Portrait of Honey

Floating

Last weekend I took my horse to the dentist. she was due (actually past due it turned out) to have her teeth "floated." What's really happening is the vet is using a pneumatic file to grind down sharp edges that form on their molars. Horses' teeth form sharp edges that can cause lots of problems, from not being able to chew their food well to creating sores inside their mouths.

After he's done, the vet gives the horse another shot. The antidote, if you will, to the powerful sedative that kept her happy while her teeth were being (loudly!) filed away.

The vet said most horses wake up faster.

This was after he put her halter back on her.

This was after I got her in the trailer. She was awake enough to step up into the trailer, but didn't quite have it in her to get that one back leg all the way in for a while. 

Deluxe and Christmas at Luther

This Saturday was the Deluxe Craft Bazaar here in OKC. The show is getting bigger every year it seems, and this year was a lot of fun. I ended up basically having a corner booth (the person that was supposed to be on the corner, next to me was a no-show.) I had to re-arrange my planned booth space once I realized they probably weren't going to be showing up, so people could see my booth from two sides. Luckily I had some great help setting up and tearing down my booth. I completely wore myself out getting ready this year (as usual.) 

And then Sunday was the big Christmas service at church. The Luther Church is very small, and I usually help teach a bible class of kids ranging in age from 5-9...with a usual attendance of anywhere from 1 to 8 kids. But for the Christmas service a lot more people come. The Adults fill the auditorium, so there is no room for kid's to come join their parents in there after bible class. So we have a 2-hour bible class for the kids. We split them into 4 classes according to age, I helped with the biggest age group (we ended up with kids anywhere from 4 years old to 11 because the 4-6 classroom got too full.) Thankfully, we had some help from some Oklahoma Christian Students, I don't think we could have done it without them. There were around 75 kids just in our class! (and around 130 kids all together counting all the classes.) We performed skits and sung songs and did a few crafts and read stories and played some games. It was exhausting! But lots of fun, and I'm looking forward to the Easter service which I hear is just as big.

I should have used my panorama feature on my phone to take a picture...this is just a small number of the kids. I was already exhausted from the craft fair Saturday, and all the late nights getting ready for it, so after church I grabbed some lunch, went home, and took a 5 hour nap!

Getting Ready for Deluxe!

I am up to my neck in pillow puppies and pillow kittens that need to be stuffed and sewn shut. I sold out of pugs last year so I'm trying to make more--but Deluxe is THIS Saturday! Yikes! 

Red Panda 8x10

Dappled Buckskin

I finally finished this painting. Here are pictures of the rest of the process:

Wordless

Batik Bowl

   Check out this awesome bowl my friend, Ann gave. It's beautiful, and colorful, (and I don't think I need to point out how much I love lots of color!) 

right now I have it at my desk at work holding some tea another friend brought back from Malaysia for me (thanks, Wilson!) I'm not sure if I want to take it home because nobody but me would really see it there, and I get lots of compliments on it at work!

Still in Progress

Hooves for a Cure Trail Ride

This Saturday I went on my first official, organized, haul-your-horse-somewhere trail ride. It was the Hooves for a Cure trail ride at Lake Carl Blackwell in Stillwater Oklahoma…which meant hauling the horses about an hour and a half (much longer than stormy has ever been in the trailer that I know of.)

Here she is in the trailer with her little buddy, Wisp:

   I had a very vivid dream the night before that I overslept…it was so upsetting I woke up. What a huge relief to find out it was still 5am!

   Then, all morning I had a weird feeling I would forget something. Which those that know me know  isn't really that weird of a feeling for me. (I’m always forgetting things. I really hate that. I really TRY not to.)

   I discovered as soon as we were on the road--I forgot the pink face paint and pink hair spray-on dye (for the horses, not us.) So I assumed that’s what was giving me that feeling and breathed a sigh of relief. It was disappointing I wouldn't be able to paint our horses with all kinds of fun pink designs…but not the end of the world.

   Not something that would keep us from being able to ride at all.

   Not anything like forgetting my coggins papers. Which you HAVE to show to be able to participate in things like trail rides.

   Which I suddenly remembered were still in MY glove box back in Luther once we got to Lake Carl Blackwell.

   LUCKILY my horse’s vet was willing to fax me a copy to the FedEx in Stillwater (the fax machine at “the store” at the lake wasn't working.) The FedEx was about 20 minutes there and 20 minutes back…and that was AFTER spending several minutes at “the store” at the lake before we discovered their machine didn't work.

   SO not only did we end up barely having time to tack our horses up, the whole huge group of 30 people waited on us to go on the ride. I felt so bad…but am so grateful I was able to get my coggins faxed to me and  so, so, SO thankful too that these people who don’t know me at all waited on me.

  Needless to say, now everyone who might ever haul my horses for me now has their own copy of Stormy’s coggins papers.

