More of Petey

Petey is just not too sure about what to do with that cat. He has never lived where there was a cat, cat could care less about him. She probably thinks it's a Gonzo look alike....just another dumb dog to put up with! Buster is off to do something else.

Yes, I've been absent for a while, canning, mowing hay, baling hay, back to hooking (will post what I'm hooking on at another post) and mostly being lazy! LOL Still waiting for the nasty flies to leave, maybe in another week. Next weekend is fair so that is usually the time they start to die off, not soon enough for me!!

Checking out the yard to find new smells and new places to pee! These guys spend a lot of time marking and remarking spots, dogs are funny!

Not sure what kind of pose this is? Petey leaping through the air, he does that some times, funny boy! He has settled right in with the rest of the dogs and they all play and romp in the yard and in the house.

Today while Petey and Gonzo were out for a morning pee, Petey found something really, really stinky and rolled in it...P U....he had to get a bath and his collar washed, uck! I hope he doesn't remember where he got the stink or I will have to bath him again.

Petey has decided that it IS a good thing to chase Kitty, what fun! (sorry the picture is overexposed, I was in the shade) Kitty will run for a little while then turn and chase them, too funny. Buster's tail is in the bottom right hand corner, looks like a bottle brush, he was getting into the chase too!

What better way to end the day of cat chasing than to go to sleep with your new buddy in dad's recliner? Of course dad wasn't home from work yet so the boys could sleep for several hours in the comfy chair! Awww, a dogs life!!!

Petey, new member of the family

Here is Petey, on the left with the other members of our family, the inside dogs. Buster is guarding the food, have to watch the new comer, he may eat it all you know! Gonzo and Laverne are sacked out too much excitement. This was taken shortly after I brought Petey home to meet them.

Now everyone is asleep....well Buster, who you can't see in this pictures is still guarding the food.

What kind of dog is Petey, you are probably wondering??? Not sure, he is a little smaller than Gonzo, has a monkey face so he probably has some boxer or Boston Terrier, has a big overbite like Laverne
Petey likes to crawl on the floor when he gets excited and wants to go outside. I have tried to catch him in action with video but he will stop and look at me and won't start again. Until I am not running the camera!

Petey isn't too interested in basted Meaty Bones, he just looked at it then me as if to say, "You want me to eat this tasteless thing???"

All the dogs have accepted Petey and here is Laverne snuggled up to him sleeping on the couch. Now I have to fight for a place to sit......four dogs in the house! They are sitting on my end of the couch and Gonzo is on the other end.

No matter how many times I fold up this blanket it will never stay that way. They like to move it around and crawl under it and the one on the back of the couch too. That is for them to sit on so they can look out the window but Laverne and Gonzo have other ideas. It's always wadded up in a ball and one of them is under it. So far Petey hasn't had the urge to cover up.

He seems to think that Mike's chair is a good place to nap; this is where he spends most of his napping time.

Petey is eight years old and we got him when a long time friend passed away last year. Petey was given to our friend by one of his daughters for a companion dog. After our friend passed away Petey went to live with another family but that didn't work out and now he is here on the farm with us. I think our friend would like that, Petey has a lot of friends to play with and really likes it here. We are glad he is here with us, just one more member of the family. Maybe we should call this farm "Dog Trot Farm"!

Below is our friend and Petey, taken last August, just a few months before he passed away suddenly. We miss him and will take good care of his beloved pet.

Gilly with a fat lip

Last week when getting ready to ride Gilly, we did some lungeing for respect before cinching up all the way. This consists of trotting first one way then the other, lots of turns, stops, backing up and going sideways. Gilly was being a brat and just out and out assing around, things were going fine until he started that. There was dew on the grass so his feet were wet then he crossed the hard pavement of the dust control on the road. His feet slipped, I am not on his back but at the end of of the lunge line, front legs splayed out and his nose hit the pavement!

