Royal

Royal is our newest addition! She is a 19 year old Quarter horse mare. Royal's registered name is VF Docs Royal Star. If any of you horse people are interested in her pedigree go here: http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/vf+docs+royal+star You'll see that she's got great bloodlines! A close friend of mine, Randy Dehaan, decided it was time to close the ranch after his wife Robyn (my trainer) passed away and needed to get rid of all the horses. At the time, I had just bought TrisKit and was unable to take on another horse. A few months went on and Randy still had a lot of horses left and so after talking it over with Justin and alot of begging later we decided we could take on Royal. She will be a great companion for TrisKit and a nice riding horse. She was with the DeHaan's for a long part of her life and was a special horse to Robyn. It makes me feel really special to be able to own one of Robyn's prized horses and makes me feel like I can have another little piece of Robyn with me. The Dehaan's are a great family and have always helped me out in times of need. I appreciate them alot! Thanks Randy for everything!

SNOW

I love the snow.... but I hate being forced to still go to work when it's icy and scary! Thankfully Dan (Justin's dad) has a big Yukon and so he drove me back and fourth all week. Anyways here are two cute pics of me and my girl TrisKit. Beth took pictures of her while I chased her around the pasture. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera when TrisKit decided to rear up at Beth and almost killed her lol, BAD HORSE!! I chased her for along time after that so hopefully she's learned her lesson... sorry Beth!!!!!!

Izzy Our New Doggie

We adopted a dog from Lane County Animal Services. Her name is Izzy! She is some sort of a German Shepherd mix maybe some Border Collie, maybe some lab, not really sure. But she is a real sweet heart and loves to play fetch. Unfortunately the first day we brought her home I put her out into our 6' fenced backyard and went back inside to put some things away. I went back out and she was gone... yep, she can SCALE of 6 foot fence!!! I pretended to go back into the house and I grabbed my cell phone to take a video of how she was getting out...I included the video so you can see for yourself..!

I also included a picture of her and also a picture of my old Doggie Gwen..they are soooo similar it's scary..!

We Bought a House!

Wooo Hooo!!! Justin and I bought our first house! We moved in on October 18 and we absolutely love it!! It is about 1500 square feet has two bedrooms, one bath and it also has a bonus room and an upstairs room in the attic. We love how much space we have. There is aslo a very big back yard and front yard too! Here are some pics...!

Photo Shoot with TrisKit

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Today my sister Jen came down from Albany and took pictures of me and TrisKit. She has started her own photography business Classy Capture and wanted some fun horsey pictures to add to her site! So here are a few of them and you can go to this link to view all: Photos

TrisKit's Future

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What will TrisKit be when she grows up? Well, I really hope she wants to be a reiner because that's what my plans are! Here is a description of reining from Wikipedia.com Reining is a western riding competition for horses where the riders guide the horses through a precise pattern of circles, spins, and stops. All work is done at the lope (a slow, relaxed version of the horse gait more acommonly known worldwide as the canter) and gallop; the fastest of the horse gaits. Reining is often described as a Western form of dressage riding, as it requires the horse to be responsive and in tune with its rider, whose aids should not be easily seen, and judges the horse on its ability to perform a set pattern of movements.

Above pictures are of horses performing the sliding stop maneuver in the reining pattern.

Here are a few videos... The first one is of reining champion Andrea Fappani demonstrating reining maneuvers. He is one of the best reining trainers out there!! The rest are of Clinton Anderson and his great way with horses! I'm learning his methods and they really do work!! He is also a great reiner!! I really hope to be able to work with horses like these two trainers!!

Andrea Fappani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqoZFz8vS3M

Clinton Anderson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dVWf-i7qpo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPdllcnn_Dk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArbmbAYJaXY&feature=related

TrisKit's First Injuries...

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Well TrisKit tried to escape out of her stall on Monday(8/11/2008) morning. Her gate wasn't latched tight enough and she was able to get herself caught over a chain. She cut up her legs pretty bad and she's also got one scrape on both sides of her head. Silly girl!! Hopefully she's learned her lesson!!!

Picking up TrisKit!!

