What always happens to the good ones?

They get hurt, that's what!  Our prize spotted butt decided that in his almost 1 acre sized paddock that has been there for years, he was going to discover an ancient, rusted roofing nail from who knows what/when, and proceed to step on it.  He came into the barn three legged lame, upon further inspection, a nail was discovered lodged in his sole, near the frog and heel.  He let Mark pull the nail out with his fingers.  I called the vet, afraid if we just let it go, it would result in infection.  By the time the vet arrived in the evening, he wasn't sore on it at all.  However, the vet pulled out the tools and scraped away the sole around the puncture, and it was quite deep.  He gave us iodine powder and antibiotics, as well as two antibiotic injections into the neck, and orders to pack and soak the foot daily.  Hopefully we can ward off infection and stop anything bad before it begins.  He said to expect him to be more sore in a couple days than he is now... poor little man.  :-(

The only plus side of the experience was that the vet commented on Durango's great disposition.  Our brave man stood with his foot up for 15 minutes, letting the vet poke and scrape at the tender puncture site, and standing perfectly still for his shots.  It takes a pretty notable occurrence to have our vet comment on a horse, so I was pretty proud.

A few days ago, I was lunging Durango, and decided to take it just a bit slower.  Because he is so big, and great minded, it's easy to forget he was a May 29th baby and a good 2-3 months younger than the other babies, so he needs to be on a lighter agenda than his older siblings.  I would like to show him in longe line this year, however, to preserve his body, I decided to make the later fall futurities and ApHC World Show in November my goals.  So, my agenda for him is a light longe once a week just to keep him going with the concept.  The rest of the time I will work on him with hunter in hand, since that's a class I can show even now without pushing him physically.  Trotting in hand and setting up will be his main lesson for this portion of the year.  For the earlier longe line futurities, I'm focusing on Denver, his sister, for the HUS, and Aspen, his yellow girlfriend, for the WP.  Either way, our hands are full with all the baby training this year, but so far those three babies have been rock stars!  All three stand quietly for baths, tie quietly in their stall (although our mischievous spotted butt manages to untie himself constantly), stand to be brushed, pick up their feet, stand to be fly sprayed, and are lightly longing out of the round pen on the line.

The next project baby is Parker, Durango's brother and former nemesis.  They are just going to have to grow to like each other, because soon, being the two stud colts, they will not get to go out with their filly friends any longer, only with each other!  Durango is getting bigger now, so might be able to stick up for himself better... but then, the bigger he gets, so is Parker!  Parker is quite large, not the biggest baby of the year, around middle of the pack for height, but already bigger than his dam and looks like he's going to be the good sized horse I was hoping for.  He's wider and bigger boned than the rest, and a darker bay that will probably be very similar to his sire in color.  He is a bit more shy than the rest when we brought them in, since he had a horrid recip mare that did nothing but chase him away from humans for the first portion of his life.  However, is IS by Chance and out of Sendy after all - the two best minded horses in the history of life - and he is already coming around and his curiosity is getting the best of him.  We've been pretty lucky with how these babies are learning so far, and I hope he is no exception.  He has some pretty big shoes to fill - his little sister also out of Sendy - Aspen - is probably the biggest rock star of the whole year on how quickly she is coming along, possibly even surpassing Durango!  She is lunging on the line after only two sessions ever, and stood statue still for her very first bath, where I was able to even scrub her all over and get to work on her filthy tail!  I've never seen anything like that with a baby.  I love these guys!

So I guess it's a good thing that I decided to take it lighter on Durango since he decided he wanted to make sure I stuck to the plan by incapacitating himself.  Hopefully I won't have any bad news to report on his healing progress.  I guess for the next week or so, I'm just going to focus on brushing out the 50lbs of hair he is letting go of, and getting rid of the permanent green poop stains on his butt that never seem to come out no matter how much I wash!  I hope he doesn't decide to make a habit of hurting himself so he can just be pampered!

Also - we are officially on mare watch now.  Golden In The Dark, "Hannah", our 16 hand buckskin daughter of Dynamic In The Dark, is due for our elusive buckskin Chance foal (one can hope)!  She is on marestare cam and is at 338 days now.  Very progressed but no wax/milk streaming yet, though we've had them foal without so still having to keep an eye on her.  She's very tender and won't let us milk her to test the pH to see when she's ready, so we're having to do it the old-fashioned way of sitting and watching!  Not too long now before Durango's mama is on the cam with her full sibling to D-man!  http://www.marestare.com/fcam.php?alias=oakfieldacres

And now for random photos after that long rant!

Durango untying himself, one of several times:

Who, me?  Nothin' goin on over here!