You can see in the picture some of what happened to him, a road rash burn on his lip. It actually ripped off a slice of skin, hair and all off his lip. His teeth cut a place inside his lip, how bad I don't know because he was not going to let me look. I tried but he wasn't having any of it. I felt sorry for him, he kept sticking his lip up and out and shaking his head....it must have really burned. I got the water hose and hosed out his mouth inside and out. That seemed to help.

This picture (above) was taken after we came back from riding for a short time. All the dusty stuff on his nose is from the Omega Horse Shine that has ground flax seed in it. He had to blow his nose into his feeder and blow it everywhere! As bad as it looks, in a day it looked like only a small scab, it healed really quickly!

I don't know if I will be able to ride this coming week, the weather forecase is calling for rain all week and hot humid weather. Not to mention the horrid horse flies that are as thick as fleas right not. Gilly and Pokey will hardly come out of the barn during the day. I certainly don't want to ride with those blood sucking biting monsters flying around and having Gilly have a bucking fit. I have to say that I couldn't blame him, those bites hurt really bad because they get me too. Wish I had a covered arena to ride in but I don't and I won't......unless for some reason I become a billionaire in the close future....LOL....I don't foresee that happening!!!

Below is a short clip of me and Gilly riding back toward home. Notice his head really bobing up till you can see his nose? The horse flies were starting to get after us; I am surprised that you can't hear them buzzing around us. We are heading toward a neighbors house, going past their garden. It's about a half a mile from home. Love the sound of Gilly's feet swishing through the wet morning grass.

Gilly and the Blue Heron

Last Monday Gilly and I were out in the evening for a ride. He seemed a little nervous, ears constantly moving, listening for something. Probably a horse eating monster of come kind to pop out of the woods and eat him!
We rode up the creek on the road, both dogs, Lucy and Gonzo where with me. Everything was peaceful; a truck was approaching and I moved Gilly to the side of the road. It was some friends and they stopped to talk for a bit. Gilly was still on alert; on up in a hay field three deer ran across the field and disappeared into the woods. He watched.
It was after 8 in the evening so I decided to head back home; which was in sight of where I was. We did some trotting then fell back to a brisk walk.
When we were almost to the driveway (see picture above, I have labeled were Gilly was on the road) a great whooshing sound and a flapping of huge wings is what I heard next!!! A Blue Heron came up out of the creek right in front of us! (I didn't take these pictures, obviously!)

This bird flew right up in Gilly's face! It was so close that I could have reached up and grabbed it's legs, so close I could see the scales, or what ever you call them, on it's legs!!! Talk about a heart attach!!!! I thought at first, oh no, not another wreck!!! But then I remember that earlier I had read Kate's blog (A Year With Horses) about her clinic with Mark Rashid. I am so thankful that I read that because I think that it saved me from a bad wreck. This is what I did:
When I saw the wings spread and start to fly up I held Gilly steady, took a deep breath and sunk my seat into the saddle. Blew out my breath like the horse does when he relaxes and just waited. Gilly only looked up as the bird flew over his head, then it landed in the trees behind us, in a flurry of flapping wings and crashing branches! I took another deep breath and asked him to move forward, he did as if nothing had happened!!!
I just kept thinking and picturing us riding down the road calmly and kept my hands and legs still and relaxed; my breathing slow and steady. It kept me calm and Gilly too; there is a lot to be said about sending pictures to the horse with your mind..........I for one believe it really works!

How would you like to see this flying over your head while on your horse??? Yes, they are beautiful, graceful birds; but with a wing span of anywhere from 3 to 5 feet they are pretty frightening when you think that your horse would have a heart attack and explode!
I hope that Gilly gets used to them since there are many of them around here right now, seems like more than usual.....I call them Terradactyl, pretty scary when they come flying up and surprise you! LOL
Hope to be riding again soon but right now it's really hot and humid and the monster horse flies are now out in force! Makes it hard for the horse and me to be out, none of the fly spray seems to have any effect on them so if I want to ride I will have to do it in early morning.
Does anyone have any really good fly spray to recommend that knocks out these terrible flies???