The ride itself was great, the trail we went on was beautiful and had a wide variety of terrain. It was cold, but didn't really rain on us like we were afraid it might. There were fields of bluebonnets in bloom, and wooded areas with trails winding up and down hill, and of course, the lake. Stormy didn't spook at anything, and she was very well behaved the whole time I was on her. And I got to meet lots of other horse people which is always fun! I didn't start taking any pictures till we were more than halfway done...because with all my layers of clothing my phone/camera was a little hard to get too.

Here is Kim and Wisp and a bunch of people we don't know. This was towards the end of the ride where there are some water troughs in a wide open area. That black horse in the pink hat is a Percheron  She was HUGE, but you can't really tell from this perspective. 

This is me and Stormy, both stopping for a drink of water. 

This is Kim and a lady we don't know and my finger. This road was the last couple miles of the ride and made for great trotting, and would have been great for cantering, but Stormy was a little tired at this point.

I kept staying back so I'd have room to run:

Stormy after the ride. I obviously I had not had time to take a picture before the ride, so had to take one after. She is wondering why I'm taking pictures instead of getting the saddle off and giving her some hay.

After the ride I was so cold..I'm not sure if I've thawed out still since then. But I can't WAIT to do another trail ride!

If I have Stress in My Life

I completely forget about it when I'm in my happy place.

Riding Stormy on the motor cross trails last night at sunset she decided to stop at the top of a hill (which usually is the case on a big hill.) The view was too lovely to not take my phone out and snap a picture.) And I don't care if anyone thinks Oklahoma red dirt and weeds aren't lovely. Put anything between a horse's ears and it becomes scenic in my opinion.

Another Finished

Some Things in Progress

This horse one isn't quite finished yet. 

Sycamore

Update on Various Things

I haven't posted anything new in a while because I've been rather busy. So here's a brief summery of what I've been up to. So brief I won't even include how I was sick with the worst cold ever for a while, and went bowling for the first time in forever the Tuesday before last (and enjoyed it even though I'm horrible at bowling) Or worked on cleaning up my flowerbed this weekend, or any of that.

Painting: 

I've got a custom portrait or two in the works. They're gifts for people so I can't show pictures for a while. So there will be more on that in several months.

I finally finished this painting for another pillow pet and have started working on a few more:

I've been painting some wine and grape themed paintings as well as trying to add to my other animal paintings. (Basically I'm trying to just paint every free second I get):

 

I sold all of my horse paintings, the proceeds of which paid for Stormy's 60 days of training. Very appropriate I thought.

Pets:

Roman is getting bigger:

Stormy is getting smaller:

I've been riding Stormy a lot. This particular photo was taken at the end of the longest ride I have ever been on. About 4 and a half hours if you count time just standing around visiting. Which I do since I was still in the saddle during that time. My knees and ankles count it...

I've decided I want to get Stormy freeze branded. When there have been wildfires, I know some people have been forced to just open gates/cut fences and let their horses loose for lack of time and/or a trailer. Horses also just get loose occasionally. People steal horses. And since Stormy's physical description would be "bay" (she has no white on her at all) I'd like to add something more identifiable. She does have some scars on her face but that isn't good enough. I want something I can register.
Here's the sketches I've been working on:

Fire storm

The start of another painting.

My horse (who happens to be the model for this particular painting) lives in Luther, Oklahoma, along with several people I love. She was out of the path of the fire, but this Friday all I could do was watch the news as a fire burned through parts of the town. I am so so thankful to report that that nobody I know lost their home to the fire, but a lot of other people that live around there did. (I've been hearing varying numbers, but somewhere between 25 and 30-something homes were lost.) Please pray for these people/families. I can't imagine. 

Cody

I didn't realize how difficult it is to investigate and remove a possibly neglected animal until following Cody's story. I'm sure I don't know all the details just from reading stuff on Facebook, but the gist is that people started reporting that they saw this horse, then vets were apparently called in and deemed his condition to be due to old age and surgery (to remove golf balls he had ingested). Then other people that are higher up (like the DA) got involved and the horse did end up being seized. He was severely dehydrated and malnourished. One wonders how much longer he would have survived in his dehydrated state in these over-100 temperatures we've been having.
I don't know how long this has taken to get him removed and cared for but, Animal Cops (the tv shows) makes it look a little faster than this.

If you want to help Cody and others like him, I'm offering the print from my giveaway (scroll down a couple of entries to see a pic,) on my Etsy page for $15 (not including shipping) with $15 going to Horse Feathers Equine rescue for each print sold. You can also of course, donate any amount directly to Horse Feathers by going here.

Riding Horses like Motorcycles

 Last Saturday I got to ride Stormy on a dirt motocross track. The guy that owns it has a professional motocross team that trains on that track, and it just happens to be a very ride-able distance from my trainer's house. (Stormy is at the trainer's right now...did I mention that?) Since nobody was going to get off their horses and take pictures, here are some rough sketches of what we did:

There were small moguls. good for trotting or cantering over. I learned to switch between leaning forward and leaning back very fast. it was like going over tiny jumps in a row...only not.

There were also big steep hills that were fun to run up. Here's the first one we went over:

And here is what happened when we got to the top:

There were also flat areas and banks on the curvy areas. Lots of running happened

t h e  e n d.