Is this Sid?

I saw this @ a car dealer. I thought that maybe someone plucked the feathers off Sid Vicious, a rooster discussed on Laughing Orca Ranch's blog.

Sunday riding

So I am a little late with this post but I thought I'd feel you in on how my ride went Sunday. I took her to the church arena again and longed her before I even thought about riding. She was responding pretty well, so I climbed on. Meanwhile, there were 3 other people in the arena and they were playing with cattle. They would release one from the chute with a loud clang and then chase it down to rope it or run it to the cattle exit. Koda gets REALLY excited/nervous when they do this.

I'll finish this in a few hours gotta go to town first.

(the next Sunday...)
Sorry, I never managed to finish this post. I will sum it up with letting you briefly know what happened.

We struggled with attitude for a little while especially when we were around the cattle chute. She finally calmed down after I took her around some cones in a straight line.

Missing blogs

When I posted last night about my kid's competition, I checked to make sure that the page looked ok the way it was. It was good, so I went to bed, then spent the day at my dad's. When I got home, I went on my post to read the comment that was posted, and my posts were missing. I had my hubby check it on his computer and his looked the same as mine.

The info at the right was still there, such as my profile and my blog archive. So I clicked on one of the posts in the archive. They were still accessible. I was (and still am) really puzzled about why everything in the main blog section was gone. I decided to sign in and see if I accidentally erased that section from the page layout. It showed to still be there, so I clicked on edit to see if there was a feature that was selected wrong and everything looked ok there, too. I'm stymied. So, I went back to the page and there were my posts.

This is really weird. Did anyone else have this problem today?

My baby's Goooooodd!

My kid's in 6th grade band at her school and plays the clarinet. She started "band" in 4th grade with a recorder, then went to the clarinet in 5th grade. Her grandpa, my dad, bought her a subscription to an internet program called SmartMusic that helps her with her work at home. Most kids have to be forced to practice and "forget" to take their instruments home. Mine begged us to go to the school during the holidays so she could practice.

So, she went with the band to a local competition. It was a private judging, so it was just her in the room with the judges. They grade on a scale of 1 -4 with 1 being the best and 4 needs work. LAST year, she got a 2. That's with only a semester of clarinet practice. THIS year, she go a 1!!!!. She rocks!!!!

She loves band and is planning to use that for scholarship opportunities for college. You go girl!

Sorry the picture is blurry. It's from my old cell phone.

Memory Lane

Remember the pictures of the goats I promised? I finally got them today. When I loaded them on the computer, I had an unscheduled trip down memory lane. I'll share a little with you.

I hope I don't offend anyone at the church, but they will be on our church website anyway. But here are some pictures of Common Ground Cowboy Church's 1st trailride. We had fun and I think I wrote about it already. Koda likes to kick others was one thing I learned that day.



The Baby was passed from horse to horse and was asleep before the end of the ride.



This man, Brad, is our 4-H riding club leader and a good man.



Melanie hosted the trail ride from her house. We left her house and went down the country road onto our pastor's land. There we got lemonade and did some ravines and "forest" trails. After that we went back to Melanie's. Thanks Melanie.

I let a girl my daughter's age ride our old mare. I require anyone under 18 riding my horses or on my land to wear a helmet. Scarlet got kicked by Koda on this ride and scared the fire out of the girl. It was her first ride and I had to pony her a little while.

Anyway, here are some pictures of our goats: BRIAN


You've met Brian. He's our billy. There are better pictures but you already know him so I wasn't worried.





MAMMA
Mamma is the older nanny we bought. She's around 3 I think. She is the mother of our baby Lulu.

LULU

Lulu is so cute. She is just getting her nubs and is still friendly enough to come running when we go out. With or without food. She's a sweetheart.





LILLY

The "middle-aged" (as in not oldest or youngest) female. We think she may already be pregnant. She may have been pregnant when we got her, but if not, she should be now. She's been with Brian for a couple of weeks now.






And don't forget my favorite, who came up to investigate what we were doing and if we had food.

This puts my tribute into perspective

An awesome testimony from a mother who just had to say goodbye to her son. Please read Sweet Cottage Dreams' blog and let her know we appreciate the sacrifice her family has made for our freedom.

Three's a crowd here... Tribute to Samson

You know they say that bad things always come in threes? Well, here that statement qualifies in the "three's a crowd" category. Since school started this year, My family has been to 3 funerals - my step-mom's, and Hubby's cousin and grandfather. The first 2 hit hard and all funerals were in the first semester of school. This semester the deaths seem to be confined to animals, but we have now had 2 important animals die. I wrote about our goats already (and have not had a chance to get pics yet). We've taken care of that.

First some background. Samson was MY dog. I have never before owned a dog that was mine. When one of our other dogs had died, my hubby got him for our family for Mother's Day 2 years ago. We rescued him from a shelter on his last day there. He was big, goofy, and sometimes annoying or stupid. His big head would get onto the counter after our leftovers. His big tail would knock drinks off side tables or whack in rhythm against the wall when he was waiting for dinner or happy. He enjoyed many nights outside (we usually keep our pups inside) due to his ignoring our calls or his love for skunks. I loved him. I took him with me whenever I went out of time.

His undoing (and the stupid in him) was that he LOVED to chase cars. I could not convince him to stop and he would ignore us when we called him back. When a car or truck drove by, his job was to make sure he ran truck off. He would run the entire distance of our property (about a half mile) to run off an intruder. He was proud that he scared off those crazy noisy beasts.

Last night, I had taken Samson outside with me to feed my horse and got distracted. I went back inside and then remembered that he was outside. I called him but he didn't come so I assumed that he was running in the pasture. I figured that he would be back soon and would hit the door to let him in. I didn't even hear the truck come down the road. It hit him on his head and there was nothing we could do for him. Within minutes, he was having a very hard time breathing and his right side of his head was swollen. By the time my husband had him in the back of the truck and toward the pasture, he had almost stopped breathing. Hubby had to take care of him and was hurting by the fact that his daughter and wife just lost their dog.

The worst part was that my daughter was the one to find him. She was heading out to feed her goats and he was right in front of the garage. This is the second dog we found like this.


I CAN'T WAIT to find a place that is far enough from roads that I can let my dogs run the property without worrying about cars hitting them. I hate having 38 acres and having to tie or fence my dogs up close to the house.

Hopefully this is the last post like this, and I am sorry to poor out my pity party all over the internet, but this is why I have this post. I want to chronicle the adventures, good and bad, of our life on a ranch. Maybe through this, I, and others, will be able to learn what not to do and what is good.

Thanks for reading.