Introducing the newest members to our farm.......

Missy and Feather!!

Missy and Feather are half sisters and are 10 and 11 months old.. They are mini donkeys.

The two are inseperable as you can see from the pictures they never leave eachothers side.

They are both show donkeys and we hope to get them in the ring sometimes next year.

The boys were VERY excited to have new friends and were a little pesty at first but have been very kind and willing to share their space with these two girls.



Checking out the new grass!




Not too sure about getting out of the trailer



Heading out to the pasture to meet their new roommates

Bringing The Boys Home and first bathes!

Moving day was a breeze and the boys have seemed to fall right into their new

schedule and pasture with ease!

Walking Flynn around the new pasture to get him familarized. He is such a good boy and

 handled everything beatifully. I was like he had been living there all along!

The new sign for the front pasture gate.

Of all the new loving family members surrounding this little horse he seems to have put all of his trust and respect into this little girl!  He follows orders for her with the zero resistance and with the greatest of ease and confidence.  It is an unspeakable bond that has been created in the short time since he has been moved out to the new pasture. It funny... Here is this little 3 year old girl, who expects nothing from this horse yet he gives her everything.  He can be so stubborn for me to work with and sometimes to just get him to move.  But he never fails to do so with her!! All those days I was out at the boarding stables with him without my daughter because it was raining, too muddy, too cold, or too snowy and he STILL chooses her!  All the times I fed him the treats, removed the knots from his hair and cleaned the dirt from his eyes and hooves.

 It is funny.... the lessons you learn in life!

I guess it is true...

"It isn't the person who seeks the horse it is the horse who seeks the person".

FINALLY!  Warm enough weather for a well needed soapy bath!!

Drying out after the bath

She HAD to show the horses her ballet recital costume to see what they thought of her!

The Horse With A Big Question Mark!

Well, the boys are here getting used to their new home and new friends but it sure has made it hard for us to do much with them with all the mud and the freezing cold rain and on again off again snow and hail we keep getting.

We get them all groomed out and look shiny and new again to turn them back out to a mud pit and of course being the naughty boys that they are the first thing they will go do after getting groomed is roll in the mud!



Although the rain and snow is nasty it drove us into having to use the indoor arena where we discovered Flynn's natural talent and love for jumping! Someone had left a set of 4 jumps out after practicing with their own horse and so I decided to walk him over the jumps for a little exercise.  But Flynn didn't wanna walk over them.... instead he JUMPED OVER ALL FOUR OF THEM! And was ready to do it again and again and again!  I have been jumping for about 10 minute with him daily now and he gets SO excited when we enter the arena he can hardly contain himself!! I have to limit him to only about 10 minute or so because I think if I didn't he would jump all day long! Most of the other boarders are impressed at how much of a liking he has for the jumping so soon after starting and how well he does with them. It sure has boosted his confidence too!  He struts back into the pasture after his workouts.

 

Cowboy on the other hand is a little bit of a question mark for us.....

Unlike Flynn, who will usually start to approach the gate when we enter the pasture with his halter and lead in hand and is ready to go. Cowboy usually required a lot more time to get him convinced to come to us and sometimes we have to chase and catch him.  It is rounding 2 weeks tomorrow since we got them and he is still wearing his halter in the pasture.  Flynn earned his halter to be removed when he is turned out in less than a week and has not had a problem yet. Cowboy also refuses to try the jumps and is so stubborn that in most cases when exercising him we can't even get him to trott.  We call him the mule horse!! I worried that something was wrong with him an injury? Was he sick? But the stable owner assured that he was fine she said he will run with Flynn in the pasture and always finishes his meals.

His personality is very different from Flynn's personality.  They are exactly a year and a month apart Flynn's birthday is Sunday, he will be 3 years old and next month Cowboy will be 4 years old.

They are very young horses but most days Cowboy acts like an old man at least compared to the energy that Flynn has.

