We are OFFICIALLY more than half way done with 2020! Has there EVER been a year that more people have been excited to see come to an end?! Coronapocolypse hasn’t been awful to my close knit family and friends, at least not yet, but I’m excited for the year to be over because of the elections.

Things on the farm are at the very least a lot more REAL than the crap going on in the news and on social media, so enjoy some silly shenanigans and updates.

Ousier is a repo kitty and she LOVES her house life. She’s the easiest and sweetest kitty ever. We love her. We also really love our induction cooktop. If you are choosing a cooktop, I think induction is the best. Gas is complicated, albeit fancy, and electric is just awful. Do yourself a favour and get induction; it’s easy to clean and your water boils nearly instantly.

Ouiser can find herself the softest and weirdest spots possible to sleep. In this case, barn towels.

I worked from home one day this week. It was fabulous. Until I went to the barn to check on the horses:

Pablo peering out of COCO’S stall. Notice the feed bags and hay all over the floor.

This one is my personal favourite:

Yes, he has an ENTIRE BALE OF HAY in his stall. He can barely chew, so it’s not like he’s really enjoying this. #itsgoodtobe27

Then later in the week our lovely neighbour (one is lovely and one is AWFUL) invited the horses to come eat the grass. It was so lovely and idyllic for like 79 minutes.

Mostly they ran around a lot and eventually started grazing.

However, about an hour into their rendezvous next door, they discovered the deer feeder (Jaguar) and had to come back to their regular pasture to hopefully avoid colicking. BAD HORSES!

I hope your dependents behave better than mine and that it isn’t a bajillion degrees hot where you live so you can actually enjoy the weekend outside!

The weeks seem to go by a bit slower during Coronapocolypse. Mostly because there isn’t a whole lot going on during the weekends like there might be when we aren’t social distancing and most social activities aren’t canceled. Plus, it’s hot in Texas right now. It’s (thankfully) cooled off a bit the latter part of this week, but temps are still in the high 90’s, which inherently makes one want to take things more slowly. I have some fun horsey things this weekend, so I’m looking forward to horsing around with friends a bit.

Despite the heat, I’ve been getting some rides in after work. I got a super fantastic new bareback pad recently. I’ll blog about it soon, but for some reason summertime seems like a great time to ride bareback. Possibly because I can do it without wearing pants.

It appears that Simon and Samson have a bit of a bromance going on. It’s extra cute because Simon is the biggest horse we have and Samson is the smallest. Please ignore Simon’s lack of mane grooming. I promise I’ve been trimming it

What is it about cats in boxes that is SO entertaining?! I got a kick out of this one because the box is so very big and the cat can’t really get in it, but that did not stop her from trying.

Winx in a box.

I rode Coco for the first time in about 18 days after her vet visit cleared the weird welt as superficial. She was a very good girl and even walked and trotted through the sprinkler like a super star (she hates water and is usually pretty spooky). After our ride I groomed her and put some conditioner on her hooves since the ground is so dry in Texas. Who knew that one’s own shiny hooves could be so terrifying! She stood stock still until I undid the cross ties and then nearly jumped out of her feet, well, she would have jumped out of her feet if it were actually possible.

What, aren’t all horses afraid of their own feet when shiny from hoof conditioner?!

We have two neurotic and geriatric tiny dogs who both love a super fluffy blanket. One (the Italian Greyhound) is EXCEPTIONALLY neurotic and will scream at the top of her lungs if you pick her up wrong, not because it is painful but just because she’s crazy. Well, I succumbed to Facebook’s advertising algorithm and ordered two Soothing Beds that the internet told me would change my dogs’ lives. After watching the shipping status FROM CHINA for about 12 days the new beds arrived and let me tell you, those little dogs are OBSESSED with their Soothing Beds! Facebook Advertising Algorithm for the win!

Bunny LOVES her Soothing Bed! LOVES. IT.

And last, but certainly not least, the world always needs a Pablo update. This isn’t a particularly remarkable photo of Pablo, but he’s always cute and funny. He’s finally settling down and getting sweeter in his older age. We don’t really know how old he is, but we have had him for about 14 years.

Everyone loves the hairy ass. And the hairy ass jokes.

Y’all have a GREAT weekend! Wear your masks. Maintain social distance. Be kind to one another.

