Good thoughts please

The Cow Wrangler was taken to the hospital today. He has been having a bit of trouble with his heart and during a stress test they stressed him too much...What were they thinking? He is a wonderful guy who does a lot for us horses. He irrigates the pastures, hauls hay to us, checks our water, makes sure the fences are in good repair, and tells us all how great we are (okay he said I was very bad when I bucked off he DOR, but I deserved that). We are all a bit worried about him and if you could spare some good thoughts and prayers we would greatly appreciate it.
Enjoy your day and don't forget to hug your DOR

Less words Wednesday

This is Mo, a horse the DOR rescued who now owns a teenage girl. Mo was too busy munching to pay much attention to the DOR. The DOR gets to see him on site visits several times a year. He is a very happy horse.





Jack and "his girl" Shandi. She is always by either Jack or Freedom.











Hank going out on his daily trail ride. He is very happy living in "France"






The DOR got to spend the afternoon with Scooby. Scooby enjoyed getting a massage and lots of grooming.












Here is his oh that feels so good face.













This is Jesse, another horse who lives in France (what they call where Scooby and Hank live). He is laying down and smiling at his rider after the trail ride. Jesse was trying to sucker her into sitting and holding his head.







Here is how Scooby spends most of his day, right by Hank's side. Hank is Scooby's seeing eye appy. It works well because Scooby depends on Hank's eyes and Hank is more secure when Scooby is around. They are best buddies and will spend the rest of their lives together.


Enjoy your day and don't forget to hug your DOR

Cool, clear water

It is that time of year again...ALGAE time.
The sun, black water tubs, and heat all combine to make my water trough the perfect home for algae. Now I want to make it clear up front that my water trough doesn't look anything like these pictures. My trough could look like this though but the DOR scrubs it at least once a week, twice if the weather is real warm. She also flushes it out between scrubbings.
The DOR teases us that we are trying to grow our own feed because we leave chunks of grass, Freedom drops mush in the tub, and we sometimes put sticks in our trough. We are just making sure she has plenty to do.
I wait until she has tipped the tub over and has her head in the tub scrubbing at the gooey algae, then I come over and goose her in the rear. It makes her jump up, drop the brush, and spray herself. I laugh my spotted butt off while I am scooting away, because she is aiming the hose at me. I think she is getting smarter about it though because yesterday when I tried sneaking up on her she stood up before I could goose her. Not only that but she had her hands covered in slime, she grabbed my nose and gave me a smooch...leaving green goobery stuff all over my nose. I had to wipe the slime off on Salty's rear, now he has algae on his butt.
My friend Harley loved to eat algae when he was here. I don't know why he did that. He would stick his head in the water and scrape the sides of the tub with his teeth. The DOR says that algae can help boost the immune system and helps with ulcers. Maybe Harley knew what he was doing after all, he was a smart guy. I may have try some the next time the DOR is cleaning the tub because I am not sticking my head into the water to scrape it off the sides. Of course the DOR could just hand feed it to me.
The DOR is adding apple cider vinegar to our tubs. It helps cut down on algae build up and ingesting it helps discourage flying pests from bothering us.
Enjoy your day and don't forget to hug your DOR

There is a tiger in the arena!

The DOR came out the other evening to take me to the arena to play. I was excited to see her with a halter, it always means fun, so I ran over to meet her at the gate. Well actually I started walking slowly, being super cool, then I trotted until I couldn't stand it any more then I ran and stopped right in front of her. I got my smooch and the she put the halter on and we headed to the arena. There was something new in the arena, actually two somethings. But the one big something got my attention...it was a tiger, oh my!


I did a double take. There was no way this was going to be fun. Tigers are dangerous, they eat things...things like lovely spotted horses. What is the DOR up to? Did I make her mad? Is she feeding me to the tigers? The Trailboss wasn't this mean to me when I was at trail horse boot camp.
The DOR had me do my groundwork to start things off. It was a bit hard trying to pay attention to her and watch that tiger at the same time. Then we played the circling game...the DOR kept sneaking the circle closer and closer to the tiger. Before I knew it I was doing circles only 5 feet away from the danger zone.
The DOR let me take a break from circling and lead me around for a bit. She lead me over by the tiger and let me meet it.
I gave the tiger the fearsome "appy stare". It worked because the tiger didn't move a muscle.






I got closer to get a better look and to sniff it. The tiger still didn't move.












I even touched it and the tiger didn't move. The fearsome appy stare worked. I was so good that the DOR picked up the tiger and carried it while we walked around the arena. I even let her rub the tiger on my neck. You see I learned to be brave at trail horse boot camp, the DOR has almost all of her confidence back, and we both know the value of humming our way through stress.
By the way the other something in the arena was a giant tweety bird. It wasn't frightening at all, in fact when I was loose I went over and played with it.
Enjoy your day and don't forget to hug your DOR

Quote for the week

A Horseman should know neither fear, nor anger. ~James Rarey

'Horse Frightened by Lion'
Works Of
George Stubbs

While Rarey speaks of horsemen knowing neither fear, nor anger...this translates to the horse through the horseman. A horseman who is in fear will cause fear in his horse. One who knows anger around their horse will share that anger with their horse. Neither of these emotions should be sent to a horse from their rider, it makes it hard for us to understand what is going on.

It seems that humans have forgotten that once they domesticated the horse they became responsible for their emotional and physical well-being. While there is no way to protect a horse from things in nature that may cause them fear, they can be protected from fear caused by humans. A horse getting scared of an obstacle or getting spooked while training is different than a horse that is in fear. Fear is a total physical reaction that causes a horse to fear for its life...a human should never cause that to happen. The other thing that a human should never do is address their horse in anger. Anger directed at your horse will not get you the response you are seeking, in fact it will most likely make things worse. Deal with your horse from an aspect of justice and they will try hard for you.
Keeping us from fear and anger is a small price to pay for our willingness to be your partners.
Enjoy your day and don't forget to hug your DOR