Hiatus

So, it turns out that having a (human) baby greatly reduces one's available free time for writing blogs (and many, many other things!).  It's been  2 years since I last posted - our son is now almost 20 months old.  We've moved, the boys are back in boarding, and Daria returned to her breeder's herd.  I'm going to just pick it up where I left off, writing posts as I can and sharing my horse life with my readers.

Run for the Cactus 50 mile Endurance ride, August 17, 2019

Rhio is 19 and still going strong!  I guess an old(er) rider and horse team can learn new tricks, as I changed a couple things with his protocols for the ride and he scored better on his vet card all day than he has in the past few years.

Ride prep starts the week before the ride.  Unfortunately, a new batch of hay at the stable gave both boys a bit of diarrhea and "gurgly tummy," so I started them on a new-to-me probiotic ASAP.  It was wonderful!  It really seemed to make a difference, and I kept Rhio on it all week and through the ride weekend.  I have used probiotics frequently over our years of competition, but I haven't felt that I could decidedly tell a difference with prior ones.  With this product, he was eating extremely well, and even ate most of a flake of alfalfa-grass mix hay in the trailer on the way to the ride on Friday night!  That is a very rare thing for him, as he is not a good eater on the trailer.

Beet pulp mash with electrolytes and probiotics in the week leading up to the ride. 

I also started syringing him with plain kaolin-pectin (the pink stuff - it smells like bubble gum but the flavor is pretty mild/bland) a couple days before the ride, to get him used to the taste.  It's a buffer used to help make the electrolytes less harsh on the stomach.  He hates being syringed and in the past has refused to eat after I've given him electrolytes via syringe at rides.  I'd decided to pre-mix my powdered electrolytes with the kaolin-pectin at home in the blender, then add a bit of liquid electrolyte solution at the ride, and dose before and during the ride via syringe.  I'd been just putting the powder into his mashes, which he typically doesn't consume very readily during the ride,  anyway.  So the few days of just the pink stuff did acclimate him to it, and dosing during the ride was easy-peasy!  And, even more important, he kept eating!

Kaolin-pectin 

Besides getting Rhio ready with diet/supplement tweaks, I also washed my girth, saddle pads, and half chaps.  Packed everything needed for 1 horse, 2 dogs, 2 adults, and 1 toddler to camp, eat, sleep, poop, and ride for the weekend.  Prepared food to feed all said beasties, two- and four-legged.  And completed various other myriad packing and prepping tasks.  It truly takes me all week, in between daily life, working, and being a toddler mom.  We had a plan to leave immediately after my husband finished work (i.e. I'd be all loaded and waiting for him in the back alley with the truck and trailer, since work is 30 minutes from home in the direction we were headed.) It was going to be a 4 hour drive, and we'd be getting there at or after dark.

And then, my carefully constructed plan imploded with both hubby and I getting late patients, and then hubby deciding he and toddler and 1 dog would stay home, after all.  So, I hurriedly unpacked a bunch of the stuff, fetched the toddler from daycare before they closed, went to the stable to load Rhio (with a small meal of Outlast and a handful of senior for his tummy prior to hauling), and meet hubby back at home to hand off the toddler.  Whew.  Ok.  Ready to go.  It's only 6:45 pm, 1 hour and 15 minutes after I'd planned to be on the road.

The trip was uneventful, with Rhio hauling calming and quietly as he usually does, Smokey riding shotgun, and little traffic.  I pulled into ride camp at 10:30 pm, having no difficulty finding it (whew! my night vision is TERRIBLE) and even saw a spot to park right there next to the entrance drive.  I pulled in, trying to be as quiet as possible, and proceeded to get Rhio's electric pen set up, his mash made, hay and water fed for the night, the tent set up, and my contacts out and teeth brushed in exactly an hour, under a beautiful full moon.

11:30pm Friday night, all settled in for the night

I slept poorly, as I usually do the night before a ride, and "helped" by the extremely bright moon keeping the inside of my tent nearly light enough to read without a headlamp.  I checked my phone many times, worried I'd overslept my 4:20 alarm.  When 4:20 rolled around, I got up and got dressed in my riding clothes,  put Rhio's hoof boots on, and then walked up to the office area (in a building with electricity! how nice!) to get my ride card and a map and a quick run down of the vital information for the 50 miler.  One of the vets was ready to vet me in, so I traipsed back to the trailer to grab Rhio, and vetted in, still in the dark.  I'd lugged my vet check stuff up with me as well, so I quickly got that set up for myself, and went back to get ready.  I remembered to eat something, I forgot to take my ibuprofen, and I was ready to head out pretty much at start time of 6am.  It was 6:05 when I left camp, the last 50 heading out on trail.  I knew Rhio would catch up to the next horse in no time, which he did.

