"One rose says more than the dozen" ~ Wendy Craig
Silent Sunday
Month: April 2023
Weekend Coffee Share; End of April and May 1st!
How are you today? Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea, or maybe some juice as we visit? I have been keeping very busy since I work full-time. My week days are full of horsey stuff in the mornings then off to work to be there by 2pm. Unfortunately, work has been very stressful. We have a shortage of components called reagents to run a certain test, so the testing is being batched to be run twice a week. Oh my, it is an ordeal as everyone involved trying different methods to organize all the blood samples that need to be tested. On top of that I am having to train many people in my department. This just adds to the stress to an already busy day. Anyways, I appreciate the time I get in the mornings as I get all my therapy in before work. I try and relax and breath with my horses and my flowers in my garden bring me many smiles. 😀
With a new day comes new strength and thoughts ~ Eleonor Roosevelt
Happy Birthday to my sweet boy Murphy! He turns 5 years old May 1st. He brings me so much joy. ❤
As I share my love of my horses I thought I would share a few photos a friend took of me riding Murphy last weekend.
I have to say that I have not been able to do as much riding the last 4 months with young Murphy because of the wintery weather we experienced this year. I told myself when I adopted him 2 years ago that I am not in a hurry with him. As he is turning 5, I still feel the same taking one day at a time. I thankfully am able to fit in more rides with the warmer weather. I like this quote that conveys how I feel with life and my journey with Murphy.
"It's often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change." HRM Queen Elizabeth II
I feel I am a little shy on words this weekend. My thoughts are a bit all over the place as I think about the future. It’s funny and a little off topic but since my thoughts are all over the place I was touched by James Corden’s last shows as he is returning home to England. His Late Late Night Show has come to an end and although I didn’t watch his shows that late at night, I have watched many on YouTube. I decided to record his last shows and they were hilarious and so entertaining. They were touching and emotional. It got me thinking how there are folks that move to different country’s to live a dream or to experience and work a new job, and I worry about moving 3 hours away from where I have lived my entire life. I love James and his zest for life and his take on life and entertainment. Life is too short to not go after dreams! I went after one dream when I adopted Murphy! ❤
How are you doing, do you need a refill? You say to me, why take a photo of your horses behind? Because her tail is SO BEAUTIFUL! 😀 Miss Chloe and I had a wonderful trail ride today and afterwards I gave her a bath. I washed her tail and I even used a conditioner which I only do every once in awhile. It just looked so pretty I had to take a photo. She is doing pretty good considering her arthritis. I now use a liniment lotion on her legs before and after I ride. I can see it is helping her and so this is our new routine. I also have added a glucosamine supplement which I hope in time will help her as well. She also gets an NSaid pain med which is easy on her stomach and helps ease her pain which she has been on for some years now. She’s a happy horse and I LOVE her so much! ❤
"By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before." Edwin Elliot
I’m ending with another flower from my garden. I enjoyed sharing this weekend and especially sharing Murphy’s birthday! I do not know Chloe’s birthday, I think she was born sometime in June. She is 19 years old this year and I will wish her a happy birthday too. When I had my horses vaccinated a couple weeks ago my vet asked if Murphy was a thoroughbred which I told him he was an off the track thoroughbred and registered with the Jockey Club. He said he didn’t see a tattoo under his lip and I told him he should be chipped as they started that the year Murphy was born 2018. The Jockey Club is now paperless, no real papers just chips and everything is online. My vet had a chip reader so I now have Murphy’s chip number, this made me so happy and is important I have his number for identification.
Sorry my thoughts have been all over the place. I wanted to share inspirational quotes as I am trying to stay focused and strong looking towards the future. I wanted to thank Natalie for hosting the #weekendcoffeeshare and also thank you Natalie so much for the tips on discarding photos to free up space on my WP account. It worked great! I need to delete more and delete old posts. That makes me very happy. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and week ahead. Thank you for stopping by, I always enjoy your comments and your visits. I will end with one last quote since I am enjoying them so much this weekend.
"It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you." Oprah Winfrey
Happy Birthday Murphy!
~Diana ❤
Weekend Coffee Share; Keeping Busy In April ~ And All Things Horses!
Welcome, can I get you a hot cup of coffee or some sweet tea? I have whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, half a batch so we have the perfect amount to eat this weekend. I have had a busy month of April. I am happy to say that after the first two weeks of April we are finally warming up here which I am thoroughly enjoying. I have never seen a wetter, colder winter here in Southern California. I know, I know, I don’t know what cold really is since we never see snow here but the unseasonably cold winter made me appreciate even more where we live.
I thought I would also say that I am trying to think positively concerning my family issues I wrote about in my last blog post. I will stay patient, calm and I will keep busy as all I can do is keep looking forward to the future and pray for forgiveness and happiness. As each day comes and goes I have more good days than sad days, and I am so thankful for my horses as they give me purpose and joy. Speaking of horses, I have a lot to share as my horsey sister who lives in Idaho came and visited for two weeks.
