And to think, the dude practically refuses to step in to some calm water while I’m on his back… apparently water is more dangerous than mud?  Or, he’s playing me like the fiddle.

“Who, me?”

My little grulla mare, MRK Annie Oakley, has left her birth home to live with a wonderful lady in Wisconsin.  This was definitely one of the hardest decisions to do — part with the first foal born on the property and essentially, my dream horse.  She had the look, the color, the height (short!), the spunk, the heart, the brains, the quickness, and the talent that I’d always wanted.  But as life changes, so does your heart and so you learn that just because something is exactly what you might have wanted, doesn’t mean it is right for your life.  Annie Oakley would not be a good horse for me to raise my daughter on or with, she’s got too much attitude.  Cali and Sunnie, however, get along great and are both fairly slow and calm to where I can pony one off the other.  Annie Oakley would never have any of that.  So, she has moved on to be an endurance horse for a very spunky and fun lady — I know they’ll get a long great and I have no saddness of where my baby has gone.  She is in the perfect spot, the spot I’ve been wanting for her — though I always envisioned it being part of my life.  Turns out, it’s not.

My daughter, Annie, is growing by leaps and bounds.  She is constantly putting me in stitches with her comments — the other day on the way to church, my father in law made a comment to Hubby’s Grandmother and called her “Grandma,” Annie corrected him and said, “No Papa.  It’s Date Mema!”  (Great Mema.)  She is certainly 2 going on 13 — hire a two year old while they know it all.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Hubby aka “Daddy” is gone to Belgium for a trade show.  He has been there since last Saturday and after the show, will be moving on to Croatia to install the machine they’re showing into their first European customer’s factory!  Annie and I miss him and Annie keeps telling me that he and Curtis are in a plane (whew, I’d hate to be in a plane this long!)  But they’re doing well, figured out transportation in Belgium and working it out with most the French speaking locals… I don’t know how well they’re working that out, but they must be doing okay.  If they spoke Spanish, Hubby would be in like flin… French is a different subject.

While he is gone, though, I am able to leave my sewing machine out on the counter and do some crafting.  This little “Baa” is my first… and though he does have issues, we’ll work them out.  He has now joined Annie in her vast array of buddies that join her about every where we go.  Seems that he and her new Bubby (of which I will be posting pictures soon) are a smash hit.  Oh, and this is the first time I’ve embroidered anything… that’s why it ain’t to great.

So, we’re keeping busy here — the rams have been out breeding their groups and are about to be brought back in.  I need to make appointments for two yearlings, a heifer and a steer for their visit at the butcher as well as a handful of 8 month old rams.  Looking forward to salting the pelts and getting some meat in the freezers!

Thursday last week, we took our Mommy’s Day Ride again but this time we had another “man” along.  We always have Otter with us, and sometimes Sunnie, but this time Maleah brought along her grulla gelding, Smoke.  Smoke has “issues” or rather, Cushings Disease which is basicly a non-cancerous tumor in the petuitary gland which affects him in more ways than one.  So, to remain fit and healthy Maleah decided to drag Smoke along, and I think he thoroughly enjoyed it!  He kept up with the group very well and even trotted a bit to stay up with Maleah’s mare, Tiki. 

Maleah calls him her “new main squeeze.”  I’m pretty sure she’s awefully smitten with Smoke and intends to do everything in her power to keep him strong and healthy, as much as she can.  Both Maleah and I are more on the “natural healing” side of things so when Smoke came here from Washington with a package of herbs and supplements, we were more than pleased to see this route being taken in his health.  He receives big amounts of Chaste Berry and various other herbs for health, and nutritional goodies such as flax.  Smoke is in good hands here, and all of us are excited about him being in the neigh-borhood.  Okay, so Sunnie’s a bit jealous, but it’s a guy thing.

Fall is certainly closing in on us lately, with very cool nights and warm days.  The shadows are getting deeper and the days are shorter.  We Mommy’s decided we had to be in the saddle heading out at 5 pm otherwise our rides were only going to be about two hours instead of three like we were enjoying. 

Jenni and her boy Otter B Good – Extreme Mustang Makeover horse who attended the first ever in Fort Worth, TX.

Dixie and her Haflinger mare, Fancy.

Cali’s glamour shots – I could hardly get her to stand still, she kept wanting to stick her nose in the lens!

This coming Thursday we’ll be meeting at Dixie’s house and going down to the river to play in the water.  Most of our horses are fairly new and most don’t like water — mine normally don’t have that problem.  We’ll see this week though!

