Ride in the New Year???

Well, here I am sitting waiting for the New Year to come in and I thought I would do something different this year. This afternoon I got Gilly our for a short ride, wow, it was great! I hadn't ridden for several weeks or has it been longer? Oh, well, I got to sit on that big broad back of a magnificent creature and just let him take me down the road.
I got to thinking this was the last ride of this year but.....wouldn't it be fun to ride out the old year and ride in the new?
Well, that's what I'm gonna do!!! Gilly is in the barn now with Pokey quietly munching some hay, and he is still CLEAN, imagine that??? Well it's only about 5 after 11 as I write this so in about half an hour I am going to saddle up. Mike is going to take some pictures and I have the date and time stamp set on the camera so you will know it's the real thing!!!
Will post these pictures (they'd better turn out!) later!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
Jane

Archie, my daughters puppy

Archie, my daughters puppy got to come home today! She said he was very happy to be home, he was wanting to eat some, play with his toys and bark!
I told my daughter the type of dog she has is going to have SOME bark. Half Walker Coon Hound...oh, my!!!

He will have to go back in a few weeks to have more shots and more worming. He had a LOT of worms, poor little guy....well, he's not really so little. I think he is going to be a big boy when grown.


We have been working on our downstairs bathroom and got it nearly finished! Over the weekend my husband got the drain and water lines run. All work that no one can see, glad he knows how to do it, he is quite the handy man to have a round.
Today we went grocery shopping, he has been on vacation this week, it was more fun to go to Lowe's and shop! We got some paint, this is exciting...LOL...the ceiling paint we bought is purple! You heard right, purple but it dries white. This is so you won't miss a spot. I need all the help I can get!

I will be posting some pictures of it a little later. Molding to put up, then I can paint the ceiling. There is still a linen closet to build, that will be awhile.
Kicked back now drinking some really good raspberry wine that a good friend made and gave me! It is YUMMY!!!
Jane

Sick Puppy

Hi Everyone! Hope you all had a grand Christmas! Ours was starting pretty good until my daughters puppy had to be rushed to the emergency vet Christmas morning. We had had our Christmas on Christmas Eve with some dear friends and my daughter and her boyfriend.

They had left their new puppy, Lab/Walker Coon hound mix at home because he was not feeling well, they had had him 4 days. They didn't want to bring him for fear that he had something contagious.

They were here about 3 hours then went home; she called and said they were taking him to an emergency vet clinic about 30 miles away. This clinic is open when regular vets aren't....thank goodness for them! The puppy was vomiting, had very bad diarrhea and seemed very depressed. Turns out he has Parvo! and has a 60% chance to pull through.

Wow, this stuff is nasty and can hit a puppy pretty hard in a short time. While at the emergency clinic he was on IV fluids and antibiotics. Yesterday morning, Monday, they took him to their regular vets office. He has improved a little but still not eating. The vomiting and diarrhea have stopped but he is not wanting to eat. He seems somewhat happier, tail wagging and seemed happy to see them last night when they went to see him. However he is not out of danger yet, they will see him tonight again and see how he is doing. They call the vet periodically to check in on him and will see him again tonight.

Hope he pulls through! I have never had a dog with this horrible virus and hope I never do; this is some bad, bad stuff!
Jane

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!

Merry Christmas!

I added some bling to this very special card for all of you, my blogger friends. All of us here at Liberty Homestead Farm want to wish you and your loved ones good health, much happiness and love at Christmas and all year long!

Snow and cold

 We have gotten some snow, not a lot but it's very cold here too. Gilly and I haven't been out doing any work, cause I can't take the cold. Gilly and Pokey don't seem to care though. A few nights ago it was 7 degrees with the wind chill of -11, wow that is cold!!! Now, Gilly and Pokey can come and go as they please but that night, that cold night, they slept on the ground outside!!!! I know because I found a big spot on the ground where the snow was melted where they had been. In the barn there is a bed of thick sawdust for them to sleep on, I guess they weren't cold. I gave them lots of extra hay and have been since it's been so cold, they seem to prefer to be out in the weather. I check them to make sure neither are cold, both have thick long hair and are toasty warm.

Here is Lucy our Australian Shepherd who also thinks winter time is great! She has a double walled insulated dog house with lots of cedar bedding but a lot of time she too will sleep outside on the ground. One night she, this was a few years ago, slept out all night in a flower bed and was covered with snow. See? What a silly dog I have! She has a very heavy coat also and loves to play and roll in the snow. Not me, I'll stay in the house and keep warm cause I don't have a hairy coat like the critters do!

