We are now all older

The birthdays came and went. Foxy and Belle had their cakes. Belle had two carrot candles since she turned 19, Foxy only got one since she turned 12.

Lady just got a carrot since her grain is just pelleted and the carrot wouldn't stick. We did made a human carrot cake in the shape of a horse, but I was not in the house when they cut into it, so I did not get a picture. For Kid #2's 12th birthday, I made a cake. It's a chocolate Foxy. Complete with the Blue eye.
I just got cherry chip cupcakes. I did not even bother to frost them.
Then we went on a trail ride. Yes, the halter is on Foxy, yes, that normally drives me crazy, but I wanted to be prepared. She had a half a moment of naughtiness, but Kid #2 handled it just fine. It has taken a while, but he is definitely gaining confidence.

My neighbor let me borrow her harness. We are planning a neighborhood cleanup. I thought that it would be cool to have Belle pull a wagon to through the garbage into. Unfortunately, the wagon only has a pole, no shafts. But I wanted to try out the harness on Belle anyway. It is short, Belle has a very long back, and its a fine harness, not what we use to drive carriages. Belle was a little confused when I put the saddle and britching on first. The the breast collar rather than the heavy collar. The crupper wouldn't fit, the straps are too short. The checkrein was unbelievably short. (no reenactments of Black Beauty and Ginger) But I ground drove her around the neighborhood and over to show off. Belle was awesome and excited. I definitely got my workout stretching out my walk to keep up with hers. If I jogged, so did she. She kept at a walk most of the time. She really doesn't like the neighbor's yard, so that was tough trying to get her to stand while they scrounged around looking for longer pieces of harness. We just might be able to get it to work. Kid #2 wants to train up Foxy for a light buggy. She won't be able to carry him much longer with that leg, so he wants to use her for light harness work.
When we left the barn, Belle was cruising and did not care that the other horses were neighing, that we were having 45-65 mph gusts of wind, she was just happy to be harnessed. Next time, I will put her Liverpool bit on the headstall. The blinders were way to close to her face, so I was just going to walk her around the barn to see what she would do. Then just up to the house, then down the driveway, soon it was all over the neighborhood and two hours later, we were done. It was great.
(I was still adjusting to fit. The noseband was too small and never got buckled. The old snaffle is too tight in the picture, I fixed it)

Bathtime

I did end up with the day off, kind of. I went to talk to a local principal. No luck there, bummer.

So, to cheer myself up, I took a few minutes to give Lady a good scrubbing. As you can see she really needs it.

I used a ton of whitening shampoo on her.

I was worried, at first that Sergeant would charge Lady because she was tied (a favorite thing for him to do) But Foxy and Belle stayed close, so he didn't dare.

She didn't get perfectly spotless because I had to give her time to dry during the hottest part of the day and her white is going to take time to bleach out the stains from winter. So I let her loose to get even more dirty. She ran over to pick on Foxy.




What a little stinker.

Spring is on it's way!!!

With Spring on it's way, I have been swamped (quite literally with all of the snow melting. The mud is everywhere. We will be fixing up things for next winter and spring!)
After attempting to put Lady in a stall with Princess to try and wean her before show season-
-----Princess would not let her come into the stall to eat. Then when we put hay in the run, Princess chased after a heavy sweat, which is really bad with her four inch coat and freezing temperatures----

So I put her back in with Belle and Foxy for another few weeks.

Last weekend, we did some major spring cleaning. We still need a front end loader to strip the runs, but we got alot of barn cleaning done. I also put Foxy in a stall and run by herself and left Lady with Belle. The first thing that Belle did was try to push over the panel between their stalls. Belle needed weaning from Foxy as bad as Lady. They are still all turned out to pasture together, so it is not a true weaning, yet, but it helps with training and feeding.

I started my spring training with Kid #2 today. He is on the middle school track team, so I figured that we would workout together in the morning so that I could improve my physical shape (thanks for all of the reminders about rider fitness, Fitness Guru Stacey) One thing that I did not think about was just how dark it is at 5:00 am now that Daylight savings stuff was Sunday. We had to briskly walk because we were tripping over frozen mud holes, tire tracks, Shooter and Tigris. (I will bring a flashlight tomorrow) We figured that Shooter would love to run with us, but Tigris really surprised me. Tigris (During the Day)
He kept up the entire time. My goal is a 10K this summer. Kid #2 wants to run a marathon, but I think that we will wait on that.

This week is full of Birthdays. Kid #2 and Foxy will be 12 this weekend. I gave Belle March 21 as a Birthday because mine is on Monday. Lady is 1 on the 28th. I am baking horse shaped cakes and special treats for the ponies. Barnaby turned 28 this month, too.