We rode briefly with the second-to-last horse before Rhio decided he had more horses ahead to catch, and we proceeded to catch and pass the next group of 3 riders.  He wanted to keep going, so we stayed just a little ahead of them until the first water stop.  As we arrived, the next group of riders was just leaving, and so Rhio set his sights on those horses, and didn't want to stop, drink, eat, or relax at all.  We caught and passed that group as well, but I knew we weren't going to sustain that pace for the rest of the long first loop (22.5 miles) so I jumped off at the second water stop and waited for the group behind us to catch up.  From then on, all 5 of us rode the entirety of the rest of the ride together.  Which is shocking to me, actually, as I typically do not like riding in groups larger than 3.  But all the horses and all the riders got along so well all day, with zero disagreements or even crabby ears, that it was fun and relaxing to ride together.

Loop 1, about 11 miles in, 7:30am 

Sweet, clear, cool water 

The river! 

Single track - note the yellow and blue ribbons for trail marking. 

Loop 2 - water stop next to a bean field.

The bridge coming and going to/from camp.

The best part of this ride was the river! We stopped here on every loop, and it is undeniably the best water access/drinking/sponging place I've ever seen on a ride.  The water is perfectly clear, the bottom is perfectly firm with zero rocks, and it's level and mostly shallow.  By the third loop (hottest part of the afternoon), we were spending 10 minutes here sponging our horses and letting them cool down.  I'm pretty sure the horses looked forward to the river as much as we did!

The trails were great footing, and a nice mix between knee-knocking single track and two-track were you could easily move out and cruise along side by side.  The only difficulty we had on trail was an irrigation contraption that was spraying water about 15 feet above us, from the other side of a row of trees.  So we couldn't see the machinery, but we could first hear it (what's that noise?) and then see the water spraying through the tops of the trees (!!), and then feel the water hitting us and the trail (!!!!).  Wow, that was an "obstacle" that I had never dreamt of seeing.  Basically, we had to run through a giant sprinkler on our quivering horses.  But, we did all survive.

Loop 3

We finished in great shape with a ride time of 7:36.  All five of us completed with happy, sound horses.  Rhio ate and drank like a champ all day, took his syringed electrolytes without much fuss, and had the best vet scores he's had in forever (all As on hydration parameters and gut sounds the entire day!).  We had a few rubs - a slight girth rub after loop 1 which caused me to switch from mohair to fleece and add a coating of zinc oxide ointment to his armpits, and a very minor amount of rubbing from sand in the gaiters of his hind hoof boots, so that I pulled his boots and did the last loop barefoot.  I got a few rubs myself, more than Rhio actually, and am still nursing along a very bad rub on the side of my neck from my hydration pack (see my last post on the blog, from 2017!).

Overall, I absolutely loved this ride and can't wait to come back.  I'd forgotten how much I love to ride 50s.  And I am very proud of my pony.  We are within 1 year and 1 more endurance ride of both our Decade Team and 1000 Endurance Miles with our national governing body, American Endurance Ride Conference.

And, hubby and toddler survived their boys' weekend at home just fine.

The morning after

Completion prizes - first aid kit for the diaper bag, big hook for the hay bag (or whatever), and a new jelly scrubber (I've lost all my other ones).  I couldn't have gotten a more perfect bag of stuff! 

Gear Review: Source Outdoors Dune 1.5L Hydration Pack

During a snack break.

I thought it might be of some interest if I posted a review of new gear as I try it out.  Perhaps this comes from overhearing the reviews my hubby listens to about trail running gear.  Many items can successfully cross over from trail running to trail and endurance riding.  I recently acquired the Source Outdoors Dune 1.5L Hydration Pack, a backpack-style water bladder carrier designed for trail running.  A few days ago was my first ride with the pack.

