Tuesday 28 April 2009

New Addition

I forgot to mention the new addition to the money sucking clan. A little Domestic long hair kitty called Alice, this is the first* one we have PAID for, as in, she wasn’t rescued (well sort of, since there are so many cats these days most of the healthy ones get put down anyway).

She is a crazy, SOOKY, fluffy, bouncy, lazyyyyyyy, underwear eating (yes you read right, she eats our undies! Even when they are clean! Its disgusting!) monster. But she is so cute! She loves sleeping in the bed under the covers and doesn’t want to get up in the morning, so she just sort of stays in bed and watched me get ready for work :p.

I will put a picture up over the weekend of her.

*Actually the second. We paid for Leah, my kitten before this one but she passed away L. Very sad indeed. RIP Little Leah, I still miss you!
It has been a while since the last update. I really shouldn't let the whole blogging thing slip from my hands because I just dig myself into a deep whole that takes a whole lot of typing and updating to get out of. So here goes!

Goodbye warm days!

Since the last blog day light savings has finished (=[) and the freezing cold weather has crept up on us.

This will be Gracie's first winter out from the sticks, so I am assuming it's going to be a little more comfortable for her then what she is used to up at Putty. That's not to say it's not going to be freezing cold! I intend on getting her some kind of synthetic or unlined canvas rug before winter actually starts (she is usually quite warm as it is so I don’t really want to put too much on her, and only for the nights, she can go nakey during the day),the only problem is that we don’t know how much more she is gong to grow, I don’t exactly want to spend too much on a rug and have her grow out of it, although I doubt she will get any longer, so I suppose I could take the chance.

We have been pumping the both of them full of feed and lots of hay, which is working in our favour so far since they both look really good. Grace holds her weight quite well, and she eats all the grass hay (unlike someone who just nibbles a bit then decides its fun to stomp on it and use it as a horsey litter/comfy bed! Weeeeeee*). Becks holds his weight fairly well too (after a few years of Lisa spending mounds of money experimenting on what does and doesn’t work for him) and with the feed he is on now he should hold up quite well during winter, he is a spoiled sooky big old thoroughbred so he gets rugged with one of his 50,000 rugs of a night and usually naked during the day.

Progress

With much frustration and annoyance with baby horses (on my part) we have taught Grace to lunge almost perfectly on her left side and we are getting there with the right side. She doesn’t quite understand what we want from her, then she gets annoyed because it's taking too long and starts being a brat (she gets bored very easy with things so we have to keep it interesting). She has a problem with turning in on her right side when she reaches a certain corner, no matter how much you get up behind her she still tries to turn in and run the other way. I am thinking that maybe she has difficulty on her right side because of her old injury on her back right leg making her a little uncomfortable. That being said, she will sometimes go perfectly on that side and not turn in once, and then other times it is nearly impossible to get her going without turning in (Lisa likes it when a horse turns in, I have grown upon HATING it since having a filly :), and the worst part is that she acts completely oblivious like its the first time we are lunging her and she is like "well what are you asking? I have no idea what you mean, just let me run the other way" and then the next time she goes perfect. Gah! Babies! So we are working on that every now and then, being careful not to do too much and ruin her little legs, just walk and trot for now.

Grace observes and listens really well when it comes to anything people are doing, I like this, I like that she is inquisitive and has an interest in people and what we are all about. She knows what "back back back back" means and also the clicking of the tongue thing gets her listening and she doesn’t seem to have trouble understanding that it's directed at her (I think this is going to be really helpful once we finally start riding her). She understands that when she is being a shit, she will be put out of her comfort zone until she understands what we want from her (we usually back her far away from where she was being a shit then start again and she generally understands this.

Pet Peeves

One thing that is just a really really really annoying pain in the neck thing is that Grace has issues with feedings time, or anything to do with feed. She turns into a completely different horse and tries to bully people into just chucking her feed in the yard and running for dear life out of there so she gets to eat in peace. Its really quite bad, she has pulled the wool over some people who feed up at the properties eyes, and I am pretty sure Lisa and myself are the only ones who go in and make her stay away from her bucket until we are ready for her to eat, then she gets to be scratched and hugged and smothered ;).

The attack of the clicking fences! Oh no! They will eat me! I can't possibly walk past them without bowling someone over or running for dear life!.....No, she isn’t QUITE that bad anymore, but she does have issues with walking past a clicking electric fence. She either rushes past the fence or plants her feet on the ground and refuses to budge (the Grace technique, other horses should try it, it really works! When you have one person that is, that cant direct you in front AND push you on from behind at the same time). I think this is just one of those things that she needs to deal with herself, its good in a way that she wont go near it in her yard, but a pain in the neck in other ways when we cant walk her up the isle past other yards that are clicking, when that's the only way to get her out. It's a 2 man job.

The Halter issue. Grace has no problems at ALL when putting on a halter, in fact she loves it! She would shove her nose in there and attempt the straps herself (if she could), but when it comes to taking the halter off it's a different story. She will get quite arrogant and try to hurry you when you undo the straps to the halter, she stands still until she feels a bit of leverage from the side (when we have JUST unclipped it) and then she throw her head in an attempt to rush you into letting her go so she can get her feed. She is getting better with this though, we don’t allow her to do it what so ever, we usually put the strap right back up when she even moves her head slightly and start all over again. Sometimes it takes 15 tries until she lets us take it off without her throwing her head, sometimes 2 goes. In the end I think this is another thing that needs work.

With all that being said, I think most of my pet peeves of Grace are based on that fact that she is young, a little silly, a little cocky and a little moody. It can all be fixed with time and dedication.

So that is it for now, I will surely update when I remember something that I have forgotten ( I know there is a lot missing), and I will update with some pictures over the weekend.

Ciao!!