New look

I thought I'd get a new look. What do you think?

Portable horses

We have used our horses as a great excuse to NOT have to spend more than 1 or 2 nights with parents and such, especially when we had the old mare. She could not get nourishment from pasture grasses or hay so she had to be fed 2 times daily. We did however understand that a day would come when we would need to be at my in-laws for more than 1 day and would need to make other arrangements. So I started looking into local barns that rented paddocks. I went and checked one out that was really close to the parents house and it was reasonably priced. I think they said $10 per horse per night. No problem for a couple days having my horse nearby.

Well, Spring Break is coming and the inevitable has happened. I have to go Sunday night and am coming back on Thursday. That's 4 nights and I now only have 1 horse, so I called the people to schedule a place for my horse. The price went up to $20 a night. That's $80!!!!! You know I rent about 35 acres for 10 -15 head of cattle for $20 a MONTH. The 20 was just a place to stay. That did not include hay or feed of any kind. I was supposed to bring my own feed. WOW!!!!

So, I started looking for other options. We had looked into getting an electric corral for when we went camping and hubby got paid extra this month sooo... I got this portable corral from Stateline Tack. Of course, I looked at several on the internet before deciding on the Stateline one. It helps that I already had a Stateline account. The fence is 900 sq ft and both hubby and Koda informed me that it works. :)

We are going to put her in it for an hour or so every day until Spring Break, then she'll have to stay in it at the in-laws. I think I just figured out how to mow the grass with out the lawn mower!

I am curious if it is expandable though. The in-laws have an acre and it would be a shame to pen her in such a small area if not necessary.

Trail Ride

The church had a trail ride today. We went the same route as the last trail ride. We started at one church family's house, went down the road from her house to our pastor's property, through the trees and back to the original property. As usual, Koda acted a fool all the way down the first road. She wanted to run. She wanted to be in front, I think. I fought her all the way to the end of the road where she finally decided that she could walk. After that, she was good. On the way back, one of our boys (about 13 yrs old) started having trouble with his horse. The main problem was that he hurt himself on Thursday while riding his horse. His horse loves to try to run back to the barn and usually the boy will sidepass on him to wear him out some. This time the sidepassing hurt. We convinced him to switch horses and ride a calm horse.

The real fun started after we got back to the starting location. We grabbed a snack then went on a second ride. This time we actually used a trail. There were ravines, gullies and logs to climb over. I like those rides better than the road rides.

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.