What did I love about this pack?  It was comfortable and highly adjustable.  Although my back got a little sweaty wearing it in fairly humid conditions, it really was an unobtrusive presence during my ride.  The straps are all attached, so there are no dangling ends.  This is great, as there is very little chance of catching the straps on a piece of tack or tree branch.  And it's great for those mid-ride potty breaks - ladies, no worries about getting your straps wet by accident.  I did not have to remove my pack to take a "nature pee."  The fully loaded bladder and pack are still very lightweight, and sat very close to my back, therefore not interfering whatsoever with my balance in the saddle or while mounting/dismounting.  I had no problem using the tube, reattaching it to the magnet, or drinking.  I definitely drank more water, more consistently throughout my ride than I do with just bottles.  I did carry a single bottle of electrolyte-supplemented water in addition to the plain water in my pack. 

What did I not love about this pack?  Near the end of my nearly three hour ride, I couldn't get any more water out of the drinking valve while riding.  I assumed the bladder was empty.  In fact, I think the bladder had kinked in the middle as it lost volume and I wasn't able to get water until I'd removed the pack and manipulated the bladder a bit.  I am hoping this tendency will decrease as the bladder gets a little more "broken in."  As the volume of water decreased, the pack got lighter, and had more of a tendency to bounce on my back at the trot and canter.  However, I really didn't find this to be an annoyance at all (contrary to what I'd expected).  I did have to tighten the straps considerably once I began posting trot, compared to what was comfortable at the walk.  The waist strap did tend to ride up, but it was comfortable at the higher position so I let it remain there.

The sternum strap has a whistle built into the buckle.  I used this to signal my dog.  I forgot, however, that I'd never blown a whistle from Rhio's back.  He handled it just fine, but did have a little startle response.  The integrated whistle turned out to be a great feature!  But I do recommend you try it out from the ground around your horse first.

The water bladder is unique in that it is shaped to reduce sloshing.  It has a "hole" in the middle of it.  Between this design, and turning the filled bladder upside down and sucking all the air out before you put it in the back, I had very little water sloshing noise at all.  Rhio did indicate he could hear something weird up there when we first started trotting (perhaps just the motion of the padded, ventilated back against my tank top) but he quickly got used to it.  The pack did not make my tank ride up, which has been an issue with some hiking packs I've had in the past.

The drinking tube is fabric-covered (UV protection according to the manufacturer) and this makes it really easy to handle.  As with all bladders, the water that remains in the tube gets warm, so your first sip is always warm to hot (kinda yucky).  The water in the bladder stayed fairly cool, but not cold.  The drinking valve comes with an attached cover, which is nice.  However, I did find that I needed both hands to get the cover off and twist the valve open.  This may be a skill thing, and perhaps I will be able to operate it one-handed with more practice.

The waist belt has a small pocket on both sides.  I could *just* fit my iPhone 6 SE with a LifeProof case in this pocket - it was a bit tight. I prefer to have my phone on my person, and having it accessible for photo taking was nice.  I typically use a running waist belt for the phone if my riding tights don't have pockets (none of my summer tights do!).  It was perhaps slightly easier to get the phone out of the pack pocket than out of my waist belt.

There is also a slim pocket along the length of the pack, and a bungee-cord outside attachment (you could put a lightweight jacket in this I think.)  I did not use either of these features.

Overall, with just one pleasure/conditioning ride with the pack, I am happy with it.  I will hopefully be trying it out on a 50 mile endurance ride very soon!

P.S. It does come in a few colors!  I got mine for about $100. 

Happy Herd

The boys are comfortable enough to nap while Daria keeps watch.

All is well in our little herd!  Daria is lice-free and her new summer coat is growing in all glossy and black; neither Red nor Rhio got lice, and no one has had any ticks yet, either.  The EquiSpot topical I started for the lice is also a tick preventative.  My pasture doesn't have any brush or long grasses, so it's relatively unfavorable tick habitat, but the ticks are out in force already and having some protection on the horses (and the dogs!) is paramount. 

Daria, during a 8" spring snow storm just over a week ago.

I am now able to leave Red and Daria home alone - even overnight! - with no "extra" help for Red (i.e. not even a titch of tranquilizer required.)  Rhio and I have put on about 115 miles since January, and with his brand new shoes put on today, we are ready for the first ride of the season, in about a week and a half!  But before that, we are hosting a distance riding clinic this upcoming weekend and Rhio gets to 1) mark trail for our short practice ride 2) be a demo horse and 3) lead the group of riders on the practice ride!  I guess we've been having a busy spring.

Some of the views through Rhio's ears on this spring's rides.

