the rope pressure again. He walked up on the bridge and stood on my stick! Maybe he doesn't like pink? Pink is for girls? Ha ha! This is also a good shot of his hoof - lots of heel.



Okay folks, by now you know I am all about self portraits! Here is a very poor attempt, oh wait, it was actually a GREAT attempt at getting one, it just did not turn out so well. But it will do in a pinch. Wyoming still hasn't got the hang of self portraits yet, but he will.



"HA HA HA! DID YOU SEE ME STAND ON HER PINK STICK?"



I was very pleased with tonite. He follows me around, but still doesn't want to be touched. But get this! The mud is real deep in the pen, but I need to take advantage of the warm weather while we have it so I had to do something with them. There were a couple of times he took off trotting in that stuff - okay, fine, he can do that if he wants, then do it because I want, just as long as he doesn't start sliding. No problem. Then not once, but TWICE he cantered around the whole pen! In the mud, and did not slip once! His landing was as solid as it comes with each step. If you could see Tripp in that stuff, you will understand why I am so impressed! Tripp is kind of clumsy, and he slides A LOT! There is more than once his legs went right out from under him, he gets back up, looks at me with that cute smiley face of his, and takes off again. :-)
We are supposed to get more rain Friday night, but not over the weekend, altho it is supposed to cool off again. My goal is to get my hands on Wyoming. I know once he lets me do it once, he will be great after that. Okay, I don't know it to be fact, but I can feel it in my bones! :-)

While I was watering and cleaning mud out from under the canopy, Wyoming kept coming in and sniffing my back...I like that too. He is a neat dude!

Vegas had it easy tonite. I did rub on him quite a bit, and we worked on dropping his head. Oh yeah, last night I found an itchy spot that he loves to be scratched. His forehead! He had that head bobbing up and down. Of course I wish it was a wither or something that he liked scratched instead of his head right now, but I will take what I can get. As long as I am aware that it CAN be a problem, hopefully I am smart enough to make sure it does NOT become a problem.

I was going to trim the hooves of Flash, our large pony. I will have a story about him this weekend. I can't say anything right now because you never know who is reading these things. Trust me, it will be a great story! Anyways, I never made it to Flash. Wendigo, one of the first mustang mares we adopted came to visit me, and she was by herself. After a little coaxing, I got her haltered and loved on her a bit, then I trimmed her front hooves. I am ashamed to say they were horrible! They are much better now, and she did so good! A while back I had the lead rope looped around the fence, and she pulled back and it made a horrible "ZING" noise and she has been freaked out about weird noises and ropes ever since, and working with her feet has been a challenge. Tonite I draped it over her back and worked on her that way. Her backs are still a challenge to deal with, so I just rubbed on them for now...I just need to be consistent with her. She also has a funky shoulder injury that was there when we got her. The last time the vet looked at it he thought she might have been kicked and it broke something in there. The next time he is out I will have him check it again - I have been on her, but want to make sure it isn't going to be a problem trail riding. Then again, we might not know until we do it. I just don't want her in pain.
After Wendigo, I got a hold of Nevada, a mustang gelding we acquired a couple years ago. That boy is BIG! I need to officially measure him, but I would guess 16 hands with a very short back. He is gorgeous! He also has hooves the size of Texas! Dang! So I got his fronts trimmed too, and now my hands are so sore! They won't hardly grip anything. I need to be more consistent with my trims, and I am going to start trimming from the top. Here is a You Tube video on how it is done - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLc-C03mfuM. The gals that I try to follow are at this site: http://www.ironfreehoof.com/. There is another site with more of the TFTT videos...if you are interested let me know and I will hunt them down. Several people on one of he barefoot groups I belong to have been doing it with great success. Not only does it makes sense, everyone says that it is much easier on the back. I am all about that!
Tripp is due for a maintenance trim too, and he has some thrushy issues in a couple of his feet...will have to fix that pretty quick!

That is the extent of my evening.

Until later...Karen and Tripp