So Gilly is getting a break for now, it's too cold for me to be out to even do any work with him in the barn. I can't keep my fingers warm, I will have to look for some really warm gloves or mittens to keep my hands warm. I have some Mountain Horse gloves for winter but they aren't doing the trick.
What kind of warm gloves do you have for frigid weather???
Jane

Santa Rug on Ebay

I have this Santa and Reindeer rug listed on eBay just in time for Christmas. Here is the link to see it there. Rug measures10.5X14.5 inches.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360327736363&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

Most of the snow we got the other day has melted but tomorrow we are supposed to get about 2 inches of the white stuff! Will we have a white Christmas? Who can say; I myself would rather have a warm Christmas so I could ride!!! I haven't gotten to work Gilly on the long lines since I posted about it but we have done some work in the barn. He can be pretty pushy at times so I started making him do some foot work inside. The end of the barn he and Pokey occupy is about 14 by 24 feet so he can move around pretty well. We work on backing up, moving his butt around, this is a spin around on his front feet, stepping over one hind leg in front of the other and really moving that butt FAST. Now I just have to crouch down and look at his butt and he moves around in a hurry. He used to move at a slugs pace and have a very Ho-Hum look on his face, now he is very alert and hustles those feet for me. I have also been working on him lowering his head to put the halter on. He wants to hold his head up in the air, but now he is starting to lower it and be more respectful. This is something we work on everyday, rain, snow or sunny he can do this little bit of work inside; Pokey too.

I have to give both boys some worm paste the other day. I was hoping that Gilly would remember the work we had done with taking meds and he did. He still was a little resistant but then I got out a peppermint candy that was in a cellophane paper, it rattled so he was very interested; took his meds and I gave him his treat. It worked great. Pokey you just open his mouth, insert the tube and squirt it in, he makes a little face and that's it, he's a good little boy!!!

Has everyone gotten their Christmas shopping done yet? I haven't ...... still have a few more things to do; think I will shop the internet. So much easier, no crowds, no traffic, no standing in line.........I LOVE IT!!!!!!

Jane

Hoof print in snow

We got snow last night; I thought we were only getting flurries but the flurries turned into about 2 inches of snow. Yes, it's pretty but.....seems like just yesterday I was shoveling snow off the patio! Wow the summer went fast, fast, fast!!!

Anyway, when I went to feed the boys, Gilly came into the barn while I was getting their oats. I feed them outside so he turned and went back out and to the feeder by the gate. When I came back to the barn to fill up the water bucket and get hay, here is what I saw laying on the barn floor.

 

I picked it up and carried it to the yard by the patio so I could get my camera and take a picture. This is a cast of one of his hind feet, I can tell because they are have a more pointed toe than the front feet. I was looking at the long marks the bars of his hoof left. When he first started getting the barefoot trim almost 4 years ago he hardly had any bars but not look at them! Almost to the end of the frog! (click on picture to enlarge) There is also a large snow flake on the left side too!

Since it's cold outside and I am a wimp about the cold today I am staying inside and addressing my Christmas cards and am going to watch a movie, "Tombstone". Lots of horses in there to watch and Sam Elliott too (sigh) one of my favorite cowboys....my number one favorite is Tom Selleck (bigger sigh) and I have a lot of his  movies too. So I'll be in front of the TV all day! LOL

My two favorite cowboys!!!

To get a new saddle or not???

I had been thinking of getting a new saddle, an all purpose instead of the dressage saddle that I now have. But now??? not sure what I am going to do. I thought of taking the large knee block off of the under flap of my saddle so I had a little more knee room. I really like this saddle, the deep seat is really comfortable, so I was almost ready to get my seam ripper and take the stitching off the leather and remove it. Then I thought, well, maybe I should call someone who knows something about saddles before I do this.

I called Trumbull Mountain Tack Shop and talked to Kitt Hazelton the saddle fitter there, check out her blog for tons of great information, Saddle Fitting-The Inside Journey. I wanted to know if I really could take the knee block off, she said yes. But then she said maybe what I wanted was to get an all purpose and sell the dressage saddle. If I take the block off, no one else might want it. So another thought but since Gilly needs work on his back, I will wait and see how he looks in the spring. What Gilly is doing in the picture above is what I have heard called long and low, he needs to do this to work those big back muscles.

Monday before I started working him in the round pen I put his saddle on him with only a thin quilted pad that I had made for him so I could see just how the saddle sat on his back. It actually looked pretty good.

 

 

Gilly looks like a big butter ball with his velvety winter coat, and he isn't done growing it in yet. When I put the saddle on him I didn't tighten the girth all the way up at first and just let the saddle find it's own place to sit. When I did tighten it up this is where it wanted to be. As you can see though it is still a little high in the front. I hope that with work his back will come up and it will be fine.

 View of saddle from back, this one was a hard one to get. I had to stand on tiptoe and hold the camera up and just click and hope I got the shot. That's one big butt to lean on, and pretty fuzzy too! LOL

 View of saddle from front, looks like he has room there too. This is a wide tree for a wide boy. So now I will just have to work Gilly when I can and weather permitting to build up his muscles. I ordered a couple of books from Amazon.com (my favorite place to buy stuff)  Longeing and Long Lining The English and Western Horse: A Total Program by Cherry Hill and 101 Longeing and Long Lining Exercises English and Western: A Ringside Guide by Cherry Hill  They both sounded like good books, lots of pictures it said. I like lots of pictures!

Will let you know how it goes when the books get here. I love doing ground work with Gilly boy, he is fun to work with. Maybe Pokey can learn something too. Then he will be a smart ass! heehee

Jane and the boys