My handy husband built me a hay box last week.  I wanted to be able to feed hay in nets to reduce waste, keep more hay in front of them all the time, and allow us to go away for a weekend camping without needing to have someone come feed the horses.  I have a full-bale size net, and because Rhio wears shoes (which could get caught on the net), I can't put the bale-in-the-net directly on the ground.  So, we designed this small hay box so that he can't catch his feet on the netting (ok, I suppose if he decided to stand IN the box - and horses do the darnedest things sometimes!), but that is still small and low enough to the ground that little Daria will be able to eat from it!  With two half-bale nets affixed to the board portion of the fence, and the box full with a full bale, and probably some loose hay as well, they should be good for 2 days. 

The box is just big enough for 1 bale, sits about 4" off the ground, and has solid sides but a slatted bottom (for drainage).  We used eye bolts so I can secure the net into the box, but they protrude too much and get caught on the net when I am putting it, full, in the box.  So, we are going to move the eye bolts to the top instead of the inside surface.

"Slow feed" nets are a big deal right now - rightly so, as they are very helpful for lots of "easy keeper" horses in reducing/slowing hay consumption, keeping them busy "grazing" more hours per day, and help keep small amounts of forage moving through their digestive tracts all the time (healthier horses.) My nets are not truly "slow feed" - because the diameter of the holes isn't small enough for the horses to really be slowed down, once they figure out how to use them. Red and Rhio have net experience, and they were thrilled with the box-o-hay immediately! They were actually preferentially eating out of the box, instead of loose hay I also put out. Daria has been skeptical of the whole thing, and has been scrounging for dropped hay beneath and around the nets rather than trying to eat from them, once the loose hay is gone.  I have every confidence she'll figure it out.  

Red uses the net like a pro.

Why don't I use true "slow-feed" nets, with all their health benefits? This is a purposeful choice on my part, because in the past Rhio has actually not been able to keep enough weight on if he is fed exclusively with a small-holed "slow feed" net.  My nets have 1 3/4" openings, the "slow feed" versions from this company (Hay Chix, www.haychix.com) are 1 1/4" or 1" openings.  The horses must learn to pull the hay through the holes, without biting the net (which just lifts the net off the hay, and doesn't result in a mouthful of hay.)  I don't know if Rhio just doesn't/won't spend enough time eating with a true "slow-feed" net, or if it really just limits his consumption too much.  At any rate, we will see how it goes with these nets.  Although the horses spend a reasonable amount of time "grazing," my pasture is very sparse in grass (our soil is too sandy) and it's not really come in well yet. They have reduced their hay consumption from winter, but I know that even in the summer, the majority of their feed will be hay.

Just 'cause he's so handsome!  It was recently his 22nd birthday (April 13th.)

Late afternoon light made this a great shot!

Quality Couple Time

My hubby and I have similar sport interests - he is a trail runner and aspiring ultramarathoner, and I do endurance.  Our sports are parallel in so many ways.  A few times in the past, we have trained together.  Today was one of those days.  He needed a 10 mile run today and I'd previously scoped out a quiet road nearby (unfortunately it's paved) - so Rhio and I joined him for a ride/run training session.  And it was great!

Rhio loves to have a buddy, and it turns out a human will do just fine.  We kept a nice, steady, slow trot for much of the ride, and hubby kept up his nice, steady jog pace.  We got some funny looks, especially when we decided to take the last few miles home along the shoulder of a county highway.  But, it was fun!  We got to spend time together, and we all got our miles done.

My hubby has recently acquired a spiffy new GPS watch with a heart rate monitor and a whole slew of fancy functions.  I use a tracking app on my iPhone to track all my rides.  We were within 0.01 miles of each other's elapsed mileage for the entire workout - which I find pretty impressive for my free app on my phone! And it was a nice way to validate my app's functionality - at least along a road with no tree cover.   Rhio and I did 9.4 miles in 2 hours exactly, with an average speed of 4.7 mph and a maximum speed of 8.1 mph (ok, so lots of steady slow trotting, a tiny bit of medium trot, and a sprinkling of walking - this is great early spring conditioning ride!)  So far for 2017, we have 33 miles of conditioning - not bad, considering the weather.  In comparison, my husband has 30 miles for this week alone!  But he does have the advantage of doing many of those miles on the treadmill, so he can work out no matter what Mother Nature throws our way.

