Flying dogs

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi2 Comments

I was out having fun taking pictures of the dogs this afternoon.

I wanted to get a picture of them playing stick-ball.

That’s their ‘flirt pole’, is a ball on a rope on the end of a stick. I swing the stick around, they chase it and jump in the air to grab it.

They do the most amazing, acrobatic high jumps snatching the ball out of the air, but it’s really hard to photograph, partly because it happens so fast, but also because my hands are full with the stick! Barclay particularly does some incredible calculating to guess where the ball will go and is often hanging in the air waiting for it when it arrives!

After that catch Barclay got distracted by Dave coming home, which left Navi a chance to chase it without Barclay the Stick-Ball-Hog getting in the way!

But finally Barclay swept back in to show her how it’s done!

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Working out at the barn

On By stefrobrtsIn weight loss1 Comment

I was planning to run a c25k routine this evening after I got home from volunteering at the barn, but instead I got some unexpected exercise. First I got there and got to clean stalls and refill water buckets, which I consider excellent strength training! Then I was helping a little 5 year old girl ride a shetland pony, Buttons, and instead of working in the arena, they decided to have class outside in the outdoor arena. Unfortunately we didn’t realize until we were out there that it was pretty muddy in places, easily up to my ankles here and there, just a few inches in other spots, and you never knew from one step to the next if you’d be sinking in or not! I was glad I wore my heavy hiking boots!

So we started out walking around the arena, and here’s something funny – we stopped because I saw something come shooting out of the grass in front of us and onto the dirt, and it was a 2 ft long garter snake, and it was chasing a bright green tree frog! The snake lunged and caught the frog by the foot, and the little girl was so surprised she dropped the pony’s lead and ran to watch, and that snake swallowed that frog whole, and then slithered back off into the grass! I’ve never seen anything like it!

So we were walking around the arena and it was some hard walking for me, sticky mud and heavy boots! We got the girl mounted up and I was leading her, and then I unhooked the lead and my job was just to walk alongside her and make sure Buttons didn’t take her for an unexpected ride. Well, she was a confident little girl, and about half the time she wanted to trot! So I’m jogging alongside trying to keep up, then we’d walk, then we’d trot, round and round for about 45 minutes! Towards the end I was thinking I had done about all I had in me, and I think the teacher saw it too and said ‘lets just walk Buttons now so she can cool off before we put her away’ and I was like ‘thank you!’ – we all had a laugh 🙂

So I think that was my intervals for the day. Running in that mud was SO hard! I thought about wearing my Heart Rate Monitor before I left but I thought, oh, I never really get my heartrate up just walking around the arena, so I wouldn’t count it as cardio anyway – apparently I should have worn it, I’d like to know how hard I was working – my perceived effort says I was working pretty danged hard!

Afterwards we put Buttons in her stall and brought her some carrots and apples and I showed the little girl how to hold her hand out and feed her her treats, but she was scared and just tossed them on the floor for Buttons to eat. I fed Buttons a few treats out of my hand, and she was very gentle. What a sweet little pony! As always it was great fun helping a kid ride, and this time I enjoyed getting my exercise for the day too!

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Dog Yard for the trailer

On By stefrobrtsIn airstream, barclay, navi1 Comment

We have a camping trip coming up, and I’m planning to take both dogs. I thought having a little ‘yard’ for them would be a lot of help. Our trailer is very small, and space around the door is crowded. So I took our X pens and spent most of the day making this:

I can make it bigger by adding more panels. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to work around the step.

I ended up cutting a panel in half, and then cutting one of the halfs in half again, and made this three piece panel to go under the step. I topped it with some flexible water pipe to protect our hands (you can see the pokey side on the right I have yet to do). This will make it so we can just open the trailer door and let the dogs out into the yard. That will be really nice for morning potty breaks! Also I won’t have to worry about Navi dashing out the door running off to annoy the neighbors.