Aspen after her first bath ever, finally shedding out the white fuzz to reveal the golden color underneath!

Denver's first time on the longe line out of the round pen, in our brand new awesome arena!

Hannah banana, largely in foal to Chance!

Here's to healing hoofs and bundles of baby for my next post!  Fingers crossed.

Durango's first lesson in how to talk to a woman...

So, today, we decided to let Durango out with Aspen in a separate pen from the other bullies... I mean babies.  Since Durango still gets picked on to this day, and those babies have never seen Aspen before as she was previously in a different pasture... as well as her being the shrimp of the bunch since she is the only western pleasure bred baby... I was too nervous to let her out with the big guys just yet.  Poor thing could use some company though, so I figured Durango, being the pushover of the other group, would be the most amicable baby to be Aspen's new temporary pasture buddy.  We separate all the colts from the fillies once they turn physically one year old, which these two aren't quite yet.  Just long enough to get her warmed up to going out with new horses, and then she will go out with the big girls.

Well, it ended up being more monumental of an occasion than I had expected.  It went pretty much like this (please excuse the dirtball of a palomino filly, who is still wearing her faded winter woolies and loves to roll in the dirt to make us think she is turning grey, even though she isn't!) :

"Hi!  I'm Durango!"

"I have spots!  Wanna see them up close?"

"Wow, you sure are a cute blond girl..."

...of which, Durango decides the best course of action would be... biting her face.

Aspens "Oh no you DI'INT!" face.

The following is what I would like to sum up as the, Durango gets a taste of his own medicine sequence.

And the, "Maybe I could have approached that better..." face:

We were worried it would get to rough and we'd have to separate them, but we kept watch and fortunately they settled it over a good roll (Durango's a bit more subdued than Aspen's):

Both came out of the ordeal none the worse for wear, bright eyed, perky eared, and cute. :)

And thus concludes Durango's first encounter with the opposite sex.  Methinks he has a lot to learn over the next couple years. ;-)

Edited later to add... I just realized the irony of this post and his registered name.  Romance The Ladies, indeed.

He's baaack...!

So I woke up this morning, and one of my first thought processes of the day was how I feel like I have been neglecting to post on the Durango blog any posts about, well, Durango!  My inspiration turned to motivation, and we got a lot accomplished today.  While doing my morning internet check, I decided to see if there are any Appaloosa shows coming up in the area.  Well, there are, and closer than I thought!  There is one two weeks from now and one three weeks for now.  They only have hunter in hand and halter available for yearlings right now, but I thought it might give him good exposure and a start to his show career.  So here are the pros and cons to doing any shows this month:

Con:  He is still has the hair coat of an Alaskan Mountain Yak... I mean Appaloosa.  The weanlings always seem to go overboard with the hair in our Florida winters and Durango was no exception.

Con:  I still have to send in his registration papers.

Con:  I have to teach a baby some semblance of trotting in hand and setting up in one week.

Pro:  He is shedding in handfuls and handfuls.  Whether or not this is good enough to get rid of the hair in 2-3 weeks, I don't know, but it doesn't hurt to keep scrubbing!

Pro:  I found out today I can rush his registration and have it back in 48 hours!  Way to go Appaloosa Horse Club!

Pro:  Well, he is our little prodigy, after all!

So, our show agenda for the month is yet undetermined, but now we have a goal to work for.  So, in honor of day one of Project Turn Alaskan Mountain Yak Yearling Into Show Horse, I ventured out to Durango territory to take his registration photos, which turned into full blown grooming and photo session.  I pulled him out of the good life, aka, the pasture where his lazy butt has been knawing on an alfalfa block for two weeks since he's been on the backburner, and into the barn for his first taste of a show horse worthy grooming ritual.  The good minded baby doth not protest much, though.  He stood (mostly) like a champ while I curried off buckets of Yak fuzz, and even put some bands in and trimmed his mane for the very first time!  Goodbye baby faded mohawk mane *sniff*.

In the barn after his first haircut!

This was probably the highlight of the day.  Continuing to awe me with his high horsey IQ and rational thought processes... you are looking at the first time Durango was ever fly sprayed.  Other than looking mildly offended, he did not budge an INCH.  You would have had to see it to believe it.  He stood better than most of my adult horses!  I was expecting spooks, snorts, jumps, run-offs, ANYTHING but the actual result.

Okay, on to the good stuff... Durango's first "real" photos as a yearling (well, almost yearling physically, he was a May 25 baby if you can believe it!).  Still fuzzy, but the fuzz kind of adds to the cute... this is the last time we'll see Durango in his furry baby coat... this time next year, I'm sure he'll look all grown up! *sniff*  Enjoy!

Okay I'm signing off, it's a late night but I wanted to share these... goodnight!