Rhio's and my first competition will be May 6 and 7; we are planning back-to-back 25 mile rides.  My husband's first race is a 50K (32 miles) along the Superior Hiking Trail on May 20.  We all need more miles under our hooves/feet before May, so let's get cracking!

Even on a Sunday afternoon, there was little traffic here.

About a mile from home.  Rhio wore his hoof boots on all four feet because the majority of our route was asphalt.  I won't train much on asphalt, due to the concussion, but occasionally it will be fine. 

Almost home!  It was a "balmy" 18 degrees, but with little wind.  More sun would have been nice.  But, we did manage not to totally freeze.  Such is life trying to put on miles in northern Wisconsin in March.

Coming down the driveway - Red and Daria (can you spot her?) are waiting for us.  Red had a little extra calming help from a bit of tranquilizer, but he is doing great with Rhio leaving!  This was the second time in three days that I've ridden.

Post-ride, looking fine!

A Mini!

Red and Rhio need a buddy.  They are a two-some in a pretty isolated setting, and Red is already overly-attached to Rhio.  Rhio needs to be able to leave the premises to ride, and so Red needs another equine to keep him company.  "Herd of One" is not in Red's vocabulary.  In the past, he has gotten so upset, running the fenceline and calling desperately to Rhio (who was still on the property and in sight of Red), that he slipped, fell into a gate, and the gate fell on top of him.  Luckily, he wasn't hurt.  Since then, I have used a light tranquilizer whenever I took Rhio away to ride, until they were fully integrated into J.'s herd.  Once Red has other buddies, he still worries and frets when Rhio is gone, but it is manageable and I don't worry that he will hurt himself. 

She's about 31" tall at the withers.

So, here is Daria!  She is a 16 year old American Miniature Horse mare.  She was a broodmare for a friend of a friend, and is done having babies.  Her new task is to keep Red company.  We brought her home Sunday night.  We had hoped to make it home before dark, but that didn't quite happen.  She is black, so the horses didn't immediately notice her when I unloaded her out of the trailer.  I brought her over to the outside of the wooden fence and put a little hay down for her to eat.  The boys acted all silly and Arabian, prancing and snorting.  Daria was unimpressed and chose to munch a little hay instead of worry about them. 

Rhio wondering what the heck she is!

Meeting Rhio for the first time.

I don't have a place to keep her separate from them, but allow them to get acquainted, so I really had no choice but to just put her in the pasture with them after a short time.  This is one of those instances where you should do what I say, and not what I do!! It is always much, much safer for everyone involved to let a new horse meet the herd gradually over a few days, across a fence for example.  However, I know that my boys are fairly well "socialized" and usually take to new horses pretty well.  They have never lived with a mini before, but they have lived with mini donkeys without incident.  So, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. 

Another good reason for a separate area for a new horse is to prevent spreading disease to your herd.  This is a definite disadvantage in my case, because Daria has lice. While lice are not uncommon in minis in the late winter, due to the fact that lice love the warmth underneath the thick, dense winter coat, they are contagious.  How am I dealing with this?  First, before putting her in the pasture, I treated her with a permethrin spot-on (made for repelling ticks and flies).  Lice are insects and can be killed by regular insecticides (i.e. fly spray), but you have to get it down to the skin.  There is also a powder formula, which you brush into the coat.  I couldn't find any of the lice powder enroute home from picking her up, but what I could find was the spot-on.  So, that's what I went with.  The very best solution is to remove the thick hair (body clip), shampoo with a permethrin shampoo, and then treat.  But, it is March.  I cannot remove her warm hair nor give her a bath in March! Lice are very itchy to the horse, and poor Daria has scratched out big patches of hair on her neck, the backs of her hind legs, and her face.  I believe that she has "chewing" type lice, which eat dander.  This makes any type of internal medication given to the horse useless.  In an attempt to prevent Red and Rhio from getting lice, I put the spot-on treatment on them as well, and will continue the spot-on treatment on everybody every 2 weeks.  Additionally, every other day I've been grooming Daria really, really thoroughly (which she loves) and putting fly spray into her mane and tail, down at the roots.  Today, I couldn't see any active lice.  However, they have most definitely laid eggs, which are glued to the base of the hairs and hatch in 10-14 days.  So you can see, this isn't going to be a quick fix! 

Big patches where she's missing hair from rubbing it out.

