TGIF

This Week:

--Pedro graduated from basic obedience II...(even though he's passed the CGC and therapy dog test. I wanted to take a class with him for fun)

--I got a lot of laundry done. And a lot of painting. But not enough of either.

--I worked more on training Stormy (that is not her in the picture..that's Buddy) 

--I locked myself out of my car and had to be rescued.

--I hit the car in front of me when I thought the light turned green (It didn't. I'm an idiot.) Neither of us was hurt, neither of the cars were hurt either. (whew!)

--I learned how one measures their vertical jump.** And measured mine (17")

--I read about 250 pages of "A Storm of Swords"

**To measure you're vertical you stand with your dominant arm facing the wall and reach as high as you can. Mark the wall. Then mark your finger tip(s) with the pencil and jump, hit the wall as high up as you can. Measure the difference.

Stray Livestock. And Squares.

Last weekend I was on my way home from Luther, and saw a calf in the road. He looked colorful...I think he was a longhorn calf. Anyway, I tried to kind of heard him down a gravel road--so he at least wouldn't be on the main road, but a truck zoomed past me and scarred him into running past the gravel road. The truck finally saw my reason for driving slow, and proceeded to swerve several times in an attempt to cut the calf off (he was getting sort of close to rt. 66 by this point.) Another truck came along and the two truck guys ended up chasing it on foot when it ran down into the "river" (basically a dried up creek with a small trickle of inch-deep water...like most Oklahoma rivers.)

This Saturday the neighbor to my friend-who's-house-I-keep-my-horse-at found three stray horses in his yard and thought they were my friend's. So he herded them into his pasture. Where they met our horses (who happen to be three mares and a gelding). They were together for about an hour before my friend came home and got them separated. 

Here's one of them: 

He happens to be a stallion.

Then on Sunday (on my way home again) I saw three more loose horses grazing in the Pecan grove on the corner of Luther Rd. and Rt. 66. 

I hope Stormy doesn't get any ideas seeing all these stray cows and horses running loose. Luckily there's really not a good reason for her to try and escape her 40 acre pasture with all it's nice, new, green grass.

I feel like maybe I write about my animals too much and not enough about my art, here's some pictures of some old paintings I did in college:

Wordless Wednesday

Maggie & Calleigh

Confession Time

It's sometimes said that a dog's personality is a reflection of their owner's personality. I hope that's not true of horses. I was told this weekend that my horse is a bully.  

I took it to heart, and am working on nipping it in the bud. She has become very herd-bound, and really gets agitated when I try and ride her away from the other horses. I knew that much. However, I hadn't noticed how much she just pushed me around. She's great in the barnyard, but when I take her on the trail she's pretty bad. So I got a lesson on Friday from my farrier-who-is-also-a-horse-trainer on what to do when she starts throwing a temper tantrum. (That's the best way I could think of how to describe what she does). She demonstrated just how bad she can be, and I got told how to fix things (and that if I don't it will only get worse.) She's going to be going through horsey boot-camp now. Lots of riding like I've said before, and there's going to be a zero tolerance for outright rude behavior (she's bad about trying to rub her face on me.)

*Just to note, she wasn't actually being crazy when the first picture was taken, she was in the process of turning to look at something. And of course in the second picture she had just taken a drink of delicious leaf-filled water and was just liking her lips.

Point Your Toes

Portrait Process Wednesday