Random Ramblings

I'm not neglecting the blog, I promise.  Have just been too busy to have anything of blogworthy interest as of late.  Breeding season is upon us, and Durango's daddy and his co-hort Tatorchip are gaining enough interest to make me very busy this spring.  That's a good thing... bad for time allocation to be spent on Durango and the rest... but still good for business!  We've also been completely re-doing our barn and facilities.  Cleaning out and painting/decorating the tack room, feed room, and entire barn... as well as putting in a new fenced in arena (very exciting!).  Poor Durango has been on the backburner for a couple weeks... yikes... but I promise tomorrow will bring another session.  The slow progression hasn't just been due to a lack of time, however.  Durango is still young, and even though he is a big boy, was a late May baby.  It's easy to push the babies too far for their bodies when their minds are so willing and able, and I don't want that to happen to Durango.  While I want him to hopefully have some successful longe line and in-hand shows this year, I'm waiting until the ones later in the season, and just a handful of select shows, such as the Appaloosa World.  I want to get him out there, but I don't want to overdue it to preserve his body for an even more important riding career.  So, he's certainly still in training and learning, but it's not going to be an every day routine, and each session will be kept to a minimum.

We also brought in the third baby to be worked with this year.  First was Durango, then Denver, now "Aspen".  I don't believe I've mentioned Aspen yet on this blog, as she is not a relative to Durango in any way.  Aspen is a palomino filly, also born in 2010.  She is by World Champion Huntin For Chocolate, and out of Southern Sensations, "Sendy", who I believe I HAVE mentioned on this blog before.  Sendy is the dam of Parker, Durango's brother/nemesis by Chance, and the chestnut colt in the last blog, Southern Rock Star, "Clash".  Sendy had an embryo transfer done on her last year, as a result she was able to produce two foals, Parker and Aspen.  I have owned Sendy for 14 years, since she was an early yearling, exactly Aspen's current age.  Looking at Aspen is like being warped back in time 14 years.  She is an exact carbon copy of Sendy, which is an amazing example of fate.  Sendy is the once in a lifetime, irreplaceable horse, and she's getting up there in years.  So fitting and lucky for us that she produced a palomino filly that is identical to her in every way physically... and most important, mentally.  Little Aspen is going to give Durango and the other smart Chance babies a run for the money in the brains department.  We pulled her out of the pasture over the weekend, and she'd never been led before.  We got her all the way to the barn (at least a quarter mile hike) and into the stall.  She was unhappy, understandably, it felt like weaning all over again as it was the first time she'd ever been separated from her buddies.  However, the whinnies died down after only a couple hours, and then there was barely a peep.  We kept her in the stall for a couple days to make sure she was settled before trying out our first leading expedition to the turnout pen.  I figured we were in for a rough one, a filly who barely knows how to lead, that has been in a stall for a couple days... well, she led straight out to that pasture like she'd been doing it her whole life.  When it was time to come in, she led straight back to the barn equally calm.  Not a single explosion, no dragging, not a spook, not a peep.  I don't want to jinx it, but if this is a sign of things to come... wow!  Who knows, maybe she will make a girlfriend for Durango one day. :)

A weanling photo of Aspen.  Will get new photos when she sheds out all the white faded fuzz.  She's not turning grey, but she likes to fool you with all the dirt!

Dam of Aspen, Parker, Clash, all-time favorite horse and the inspiration for our entire stock horse breeding program, Southern Sensations, "Sendy" (see the resemblance to Aspen already?).

Also thought I'd share some of our "barn improvement" photos to show examples of the task we've had at hand... yikes.  4000+ sq ft concrete barn that has mostly been a lot of stuff stored.  We had a huge rat infestation around five years back that chewed holes in the walls, ceilings, etc.  Finally cured that by putting all the feed into sealed cans to cut off their food source, in combination with the snakes that discovered the rat haven in there!  Hey, I'd rather have snakes than rats!  Needless to say, there was tons of cleaning, organizing, repairing, and painting to be done.  We have the tack room and feed room near done, and the bathroom done.  On to repainting the whole barn from an ugly light grey blue with peeling green wood trim everywhere... to a more pleasant (and better for not showing dirt!) color scheme of a tan brown with darker brown trim.  We're hanging up artwork, photos, awards, and everything.  Then re-bedding the stalls and repainting the stall fronts.  It's going to feel like a brand new barn! :-)

Bathroom before

Bathroom before

Bathroom after

Bathroom after

Bathroom after

Tack room before

Tack room after

Tack room after, still have to hang up some artwork :)

Arena will be finished tomorrow hopefully.  Okay, signing off, and I promise more updates soon about the title of this blog. :-)