Puppy Update

After our walk this morning I drove in to Meisters to pay the first of the month bills early. That is just one day early then told Mark, "don't cash that check until tomorrow." From there back to Sam's to pick up the last of the food from that store for church lunch then to church to drop it off and set the tables.  A few visitors came in while I was working. Marie Graham brought her mother Marie and the new scooter she bought up by Chicago for her mom to practice driving it around church.  Marie was getting really good at it by the time I left. Mark and I drove down to Sarah and Nolan's house this evening to watch their girls. Rhoda had arrived before us and was feeding them supper from Panda Express. She even brought enough for Mark and I.

Zion had to show me all the new tricks she learned while visiting Abe in Texas.

Rhoda helped give baths before she took off for her dinner with the ladies.

Arrie's puppies are all doing well. The only female sold today (they are just 1 day old) She is now named Maizie is pictured below:

Arri's 3 male puppies are still available.

Below is Max.

Milo is more of a champange color.

And then there is Marley.

Rhoda showed us some videos of Ruby's puppies. Their eyes are now opening and they are so fat and fluffy. Hopefully she will post pictures soon. There is still one available male puppy from Ruby's litter born Jan 16th, 2020.

The Whoodle pups are all doing very well as are the Moyen Poodle puppies. There are still some puppies available from both of these litters. If interested in any of these puppies check out Sarah and Nolan's new website https://www.gardnerlanepuppies.com

Raining PUPPIES in January

Sarah and Nolan's gorgeous purebred miniature Poodle Arrieta had her puppies today.

FOUR beautiful Cavapoo puppies. The sire is Duece, a King Charles Cavalier.

Right now there are puppies galore listed on the puppy page of the Horsemeister website and NONE of them belong to me...that was typed just in case someone thinks we are running a puppy mill here at the farm. In fact none of these dogs even live near here.  Rhoda and Lee's Ruby delivered her 4 Cavapoo puppies first Jan 16th, 2020.

Duece is also the sire of her litter. She had 2 female and 2 males puppies.  The next litter of puppies born Jan 19th, 2020 came from Nikki, Nolan and Sarah's AKC registered Moyen Poodle. Nikki had a huge litter of 8 purebred Moyen Poodles 7 males and 1 female. This litter has been registered with AKC. 

Chewy, Anni's AKC registered Moyen Poodle is the sire of Nikki's litter and Maddie's litter. 

Maddie's litter of Whoodle puppies was born Jan 24th, 2020. WE thought Nikki had a big litter but Maddie shocked us all. She delivered a whopping TEN puppies, 5 female and 5 male.

If anyone is counting that is a total of 26 puppies all in less than a month. Oh my oh my.  Our grandchildren are going to have SO much fun socializing all of these adorable puppies. If interested in a puppy check out the puppy page on the Horsemeister website.  

We had to be careful again on the walk. Yesterday Joan spread salt but there is still so much ice. We have altered our route using mom's yard instead of the drives as the snow is much safer to walk on than the sheer ice on the drives. The weather man keeps promising a warm up by Sunday so we are hoping it is true. 

