Cregga, 4 Months Old

Cregga will be FOUR months old in three days! I sticked her about a week ago and she is THIRTEEN HANDS. THIRTEEN. 

She is almost completely shed out of her babymange stage. She is now a very pretty steel color, sort of bay-ish still but with lots of white hairs. I am not sure what color she wants to be and she's not either, so we're just going with whatever it is. The steel has changed to sort of more brown with the exposure to our hot Texas sun. I imagine she won't stay dark for very long.

From bay with some shedding....

Chasing Moo

So pretty

The Bullfighter Babe

To more shedding...

Future Hubs and the Mangey

Wtf is even happening with that shag rug coat

I took O out to give her a bath one day and Cregga was NOT having it. She took the opportunity to try out for the Spanish Riding School. 

So fresh so clean

That courbette tho!

We trailered O and Cregga out for baby's first ever trip to the vet, and first ever trailer ride. It took a minute for her to get on the trailer, and she insisted on jumping in instead of putting her feet on the ramp, but she did trailer well and loaded back in just fine. 

Unfortunately the reason for the vet visit was to check and see if O was pregnant, and she was not. We bred back again this month and we find out on Monday if she is pregnant, but I'm pretty sure she isn't. We've had all sort of breeding trouble this year and I'm pretty sure we're not getting anything out of it. But, we will try again next year. 

Being a good girl at the vet

Dad's girl

What color is that....

Pest

Returning the pest favor

And the Pestimus Maximus

The mohawk was getting out of control...

So I roached it. Half clipped it and half scissored it since the clippers died. She did well with the clippers!

I was also able to get some more video of the babe in action. Man she can move!!!!

Gigantisaurus Rex

Cregga comparison 2 days old and 3.5 months old

Cregga and Future Hubs - newborn, 5 weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks

She has gotten better about all of the things she wasn't too sure about. At 4 months old she clips, leads, ties, bathes, trailers, stands to be trimmed (within wiggly baby reason), and wears a flymask and flyspray. Although like dad, she doesn't love wet things on her. 

Why am I wet ITCH IT OFF

Smelling and marking mom's pee spot.... idk why. And I have no idea what color she is trying to be as of today!

Taken today

We will find out if she has a sibling for next year on Monday, although I'm pretty sure she does not. Disappointed there.... I really like this cross. 

Pine Hill HDT 5/28-5/29/2016 - Part I, Getting There

Normally I would not need dedicate an entire post to just the journey to get to a show, but it was kind of completely insane, so in order to not put everything into a GIANT chunk I will separate it out!

If you've been watching the news recently, you'll have noticed a lot of reports on the EPIC FLOODING that happened in southeast Texas this past weekend. Images of 100+ head of cattle stranded on the freeway, several drownings, dozens of total road closures, people stranded, water actively flowing over the roads.
Yeah. That was all EXACTLY where we were all weekend. EXACTLY the town we were in.

On Friday morning, the day before the show, the TD contacted all of us to say that while  nearby Brenham had gotten literally 17" of rain - no, seriously, they really did - the showgrounds had at that point only gotten 1". The show was on, so we got ready to roll. It was also raining up here in DFW, so I had to wait to finish washing my carriage and putting out hay for the home horses, as Future Hubs is allergic to it and can't do it himself. I was on the road with O by 12:30pm, and B2 got on the road at about 3pm. This will come into play later.

Well, over the course of the day I tailed pitch black rainclouds the WHOLE way there. Halfway down, I got a trailer flat, and had to pull over to change it. I seriously am cursed with trailer tires... I change them ALL the time. I had literally just gotten a new spare two days beforehand. 

Damnit

Double damnit

I was not feeling so good about the radar or the look of things. It looked as though it were raining heavily at the showgrounds. Immediately after passing through Navasota, I had to slow down and stare wide eyed at the trees and houses sprawled in broken pieces all over the place - a tornado had come through that area and shredded everything into toothpicks.

At some point, my nerves forced me to pull over into the nearest Discount Tire so that I could replace my spare. Since I clearly have fantastic luck with flats on my trailer, I decided that continuing on without a spare was the worst idea possible, so I went and replaced it. They told me it would be at least 30 minutes, which did not make me happy - O isn't a great traveler most of the time, and tends to fidget when the trailer isn't moving, as well as refuse to eat any of her hay for the entire journey. I don't know why she won't eat from a haybag parked in front of her nose for several super boring hours of just being in one spot forever but she won't. So, I stood in the trailer with her, stuffing cookies into her mouth, and waited for my spare to be replaced, which it eventually was. O was really quite good, and contented herself with just watching the mechanics work on cars. She's not afraid of things like heavy loud machinery, just interested in watching.

