Pascal Plays Alligator

The dogs have resumed off leash training here at the new place, which they are loving  because they get to run as fast and hard as they can! To cool off Pascal has discovered playing alligator in the pond, sinking deep into the mud must feel satisfying to his hot dog body!

Raven and Kim Give A Tour

 Here’s a video tour from my ride with Raven yesterday- enjoy the views of the new place!

Barn Dogs Go to Work at The Office

Rizzo and Pascal are enjoying helping with unpacking the office in the barn.  This packing material was great fun to shred, though they made funny faces as the thin paper began to dissolve in their mouths!

Rizzo thinks my green office chair is fabulous. She likes to run up it, pause momentarily to look out the window at the horses, then she flips around and slides headfirst down the chair.  

 

She squirrels around to find the best positions as well. 

We go for walks so the dogs can learn the perimeter of the property, sometimes visiting with the horses along the fence lines.

 And occasionally the dogs even run out of gas and take naps.

Plumbing and Barn setup

Today went well, despite the cumulative cost of repairing plumbing in the barn. When we first arrived and turned on the water to the barn I discovered a leak between my office and the tack room that was literally pouring water into the wall. It flooded out the first stall, my office, and my tack room (thank you to my mother in law for sweeping buckets and buckets of water out of there with a dustpan!)  That stall is still wet even a week later, but at least it is drying out slowly and we no longer have standing water or water gushing in the wall.

The other leak was a busted pipe underground in the pasture near a water spigot. It was a little sketchy because it created a serious body of standing water, with a power outlet and wires attached to a wood post going into the ground right in the middle of the water. So neither plumbing issue was of the type that I could postpone safely.  Thankfully they are all repaired now and the plumber was not zapped when he severed the wire in the puddle. But there’s nothing quite like hemorrhaging money when you move to a new place!

This is the view from my chair at the computer in my office in the barn, now dry but in need of a thorough mopping. It will be nice to have my office in the barn for printing forms, doing all the Bit of Honey Training business things right there.

This pavilion is just a very short walk from the barn, and is where we’ll do the unmounted portion of teaching once I start hosting clinics.  Shade, running water, and power, all overlooking the pond and the barn will make for a really peaceful clinic setting!

This is the long row of dog kennels spanning the length of the barn. I only use the first two for Rizzo and Pascal, and most of the time they are together anyway. I snapped this photo of them because it felt like a miracle they had finally settled down and were napping in the sun.

The row of kennels does however make for decent storage for the many many tubs and trunks of gear I brought with me from Colorado. Fortunately everything is labeled! I still have some organizing to do but it’s getting there now and at least I can get to my stuff to ride some of the horses.

I was able to get on Dewey today and hack around the property. He has gotten quite round on the pasture!  I’ve almost stopped giving him mash, just a little to get his supplements into him now.  I try to tell the others if they would spend a little more time eating and a little less time running around they too could be as round as super Dew! 

Daisy goes for a ride

Daisy has had the hardest time adjusting to the new place. She does well with structure, and all this open air time with friends grazing in large pastures feels unsettling to her. Because of this she paces the fence all day long, and gets very upset if her friends go to an area that’s out of her sight. I can’t turn her out with the other two girls because while Daisy wants to be with them, she also has a history of beating up her roommates.  I am not eager to have anyone injured.

Note is having similar issues.  He and Daisy are both fine in stalls in the barn but struggle out in large areas. Note at least has been turned out with Dewey and Highboy and the pasture is large enough they can ask get out of each other’s way. He is more concerned with where the mares are, especially since they are alternating who is is season every few days. 

I think I may have created a good setup today. I rearranged some things and hopefully with this organization of the herd and this routine I can get everyone to settle.

I did take Daisy for a ride today around the property.  She really needed some grooming (also appears to be molting as she sheds her winter coat as fast as possible) and I tacked her up and we went for a jaunt. It was good for my mental health and hers. 

Second Serviceable Pasture Open!

I have a second serviceable pasture to use!  I did a lot of fence repair in the farther field along the tree line, and we added a bit of fencing in the low area where a creek is washing out some of the ground.  I still have a lot of hot wire to set up but thankfully so far they are staying in the pastures because that’s where the best grass is.  

I’m hoping a hot wire along the top will work since they all tend to go bump it with their chests to assess height. With any luck a little zing will be enough of a deterrent for hopping out.  I’ll definitely be making a sturdier area for when the stallion arrives, though. 

I’m also scouting out where I want to put my sacrifice areas, so that the horses can be outside and out of the stalls but not on the pasture itself. In a perfect world everyone would be eating grass all the time, but there’s a few reasons that’s not feasible.  

Firstly, a few of the horses would turn into blimps if they ate the rich grass constantly (Dewey and Daisy, I’m looking at you, kids!). There are also a bunch of health issues that come with obesity in horses that we can avoid by creating some turnout where the grass is gone. 

Second, the pastures will grow better and maintain quality grass if they are rested periodically, meaning no one is running around on the grass or eating it. The rate of grass growth has to be able to stay ahead of the rate at which they eat it or stomp on it. 

Third, the sacrifice areas will be good to keep the horses out of the stalls. It’s a ton of work to maintain stalls, which my saint of a husband is currently doing because I can’t lift/push the wheelbarrow or shovel horse manure this soon after the back surgery. The more I can keep them outside the better, for their mental health and my husband’s!

If you look closely at this photo of Dewey grazing you can see my tape measure outlining part of where I’ll have the sacrifice areas.

Doggies in the Office

Waiting for a guy to come and check the place out for an estimate on fencing, Rizzo decides to play a game of her own making: “Which way is up?” She started by running up the chair to the window behind it, pausing to glance outside at what the horses were doing.  Then she laid down and slid headfirst (upside down) down the chair into my lap, then to the floor. She did this three separate times with a big doggie grin on her face each time. It’s fun to have new playground equipment, and thankfully my office furniture is off the rough and tumble variety, so there’s no harm she can do to it.

The dogs are adjusting pretty well, they are eager to add their regular work into the new routine. I had someone here this morning to get me an estimate on arena footing and digging out the water jump, so soon we’ll hear how much setting up that part of the facility will set us back.

Pascal says not to worry, he has it all under control.

While Rizzo watched from the window in the office (which has not been set up yet) Ferriana smooched on Highboy in the pasture. It took a couple days of turnout together with Ferriana escorting Raven around so Highboy couldn’t get to close to her, but now Ferriana is in love with Highboy too.