More than Ready

After the walk and after getting a few things done here I left for Peoria stopping first at Sam's. There I found hamburger reduced in price and bought 30 pounds to make haystacks for next Wednesday. Sam's also just got a shipment of cuties in and I bought 15 pounds of those to use for the Sunday lunch. From there I drove up to the Berean office to pick up the camera and drop off labels.  GFS was next on the list to order 20 pounds of Bavarian ham, 25 pounds of turkey and 30 pounds of munster cheese all to be sliced thin and picked up on Saturday. I also picked up 3 gallons of bread and butter pickles at that store. The next stop was church so the towels, chips, pickles, cuties, and a few other food items were dropped off. The next store was Aldi for 20 loaves of bread except at the check out line the cashier said there was a limit of 10 loaves. Those were taken to church. Mark called about then and he was heading up to Menards. There is an Aldi next to that store so he popped in and bought the other 10 loaves of bread. I drove to Casey's in Hanna City and ordered 21 dozen donuts to be picked up Sunday morning at 8:00 am and made sure to ask them if they were going to be baked Sunday morning since we want fresh baked. The baker assured me that they start baking early and would have them ready by 8:00 am.  Finally I was on my way home arriving around 1:00 pm and went straight to work browning the 30 pounds of ground beef then freezing that. The next job was to de-bone the cooked chicken from yesterday, chop carrots, celery and onion and start a big pot of soup. We each had a bowl of that for supper and the rest was taken outside to cool.
We picked up mom for church. Rick Kaisner had the message reading first Psalm 63 and then Colossians 1. After church the soup was brought back inside, divided into 6 quarts, labeled and placed in the freezer for later. Now I'm more than ready for bed.

Ayanna Sold

Mom overslept this morning and didn't make the walk but she came to Berean to help so we got plenty of talk in. We had a good morning at the Berean office getting everything done by lunch time. It wasn't until tonight that I realized the camera was left at that office.  I'm heading in to town anyway ordering the supplies needed for church lunch for Sunday so will stop and pick it up tomorrow then work on the Berean blog tomorrow. Speaking of the church lunch I was able to pick up quite a few of the supplies at Sam's today.  The call came in today that Julie wants Ayanna and wants her bred to Evan.

Ayanna and Evan have the most gorgeous babies with amazing movement. Check out the movement in the video below of her 2014 filly by Evan.

She sent the deposit via paypal so Ayanna was marked sold. I will need to go pick her up soon and start teasing as Ayanna can't leave until she has been confirmed in foal. It really is hard to sell these mares we have raised from birth and yet I know it must be done. Thankfully Ayanna is going to a family we knew years ago when Ben was in Peoria Christian. She will have a wonderful home. 

As today is Diane's birthday we all crashed her party spending the evening there for games. Of course we had to sing happy birthday and Diane had to wear a silly birthday hat.

Lance Leaves

Lance was suppose to be picked up today but when we walked the driveways were so icy that we didn't think it was a good idea. The owner was called but he said he had a 4 wheel drive truck and snow tires and still wanted to come.  Mark went out early to start spreading sand on the entrance way.

 Lance was such handsome colt when first born.

 Even at a week old showed amazing movement.

 Below is one of the last pictures taken of him right after we weaned him. 

The owner arrived after noon with a rented horse trailer.  We didn't know anyone rented those and asked how much they cost to rent for a day and was told $150.00.  What a bargain! I was very pleased when Lance walked right into the trailer. The owner was also very pleased. 

Diane called this afternoon to report Russ Rumbold, our tax man was arriving tomorrow and we needed to have the Horsemeister books ready for him.  That meant a trip to her office and with the 2 of us working we got it done in less than 2 hours.  This evening I was looking through some pictures and came across some taken in the summer during some of the trail rides at Middle Grove. On this trail ride we had a yearling Friesian leave the herd and come along with us.  We were so surprised as her buddies didn't come on this ride, just some of the riding horses. She followed the entire way even when crossing the lake.

Sunshine

We had SUNSHINE this morning and even though it was only 25 degrees outside Mark came in saying, "what a beautiful morning!" The snow and ice are still there but the sun and no wind made all the difference in the real feel of the last few days.
We had a visitor for our morning service, from Champaign, Darren Plattner, Caleb's dad and he had quite a message reading first in Daniel then in Corinthians. Greg Rumbold had the afternoon message which was on Thankfulness.
Phil and Anna's family along with Rhoda and Lee's family and Nolan joined us for dinner tonight. After dinner we went to mom's and played games.

Fun at Bridlewood

Mark did more driveway work spreading salt here and at mom's house. A bale was moved in for the weanlings. I had to use the skid steer to move the bale as the tractor has the snow plow attached. It is still snow with ice under, not much melting went on today as the thermometer pretty much stayed steady at 33 degrees and cloudy. David dropped off Israel and Elisabet this afternoon. We left for Sam's Club around 6:00 pm, ordered pizza and while that was cooking did our shopping.

