Monday, February 13, 2017

On Hold

Our horses' Grand Adventure has been put on hold for a bit.

It seems Beel's truck decided that it didn't want to go to Arizona and went on strike. Luckily, it broke down at the gas station the night before we left, instead of leaving us stranded on the highway with three horses in a trailer. The truck had been fixed by the dealership the week before our scheduled trip, so to have it break down less than one week since picking it up from being "fixed" did not make anyone happy. This time, instead of going to the dealership, Beel found an actual diesel mechanic to work on the truck.

It is now running, but the window of opportunity that Jay and I had to go down with the horses has closed and it'll be Mom and Beel running them down when they can. We were sad that we had to postpone the trip, but have been thankful to have them with us for a bit longer. The weather has been unseasonably warm down on the plains (while Mom and Beel have been getting hammered with snow), so we've had time to just hang out and enjoy the herd.

I'm not certain the horses are as thrilled as we are about having time to hang out with them, though. The weather has been so nice that we took the "winter" water tub out of the pen and disconnected the hoses. Suddenly, we had extra baling twine, from untying the hoses from the fence, and we had a couple of 4' hoses. The horses were curious, so we helped them do their best Cyndi Lauper impressions. You can see how thrilled they all were.

"Really Mom?"

"I can pull this off."

"I'm never going to forgive you for this, Mom."

Thursday, February 2, 2017

One More Sleep

In approximately 12 hours, we'll be loading up the horses and headed to warmer pastures.

If you've read my book, Tales from the Trails (a little shameless self-promotion), then you've "met" Bucky. He's a real-deal cowboy who is doing what he loves with his wife and son by his side. Long before the movie UnBranded came out, Bucky decided to ride his green horse from the Arizona border up to his "summer job" in Allenspark, so he loaded up two horses - one to ride, and one to pack - and set out. This was long before GPS and cell phone coverage everywhere. He didn't have a "support crew". He'd call and check in every few days on his trip, and he always had a hell of a story when he'd call.

He and his wife are two of the best Barn Bosses I've ever worked for, so when he suggested I take the horses down to their place, I jumped all over it. I know there are a lot of people who look down on trail "nags", but I have to tell you, those nags are some of the best trained horses I know. They might not know a lot of fancy dressage moves, but they are solid mounts. The opportunity that Bucky and Mrs. Bucky are giving the horses can't be beat.

Our paperwork is all in a row, the hay nets are full and ready to be hung in the trailer and the horses are ... intrigued. They all got very excited today when I started prepping the trailer. They got even more excited when I went into their pen to fill the hay bags, and Skeeter was beside herself when I took the halters off of the fence.

Where are we goin', Mom?

Yikes! These had to come into the mudroom to thaw.
I hope they are as excited tomorrow about the trailer as they were this morning, otherwise it can be a really stressful start to the trip. I don't foresee any problems whatsoever, and any problems that might come up will be solved with a honey/oat granola bar.

Though the horses don't know where they are going, I'm sure they'll be glad to go some place where they don't look like this in the mornings:

Miss Pearl

Miss Skeeter
When you get a chance, check out their temporary new home (YES, they are coming back home to us in May) at Blue Sky Ranches.