Settled

Whewwww...

The old gray mare has an embryo growing!!

I wasn't too worried about whether she took or not after being AIed, I just sort of had a gut feeling that she would take. After all, it wasn't taking that was the problem. I just kept missing her ovulations.

I will still keep my fingers crossed for the next 30 days or so and will take her back for one more ultrasound just to confirm a viable foal is growing, but for now, I am just relieved that both mares are confirmed in foal and am happily contemplating the superior babies that will arrive next May.

I am hoping for a filly out of Sassy. I already have someone interested in purchasing the foal....provided it's a filly. They don't care about color....just bloodlines and sex. If it's a palomino...I guess that is just a bonus.

As for Miss's foal...

I don't really care whether it is a filly or a colt. Oh, I guess I do hope for a filly. This may be the only foal that Miss is able to give me and she is such a dear, sweet soul, I would love to have a filly to replace her.

A colt produced wouldn't be all that bad either. Of all of the mares I have here, I think Miss has the best potential to produce a stallion prospect. She is the better of the two Tiny Watch mares. Not that Scamper isn't almost identical to Miss in many ways, but there is just something a little extra special about Miss. She has an aura of elegance about her. She reminds me of a grand lady from the old south.

I ask myself if I really want to keep a stallion prospect and at this point I don't really foresee myself doing so. I guess, just once, I would like to raise a colt that when I looked at him I could say, 'Now THAT is a stallion prospect!' LOL.

Everything else around here has settled into a nice routine. The heat dictates I now become an early morning riser if I want to get everyone rode before the heat becomes unbearable. The only one I have yet to get worked into the routine is my 3y/o filly. However, that will happen in the next few days. She has become a real PITA out in the dry lot. She's bored and just looks for ways to cause hate and discontent. It's time she gets separated and goes to work.

Moon continues to enjoy his good health and I still marvel at how fresh and frisky he is. I've been anxious to get a run in on him, but the timing isn't going to work out until the end of this month. Which actually works pretty well for both him and Frosty.

Frosty got quite large around his mid-section again, but is not blubber fat, nor is he as soft as I feared. A week of daily riding has got him sweating again and that is usually be biggest thing I look for with him. As a rule, his IR tendencies rapidly diminish once he is able to start breaking a sweat easily.

The swelling is starting to come out of Shooter's leg more and more. I'm still only riding him lightly and employing an arsenal of therapies, but he's coming along. The biggest thing we are working on is building up his right hip again. He has become overbuilt in the left hip in response to carrying/protecting his injured left hind leg and it will just take time to build up his right hip again.

Jet has been doing well, but I see it is time to re-up the injections on his right stifle and hock. This time around, I am going to insist that the vet only do the right side. Technically, there is nothing wrong with Jet's left stifle and hock, so at this point, I fail to see why he needs injections all the way around. When he actually starts doing something besides just non-stressful riding, I don't have a problem with doing both sides. All along I was hoping that the hitch in Jet's right side would diminish with conditioning, but I don't think that is going to happen. His right hock is so poorly formed that he is never going to be 'sound' without the help of injections. It leaves me with a bit of a quandary about the investment of resources and time into an inherently unsound horse, but I figured after investing so much  time, effort and $$ into him to get him to this point, I'd let it play out the rest of this summer and see what happens.

Of course, Little John is just a rockstar. He is loping the barrel pattern a bit. He has the general idea, but like all horses at this point, he is a bit all over the place with his leads. Wanting to pop to the outside lead when leaving a turn is pretty common with green horses and it just takes a lot of stopping them, pushing their ribcage in again and asking them to pick up the correct lead again before continuing on to the next barrel to get them solid about keeping that ribcage in and maintaining the desired lead until it's actually time to change. At this point in a horse's training, I don't feel the need to start employing a bunch of drills or exercises to reinforce the idea. LJ doesn't even understand what he is supposed to be doing well enough to even contemplate the idea he is doing something wrong. A simple stop, move the ribcage over and pick up the desired lead is sufficient to start building the concept and muscle memory necessary for a properly finished turn.

Now that everyone is starting to get a little legged up again, it's time to start hitting the desert and getting some hill conditioning on them. My 3 greenies need miles and I can alleviate having to ride Moon or Frosty a whole bunch by ponying them along. Those two horses have logged hundreds of miles ponying other horses in the last few years, now the rolls will be reversed. :-).