When I first met him at the farm he was born and raised at he seemed full of life! In fact, we thought their personalities were going to be reversed! I keep wondering if he is just plain sad and missing his home or is it just that he is not used to all the attention and little workouts he is getting. I don't think he has been worked with in a very long time and probably only received one on one attention or grooming right before he was to be shown.  The farm they came from has over 90 mini horses! He seems to really enjoy the attention once we can get him to come out of the pasture and we praise him for it everytime with treats and a good grooming session.

The reason why this is so confussing for us is because Cowboy unlike Flynn has been broke to drive a cart and has a national title in halter.  Flynn hadn't received any training what so ever but seems very obedient and loves to work and please us and has a ton of confidence. 

My head is constantly swarming with could it be this? Or could it be that? They do have a much bigger pasture area and the boarder told us she cut back a little with their grain because they both were a bit over weight when we got them, is he just tired? He has already lost a little weight which I have question whether of not it is too soon to be show slight signs of weight loss.  But again I'm a new horse person and who am  I to question to stable owner! 

I think Cowboy was used to being the top dog at his previous home possibly too and is now the low man on the totum poll with these bigger horses. Flynn has even shown off his confidence/dominance toward the big horses since we started jumping him but from what I have observed treats Cowboy just fine.  He will  even kick at the big horses now when entering back into pasture which is just hilarious to watch this tiny horse scaring off these large horses! Where as Cowboy usually walks with a low head back into the pasture and straight over to the water for a drink.

I notice that even when leading Cowboy he tends to want to walk behind me instead of next to me and doesn't walk with the high alert head like Flynn does.

He is such a mystery to me and I feel so bad that I don't know what is troubling him if that is the case!

I need help!



Muddy, Muddy, MESS!!





Big Names For Small Horses

Soon after making the official phone call to the farm owner that we would not be taking one of her minis home with us but two we found a great boarding stable for our petite little guys where they would hopefully befriend some of their larger roommates and neighbors. The stables that we decided on was not as large as some of the others or should I say not as populated but still had all the amenities that we wanted. Tack room with storage lockers, indoor plumming, indoor wash rack, round pens, jumps, indoor arena and a nice sized pasture for the two of them. It is located just minutes from Michigan State University and homes alot of the MSU polo team horses along with other show and competing horses.

Now that we had found our horses and found them their new stable home the next step was to come up with names.  I wanted my 3 year old to feel as included in the entire experience as possible and since we wouldn't have the horses come until after we got back from our Disney trip about 2 weeks after, I wanted it give her something to be excited about. Although my daughter is a true girly girl and believes that pink is not just a color it is a life style she surprised me at how enthused she was about having two BOY horses come into our lives. Of course she still tried to convince me that a good "princess name" would work for them. 

Like most little girls she is VERY into the new Disney "Tangled" movie, so naturally she wanted her horse to have the name of Rapunzel. I tried not to discourage her from the choice but explained that if she called her horse Rapunzel people would assume he was a girl.  She thought about this for a moment and responded with "Ok.. His name will be Flynn Rider then".  Which for anyone who doesn't know who Flynn is, he is the leading male charactor in the "Tangled" movie Rapunzel's love. She picked the sorrel chestnut pinto to have the name Flynn Rider and that made it official..  FLYNN RIDER!! 

My daughter was completely satified with her choice of name and lost all interest in naming the other mini which  left it up to my mom and I since he needing a stronger name than just "Buck" to stand up to Flynn Rider.  I decided one afternoon out of the blue that the name Urban Cowboy seemed to be very fitting name for the tri colored bay pinto since here we were city people trying to become horse people!  I found out later after deciding with  the name that it was the title for an old John Travolta movie that was well before my time. 

Unintentionally, we have named these two horses after some very handsome and very bold characters!

So now we had a Flynn Rider... Flynn for short and an Urban Cowboy... Cowboy for short. 

Two big names for two small horses!

Love at first site!





Picking our minis was a very tiring and long guilt ridden process of elimination.

So many minis but we could ONLY choose two to take home.

Took a two hour drive on a VERY cold and snowy Saturday morning to check out some geldings at an arabian miniature horse farm.