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On Saturday, 8/9/2008, Justin and I got up at 4:00am to preprae for our six hour drive to Walla Walla, WA. We were moving a little slow, but we finally got out to the rig at 5:30. Justin started to Yukon and realized something was wrong. He was pretty sure that we had more gas in the tank then the fuel gauge was displaying and he got out of the car and opened the lid to the tank...our gas cap was missing meaning one thing...someone stole gas from us and took the cap as well..oh great!!! So we are sitting in the Yukon totally stunned and unsure of what to do...we obviously couldn't drive without the gas cap! So we decided to call Justin's dad.. oh poor Dan! I felt so bad calling him sooo early, but he was really are only hope! Dan quickly suggested using the gas cap from the Miata. Luckily it fit and we were on our way!!!

We had six hours a head of us and were loaded with music, games, and books! Every hour or so we'd stop and switch places. I know this might sound weird, but hauling a horse trailer has seriously been one of my goals in life! Haha! I've just always thought it'd be fun to haul horses somewhere, and believe me it was fun!! And I was pretty good at it too! :) We had a great ride up with no problems, except we got there later than we anticipated putting us behind schedule.

When we pulled up Cindy greeted us and led us to where TrisKit was at. She was in a pen with two other foals. He had a hard time separating them, but we soon got her out and near the trailer. We decided to load up one of the older mares that was experienced in trailer loading to help encourage TrisKit to follow. I took the mare and loaded her up while Cindy encouraged the filly from behind. TrisKit jumped into the trailer and stood inside with splayed legs and shaking. The mare pushed into me and I was backed into the corner of the trailer with her shoulder in my face. Cindy closed the door to prevent the filly from jumping out. At this point the trailer was heating up like crazy and the mare was getting nervous...I was also getting scared because I couldn't get the mare to move and I was stuck and claustrophobic!!! Cindy finally got into the trailer and helped me out of the corner..PHEW! We got the windows open and it started to cool down. I got a halter on TrisKit and held her tight as Justin opened the trailer and Cindy led her mare out. TrisKit threw a huge fit realizing she was alone. I quickly got her halter off and got out of the trailer so we could get going! We said good bye to Cindy, who was very very sweet!!! And got on the road again back to Oregon.

The trip back was pretty uneventful, TrisKit road smoothly and did really great! We didn't pull up to the Porter's until 8:00!! Sheesh, that was a long day of driving!! We got home safely and got TrisKit settled in her new stall. We're so glad she's home!

Preparing for TrisKit

When we made an offer on TrisKit the owner wanted us to come ASAP. So we decided to go down that coming weekend which gave us a week to get the barn ready for a young horse. It was an extreme stretch, but I did it!

Here was the list:
-Spray the weeds...that took along time, but it was fun to driver the mower.
-Mow around the edge of fence.
-Trim all grass and weeds around edge of fence so that no plants were touching the hotwire causing the wire to not work.
-Get hay.
-Get pea gravel for the stall.
-Pickup the horse trailer from Ken.