Other things I'm doing to reduce the chance of spreading lice, since I can't keep her separate: when I groom her, I use only her own dedicated grooming tools, and they are washed and disinfected after each use.  I do not handle Red and Rhio at all while I'm grooming her, or until after I've changed my clothes.  My outwear goes directly into the washer on hot, then the dryer.  I don't let her hair fall to the ground, but bag it up and remove it to the garbage immediately.  Luckily, only horses (donkeys & mules too) can get this lice - so I don't have to worry about the people or the dogs getting them.  However, I could potentially carry lice from Daria to the boys, so I'm trying to be ultra-careful to reduce the chance I'll accidentally give some lice a free ride.

Otherwise, she seems to be settling in just fine and getting used to the routine.  Rhio postured at her pretty intensely for the first hour or so, making sure she knew he was herd boss.  Since then, he's been just fine with her and the two are often hanging out in fairly close proximity.  Red, however, chases, bites, and kicks at her - but only when I am putting out hay.  Once they've settled down to eat, he is fine.  They all move about the pasture together, and can often be seen dozing under the pine trees.  It is only the third day she's been here, so I am optimistic that we will soon have a happy, content Herd of Three. 

And, I can't wait for that first really nice day, so they can all get therapeutic baths. 

Where's Daria?

Phase Three: They're Here!!! (The First 24 Hours)

Third conditioning ride of 2017, bringing us up to about 20 miles so far!

Almost home: Rhio's shadow and Pete's tracks in front of us.

After a wonderful 9.5 mile conditioning ride around the local gravel roads at my friend J's house, where the horses have been living since November 2015, I loaded up the boys for the two hour trek north.  With the incredibly warm weather, it was a breeze to get the trailer out of its winter spot (thanks, J! I drove into the driveway and my trailer was already sitting in the middle of it, ready to hook up!).  The boys hopped right in, as they do - I love that trailering is just not an issue for them.  It *has* been an issue in the past, when they were younger.  But, since they both had to ride in many different trailers, with many different horses, over the years (I've only had my own trailer for 10 months), they've become pretty consistent loaders/haulers.  Except that Rhio never eats hay on the trailer, ever.  This is a big bummer, but I work around it.  Luckily, most of my hauling is relatively short trips, and he does great as long as he has a tummy full of hay, grass, or beet pulp before we leave.  I'm digressing...

Munching on their first meal at home.

We arrived home about an hour before full dark, and I let the dogs out before I unloaded the horses.  The dogs had been inside since lunchtime, when hubby came home from work to let them out.  Our four canines are not in the slightest habituated to horses.  So, this made for an "interesting" exercise in dual dog-and-horse management.  Red and Rhio are completely unfazed by dogs, luckily.  Birch, our 7 month old Golden Retriever puppy, was ... overwhelmed? overexcited? taken aback? half scared to death? immediately drawn to gulping down massive quantities of horse manure as fast as possible? I'm not sure quite what the right word or phrase is here, but he proved quite the challenge. 

While trying to lead both horses, Birch was underfoot, and/or jumping up on me in his "I'm scared to death, you must save me!" mode.  Somehow we managed to get all of us into the pasture successfully, though I was trying to get Birch *out* of the pasture the whole time! As soon as I'd released the horses, and they moved off in curiosity within their new space, Birch discovered that barking and bouncing seemed to make the big, scary mystery creatures run away!  Wow, this is fun! Ummm, no, Birch, this is NOT how we do things!  I resorted to putting Red's rope halter around his torso like a harness and using the lead rope as a leash.  It actually worked great! I kept puppy in tow while I got a few flakes of hay for the boys, then took the dogs inside and fed them.

Filling buckets by headlamp, at the back corner of the house.

After all the critters were fed, it was time to haul water for the horses.  For now, I have a 20-ish gallon small rubber tank that was in the barn.  The water source is on the far back corner of the house away from the barn.  Which is entirely inconvenient, and I have already vowed, after a single evening of hauling water, that my next barn will have a water source.  With a hose, and buckets hefted into the back of the truck, I successfully filled the tank.  Whew.  Guess I won't be needing the gym for my strength workouts!

While I was settling the horses, hubby made dinner, and so I came inside to a hot meal, then before bed, we went out together to do a bedtime check and give the boys a little more hay.  Oh, I am in love with this!

First morning at home!

Rhio doing 'crazy lips' for hay.