Barclay’s ready to go camping. He’s waiting in the van!

Jack moves on

On By stefrobrtsIn jack2 Comments

First off, I have to say Jack is a very nice dog. He’s well behaved, and you hardly even notice he’s around. He mostly sleeps and begs for food, and occasionally plays with the other dogs. His downsides would be that the baying really gets on my nerves, like nails on a chalkboard, and that he is kind of a third wheel to the eskimo antics that go on around here. The eskimos are in-your-face, lets go have some fun, constant interaction party dogs! They are always thinking of new things to do, and they want you to join in. They bring you stuff to see if you’ll come play or try to get it away. They pretty much overshadow poor Jack in every way, and run circles around him in the yard while he races to keep up with the faster, higher-energy eskies.

So last year I started asking around to see if anyone wanted a dog. I was hoping I could find some friends who were looking so I could keep an eye on how he was doing (though I’m sure he’ll do great wherever he goes). Our Eskie friend Sherry put up an ad for him on her bulletin board at work. But after not finding anyone interested, I had kind of given up and figured he was a permanent fixture now. In fact just a couple days ago I asked my friends on FB if anyone could dogsit him while we go camping next month.

Then yesterday I got a call from someone who’d seen the note on the bulletin board. He came over and met jack and they got on great. He was an older guy, getting up towards retirement. He and his wife had a new property with woods to play in, and he was ready to get a dog again. They have grandkids who visit a lot, and Jack loves kids. Sounds like a match made in heaven.

It was still hard to pack up his goodies and send him on his way, though he seemed happy enough about it. The house seems quieter, which is odd because he would have just been sleeping anyway. It will just take some getting used to, I guess. His new owner promised to send me an update and keep in touch, and bring him back if it didn’t work out for some reason. I hope it works out great. I know he’ll miss the other dogs, but he’s such a good dog he deserves to get more attention, and not be the third wheel like he was here!

I’m looking forward to only having to deal with two dogs! That really should be our limit – one per person!

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Mustang – getting started

On By stefrobrtsIn mustang1 Comment

My poor mustang has been sitting ignored for too long, gathering dust and having stuff piled on it. So this week I have been cleaning up the garage, and working toward getting things organized enough to work on it. I set up shelves, got things stored away off the floor so there’s room to move, mounted the electric heater back up on the wall. And now it looks like this:

The pile of garbage by the front fender will go away next week on garbage day.

 

Cleaner and more organized than it’s been in quite a while.
 My first project will be to get the rusty, oily, mess of an engine out for rebuilding.

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Lap dance

On By stefrobrtsIn dave, mighty, navi6 Comments

There, that title should get some hits 😉

Dave came in from mowing and sat down in the office, and immediately Mighty took up residence on his leg. Soon Navi jumped up in his lap, even though lap capacity is really only 1 max!

But that was ok, she just sat ON the cat!
 So they re-arranged a bit (Dave looks thrilled)…
 Hang on, we’ve almost got it…
 Purrfect!
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Teaching kids to ride a pony

On By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I got to go mentor at the stables again today. My student was a 6 year old girl who had come once before, and she got to ride the little welsh pony gelding, Lightning. He’s a bit of a pill, though I’m told that’s typical pony – he’s always trying to see what he can get away with! I had a go-around with him last week when I went to halter him and he managed to make it difficult and shake his halter off three times before I could get it fastened – so I was ready for him!

First we went and got him out of the paddock, and he met us at the gate. I haltered him up with no problem and then I let the girl walk him back, while I walked on the other side with my hand on his halter so he wouldn’t take off on her. We tied him in his stall and then the girl started grooming him. She was so excited to ride him again, it was really cute, but she also wasn’t putting up with any nonsense from him – if he nudged her she told him to back off! She did great! We got him all cleaned up, and then I held each foot for her while she picked them out, and I helped her when needed. Then we got him saddled up and got his bridle on and walked him over to the arena.

