January 2014

Ark, the guy who won was not one they followed from beginning to end and I don't remember his name. But, Bobby Kerr got 2nd AND 3rd with his two horses; $175,000 for both placings. They had a total of 120 days to do the job. I agree with you, a couple of the trainers weren't all that wonderful, in my mind.
I don't know if you could find those shows to watch on your computer or not. I hope you get to see the final episode so you can see the stunts he did with the palomino.

not doing a whole lot ....doc appts and more doc appts, then eye appts and then more doc appts.....old age at least gets one out of the house! Then hubby went to get more hay. They store hay here in these huge sheds or hay barns, most everyone is out of alfalfa hay now or have priced it out of reach for most normal horse people..16 bucks for a small bale, about 65 pounds ....so we are feeding grass hay now and supplementing with alfalfa hay pellets that we moisten. Tomorrow is laundry day and hubby picks up pallets, he has a stack of the things, I do hope he finds a use for them all! He has built some dog houses, and is now underpinning the camper with them. Looks pretty good.

Temps have warmed back up here it was tshirt weather today and the rest of the week. I'm a happy camper. The dogs and horses all did fine in the cold snap, thankfully.

Sweet Dreams Y'all.

well it is raining here, and getting warmer, then another cold front comming, but that is winter in Florida great to see some of the Missing back great to hear from you Rose

Hey folks, at long last we get to see George!!  Here he is with TRUDY (manygates).  Now is this a handsome couple, or what?    

TRUDY sent us a little jingle....    

Okay, I am back.  Busy couple of days here.  I had a wonderful lesson with Lori yesterday.  Ivan and I are learning to use more subtle cues to do things.  You know how those dressage people move along doing all these wonderful moves with their horses and you never see them twitch, but the horse looks like he is doing things with no cues?  Well, that is sort of what we were trying to do yesterday.  I had Ivan sidepassing with the tiniest of cues, for us, and he did it!  He loves those lessons where he gets rewarded for taking a few steps in the right direction  .  We also worked on the position of my hands, which are usually too high.  When I had them in the correct position with just a touch of contact on the bit, he moved along without shaking his head or giving any opinions on where he thought we should go.  Lori said we would have done well at a walk/trot class.    First time she has said that!   Lori is such a patient teacher.  She has been great to learn horsemanship from.  

Areion was a bit out of sorts during the lunging part of her lesson.  She may need a different bridle, I think hers may be pinching her somewhere.  She did really well during the time Lori rode her, but put on a little hissy fit during her lunging time before her ride.  

Lori and Areion

We played around with the bridle and she seemed fine after that.  I think I will get her a nicer one soon.

Today I had lunch with my local horse riding friend.  It was nice to sit and gab a couple of hours on a rainy day with a friend.   It rained all day. It is going to rain all day tomorrow.....The mud down at the barn is too slurpy for words.

ARK, you are having way tooooo much fun!

Trudy, where r your wrinkles girl If walking dogs did it, I'd have none! LOL I love the pic of you and George. Love the pink jacket too....I love wearing pik, oe of my bestest colors!

A ho hum day doing laundry, then home to clean house a bit Not my fave thing to do! Weather is warm, tshirt warm! yessssss! like it!

Sweet Dreams Y'all. Have a great fun weekend!

Well, my Christmas tree is down. However, my living room looks like some crazed lumberjack went nuts and threw tree pieces all over my living room. Tomorrow, I'll get it all back into the garage. Two days to put all those lights on, and 7 hours to get them off.

Areion is still inexperienced. She wants to make sure you stay on your toes for a bit longer, before you can take a nap while you ride. You and Lori have come a long way with her this past year.

u can teach an old dog a new word!   

The word for the day is Rabicano! and I like it! Been around horses a LONG time and never heard it before this week. awesome...

Windy city today! Hubby is putting up electric fencing on the side property line....he is certainly keeping busy and out of my hair, which is good!

Whats everyone up to today? Anything exciting?

Farrier was here yesterday and Jessi and Joey for lunch....all good. That Palomino appy mare was a real bonehead yesterday for the farrier. I'm not sure we need to keep her if she won't let anyone work on her feet. It doesn't seem to matter how much we play around with her feet...she just hates anyone doing anything to them.

Snoop here: Rick generally hears 3 or more of these each day!      

Nancy, that is a really cute video. Thanks for posting it.

Wow! My living room is so big!    Amazing how much space there is without a sewing machine or Christmas tree scattered all over it. A little bit more vacuuming and Christmas will be over for another year.
Now, I just have to start coming up with ideas for next year's Christmas gifts....