We continued on, following the black clouds. Rather amazingly, it did not ever rain on *me* while I was driving. I did, however, come across this right before I got to the showgrounds:

Ooooookay then

If you can't tell, that's water. That's ALL water. And some of it was flowing along at a fair pace too. I stopped the trailer while trying to decide what to do, then watched several tiny cars go through it without a problem, so I decided to go for it. Normally I am a pretty adamant turn-around-don't-drown advocate, but in this situation I was kind of stuck. I had nowhere to go. None of the little cars had any trouble, so my big heavy truck and trailer were likely to be all right. We made it through fine and the water wasn't deep. The road wasn't closed on my side, but they had erected a barricade on the other side of the road, which could not be seen from where I was. It was a pretty hairy few minutes. Don't do what I did. 

I made it to the showgrounds without further incident, unloaded O and her buckets and haybag, then dropped the trailer and unloaded the carriage. We all had dinner and a competitor's meeting, and then I started to get texts from B2. She was stuck - the road was flooded. She turned around, and tried to go a different route - it was also flooded. Then she got a flat tire too, and was stuck on the side of the road. Roadside assistance came to help her thankfully, but I think she was strongly considering saying screw it and going back to Dallas. 

While she was on her way, I went out to see the cones course. And oh man... the conditions were HORRIBLE. The showgrounds got at least 7" of rain that I know of that day alone, and it could have been more. Everything was literally underwater. Someone found an actual fish swimming through the dressage arena. A FISH. THERE IS PROOF.

A LITERAL FISH IN THE DRESSAGE ARENA I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING RIGHT NOW

Well, that wasn't terribly promising. The cones course was also basically underwater, which made walking very mucky but did give some specatcular views on the tail of the storm:

Lovely view, terrible everything else.

B2 eventually made it, and after making sure O was settled for the night, we got into my truck and headed back into Bellville. We were *supposed* to go to Sealy to where our hotel was, but we hadn't even gotten out of town yet when we were flagged down and turned around by a road crew. The road was closed, they said. Yes, flooded. To Sealy? Well, go that way and around.... for like an hour... and maybe there will be open roads somewhere. We weren't all that keen on that idea, so we went into Bellville and picked the only hotel we could find, a seedy Budget Inn. I've never been to Pine Hill before, so I didn't know about the *lovely* accommodations there. As The $900 Facebook Pony told us afterwards, "make sure you get checked for Ghonoherpasyphicrabs."

O says, I am not completely sure about this whole thing

The next morning, we were up bright and early for the show.... stay tuned for the rest of the story soon!

Moolies Gonna Moole

When mooles decided to go all Mad Moole on you, man they really go for it don't they?

Yesterday it was rainy and disgusting all morning. Everybody needs to be worked, but I only have a two horse trailer, so I decided that O was going to be the chosen one to go lunge in the indoor at WD. On a whim, I decided I better take Lendri along too, because she is ready to start going places and seeing new things. She has not trailered at all since I brought her home, so I wasn't sure exactly what she was going to think of this.

Well. This is what she thought of it:

Ohhhhhh my. 

It's funny - she walked right on without a moment's hesitation, both when we left the house and when we left the arena to come home. But as soon as she was in there, she immediately regretted her decision, and went to all kinds of flailing around. Mostly I think she is just herd bound (not surprising, she's been mostly unseparated from her herd since I got her in December). She'll have to go more places by herself now that we know this, but it was a good idea to take O to keep her quiet.

Both O and Lendri were chill and quiet when they unloaded. I mean, O is usually that way when we take her places anyway, but it was good that Lendri was also quiet and acting exactly like everything was normal. We went through our normal routine with no issues whatsoever - she acted just like she was at home.

What in the fresh bag of craps is this

Not surprisingly, when I took O into the arena to work, Lendri had all kinds of heehawing to say about that. I could see her little ears above the stalls separating us from the outide, when she would rear and walk around on her hind legs trying to see O. Mules make HORRIBLE noises, did you know that? Lendri makes a deep braying whinny, Sriracha sounds mostly like a whinny with some heehawing cadence to it, and Uma sounds kind of like an old man hacking up a lung with bronchitis is beating a squeaky rusty metal hinge at the same time. At 32" tall, she has the deepest and loudest baritone on my property. I have yet to catch any of mine on video but my god it's something else. Kind of like this.  Go watch that video, you need to hear it!

O is definitely feeling good from her chiro. She started off just a little behind the bit as you'll see in the video below, but as you can see in the picture above, she stretched out and went better. The footing at WD makes all horses feel powerful and floaty, so she was getting her zooms on in the arena. We made sure not to stay in one place and move all around to preserve the integrity of the footing, which the owner actually came down and thanked me for. 

As for Lendri, while she did try to get sticky towards the gate the first few times around the circle, once we moved away from that area she went like a little angel - like traveling to a brand new arena and lunging in sidereins (which she has only done a handful of times anyway) was something completely run of the mill. And she would whoa and stand completely immobile whenever asked - something she will absolutely need as a driving mule. Good girl!!

It's a big world out there, for a little moole

She looks so silly compared to O, who is so beautiful and such a pretty mover. But I can't help it - I just think she is awesome anyway! I have located a suitable breaking cart for her too - it won't be long before she is ready to hitch!