 From there we headed over to McDonald's for dessert of hot fudge sundae's and to let them play on the play area.

We got them home around 8:15 pm and sad to say just had to play a while longer until Elisabet told me she was ready for bed. David and Stephanie had potluck tonight getting home around 9:15 pm. We are now home and almost ready for bed too, now that the groceries are all put away.
Amy posted the video below of sledding at Bridlewood. Now that's much easier than walking UP a hill to slide down. Just have the mini do the work.

10 Whoodle Puppies Born

Nolan sent a text early this morning that Maddie had 8 puppies (5 female and 3 male) and sent this picture. I look at that picture and started counting puppies and counted 9 as there was a puppy leg under Maddie's back legs. Nolan was sent a text and he replied when he left her at 6:30 am there were 8 puppies and he was pretty sure she was done. Maddie needed help with the delivery of the second pup. The first one came out ok but then Maddie started to struggle. The second pup was bigger and Nolan had to help her get that pup out. The next 6 came pretty quickly. .

Well Nolan left work to come home to check on the puppies and found TEN puppies. Maddie had 2 more after he left for work. Below are the pictures of all the pups.

 Below are the 5 male puppies

 Below is the only male pup with white markings

 Below are the 5 female puppies

 Below is the only female pup with white markings. 

Maddie's puppies will be non shedding which means they MUST be groomed. If you are not able to groom yourself and not willing to take them to the groomers please do not consider one of these pups for your family.

With 2-3 inches of heavy wet snow from last night covering the ice the walk was actually easier than yesterday. It was kind of tiring trudging through but not dangerous. This morning was mom's test for carpal tunnel at St. Francis Neuro building.  As we weren't quite sure where this was located we used the gps and found a brand new way to get to the hospitals which was quicker than going down Main street. We arrived 15 minutes early and they took us right in.  Diane had warned mom the test is worse than the actual surgery. She was shocked when the Doctor started shocking her.

 Each time she was shocked she would jump and say, "ouch." After that test the doctor told her it was time to start sticking needles in her. At that point mom called this room the torture chamber but the needles turned out to be very small and she said those didn't hurt much.  The test came back that yes she has carpal tunnel but one of the interesting things this doctor found was that both of her biceps had nerve injury, with the right arm worse than the left.  It could have been from when mom had Polio way back when she was 15 years old. 

We stopped at Kroger so mom could buy some suet for the birds but it was too expensive there. We ran into Anna and Kensley who were there getting a few groceries.  We left Kroger and went to the hardware store where mom could buy a 10 pack of suet cheaper.  Mom says the birds are so hungery they are going through 1 a day.  Mark came home early from work to help move a bale in for Valiant then we took the bale spear off of the tractor and put on the snow plow. He started plowing the drives and worked until the temperature started to fall and the drives became  icy. At one point the tractor was going down the drive sideways.

 The snow on the ground was heavy and slushy this afternoon but by tonight almost impossible to move. I cleaned off our drive with a snow shovel and was exhausted when finished.

More Snow

It was snowing this morning for our walk and we had 2 inches of snow over night covering the ice. That was just enough snow that mom felt it would be safe to walk. Even with her two trekking sticks and boot tracks though she was slipping on the ice under the snow.

Diane and Joan helped keep her balanced by hanging on either side.

That was until Heather started a snowball fight then mom was used as a human shield.

The trees were beautifully decorated by this morning snow.