And here's what happened...
Pretty much the week before TrisKit arrived was one of the craziest weeks of my life! MY boss was gone that week on vacation so I had the lovely task of filling in her position..haha! Anyways so that was pretty exciting except I had to stay late every evening to clean things up. So that took away lots of time for me to work on the property. I also had crazy random things pop up during the week that made it difficult to get things done.
So on Friday 8/8 I was finally able to get some more work done. Justin and I used Dan, my father in law's, utility trailer to go get the pea gravel. We wanted one yard of pea gravel, but the trailer could only hold 1/2 yard so we were going to have to make two trips. So we drove over to Lane Forest Products and they dumped a bunch of gravel in the back and we drove off. When we got back to the barn we realized hmm... this doesn't look like pea gravel..they actually gave us the WRONG ROCK!! Arggghhh!!! It was this very sharp gravel like they use for roads.. so we took it back and thankfully the gave us 1/2 a yard for free. So after a total of 3 trips we got our gravel and put it into the stall. It was then about 5:00 and we still needed to get hay and pick up the horse trailer by 6:30.....
Ok so we had to drive fast! We got into the Suburban and drove out to King Estate Winery about 30 min from the Porter's house... this was about the only place that still had hay for sale and it was $120 a ton which is the most I've ever paid for hay, but it was still better that the $300 a ton the feed stores wanted!! So we get out there to this beautiful place and we show up all grungy and felt WAYYY out of place hahaha! I go into the office to pay for the hay and there is no one in sight...I was getting really worried, but I heard a man cough in the back office so I called out, "Hello?" and the man came out. He had no idea they were even selling hay. Luckily he was able to find the secretary who had already left for the day, but had gone to the winery's restaurant to have dinner. She came back to the office and let me pay for the hay. As I was getting my checkbook out I asked if we could just by half a ton because we didn't think we could fit a whole ton in the trailer. She said yes so then it would only be $60.00! Yes I'm thinking, this is great!! Then I realized I had already pre-wrote the check for the $120.. so we just went ahead and bought the whole ton...I was optimistic we could fit it all in! So we drove out to the field to load the hay. Another obstacle, hehe, Justin really can't handle hay, his allergies just drive him nuts, so I had to load the hay all by myself...that was a challenge I'd rather never do again! Haha, however if I want to see horses in my future I have a feeling I will do that challenge again! Of course Justin was right and we couldn't fit all of the hay in the trailer and the back of the Suburban... so we ended up leaving 8 bales behind..sigh!!!!
So, while out in the boondocks, our phones were out of service and it we hadn't left the winery until 7:00 already a half hour past when we said we'd pick up the trailer and we still had to go hom and unload it... and I wasn't able to call Ken and tell him we're running late. We get back to the Porter's house and luckily Beth was home and she could help me unload the hay! Then we took off in the Yukon to get the trailer. We got to Ken's house at about 9:00 and got it all hooked up and headed home. Wow! What a loooooooong day!!!!!!! Sorry.. not much time to take many pictures..!

Saying Goodbye...

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A few weeks ago I had to make a hard decision. I had to say goodbye to Bambi and all the horses at Z Paint Ranch... it was a really hard day for me because I have brought Bambi so far only just to drop and leave at a moments notice. I talked to LaRae about my busy life and how I just can't find the extra time to work with all the horses anymore. I started crying and it was hard for me to get myself under control... Bambi comforted me by nuzzling my shoulder... but my heart was still torn. I will miss her dearly and I hope they find her a great home. I will miss my trips out there and my times playing with the foals. LaRae was very nice and told me I'm welcome back anytime to hang out with the horses. For those of you who don't know the story...I was offered a "trial training" position at Z Paint Ranch in Creswell, OR. They wanted help training and selling their horses and gave me a trial run with their 4 year old mare Bambi. I took Bambi from very little handling to a real quiet horse with about 60-90 days under saddle. She was a great horse to work with and I hope her owners are happy with my work. The last picture is of our last training session...loading in the trailer she did amazing, what a good girl... Sigh... it was hard to leave...

I bought a horse!

As you all might already know, I bought a horse! "Driftn Bonanza Style" aka TrisKit was born May 8, 2008. She is a 3 month old buckskin Quarter Horse filly. She is absolutely gorgeous and amazing!!! Originally she wasn't going to be available until October when the were going to wean her at five months. Her mom however decided to wean her early and stopped letting her nurse. So they were able to sell her earlier. She was originally advertised for $800, but after a little negotiating they accepted our offer of $500. We went to pick her up in Walla Walla, WA on Saturday, August 9th. Here are some pictures of her!

Kiwi's Visit To The Emergency Room

Today I came home from the grocery store and noticed that Kiwi wasn't squawking as normal and I couldn't see him. I looked into his cage and found him lying on the bottom not moving. I quickly picked him up and could tell he was still alive, but something was terribly wrong! He was really limp and his little feet were curled up and his eyes were partially open. The fact that he wasn't making any noises at all was frightening to me and I knew he wasn't ok! I held him in my hands and just sat there praying he'd be ok. I've never felt more helpless in my life..I just couldn't do anything to help him...
I called Justin crying and asked him what I should do. He told me to take him to the Emergency Vet Hospital down our street. So I wrapped him in his towel and put him in his carrier and drove him to the clinic. By the time I got there Kiwi started acting more normal, he was making small raspy chirps and he had wriggled free from his blanket. I brought him inside and since he seemed to be acting normal they put him in an oxygen chamber to help him breath while they talked to me. They decided to call Santa Clara Vet Clinic because they had a guy there that specialized in birds and they couldn't do much more for me. So I drove over there and they played around with Kiwi and took a saliva sample to test for bacteria. It was really cute because the whole time the vet was trying to handle him he's fly back to me or he'd latch on to my sweater and it was hard to get him off! He just wanted his mommy :-) So by this time Kiwi seems back to normal and I can tell the vet thinks I'm crazy. He said that birds don't show illness very well so by the time you notice a change in the birds behavior it's usually already overwhelmed with some virus. So he said this could've just been that that he's just got some virus and thats how he showed me! Hmmm.. anyways...He sent me home with some antibiotics to give Kiwi twice a day to clear up anything that maybe lurking under the surface. Overall though he's a healthy bird, he's not too fat which is what I was worried about!
So $125 later , Kiwi is doing fine! I'm just sooo glad my birdies ok!

