A Day of Rain

We awoke to a cold rain that continued most of the day with just a few breaks. The horses were checked and grained on one of those breaks. Thankfully all the paddocks had enough hay to make it through today easy. Mark went in to work today and was surprised at who showed up on a Saturday, Curt, Spark, and Philip also showed up. The day wasn't fit to be doing anything outside so they may as well get some of next week's labor done. Since today was Halloween and we had absolutely no candy in the house I asked Mark to bring some home. He showed up with some snickers bars but it was all for nothing, no one showed up at the door. We usually get a few of the neighbor kids knocking for treats, either they have all grown up or the rain kept them all away. I'll take the candy bars to the playground tomorrow for the volleyball players.
I think it was last year that Mike and Diane had no candy in the house and ended up sending frozen pizza's with the trick or treaters. We don't even have any of those.
Tonight we get an extra hour of sleep so before heading to bed I will change the clocks.
Karin stopped in for a bit then later sent a text through lining out who would be riding which horse for the fair. We also discussed who should come back from Middle Grove for extra attention and decided this next week is suppose to be warm and sunny so will plan on bringing home Jenis, Eliza, and Marika. Marika is fat and not fit and will need a riding tune up before taking her to Bridlewood in December.
The de-wormers came in. I always feel rich when those boxes come. I have 40 Panacur and 40 Ivermectin. We will use the Ivermectin first as that kills bots then a month later use Panacur. The last de-worming we used Strongid on the pregnant mares and foals and used Quest Plus on the stallions and non pregnant mares.
And just to keep this from being too boring I thought I would post more pictures from the past. The picture below is a mare we bought named Xena. She is the only mare I ever gave up on as far as training. The lady we bought her from told me she had been to a couple different trainers and she would be fine then explode.

I was sure they didn't know what they were doing and of course we could train her. Turns out they were right and I was wrong. Xena had good ground manners, she was good for putting on the saddle and bridle and even was good when I laid across her back. After working with her for 3 weeks I was ready to put Rhoda on. I still remember Rhoda's reaction when she mounted, Xena stood still for about 5 seconds then went into a terrible bucking rearing fit. I was able to pull her down and hold her until Rhoda did the emergency dismount and then heard from my red headed daughter, "are you trying to kill me?" She had a beautiful filly by Raven we named Lyra then we sold her to a lady that just wanted a brood mare warning her strongly not to try to ride her.  The next mare is Wynne. We bought her in the winter of her 2nd year, bred her to Raven in her 3rd year. She had a beautiful filly we named Kenzie. We decided she didn't really fit our program and sold her in foal. She had a colt for her new owner, they brought her back up to be bred to Raven again and she had another colt.
Below is Rebekah riding Wynne at the IL Horse Fair before she had her filly by Raven. The next pictures is once the filly was born.

The next horses were Sanna and Samantha. We bought them from a lady in Florida. Mark and I drove down with the truck and trailer bought them, loaded them and drove straight home. It was such a long trip. Sanna was a delight. She was trained for anyone to ride, and had 4 beautiful fillies for us. The first one was really special. No problem selling her.

We sold Sanna in foal to a couple and she had a colt for them. Below is Sue riding Sanna in the Christmas Parade in Chillicothe. 

Samantha wasn't as well trained and lost the first foal she was expecting at 8 months of pregnancy. 

The second foal was also born premature and we spent hours giving the foal mouth to nose resuscitation until Mike brought his welding oxygen tank. The colt was still living by morning the vet was called, he gave us pretty much no hope but we just wouldn't give up. The 3rd day, he was actually standing but by then Samantha would not take him back. He then caught pneumonia and was taken to UofI where he lived for a few more days. They called to tell us we were going to have to put him down. I drove up to pick up Samantha and looked at this beautiful colt laying in the straw trembling and just started weeping, embarrassing me and all the students that were there. The next year Samantha had a filly by Raven and then we sold her in foal to a lady living near Branson, MO. She had another filly and that filly came up this year to be bred to Evan.