It’s FRIDAY!!!!! Friday’s don’t really mean as much as they did before coronapocolypse, but I still love them because they mean I have two nearly uninterrupted days of horsing ahead of me. Add to that the weather has been gloriously cool, albeit quite wet, this week and it looks like the cooler (for Texas) weather is going to stick around for a bit longer!

A few weeks ago I was in the barn doing chores and when I went to dump water buckets from one of the horse stalls I found one of my kittens staring at a little baby Blue Jay was on the ground. It was a big baby and had some feathers, but clearly wasn’t ready to fly yet. I quickly picked it up because me picking it up was going to end better than what the kittens would do with it if they had their way. Immediately I could hear the Blue Jay parents go CRAZY! They were swooping down from the trees and carrying on, like any good parent would do if a giant took their baby.

Super cute Blue Jay nearly-fledgling.

I put the baby bird in some grass hay in a box with a lid to keep it safe while I tried to figure out where it needed to go. There are quite a few trees around my barn so I had my work cut out for me to try to find the nest this little bird belonged to. The parents were still losing their minds so they weren’t a great deal of help to figure out where was home nest. After wandering about for nearly 30 minutes I was ready to give up when I FINALLY saw what looked like a nest at the very top part of the tree just outside the stall where I found the chick. Thankfully Boot City invested in a 14′ ladder so I wrangled the thing to the barn and set it up under the tree. This was my cardio AND strength training for the day. That ladder is no joke. Once set up, the bird parents resumed their maniacal freaking out and dive bombing, so I felt pretty good that I had found the right spot.

The top of the 14′ ladder. The nest was still a good 6-8′ higher. Never mind the car projects that live in perpetuity at our house. 

I made sure the ladder was steady and got my baby bird and we climbed to the top of the ladder. The ladder was quite steady, thankfully, because when I got to the top I realised that I still couldn’t reach the nest so I had to climb into the actual tree ABOVE the ladder. Thankfully I don’t have too much of a fear of heights. As I was doing that, the bird parents started dive bombing my head and face. Yikes! I got just high enough that I could reach the nest at the top of my reach and gently drop the precious cargo back into it’s home. It never made a peep. I climbed back down and the parents relented on their attack. I never saw another sign of the bird family again. I hope all was well and they live happily ever after! Never a dull moment!

In other less dramatic news we have gone from having as many as 75 to 80 laying hens to now only having 6. All were lost from predators, old age or illness. Old hens are not very tasty, contrary to what people try to convince me. The remaining hens have two very nice gentlemen roosters to look out for them and they enjoy helping Coco eat her breakfast and laying eggs in her hay. It entertains me because Coco is quite aggressive about attacking dogs or cats in her stall, but she’s perfectly happy to have chicken guests!

A little for you, and a little for me.

When Boot City’s and my house was being renovated last year there was a long period of time when we didn’t have a dryer, so I got back into line drying our laundry. I really like line drying for many reasons. I love the smell of line dried clothes/sheets. I like that the sun naturally whitens things. I like that a lot of clothes that are line dried don’t need to be ironed like they do when they come out of the dryer. Texas summer heat dries things on the line almost as fast, and sometimes faster, than the dryer so the time commitment is actually better if you take into account the lack of ironing. However, there is the constant risk of laundry being furry.

He just stood there in the laundry for like 5 minutes. Like he enjoyed the fabric flapping around him. Like a weirdo.

And no Farm Friday post is complete without at least ONE dog photo. During the renovation we turned our breezeway into a dog/laundry/mud room and Linda (she’s a foxhound retired from Red Rock Hounds in Reno, Nevada) enjoys napping on her dog cot. She’s the sweetest old hound when she isn’t teaching the youngsters to dig under the fence to get to the neighbour’s to chase deer.

Red Rock Linda having a nice snooze.

I’m looking forward to lots of time in the saddle this weekend, some mane trimming and bridle path clipping and maybe even some house cleaning. What are you getting up to this weekend?

Yesterday I posted a photo of a cut/puncture wound in Coco’s nose on my social media accounts and subsequently was asked by a few folks how I found said wound. So, here you go.

Note the trail of blood trickling out her nose. She also has a cut on the outside of her nose.