Inside the arena they had set up cones and some logs to walk over. We started out with the kids leading the horses around with the mentors holding onto the halters (there were 4 horses in the arena), and then the kids got to handle the horses alone, but with mentors right nearby. After a couple laps they mounted up, and got to practice some balance exercises while we led the horses, then they went on to directing the horse themselves, then we were able to take off the lead ropes if they were confident and let them ride, while we walked alongside. She was scared to trot because he takes off with a little hop, but her mom kept encouraging her, and on the final lap we talked her into trotting for about 20 feet with me holding his halter – and of course she loved it and wanted to do it again so we did one more lap so she could trot again before dismounting!

Afterwards we brought all the horses back to the barn, then the kids helped take hay to the horses that were staying in the paddocks all night. They all seemed to have a great time helping out with the chores. It is so rewarding to help little kids get to play with horses – I wish I could have done this when I was a kid, but it’s great to help other kids have that experience now, and I think I’m learning as much as they are, and building my own confidence at the same time 🙂

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Kids, Llamas, Alpacas, and Dogs

On By stefrobrtsIn 4H, barclay, jack, llamas, navi, pets2 Comments
I had a fun day today, with a 4H meeting first thing in the morning. We had it at one of our 4H family’s farms, where they have alpacas. Because they recently got in a group of young alpacas they were trying to place in good 4H homes, we got to see kids working with a variety of young animals that were new to all this, which of course made for an interesting morning!
Some were resistant to this ‘jumping over stuff’ idea…
Some did not like the idea of walking on strange surfaces…
And some of them just plain didn’t want to cooperate – even though this llama in particular had years of experience!
Some kids were having much better luck with the obstacles.
Practice and persistence pays off! These kids have a show coming up, so hopefully this little refresher got their animals in the mood to cooperate next weekend!
I took my new camera to the 4H meeting, along with my longest zoom lens (200mm) because that gave me a lot of reach. I was wandering around the field where we were working, and if I saw anything interesting about to happen, I was always close enough to zoom in and get it. Another thing I like about this camera is it takes multiple pictures in quick succession without having to go into a special mode. That definitely helped me get the shot I was looking for more than once.
At home I put one of my shorter lenses (the 28-80) on for taking pictures in the yard with the dogs, because they were seldom more than an arms-length away.
I love this shot of Barclay, but because I was zoomed in, the depth of field is shallow – the result being his nose is in focus, but his eyes are soft! I’d rather have it the other way around! The best solution would have been less zoom, and move closer – but he moves around so much I had to snap it when I could – oh well! So close…
A little bone-chewing action – with the green grass and blue sky.
Then Navi took the bone. I love the way they chew on bones, they’re so concentrated like nothing else exists.
I was so glad I got this shot of Navi! She is such a goofball, but sometimes she’ll hear something and just STOP with this rediculously serious look on her face! She looks so concerned!
 Jack
 I tried to finish off with a nice portrait of Barclay and Navi sitting in the dandelions, but before I could hit the shutter Navi had to sproing away to go do something else! Well, actually, that pretty much captures their personality perfectly!
By the time I was done I’d shot about 150 pictures today. Thank God for digital cameras! This explains why I couldn’t get into photography as a kid when all we had was film!
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The alpacas are gone!

On By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I think I forgot to blog that last weekend the evil alpacas moved out and went to live at the rescue. This made me very happy, because they HATED me, and all I had to do was walk up to the fence and they would start working up a gob of spit to spray at me. They also didn’t like the dogs, and the black one in particular would run back and forth along the fenceline stomping and kicking when the dogs were out, and I was afraid if the dogs ever snuck out into the pasture that alpaca would have at ’em! I was glad to see them go!

I don’t plan to have any more llamas/alpacas at our house. Though Dave has already said he liked the sheep. I liked the sheep too. I could handle having sheep again. They never spit on you 🙂

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