Hey, where is everyone??? Busy here in PA since the snow and ice are gone. YEAH...now we have rain. Crazy weather.

Started working on our seed list for the garden. Gotta start the seedlings next month and get them ready for a earlier planting than last year. We planted too late last year. Once that starts we will be busy worrying over the tiny plants.

ARK: Your horses are doing so good. It sure has been fun watching them grow from specks and become riding horses. Way to go.

CB: How is Jessi doing? Did her surgery go OK?

ELLEN: You are so right. Once the tree is gone, there is so much space in the house. Ours has been down for about a week. Everything looks so blahhhhhhhh without all the bright colors and lights. January is my least favorite month of all.

Rick: Love the jokes. I steal them and send them to my friends.

NANCY LEE: Cool video..

Off to the Amish kitchen store this morning to look for a meat slicer. Gosh, we are becoming so self dependant lately. Got a bunch of hot water canning stuff and plan on making sauce and putting up tomatoes this summer.

Have a great week everyone.

Love & prayers for all...

My neighbors have a really pretty cat who makes a tour of the neighborhood almost every morning. He stops here for a little rest after a strenuous stroll.
https://picasaweb.google.com/ellenclark2/VisitingCricket#5968782028179358034

Funny day at the feed store...............young college gal, barrel racer, knows everything about feeds (right). However, the owner and I let her speak her spiel etc. She is the cheeriest happy horse girl and so proud of her winnings that get her college paid.............She should be. Anyhow, I got outside, and as I was getting into my car I looked at her truck (next to me) and her window had a sticker: "My quarter horse can beat up your FEI level dressage horse." After being in the store w her for a few minutes it made me laugh all the way home....I have no clue who she is but she was a bright flower in the weed patch of life today. She had talked about "all I do is work, go to school, buy feed, and barrel race". She was a trip.

Yesterday………….Lady in waiting……………….

wow, Greymare, Faith is looking sooo healthy and pregnant, how much longer before the blessed event I hope you can get pictures

Prob 5-6 weeks, SUNNY………………no signs yet at all so just waiting………...

ELLEN:
Darn, I can't get the cat picture to load. What kind of kitty is it?

CB:
You made me look up rabicano   . How is Jessi doing? What will you be doing about Max's issue?

GRAYMARE:
Faith has gotten really big! The countdown is on!    She is such a pretty mare. What color is the stallion? Any preferences as to sex of the foal? I was so convinced Areion would be male. Her name is even a male name.   But she's a nice mare.

TRUDY:
One nice springlike day and I am totally spoiled and think winter should be gone....sigh...it's not. We may get a little snow tomorrow. It won't last long, but will be enough to remind us that winter is still around. You and George are such good gardeners!

We have had unbelievable mud this past week. No snow, but enough rain to keep the mud deep and slippery. I have had a hard time getting the wheelbarrow thru it, but am caught up at the barn. My wooden plank pathway works fairly well. The horses can't go up into the pastures because the mud is so slick and if they don't run around and slip and fall, then they tear up what little grass is still there. They have been stuck in the arena during non-rainy days and in the barn when it rains. Ivan and Areion ran laps around the arena today, they just had to run. I would love to have some of their energy!

This is a test.  Try this one, Ark.


http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/24505905

Okay, here's the explanation for all that. Internet Explorer would not let me open the Image Shack website because of some security issue. Graymare told me about picturetrail.com. So, I'm still learning how to use it. That's why there is both a picture and a link. I think it's going to be a little easier and faster than Image Shack.

Thanks for the remedies, CB! I knew you'd come through!

Just wrote a post reporting on my horse's health (it's iffy) and trying to include a pic using picturetrail, recommended by ELLEN -- but it all disappeared into the ether. I'll try again later -- and Ellen, if you've got some hints about the pic-posting, lay them on me!

Raining here. Snows shrinking.

Beech, I'd never used PictureTrail.com before, but it worked. I had to register first. Then, I made sure I knew which picture I wanted to post. Click on upload picture. Once I'd gotten it uploaded, I scrolled down and chose the URL for forum, then hit 'control and C' at the same time to copy that URL. Next, go to this website and the reply box. Hit 'control and V' for paste.
If you have trouble, just keep trying until you find the right sequence.
I hope it works for you because I'd love to see the pictures.

We had a tiny little snow last night, not even enough to cover the ground. Of course, much of the ground is still snow covered from a week ago.

In a checkout at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.


The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.
So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings.

Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.


But too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person...  

LOL!! Trudy....now you know where I get jokes from....my friends!!