It was not a tremendous amount of blood considering it was a “facial” wound, which usually bleed a LOT. She did NOT enjoy having it cleaned and putting medicine in her nose, but I can understand that and she really wasn’t terrible.

This photo is after I cleaned the injury and before I put medicine on it, you know, to send to my vet. When my vet builds a new building at his clinic I really think it should be named for me after all the money I’ve given him this year.

This photo really doesn’t do the injury justice. It is at least 1.5″ long and .25″ deep, if not deeper. It’s a pretty stout cut/puncture. I still have no idea how she got it.

To make up for the gross blood/injury photos, I give you PUPPIES!

Sleepy baby girl #1.

There are only two girls in this litter. SO CUTE!

On the move girl #2 with brothers in the background. They are getting VERY active!

Pablo was being weirdly nice to the dogs yesterday. Quila wasn’t too sure of his intentions, however.

P: Hello, dog friend. I would like to smell you.
Q: WTF are you doing, you ass.

And this morning I got to share my latte with a visitor to the barn!

Hello young grasshopper.

It is BLAZING hot here in Texas so I’ll be getting rides in early in the morning this weekend and possibly cutting all my hair off tomorrow. Have a GREAT weekend!

I’m back! I feel like I have my blogging ducks in a row now, but that can always change. I would love MORE feedback from my readers! If you like a post, please comment. If you want to know more about something, please tell me. If a blog is boring/offensive/fantastic, let me know. I sometimes feel like I’m writing into an abyss and getting feedback helps me stay motivated and write interesting content.

We have a somewhat unique lifestyle that people seem interested in learning about it, and that is the primary reason I started this blog. I love writing, too, so that is my selfish reason for blogging. I’m hoping to maintain more “themed” days so readers will know which days to tune in if there is content they find more interesting. I presume most non-riders get bored when I write posts about the details or riding and showing, but I enjoy reading the blogs of other riders so I like to add my 2 cents about that every now and again.

This post will be somewhat of a catch-up on goings-on at the farm as well as some just silly pics of the farm animals. Enjoy!

Chivas has been somewhat on lock-down the past 2 months because she has some serious seasonal allergies. We haven’t gotten her officially tested, but every spring she gets mad itchy and is a tiny ball of oozing, itchy sores and keeps us up at night with her scratching and chewing on herself. This year has been the best for keeping that itching at bay, but it reared it’s ugly head in mid-May so we opted to try to keep her in the house and not take her out for rides and feeding. This is how she feels about being left in the house.

Who knew a 13lb dog could TEAR UP a giant dog bed…..

I posted before my blog break that we had a surprise set of twin goats. They are adorable baby goats as all baby goats are, but they are also weirdos. This is a photo of them nursing from their aunt Punky. Punky doesn’t currently have any kids and hasn’t had any kids since last summer. Their mom, Penelope, is producing plenty of milk for them, but for some reason they have also started nursing from Punky. We have never had kids do this! Punky and Penelope were part of a set of triplets and Penelope had to be bottle-fed because the Mom only had one teat to nurse from. Since the kids are nursing from her, Punky has gotten milk in her udder. Kind of a fascinating little social/ag experiment going on here.

The twins and their aunt Punky.

It has gotten hot in Texas so Murtagh has more or less moved in the tack room with AC 24/7. He also has mites in his ears that we are treating so I like that he’s happy staying close to home. He is just the sweetest kitty in the whole world!

Cat naps

In early May the horses came running to the barn from turnout to be put up for the night. Coco and Simon walked into the barn aisle where Boot City was opening stall doors to their various stalls. Coco turned and pinned her ears at Simon and he in turn tried to turn away from her a little too quickly on the concrete floor and fell down. It was one of those stomach-in-your-throat moments as he lay there and waited to get up. When he got up he was CLEARLY lame on his left hind. We got the other horses put away and fed them their dinner and I went to taking pics and video to send to my vet. Within an hour Simon could hardly walk.

We approached the injury fairly conservatively (my vet didn’t seem at all worried that he had broken anything) with stall rest, cold hosing, bute and poultice. Thankfully it only took a couple weeks for him to be almost 90% sound. I erred on the side of caution and kept him on stall and then paddock rest for a full 3 weeks before he was clearly stir crazy, not hurting and about to do something stupid when his friends got turned out and he had to stay in the barn. While he was sore he was a perfect gentleman on stall rest and even behaved for Boot City when he had to do the cold hosing and poulticing while I was away at a horse show with Sterling. Simon is a very wise and calm horse for only being 4 years old.

