RAIN

After 2 months of practically no rain, we got almost 2 inches of rain this morning. There's nothing like waking up to the sound of rain on our metal roof. I slept in until 10 this morning to the nice sound of rain.

At the "Riding through the Bible" study tonight, I was the only one to bring a horse. There were 18 people there. One has had surgery on his shoulder, one had knee replacement surgery. The rest just don't ride or didn't bring a horse. It's so lonely riding by myself. Everyone in this area already has an agenda or routine with their horses so I end up riding alone. It's really hard being the new kid on the block. It's just too bad that I've been here for 4 years. Isn't that a nice pity party?

The month in review

After the July 4th parade, I spent another week not riding for a total of 2 weeks. Since then, I have ridden many days. I try to ride every Thursday at the least, and want to try to ride every day but some days I wasn't able.

The kid went to camp the 3rd week of July. It was a cowboy camp where they are only allowed to ride horse during the camp free time between 3 and 6. Remember what state we live in? 3pm in Texas is the hottest part of the day and it was 100+ degrees outside. No riding for them.

I rode Koda in the pasture on that Sunday, She rolled in the pond. She's getting good at the rolling with me thing. This makes twice now. The first time was in the church arena. That one hurt! She had her hooves trimmed on that Monday.

One of my best friends came up the Thursday evening before our kids came back from camp. She brought her kids' horses with her. We rode horse that night at our church arena, then went to the house. We put a beautiful paint gelding in the pasture with Koda. We had to tie their other horse, a mare, inside a small working pen. They were worried that she would either get pregnant from the Jack donkey we still have or get spooked by a vast open pasture and hurt herself.

She was fine but Koda and the gelding got in a fight. We think that the fight was over food. When we went out to get them, they were buddy-buddy in the back-end of the pasture conspiring how to keep from working. Koda ended up with 2 nasty cuts and 1 not-as-bad cut on her side. Two of the cuts were obviously from a shod hoof. The third was a round sore the size of a silver dollar right where the back skirt of the saddle sits. We were supposed to ride on Friday morning at the church and Saturday at a Trail ride and parade in a local town. No ride for her.

For the trail ride, I borrowed a friend's (different friend) horse and of course, I had to do a test ride. We rode Friday night heading out from her house around 8:45 and got back close to 10pm. Though it wasn't my horse, we had fun! This week I went to help the original horse friend move. I didn't get to ride very much, but there was Thursday.

We still have the dumb donkey and the goat has not had babies, but our new kitten is earning her keep. She caught a mouse today and, after playing with her food, disposed of it properly. ;)

July 4th!!

I want to say "Thanks" to all the soldiers who are currently fighting to keep us free.

233 years ago, several brilliant men got together and signed the Declaration of Independence, naming us a free country. Right now, our country's freedom is in danger, yet, we still have brilliant men and women working hard to protect our freedom. For those of us who are not in the military, our job is to support those who are and to express our desire for morals and safety to the government. Don't forget the country was founded on the "by the people, for the people" principle. Don't forget to call them if needed and vote when it's time.

By the way. The 4th of July parade was on a float instead of horseback. Man that stinks. Horseback is the way to go!!!

Riding Ban

Due to serious leg issues, I have been banned from riding horse for a little while. :(
Hopefully I will get to ride in the July 4th parade. If not, I'll ride in the float. The sad thing is that Sunday, when I rode Koda, she had a swollen leg. I haven't even been able to go out this week to check on her. I am waddling short distances only. Daughter says I look like a penguin, just need to hold my hands out.

Very Busy Weekend

As is always true, the last weekend in June is very busy. My daughter's birthday is the 26th and our town has their annual festival called Polski Dzien (Polish Day). Our church has been a big part of the parade the last 2 years but I'll talk about that in a little while.

So we start the week Monday night at the church. I took Koda and rode while hubby had a meeting. Two friends also took their horse and we rode a mini trail ride. Just north of our church building the church owns a RV park, and on the other side of that, there is a dry (right now) creek bed and then another field. We crossed down in the creekbed, then went in the shaded field. There were some tree limbs down and so I took Koda over them. The most fun was when we went over the one with about a 10 inch diameter and a foot off the ground. Koda walks over large limbs on her front end and hops over with her back legs.

Next was CLEANING for 2 days for the party. We had to totally rearrange a couple of rooms since the kid got new furniture. We got rid of the "office" and made it more of a "study/guest room." We put the kid's old twin size bed in there so when guests come, there's a bed for them.

Then on Thursday, the real craziness began. We drove out to Temple (about an hour away) to pick up one of my kid's best friends for the b-day party. Of course, that meant the horse trailer so I could get friend's 2 horses. I decided we should be back home by noon to settle the horses and girls, finish cleaning, and getting ready for party. The cake was made Wednesday evening. (I'll post about the cake later.) The other partiers arrived between 3 and 3:30 and soon we headed to Waco (another hour drive) for the bowling part of the party. After driving to several restaurants, we finally ate at Pizza Hut and then bowled. After bowling, was a Walmart trip for our movie feature (we only had 5 pre-teen girls with us). The movie has yet to be seen.