I took my 3 year old with me, my toes were already frozen before we reached the stables so I knew my daughter (who was dressed warmer than I) wouldn't last very long outdoors.

We walked through the stables a small paddock area.  Turned the corner to see a swarm or very lively, nervous, biting, and kicking minis crowded around the gate area. The horses at this particular farm were never blanketed in the winter and rarely spent the night in the barn and resembled unkept shaggy dogs more than horses. The farm owner informed us that her farm hands had brought up all the wrong horses from the pasture for us to look at. But one still caught my eye.  He was a breath takingly beautiful tri colored bay pinto even under all that shaggy hair with one light blue eye. I asked about him. She responded with " "Buck" was a national champ and was not for sale". Still my mom and I persisted and she finally gave in and said that she could consider him as long as he went to a show home. Soon after meeting him up close we also got to meet a very scruffy looking sorrel stallion who she called "Yes". He was a little smaller than most of the others that were out in the paddock, standing at only 27 inches tall. "Yes" had never been broke or ever worked with in anyway but seemed to be very excepting of us leading him in his halter around the paddock.  His disposition reminding me of a golden retriever more than a horse, just very calm, gentle, and pleasing little guy. We left feeling good about the visit to the farm, although "Buck" and "Yes" carried a heavy price tag and MUCH more than we wanted to spend it didn't take more than 15 minutes after departing to come to the decision that they were the ones for us!

A New Journey....

Every little girl at one point in her life dreams of owning and caring for her very own horse.  I, like most were one of them.  I absolutely loved animals from as far back as I can remember.  I grew up with many different kinds of house pets but none prevailed over my dreams of owning my very own horse.

Although, I never had the opportunity to fulfill this dream for myself as a child. 

It never completely went away.

I could very much still see myself waking up in the cool spring mornings when the air is still thick with fog and the air perfumed with the smell of wet grass, taking my horse her morning rations of oats and hay before we would take our first mid morning ride.

It wasn't until I became a mother of two little girls trapped in suburbia where seeing a squirrel at your bird feeder would be considered "wild life" that I told myself history would not repeat itself again.  My girls are still very young. The thought of putting my youngest, a very

courageous 1 1/2 year old around a horse scared me to death even though I have been told it is best to start exposing them as young as possible.  My oldest, in all means is the complete opposite of her baby sister. Naturally, she has always had a  fear of even the tiniest animals which always saddened me and I  knew no amount of pleading or bribing would get this 3 year old on the back of a horse... at least not yet.

My eye had been drawn to a local farm outside of town years before I was even married that bred and raised show miniature horses.  You couldn't take your eyes off these forever babies! The farm must of owned close to a hundred of these pint sized horses.  They stood between 27-37 inches tall and were just as majestic and beautiful at a full sized horse.  I always looked forward so seeing the tiny horses out in the fields grazing everytime I took a trip out that way.

My husband was never allowed to have pets growing up and never really shared my interest for horses or animals in general. The idea that I would ever have the opportunity to own one of these horses seemed out of the question just the same as owning a regular sized horse. Still the idea never drifted too far out of reach.

Living in Michgan can be hard to bear in the winter monthes especially when you are cooped up with small children.  Winter weather can begin well into September and last as long as mid-April. Even though we are blessed to be surrounded by lakes we rarely have time to take advantage of the local beaches before the cool weather hits once again. This winter particularly took a huge tole on my health which kept us in most of the time. 

My mom one weekend showed me some pictures of a few minature show horses.  I brushed the pictures aside replying with a simple "that's nice". She then continued to tell me that she thought that we should each go out and find a miniature show horse of our own.  Train them, get some show experience and then pass it on to my girls. The thought puzzled me... Where would these horses live?  We both lived within city limits even though these horses are no bigger than some types of large dogs there was no way either of us could legally keep them on our property. She persisted to tell me that they would simply live at a boarding facility until either of us moved to a more "horse friendly" location in the future. That was good enough for me! It's funny how having you own children suddenly makes you realize that life is too short to leave everything in therory.

So that is how the begining of our journey....