Simon helps.

Poultice and stall rest o-rama

It took a good few months for her to settle in, but Ouiser finally seems to be happy and content in our house. She didn’t leave “her” room for about 2 months and now she more or less has the run of the house. She loves to sun bath in window sills and she is very chatty with Boot City and me.

Ouiser getting out and about in her house

Last, but CERTAINLY not least, is our dear Pablo. Pablo appears to have foundered or something similar and he WILL NOT let us catch him to try to see what is up. He lies down a lot. Stands on soft ground as much as possible. Appears sore when he moves out. We fear that his refusal to let us treat him will result in an earlier than necessary demise and believe me when I say we have tried working with him. Donkeys are “stubborn”. Everyone knows this, but you don’t really understand it until you have had a donkey. They don’t forget anything and they are not at all trustful.

Someone has mistreated Pablo and he refuses to get over that. We have, in the past, forced him to let us vet his legs/feet, give him meds, etc, but it just isn’t worth it. He will occasionally go into an enclosure where he knows we can catch him and let us groom him or trim his feet or whatever, but he seems to be doing that less lately. We don’t really know how old he is, but we have had him for 11 years. All 11 of those years we have given him treats, groomed him and basically let him do what he wants, but he still is terrified of the halter and being caught. His feet don’t look bad and he’s eating just fine (as you can see by his belly!), so he’s not suffering. We got 10 semi-loads of sand in April and he’s been loving rolling in it, sleeping in it and standing on the piles.

If you are an actual donkey-whisperer, I’d be happy to hear your advice for dear Pablo.

Pablo on his empire of sand

Please comment if there is anything I don’t write about enough or that you are just interested to know more about. Thank you for being here and reading about our little corner of Texas and the interwebs!  Happy weekend and I hope it is cooler where you are than it is here.

Happy Friday! The weather here in North Texas is AMAZEBALLS right now! Temps in the 70s and green grass (and bluebonnets) everywhere. It is truly delightful!

I feel like I never post pics of the chickens, so here is a chicken (one of our Blue Andalusians) with a beerhound photobombing.

Cheesy goat smile.

Some days you just need a unicorn and a prosecco.

I had quite a lot of help unloading feed on Monday.

If all goes accordingly this weekend will be the final hunt for this season. It’s always a bummer when the season ends, but exciting to get my Saturday mornings back! Now that I have three sound horses (and hopefully they stay that way) I need all the time in the saddle I can get!

What are you up to this weekend?

Happy Friday y’all! It is COLD here in Texas! It was in the 20’s overnight, but thankfully should be getting in the 40’s today. Life is much easier when it gets above freezing during the day. Much time is being spent blanketing and unblanketing horses, hauling hay, turning heaters on and off. All things I never had to do in Montana! The irony! As I write this it is -2F in my hometown.

Pablo the nuzzler. He’s such a weirdo!

Pablo’s left front foot has been sore for the past few weeks and when his feet hurt he WILL NOT let me catch him. I guess he knows I want to mess with the hurt foot and he just isn’t into that. I feel like a bad donkey parent, but I also don’t want to wrangle a donkey. Now that the ground has dried up he seems sound again. And now that he’s sound he is super snuggly. He likes to stand behind me and rest his chin on my shoulder, then ever so slowly he starts nuzzling my coat, hat and ear before he tries to bite. This donkey. He should write a book about himself.

Murtagh the cat and Dickens the Whippet are best buds. Murtagh LOVES to play with the sighthounds and often can be heard terrorizing them in the middle of the night.

I was trying to snap a photo of Samson in the snowflakes that we had for about 45 minutes yesterday, but he was not into the photo op!

Super hairy ponies have to be the cutest thing ever! Samson is still difficult to catch in the field, but he loves to come in the barn to steal hay and is easy peasy to catch then. He desperately wants to be with the big horses, but the one time we tried that Sterling chased him endlessly to the point I was worried about Samson. We will try it again one of these weekends and let Samson out with a smaller group of the big horses. He has been out with Jaguar once and that went really well. Jaguar ignored him the whole time.

These two are non-stop wrestlers!