Friday, I woke the girls up at about 10 and they went 4-wheelin'. Well, we have one 4-wheeler so my girl rode with a friend and the friends took turns. The girl who brought her horse rode that instead of the ATV. The 3 extra girls left and hubby and I headed into town to begin working the Polish Day BBQ cookoff activity. Hubby and a church friend set up then traded off watch night and work at the BBQ pit. I helped them some then while they were working, I took the girls to the arena to ride and then my kid's friend and I rode the parade route so our horses could be familiar with the road and some of the extra noise like motorcycles, loud music, and loud drunk people walking around.

Saturday was parade day. I have NO pictures. :( It was very hot, but Koda was fairly good. She still thinks she has to run through a parade. The kid rode the four wheeler again and her friend rode her horse beside me. Hubby worked on the BBQ stuff. My dad came down to see us ride and missed both my kid and me! How that happened I'll never know. We finished the parade, hosed off the horses and pastured them. We then went back to town and worked the church booth. I took the kids home when mine started getting too hot then hung out with my hubby and our friend at the BBQ pit.

We took the friend and her 2 horses home today. With them went one of the 2 donkeys. On our way home, I called the Monday riding buddies and we went riding in my pasture. It was about 8:40 when we headed out, so it was so close to dark when we came in. My kid was worried about me riding in the snakey pasture. It was sweet.

That's all for now.

The dogs and goats

We bought 3 female goats when our one momma died. One of the females, the oldest, had already had a baby, which we brought with her as the third female. The other female was young, but old enough to breed. We quickly lost the oldest goat so now we have just 3. 2 young females and a young male. IT appears that the older of our 2 females is pregnant. We are expecting to have babies the middle of July. That will be perfect for county fair next year.

We also have een struggling with our dogs. I miss my Samson. We think instead of Lab and Rottweiler, he may have been Geat Dane and Rottweiler. I saw some Great Danes the other day and fell in love with their BIG heads. Since he died, we have had lots of trouble with Tama, our pure bred rottie. She went into a depression. All she would do is lay around (she was fairly fat) and she quit eating. We have had a time trying to get her back on track. We thought that in addition to the depression, she was allergic to the food we had switched to. She started losing hair and biting her feet. We tried several different treatments, starting with gioing back to a healthier food. We were giving her treatments for hot spots for her itching and nothing was working. We finally took her to the vet. This was about the same time our puppy started showing the same symptoms. We discovered that she had picked up mange. So now, a month after the vet, Tama has spunk, she had lost about 25 pounds during the non-working treatments, and she's got her appetite back and does more than just sit and scratch. They smell better too.

My first summer update

It's one week and two days since high school graduation. Already we have done a lot and nothing at all. Our church has a new Bible study they started. It's called "Walk through the Bible" and is held in the church arena. Before and after the Bible study, we are able to ride our horse in the arena. Of course, I also ride on some Sundays and Mondays when they aren't promoting the arena portion of the property. The advantage is that there are others there to ride as well. So I want to attend the Bible study but have not been able to attend but one time. That was the Thursday BEFORE graduation.

The weekend of graduation, the church had a Tractor Pull. If you've never attended one of those, I would suggest you attend one. I don't know that I would be interested in going every week, but when my church hosts it should be ok. We invited my Dad to come watch and he came over Friday. He also returned my kiddo who spent the week with him while I finished school for the year.

The first week of summer was spent kinda relaxing, kinda cleaning house. The kid got a new (to her) bedroom set. This required that she CLEAN her room. We have now removed 2 lawn garbage bags and 3 boxes (1 large) of junk that she doesn't need want anymore. We have to have the house clean by the 25th for the kid's b'day party.

Thursday, we loaded up the horse, dogs, and kid and went to my dad's. My sis fed us our birthday shrimp dinner. My birthday was in May and Dad's was June 1st. We hung out and chatted on Thursday night and I cleaned his house on Friday - all day Friday. After it was clean, we decided to get the horses out (my 4 legged and his 6 wheeled). My dad has been wanting to ride Koda for a while. We brushed her down and saddled her up. I always lunge her before I ride and started to do so that night and she decided that since it's rodeo weekend in a nearby town, she'd celebrate. She started bucking and rearing and running out of the lunge. I finally calmed her down. She did the crazy routine at his house last time we were there and I didn't ride her because of it. This time I was not going to let her get away with it. I took her into dad's smallest pasture and rode her around a little.

We had a birthday party to work (we do sound for our church) on Saturday. (Saturday was a very popular day for events...2 birthday parties planned, a family reunion, and a parade and rodeo). After the party, we went home and waited until it was cool. The kid and I went to the rodeo and hung out.

Sunday, Hubby's parents came over and picked up the kid to go home with them. We had lunch and shipped them off. They were coming in from the reunion and were hauling a camper trailer and a boat. They also were carrying 4 dogs. It made quite a show when they pulled in to the church parking lot. The dogs got loose and ran around and into the church.

Today, I worked on shredding old bills and then we had a meeting at the church. I couldn't let the evening trip to the church go to waste, so I took Koda up to practice riding in the arena. That was interesting. We did some turn work around some traffic cones and then worked on establishing a cruise control on her trot. I also want to start working on side passing.

I'll post about the goats and dogs tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying not having many requirements.