Amy called around 12:30 pm to see if I would like to meet her for lunch at the Hog Trough. She was coming to Hanna City to look at a dog but on the way got the message the dog had already been adopted out. Mike and Diane joined us at the Hog Trough. Mike picked up the bill.  As long as Amy was here I put her to work. Lance's owner was suppose to pick him up today but the ice and snow covered roads in his area and ours made him have to cancel. He asked for a video of Lance, wanting to see how he handled.  Amy was more than willing to help out with the video. Lance was brought into the stall, haltered, led, tied, and then asked to back. I just took the videos with the phone and thought I would be able to text them but they were resized so tiny that they were just emailed them to him.

He isn't cleaned up and was kind of wet from the snow. Also his halter came unlatched but he was still a good boy for everything we asked of him.  These Friesian foals try very hard to please.  It is still snowing out. We are suppose to get another couple inches by morning and then depending on the temperature either snow or rain tomorrow.
The pictures below were taken during the last snow. Just try to guess what could possibly have made these tracks in the snow.

 I took them from both directions. It was obvious what ever made them was heading from Joan's to Spark's house.

It was Joan that came up with the answer. These were Kabur's footprints as he was running when the snow was deep. Then we had a melt down but before it all melted we had a hard freeze.

We are having a quiet evening at home tonight and will turn in early.

Remembering Ribbon

We walked this morning but it wasn't easy, just so much ice and now tonight snow is falling on top of the ice. Mark just came down from putting his car in the barn and reported it is VERY slippery.  With the snow coming down, it reminded me of when we took Ribbon out and had her give sleigh rides pulling kids on their sleighs while galloping through the fields.

For a big 2000 pound mare she was light on her feet and had a wonderful canter. Everyone that rode her enjoyed her canter. 

 She really was a gift from God. We had been looking for a vaulting horse and heard about a draft auction in Arthur, IL. I drove down the night before with the living quarter trailer and slept in the trailer so I could have plenty of time to look over all the horses before the auction started.  Mike and Diane drove down later that morning after the auction was over with a car full of kids all anxious to see what we bought. What is interesting is I didn't see Ribbon before the sale started. All of the horses I had marked that may work either went WAY to high or were not suitable for what we needed. The auction was well attended and I was only able to find a seat pretty far up on the bleachers.  I just started praying, "Lord, we just need something with a good attitude." Just then Ribbon was brought into the ring. The announcer announced. "This is a 4 year old  Percheron mare that has never been asked to do a lick of work since she was born and is not trained for anything but she has a good attitude." That was exactly what I needed to hear and put the the first bid on her at $500.00. Only one other person bid against me and when the bidding stopped I was the high bidder at $750.00.  We went straight to the barns to find the mare we had bid on and when we found her I was shocked at how wide and tall she was. She didn't look that big from up on the bleachers.  Of course the first thing we did was to throw a child up on her and were pleased to see she really did have a good attitude. She was taken right home and started in vaulting. 

Below is a video of one of our performances at the Midwest Horse Fair in Madison, WI.

Ribbon was a wonderful vaulting mare. Karin was able to host vaulting camps for pony clubbers that came from all over. Ribbon was in big demand and Karin was asked to give clinics to different clubs all over the state. We were all shocked when we lost this mare. If you would like to read about that day click HERE
It really was a nightmare. Now I am too old and too tired to try looking for another suitable mare and we are all too tired to think about training another vaulting horse. And wouldn't you know I have all these grandchildren that would love to learn to vault.

We picked up mom for church and it was just starting to snow on the way in.  The ICC/Bradley young group came (it was Peoria's turn for that rotation) so the singing was beautiful. Dave Obergfel had the message. It was snowing pretty hard by the time we arrived home. Joan was hosting the young group after church and many of the kids came in cars without snow tires. There was a pile of cars stuck on the drive. We could see the young men pushing cars up the hill for the girls but we also saw some give up. Not sure if they parked then walked or someone gave them a ride.  Winter is hard around here. All who live out here make sure to have good tires and hopefully 4 wheel drive. 

David, Rachel's son was featured on the front page of the Limestone News.

This newspaper picked up his comic strip. David now has a book out, if you would like to learn more about this or want to order one yourself click HERE.