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

This past Saturday was a BIG day for the muppy family! Of the 11 puppies 5 will stay in Texas and 6 will go to New York to get adopted. The New York crew will stay in Texas until they are old enough to get spayed/neutered and finish all their puppy shots. The local puppies can be adopted earlier, with conditions requiring regular vet visits. Well, this past Saturday four of the muppies went to an adoption event and I’m so pleased to tell you that all four were adopted within a couple hours!

On their way to Dogtopia! This photo was before they ALL got carsick and threw up.

The rescue group had done a few posts advertising a puppy adoption event so people were able to submit adoption applications in advance and speed up the process on the day of the event.

Denise was the first muppy to be adopted. She will be an only dog and will have a new little girl to be her best friend.

Denise

Betty Lou was Boot City’s favorite muppy so it was hard for him to let her go, but she was adopted by a delightful older couple who already have one smaller dog.

Beautiful brindle Betty Lou

Rizzo was VERY popular with his adorably scruffy face and extra calm demeanor. He was adopted by a super fun family and will get to go on lots of adventures! His adoptors have already contacted me and requested baby pics.

Rizzo. Who could resist this face?!

Last, but certainly not least, to leave the building was Camilla. She went home with a young couple to be their first pet together.

Camilla and Pablo snuggles.

It is always a little big hard to let the foster dogs go, but it is so satisfying to know that we helped these puppies have the best start to life they could. Definitely much better than if they had been born on the side of a busy road, which would have been their fate had a good Samaritan not picked up Jessie and July. My hope is that their adoptors will keep in touch, but there is satisfaction in knowing they went to good homes.

Holy smokes, it’s September already! How did that happen?!

The past few days have been so emotional for me. I watch my Facebook feed to see countless posts of the devastation in the Houston area from Hurricane Harvey. My heart is warmed and my faith in humanity is restored to see SO many people stepping up to help people and animals in need. We will be taking in some shelter dogs a as a temporary stop on their trips out of Texas to make room for Harvey evacuee pets. My Facebook feed is also full of posts of the devastation from fires in my home state of Montana. Over 500,000 acres have burned this summer. Farmers and ranchers are losing their livestock and livelihood to these fires. At the end of the post I’ll include links to organizations I feel have the best direct impact on  those in need in Texas and Montana.

Onto more uplifting pics of cute animals!

Pablo meets a Muppy!

When I was riding on Tuesday night I got a bug in my eyeball and it has looked like this since Tuesday night! It looks much worse than it feels.

Our goats like to play with and in their food.

Links to help Harvey victims:

Fund established by Houston’s mayor: http://www.ghcf.org

American Associate of Equine Practitioners: https://foundation.aaep.org/form/foundation-donation

USEF Disaster Relief Fund: https://www.usef.org/donate

Urgent Animals of Fort Worth: https://www.urgentanimalsfw.org/donate

Austin Pets Alive: https://www.austinpetsalive.org/hurricane-harvey-evacuations/

Tarrant Area Food Bank: http://tafb.org/donate/

This was a relatively quiet week at the farm. The weather is heating up to typical Texas summer temps, which makes me kind of sad. The spring and fall here are delightful, but the summers really are brutal!

Sweet little Harriet had her first heartworm injection this week. She was quite lethargic the first day, but has pepped up since. She will have two more injections in a month and hopefully will then be cured and ready to be adopted!

I can’t even with these two! This is no less than 150 pounds of dog on one dog bed. Never mind that there are at least two other same-sized dog beds they can use.

This is Mickey, our most recent foster from the Fort Worth shelter. He is your typical 6 pound dog who acts like he is 60 pounds! He is also heartworm positive so will be starting treatment soon. In the meantime he is trying his paw at goat herding.

Pardon her closed eyes, but this is Coco modeling her new fly sheet. She is a solid 16hh so I have mostly bought her sheets and blankets sized for a horse that tall, which is generally a 75-78 depending on their body type. Well, Coco has a very compact body and she was tearing up her size 76 fly sheet because it was too big and didn’t fit her correctly. This sheet is a 72. She is so petite!

This photo is a barn evening in a nutshell! Peaches asleep in the middle of the doorway. Quila chasing chickens trying to find eggs to eat and chickens wandering in the barn aisle and pooping on the floor.

Happy weekend y’all!