This morning, I put my insulated Carhartt overalls on over my pjs, and went out to give hay before the sun was even over our forested eastern hill.  I was greeted with nickers, and Rhio's 'crazy lips' - a gesture meaning that he's anticipating something he likes.  There was light ice on the water, and the heavy, wet, squishy snow of the night before had hardened into a very hard and crusty layer, which made it very difficult for the horses to move around.  Luckily, I knew it would be near or above 50 again today, and soon the frozen snow would soften once again.

I went back inside, content that they were doing well, and had my tea while their beet pulp was soaking.  I finished making their meals, and went back out to feed.  I'd accidentally make their mashes a bit too sloppy for Rhio's liking, and he's a slow eater, but I used the quiet time while they were eating to clean the barn.  There was one pile of manure in the center of each stall, and a few in the doorway to outside.  It looked like one of them had laid down in the west stall, and sure enough I found some shavings stuck to Rhio.  He does love to lay down and rest, so that was a sure sign that he was already comfortable in the new digs.  Also, I've been thinking of the west stall as Rhio's and the east stall as Red's, for some reason.  I guess he concurred!

I finished up my morning with the horses just as our little "valley" was finally lit up with full sunlight.  Or was that the sunlight shining out of me?

Doggies "helping" with chores: Smokey tests the water.

And Birch cleans out the feed buckets!

Phase Two: All the Little Tasks

Inside my barn, looking at both stalls.  I intend to leave this whole area open to them, but it's not really designed to be used that way.  So, I'm trying to make it safe.

Tomorrow.  Tomorrow's the day that Red and Rhio come home. I'm pretty sure my weekend plans consist of watching the horses out the windows, and going out to see them/feed them/brush them/give them my apple cores every hour or so. I think I'm all ready for them.

I've been waiting for the FedEx guy all day, and he finally came!  In 20 minutes, I had the last 15 feet of poly tape up and had walked the whole fenceline, checking and tightening. The top and middle line are connected to the fencer, and when I plug it in, it clicks!  Hopefully that means it's all nice and hot. So, the major component of the horses-at-home project is complete - I have an enclosed pasture.

Gate!

The whole fence is complete.

Over the past week, I've been doing a bunch of little things to make the barn and pasture ready.  I bought a pipe gate, and although it could use a little adjusting, it'll work for now.  I cleaned all the junk out of the stalls, and looked over every surface for protruding nails or screws (found a few).  With the help of a bunch of salt and a bunch of upper body strength, my hubby got both the big sliding barn door and the person door chopped out and opening/closing as they should.  I bought 6 trial bales of hay and have them stacked in my hay shed.  The hay guy can deliver in loads of 100 bales, if I (and the horses) like the hay, so hopefully I'll be calling him early next week to set up a delivery.  Thanks to my hubby's simple and cost efficient solution, I found a way to cover the sliding stall door hardware so I feel that I'll be able to leave the barn and stalls open for the horses to have free access.

On the left, the metal plate that the stall door latches hook onto.  This sticks out into the area I want open for them at least 6 inches.  Hubby's great idea: tennis balls!  I cut a slit in them with a hacksaw, and popped them over the ends.  Now, as long as the horses (ahem, I mean "Rhio") don't think they're toys, I'll be all set!

The bottom plate which holds the stall doors when they're closed.

And, I've found them a friend.  Daria, a retired broodmare Miniature Horse is going to be joining my herd soon.  Her only real job will be to keep Red company, so I can take Rhio away for an hour, a day, or a weekend.  She is from a friend of a friend, and I'll be going to pick her up sometime in the next several weeks.  I'm guessing she'll also be popular with nieces, nephews, and kids of friends - so come visit us! 

I still need to get their water set up, and sweep all the cobwebs and spiders (eww!) out of the nooks, crannies, and corners of the barn. And, of course, my list of things to get for the barn grows and grows!  Mostly, though, I just can't wait for tomorrow!!!

Sliding door to my little room.  It's not really a feed room - I'll be keeping their feed in the house, because there's no water at the barn and I make them soaked beet pulp every day.  And it's not really a tack room - too small for my stuff, and I'll mostly be riding away from home, so I'm going to leave my tack in my trailer.  But, it'll hold halters, grooming stuff, blankets, treats, fly spray, etc.

Interior of one of the stalls.  They have crank windows on the back, protected by bars, so I'll be able to have cross-ventilation in the summer.