Horses

The Tale of a Trip to the Vet

If there is one horse at my house that is loved more than any other horse, it would be Aloha. When it comes to kid broke horses, she’s there. Any horse can have an off day, but in the general realm of life, if she knows a kid is on her back, she’ll take care of them, point blank.

So a couple weeks ago I was sicker than a dawg (wonder where that phrase comes from and sadly I’m still not over this crap. I’m done with it, but that’s another story for another day I guess), but I woke up and realized my mom was outside with the horses talking on the phone. I wasn’t real sure what was going on. She came in the house, said she thought Aloha had broken her leg and we were headed to the vet.

I jumped to, got the Bug and me dressed, carseat switched over to the truck, truck hooked up to the trailer, horse loaded, and away we went. We had to hustle because we were supposed to be there by 11, vet is about 45-50 minutes away and it was a quarter to 10 already.

We got loaded up, I said a quick prayer that dad’s truck wouldn’t let us down (it’s had problems from time to time), and away we went. I pulled into the vet clinic with 2 minutes to spare. Dad met us there, we unloaded Aloha, and the vet’s went to doing their thing.

First they did X-rays to see if the bone was broken. After they concluded that it wasn’t, they then pulled out the ultrasound to see what was going on inside. They concluded that it was either a pulled Tendon or Ligament. That’s a lot easier to deal with than a broken bone! Our 2 options

  1. Stall Rest, cold watering twice a day, bute twice a day (like Tylenol to help with pain), and hand walking
  2. Head to Peculiar, MO, to a huge horse facility up there and let them do further extensive studying on the leg to make it better.

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Kansas from Cedar Vale, Kansas

Does that title have you scratching your head? Well…. Meet Kansas….

Okay, I’ll explain. So a year ago we had 3 colts born… Blue Jeans, Flash, and Cadillac. All stud colts. All yearlings now. We have a lot of horses so this summer we decided to sell a couple off. We posted Flash and Blue Jeans up for sale just to see what would happen. Early in the summer we had a guy hit us up about a trade, horse for horse. We weren’t real sure we wanted another horse, we wanted to disperse some so we kind of said thanks but no thanks.

About a week ago or maybe 2 now though, we rethought that and hubby hit the kid up. I say kid because now we’ve met him and I think he’s probably 18… that’s a kid to me ;). Anyway…. we got some more info on the horse. He’s a 7 year old broke gelding who is just grade. Now grade means no papers. All of our horses are registered. Does that matter? Really only when you go to show maybe.

We kind of wondered why the kid wanted to swap a broke horse for an unbroke stud, but we didn’t question it too much. After some discussion, we decided to do the swap. We got a broke horse out of the deal and sometimes they’re easier to sell anyway if we were to decide to sell him.

Karen and Jared came over on Tuesday of that week to help us try to get a halter on Blue Jeans because he wasn’t broke… not one bit. Not even halter broke. It didn’t work in our favor.  Thursday night my dad went back out with us and we finally got a halter on the colt after a lot of trying. It wasn’t an easy feat but the minute we had the halter on him, his attitude changed. We had him leading in 20 minutes. It was crazy.

And our only real casualty was dad’s arm. Some how dad’s arm got struck by Blue Jean’s front leg. Ouch!

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Ride for Life 2016

Last weekend was a busy weekend! Hubby, Abug, and I were able to participate once again in the Ride for Life to benefit St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. With the sale of our house, it was kind of iffy leading up to the week if we’d be able to go or not. It depended a lot on if we got moved, etc. We were mostly moved (minus the garage, we did that this week) so we decided to take a weekend off from life and go to the ride!

Jared had his camper down there so we had a place to sleep, they took a horse for Abug and me to ride (why we didn’t take one of ours, who knows, maybe that last minute decision of actually going), and away we went.  Earlier in the week we discussed what we were going to eat Friday and Saturday night. I mentioned Chicken and Noodles for Friday night. Deb said if we had that, we needed mashed potatoes. So the idea was born.

Thursday night I made up 4 batches of homemade noodles, then woke up Friday morning and my little helper and I went to work making Chicken and Noodles, Mashed Potatoes, and 2 pans of Biscuits. One pan was for us to eat Saturday morning, which oddly enough we wound up eating Friday night with dinner and the second pan was for the baked sale auction Friday night.

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Spurs and Pearls Western Show Apparel

Oh gosh people, have you heard of Spurs and Pearls Western Show Apparel? Just look at this show jacket! If you show Western pleasure horses, this would so turn the head of the judge. Okay so the horse has to turn the head also, but come on people, when you show, you work on making yourself presentable as well!

The attention to detail is just outstanding. The flowers (is that what you’d call them) stand out with all the hand beading that has been added.

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Father’s Day 2016

This year for Father’s Day weekend we didn’t have Tbug. In fact, I’m not sure we do most years. We made plans to get her Saturday evening but then it turned out I picked her up Friday noon so she got to spend an extra weekend with us.

I always wanted to be that mom/wife who had her stuff together and got everything wrapped perfectly and had the house decorated for every season/holiday… but I fail there. So this was the fancy wrapping job hubby got.

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How to: Clean a Mildewed Saddle

It was really funny, people around my parts of the country were complaining that it was so cold in May, then once June hit, BAM, the heat hit but so did the humidity. And it is hard for some people to imagine the midwest having humidity since we’re not surrounded by water, but there are days that you can walk out and be ringing wet because of the humidity.

So one thing we have to deal with is molding saddles in our trailer. The changing area in the trailer doesn’t get a lot of air movement so when the saddles/bridles hang out in the nose of the trailer, they sometimes mildew. Yuck! So here’s a trick to help you keep your leather tack in tip top condition!

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NCHA Day 2016 – Ozark Mountain Cutting Horse Association

I have grown up showing cutting horses. My mom showed Arabs when I was born, but at age 5, she sold her Arab and we bought Quarter Horses. We got in to showing cutting horses and while those first years I mainly sat on the fence and learned what you weren’t supposed to do, I got a lot of experience with the horses. I showed my first one when I was 10. I told a guy named Randy Butler “Can I go home now please?” as I was riding in the herd to cut out my first cow. I mention this because he quoted me and called me by name when he quoted me that year when he showed at the Futurity… and he’s a trainer. I always got a kick out of that.

So every year the NCHA has what they call NCHA Day. There are 25 areas in the country and one association in each area is designated to host NCHA Day. It is the first Saturday of June. This year was Ozark Mountain Cutting Horse Association‘s Year (OMCHA). My dad is on the board and they were looking for a photographer to come in and snap some pictures. Dad volunteered me. So hubby and I loaded up that morning and headed over to the show to take pictures.

Do you remember last year when a Vegan Activist group went after Walmart for putting out a toy cattle hauler? They said it was a slaughter truck. I can show you right here that it isn’t a “slaughter” hauler. These cows came in off of acres and acres of grass for the show and then they went right back home. Just saying. This is called a cattle hauler.

The cows are kept in pens out back until they come in for the show. Hubby wore his Muck Boots so that he could step out back and snap a few pictures of the cows.

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