Just to add to the day...I noticed that I left all my groceries on the counter for about an hour while I was at the vets office.. and I had sour cream inside.. I just happened to be talking to Brenda on the phone and since it was still fairly cold she said it should be ok. So I'm in the middle of making chicken noodle casserole and I open up the sour cream and yep it's full of mold!!! The date on the outside said 5/19, but bought it today and didn't even notice. So Justin runs it back to the store and there was no more left of the same kind because they were all old and so the only other one was 20cents more, but they still made Justin pay the 20cents!!! Ok, it's only 20cents, but they should've just exchanged it because they had a faulty product on the shelves and we had to take more time and gas and go back to echange it....ARGGHH!!! The nerve of some people!! So Justin's going to file a complaint..! :-)

Ok well that ends it for today!

Baby Foals!

Here are some pics of the first two foals at the barn. They're both colts and the black and white is homozygous! He'll be an amazing horse. As you can see from the pics he's very curious about my camera and he followed me all over the pasture wanting to smell it and eat my sweatshirt! There are still two more babies on the way and are due any day now.

Sick

Well I'm sick..........
Yesterday I went out to work with Bambi and about an hour after working with her, I started feeling really strange. I started getting extremely weak and dizzy and my slight headache was getting worse. I decided it was probably a good idea to head home. Well I had to take off all of Bambi's gear, her saddle, bridle and put everything in the tack room and also put her up..I wasn't sure I could carry the saddle the whole way because I was so weak, so I left it on her and walked her to her stall which was right a cross from the tack room. I was so proud of her because she's never had the saddle on her in any environment other than the arena and I was scared she'd get nervous and freak out. So I put her away and got into the car. To add to everything, it was SNOWING!!! In APRIL!!! It was snowing so hard down in Creswell that it felt like I was in the mountains, and the roads were slippery even. So that was probably the most interesting driv e I've been on.
I make it home safely and tell Justin I feel funny and I was extremely cold. I took a really hot shower, but that didn't get ride of my chills so I sat down on the couch and covered myself with 3 blankets. I couldn't stop shivering and my muscles wouldn't relax, they just remained tight and I was so uncomfortable. I also had a little bit of a sore throat.
That night when we went to bed, Justin made me take my temperature and I was at 101.3!!! No wonder I was having problems!! It was about 11:30pm, but I had to call my mommy..she help me feel better and gave me some tips to feel better! I had hot and cold spells all throughout the night... and I woke up about 6:00...it was awful.
When I woke up this morning my headache was better, but my throat was worse and I felt really nauseous... a few hours later I felt a lot better and my temp went down to 99.4 and I thought woo hoo I'm getting better!! Then about an hour later I got really cold again and starting feeling awful muscle aches and pains and another head ache. We took my temp again and it is no at 101.5!! So I'm sick...and it's no fun!!

Today I got the saddle on Bambi!! She did great and wasn't really worried about it. She also never bucked once!I'm beginning to think that that's just not her thing. At least I hope not, because when I get on her I do not want her to be bucking!! Anyways, It was a great day at the barn and I got a lot accomplished! I can't wait to hop on!

Glasses...

So I had to get glasses today...! I've been having my headaches on and off, but this week I've had one everyday for 6 days straight! I decided to see my eye doctor again and make sure my prescription was still ok and it turns out I have an infection in my eyes from wearing my contacts for too long. My eyes are also extremely dry and so my doctor will not let me wear contacts again for at least a week. I have another appointment with her on Friday April 4th to check and make sure my eyes are healing fine and if all is well I can go back to my contacts! :-) If not, the glasses must stay on..! I feel so dorky and awkward and I don't want to go back to work or school on Monday. I'd honestly just like to stay home for the whole week! Anyways, here are a few pics...let me know what you think!

