New Cats

On Saturday, when we had the internet provider workers over, the farrier over, a new worker to muck out the stalls, and in between me unsaddling Morgan and saddling Rhulain, the irksome renter from across the street came over with her horse in tow.  Now what?!  She said she was moving out of state and needed to find a home for her horse. Would I be interested in adopting the mare?  For free?  

Um, no.

I have my beloved Morgans ... I'm good.

On Sunday our farrier stopped by to tell us the horse ended up at their house.  That's good, they're nice people and they have two horses already. 

Later in the day, the home owner pulled up and found that his renters had deserted without paying him for the last few months.  They did leave him plenty of trash, stole the drawers out of the kitchen, and abandoned a dog.

Sigh.

I took pictures of the dog and posted it on our community garage sales page.  The dog found a home the next day. 

Last night I went to bring in the trash cans and two kittens came darting out of the neighbor's yard towards me.  I got them some water and food because they probably hadn't eaten since Saturday night.  They ate while I grabbed a cat carrier.  

I scooped them both up, dropped them in the carrier, and deposited them in our smaller enclosed yard.  The big dogs can't get to them, so they'd be safe.  

I checked on the kittens this morning. One of them licked our small dog's nose.  They'll be fine. Now comes the fun part ... names!  I was voting for Jupiter and Saturn.  Bill walked out and said "Hey Salt and Peppa!" They looked quite amused.  Sigh.

Next we will get them fixed and up to date on their shots.  There is no way I'm writing Salt and Peppa on vet paperwork.

Run Free!

It was warm and I decided to let everyone out and enjoy the sunshine.  I threw open all their stalls and the mares took off in a burst of speed ... sometimes Morgan led the pack, sometimes Wasabi. By the time Majesty figured out how to get out of his stall, everyone else was settling down.  Rhulain decided to play and got everyone to run down the driveway and back (letting Majesty lead) before they started milling about looking for snacks.  

I love watching them run about, kicking up their heels, and reveling in their pure joy.

Blazing New Trails

Sunday, September 21st  30 minute ride  90° 
Solo

Tried to add a different dimension to our ride today.  I had bells on a leather strap so I attached it to her neck and we moved around a bit to get her used to the sound. Once she figured out that she made the noise, she seemed to have fun moving different parts of her body to the jingle. Too cute!

We headed down the trail, just jingling away

Most of our normal trails had been washed out, so we spent quite a bit of time searching for ways to get through the sand dunes.  We looked for other prints to see if the path ahead was safe, but we didn't much other than jackrabbit prints.

This used to be a sand dune we would climb down ... now it's been washed away and it drops off a mere three feet from where we stopped.

Morg and I lost the trail again, but we found some quad tracks off to the left so we decided to investigate ... 

The tracks lead us right to this drop off.  The far left "bank" is where Morgan had a hissy fit last month.  Now we can't get there because the area has been completely washed away.

Batteries gave out shortly after this, but we made it home safe.  Once we were on the property, I took off Morgan's headstall and we tried riding around with just leg aids.  It's exhilarating!  We need to work on stopping, but otherwise she did fabulous.