Sad News

Remember that we have 2 goats. One female and one male. We were hoping to raise babies for my daughter to show at the county fair. So the goats hang out together with the horse and have been since around November. The horse has been with the female since April last year. We think that she was going to have her babies at the end of March. Unfortunately, when I got home yesterday, the female was not happy.

My daughter and I went out to feed all of the animals and Bryan (the male) came running to the feed pen. Koda kind of came up to the fence but didn't come close. That's unusual. But even more unusual is the fact that June (the female) did not come up at all. I could hear her hollering, but normally she's almost butting us and mostly climbing up on us to get to the food. I found her in the horse run-in shed laying down in the poo. I could not convince her to get up and saw that her front leg was cut. I sent my daughter after her dad and the truck and had him help me check her out. We started to pick her up and her belly was bleeding.

We took her a couple of miles down the road to a local vet. Now you have to understand that there's not a real vet office anywhere near our house. The vet has the basics you would need for small animal issues and vaccine shots. He looked at her on the back of the truck pronounced her ok said we can't do any stitches and gave her some penicillin. He said if she didn't improve, to bring her back in the morning.

Well, she didn't improve. We got home, washed her sores the best we could and wrapped them in VetRap. I was eating supper at 9:00. We went to bed at 10:15 and I checked on her first. She wasn't moving.

The poor girl didn't make it. Since she was pregnant, neither did the babies. And there went next year's county fair. Very sad.

We are gonna try to get another adult breeding female this year.

Weekend Warrior Rides again

Can you say "Weekend Warrior Rides" 3 times without mixing the W's and R's? I don't think I can. Anyway...

My horse life has been reduced to the Weekend Warrior lifestyle. I can only work with her on the weekends and not every day of the weekends every week. So I have committed to working with her on Sundays especially. Today, we had church. Then at 11 hubby had to do firefighter stuff (he left church early). No one was doing anything horsey at the church, so I went home and fixed lunch for me and the kid. Then I took a nap. After the nap, I got horsey motivated. We stayed at the house this time and hubby was back so I felt more comfortable. I brushed her and saddled her, longed for a few minutes then got on. We walked down the road and I decided I needed my phone so we turned around. I remembered what my horse trainer friend said: "On the way home, stop and back constantly." So I decided to try. Well, she wouldn't back up. He also said to put her in a shank snaffle so I said, "OK, wanna be a pest? I know how to fix this." I went home and got the shank snaffle out. I only road her around the yard after that because it's a lot softer than the road if I end up on the ground. She did back a LOT better though.

I just hate to go harder. I figure the softer the better, and she was only in a hackamore when I got her. I was riding her in a ring snaffle.