An Accomplishment

Today I went our to work with Bambi. I haven't seen her for a week so I was worried that she would be a brat and hard to work with. I happened to show up right at feeding time and I thought oh great now she'll be even worse because I'm taking away her feed...! Well it turns out she did really really great! It really surprises me how intelligent she is. It doesn't take long for her to catch on to something. So today I decided to get her used to having a blanket on. She's never had contact with such a scary object so I was a little nervous. She was really afraid of it at first and wanted to run away for the first 10 minutes, but after that I was able to throw it all around her and then leave it on her. I then buckled all of the straps around her legs and belly. I was afraid at first to connect the straps around her hind legs because I didn't want her to kick me, but she was totally ok with everything. It was a big relief!!! I'm going to be going out there every evening the rest of this week so we'll have lots of time to do lots of things! :-)

I had my Equine Business Management final today!! Yay no more class! However I really enjoyed that class...! The final went well and I know I did good! One more final to go on Friday and no school for a week!!! When class start again, Spring term will be crazy...! I have on class (Reproduction of Domestic Animals) I know...weird...but anyways.. I will have this class EVERYDAY Monday through Friday!! So I'll be driving to Corvallis everyday... NO FUN!! Oh well! Such is life! :-)

Random Name Generator

Well my creative husband used his sweet computer skills and randomly created this Random Name Creator! Hahaha!
http://www.justinbporter.com/testing/star_gen.php (keep refreshing the page to get a new name)
Here are a few I liked:
goobee
prihoomooo
zynaasestia
ti
caagefigoop
waakapob

(Just so you know--we're tired and it's late) :-) Good Night!

My Current Project

Just recently I was offered a horse training position at a facility called "Z Paint Ranch" in Creswell, OR. The have gorgeous horses all with great pedigrees and could all excel in any direction. I'm starting out working with one horse and then move on from there. They have many horses that are already ride able, but just haven't been worked in a long time and need "tuning" up. The also have a few young ones that are ready to start training along with 3 mares that will have foals in May. I'm very excited for the foals!! I've never been at a foals birth or assisted with imprint training so I can't wait till may!

The mare I'm working with now is named Bambi. She is four years old and really has't had any training other than leading. So she's a real great starter horse for me because I know not only will I teach her, but she will also teach me! So far we're progressing, she's learning not to be scared of simple things and to have me jumping all around her. I'm going to start putting blankets on her and a surcingle around her belly to start getting her used to pressure from a saddle. I'm also going to be working on her gaits(learning the commands for walk, trot, and canter). She is aslo really stubborn!! I decided to try and work with handling her feet at the end of our lesson and it took me 45min just to get her to hold her foot up for 3 seconds...! This will take sometime! Even though she's stubborn, she's very smart. Anytime we start something new she instantly looks to me to figure out what the right thing is to do. Life is good! :-)
The only thing that is hard for me is that this isn't my horse...it's hard for me to discipline the horse or work on something I feel is necessary with her owner standing right there. I feel like I'm being scrutinized and I just don't know what to do when she's staring at me!!! Oh well, I'm sure as time goes on I'll get more comfortable.

Ok, so there are two things that are hard for me... I'm also not sure if I can get over my underlying fear. Yep I have a fear of horses!! haha! Well, ok, so my first horse I owned at age 16 and he was a very fearful untrained horse. It was a bad idea for me, at the time, being so inexperienced to by an untrained horse and try to train him myself. I got really far with him in his training, but there were many times when this horse was very untrustworthy and would freak out and buck me off. I started getting really nervous around him and soon I wasn't even able to get back on him. Last weekend in my training session with Bambi, she reared up a few times when she was really confused about what I wanted her to do and that instantly brought back fears..! I'm just trying to tell myself this is a different horse I need to trust her, just as much as I need her to trust me. I just hope this doesn't turn into a repeat...! Here are some pictures of my girl.

First Blog

Hello World!
I started this blog because my sisters did. I didn't really want to at first, but they told me too! :-) So here's my first entry! By the way, I put this picture here because it's so cute and every time I see it, I'm happy!