Aren’t her braids quite striking?  You can see where her bi-coloring weaves down through the hair — and it doesn’t cost her $50.00 + each month to get those highlights either!  There in the middle to lower part of her mane you can see that she has rubbed out the bi-coloring and it is standing on end in the photo… too short to lay down yet.  But I do love Cali’s coloring, she’s a very handsome gal.

Cali is normally a very calm mare, almost too calm if you can believe that one.  She tends to saunter down the road, rather than go somewhere with purpose but that could be because of her rather “fluffy” frame she’s carrying right now.  We’ll just blame it on her baby weight she never lost — though her colt is 3 now.  Hey, some just lose it quicker than others right?  Anyway, this trip out she spooked at a few more things and walked out a bit quicker.

I was pleased that she had a bit more energy this time and wasn’t sweating near the amount that she did on our first real outing up in the mountains.  We did go to the same place, up in an old burn from back in ’93 or there abouts.  The roads are wonderful for riding on, and have turned in to trails.  The trees planted by Sierra Pacific logging company have grown in beautifully and are about 10′ tall now.

We did find a way behind a gate that significantly cut down our riding time up the dirt road through a small mountain neighborhood.  We had permission from someone who had enough authority to say we could cut through if we so chose.  Maleah is there in the background, with Cali wondering what on earth she is doing with a large stick in one hand and a pocket knife in the other — she soon learned that those are essential trail riding tools to cut back the blackberry bushes from our very narrow path.

We rose higher and higher and higher, all three of the horses did very well though Jenni’s gelding Otter threw a few mini-fits and so did Cali, but it was nice to see them gaining a bit more energy.  All this working out is working out well for all of us.

We stopped a couple times and took in the scenery — here’s a local layout if you care to know.

I think Cali even liked stopping to take in the view… or maybe to take a breather.

And then she was ready to go again, back down the mountain before the sun left us.

It was another lovely ride, and I am so thankful to have friends to do it with again.  It feels wonderful to be back in the saddle again, climbing mountains to look at the view.

“Well, you wanted me to ride your horse right?  I’ll make some chicken wings and bring them down to the arena.  Meet you there at 6:00pm.”  Okay, sounds great!  Don’t have to worry about dinner and get my horse ridden.

I haven’t ridden my little Miss Annie Oakley for two years!  I took her to a Jerry Tindell clinic in early October and she did amazingly and I was so proud.  A week later I became pregnant with my baby and she has been sitting in the pasture, waiting to come out again but me, always choosing a horse much easier to work with.  So, I walked her down to the arena, not a quarter of a mile away to meet up with Maleah.  I turned Annie Oakley loose in the arena while we munched on chicken and she ran around getting used to the dirt and surroundings.

Enter – Hi Ho Silver.  We put the saddle on when Hubby got there and this is the reaction I was expecting.  I had saddled her up a few months back in the round pen and got the same reaction but she settled in nicely after a little temper tantrum.

Anyway, I have had some pretty bad horse related accidents in the past and have been a little “spooked” since so I have been very hesitant about getting back on – lucky for me, Maleah has all the confidence in the world and is also very nice to me (but doesn’t give me any slack either) about my shyness.

So Hubby likes to run the horses around on foot before getting on, he wants all their kinks out.  He and Annie Oakley started out a little bouncy.

But of course, after a little more bouncing, she had settled in and was ready for her rider.

And what a pretty little trot she has!

Maleah worked on just walking right off the bat.  Annie Oakley got stuck many times, like her feet were in cement.  She would protest in balking then she’d give little half-hearted attempts at crow hoping but Maleah didn’t give her any slack either.  Pretty soon they would make a complete circle around the arena at a nice walk.

Things were doing very well, and Maleah decided they would kick it up a notch.

Annie Oakley’s trot is very lovely, once she gets going.  It smooths out and is pretty quick, but easy to sit to.

Soon Maleah was making my little butter ball move out faster and faster around the ring.

Her cute little smooth trot had turned in to a full out racing trot that looked much more bouncy but sure covered the ground!  Doesn’t she look like a Standardbred (but much shorter?)

Maleah was trying with all her might to get my little horse to pick up a lope… she just kept trotting then finally, she started loping, let out a little protest in crow-hops and then Maleah got her to pick it up again and off they went.

They settled in to their lope and Maleah ended there, on a good note.  She then offered to do this a couple times a week.  Yay!  I’ll get that little mare of mine out in no time.  I won’t want to sell her now… Though I already don’t want to.