Last day of June already!

Wow, it's the last day of June already. This month has flown by and Friday is th 4th of July!

My birthday was June 23rd and Don gave me a brand new Circle Y saddle and matching breast collar and headstall. Wow, what a shock! Gorgeous saddle but way too expensive!

It was a nice birthday weekend. Two of our horses went to the same home. A father and his teenage daughter took home one of our Thoroughbred mares named Boots and his daughter bought our Arab mare named Abby. We wish them the best and many many years of happy trails together!!

So now we are down to just three horses and it sure makes feeding easier not only time wise but on the old wallet too!!

I'm still hoping to find a good home for our Thoroughbred Spook N Scoot. We are going to keep Ebony (Tropic Pass). I've been doing some research on her and discovered she has Alydar in her heritage along with some other fine Thoroughbreds. So our plans for now are to keep her and breed her early next year with another fine Thoroughbred stallion.

Saturday Don spent an hour working with her trying to get her to accept a fly mask. Horses can sure be stubborn but his tenacity paid off and she finally allowed him to put it on and she also let him use some fly spray on her. I put both the mask and spray on her yesterday morning but this morning she wanted no part of it! She's having one of her "mare" moments I guess. After an hour, I just got frustrated and hung the dang mask on her corral. She's probably mauling it right now!

My garden is coming along ok. I have just as much grass in it as I do vegetables. But I've been cutting the grass with clippers and giving it to the horses which they love since they are standing in sand all the time. It must be the pits to be a horse in Arizona where there is no such thing as grass like there is in other parts of the country.

It's hot!

It's too darned hot. Our weather went from freezing temps last month to hot, hot, hot practically overnight! But at least the danged wind isn't blowing 100 mph.

On June 7th, we started training Surenuff and she is coming right along. She is a real sweetheart. I had considered waiting until she was 3 years old but was advised that she might be too big and harder to handle if we waited til then... so seeing as she is pretty stout and strong and turned two in February, we decided to go for it!!

After 3 training sessions, I got up the courage to ride her in the round pen myself and she did really well. I was hoping she wouldn't buck or rear and she didn't. In fact, she didn't even do that the first time the trainer got on her. The worst habit she has that we are trying to break is that she walks off as soon as weight is put in the stirrup and for me, that means someone has to hold her head or I have to hop, hop, hop along beside her til I can swing myself up into the saddle... not an easy thing to do at my age! (hahha)

June 4, 2008 and all is well

I can't believe it's June 4th already! One month from today and we will be celebrating Independence Day which usually includes a BBQ with family and friends and we all camp out on our back deck to watch the fireworks from the neighboring towns. From our vantange point, we can usually see two or three shows at once. Since personal fireworks are "illegal" in our town, we enjoy the commercial shows put on by the towns next to us.

I still have 5 horses... been trying to sell some of them... to no avail... guess it's a sign of the times. Feed, hay and gas prices are ridiculously high and horse values seem to be in the toilet!

I had 3 people make appointments with me last Saturday to come and see my horses... none of them showed up and only one person sent me an email Monday morning to let me know she had bought a horse from someone else. Would've appreciated a phone call cancelling the appointments! Some people are inconsiderate that way.

Our weather has gone from cold and windy to warm and windy now. This has been the strangest spring/summer weather wise that I have ever seen here in our part of Arizona.

I planted a small garden but having a hard time getting seeds to grow. Still getting cold at night and then warm, dry and windy during the day... ugh... now I know what they mean when they refer to the "dust bowl"!

It's not good for the horses either... Abby has something in her eye that I've been trying to wash out for a week now. I think it's either hay or dust... can't see anything but know that it's bothering her.

I got out the fly masks but was only able to get one on Abby and one on Surenuff. Well both are now destroyed! I saw Surenuff tossing something in the air and thought it was a bird... ran out there and discovered it was her new flymask ripped to shreds... how she did that I haven't a clue!

All the horses need to be trimmed... last time I had it done it was $125.00... not something I look forward to ... my feed bill goes up 10% every 3 weeks! And I've cut back on feeding because it's warmer now.

Tis always something around here!! BUT I keep telling myself that it could be worse. I've had two friends go through some heartache with their horses. One lost 2 mares to botulism! And another lost her 3 day old filly to a bladder rupture. Talk about sad......

I wish everyone well!!