She came at the end of March which was a rainy time and we had to let the arena dry out before we could ride, just a few days. We had so much FUN with the horses and I wanted to work on many things with young Murphy with my sister here. I will say that having her here the first few weeks of April was a wonderful distraction. I so appreciate my sister’s and all of my family’s love and support. ❤
I told my sister that I wanted to work on desensitizing with Murphy. He is 5 years old this year, it’s almost his birthday May 1st. I have always believed that doing ground work which includes working in the arena with scary things to get your horse use to said scary items and teach them that these things will not hurt them. We want our horses to be less sensitive and we want them to see that they are safe with us in hopes that if we were out on the trail and a scary item blows in the wind, for example, we will be able to remain calm and work through the scary event. Murphy in general is very brave!
We started with a plastic bag we tied to the end of a lunge whip. All I had was a carrot bag on this day and I will work more with him as I later brought to the barn a white plastic grocery bag. I will work in the arena like how my sister is here. He followed the small plastic carrot bag all around the arena as my sister walked along. He is so curious, but remained calm and didn’t run around all crazy like I have seen some horses do. Remember horses are fight and flight animals ~ so if over stimulated their flight instincts can send them into overdrive. This is why we are working on desensitizing. 😀
In between the arena work with fun items we also rode Murphy and we had fun working him under saddle. He had most of the winter off with all the crummy weather as it was difficult to find ride times and he never missed a beat nor forgot anything we had been working on. He actually is very smart and we just picked up where we left off.
My husband has a handful of flags and he let me borrow two flags that we brought to the stables to work with Murphy. One as you can see is the American flag and the other is an Air Force flag. He was very curious of these flags and I have many photos and videos of everything we did but will share the best ones here. After we worked in the arena, we tacked him up and presented the flags while we rode him around the arena. My sister has lots of experience with all of these things because she use to ride in the mounted Chino Hills Posse, which is connected with the Chino Hills Police Dept. She helped the unit desensitize their mounted horses. This is how they got them use to parades and other events they attended.
I am so proud of Murphy! He could be my parade horse, haha. I highly doubt I will ever ride in a parade but he is not afraid of the flags!
May I get you a refill? I will warn you this will be a rather long post because I have so much to share! It’s all horsey stuff as there is more I introduced to Murphy. I think the next thing we did was see what he would do if we introduced a jump. This wasn’t necessary for desensitizing but more for the future if I should want to jump him. When they are young and never seen a jump, sometimes they jump exceedingly high over it, but as you can see in this next video Murphy wasn’t too impressed and just loped right over it with no effort at all. After he went over it lose, we mounted up and jumped him while riding. He barely picked up his feet, silly guy! I may work more with the jumping, nothing too serious, just for fun and to keep his interest. I love that I can ride him in my English saddle and jump, or ride him in my western saddle and work on western dressage, so versatile! ❤
As we worked with Murphy we did not forget about Miss Chloe. My sister rode a friends horse Fashion out on the trail while I rode Chloe. We had lots of fun rides and it is the best exercise for Chloe. She can’t be ridden in the arena any more as she has arthritis and so walking on the trails is the best for her. I call it motion is the lotion, and she always is walking better after our rides.
Let’s see, the next thing I thought of was using a tarp for the last desensitizing session with Murphy. Thankfully my sister’s son had a blue tarp to use in the arena. For the non horsey folks out there the odds of having to walk on a tarp is highly unlikely but a tarp is a common item horse trainers use to get horses use to unusual sounds while walking over it. I finally found something Murphy was definitely afraid of, so much so we could not get him to walk across it or on it. We used a little grain in a bucket to entice him to walk on the tarp, but all we could get was one hoof. He ate off the tarp which was good. It was a good session and I was very pleased.
After we put Murphy in his stall I told my sister that I had never tried Chloe with the tarp. So she went to get Chloe and put her in the arena lose and she walked right up to the tarp on the ground. We then went in the arena with the bucket and I was able to video my wonderful girl doing what she does best! She is a wonderful trail horse that has seen it all. At 19 years old she is a solid horse and a wonderful partner. I am so thankful for her and love her so very much! ❤ Here is the video!
Afterwards, when we were driving home from the barn my sister said we should take Murphy out with Chloe in the arena and show him how she walked on the tarp. He may see that it isn’t going to eat him or hurt him and may have followed Chloe but we ran out of time and we never did try and I had to return the tarp to my nephew. I am not too worried that Murphy didn’t walk on it, and at least he was introduced to it and I have plenty of time to try again in the future. I’m going to end with one last video of me riding Murphy. He is maturing and filling out and looks so handsome trotting around. He is so much FUN!!
I have had so much fun sharing all things horses! AND four video’s! I actually am running out of room here on this blog for media uploads. I need to open up a YouTube account and put my video’s there and then attach here is what I see most bloggers do but I haven’t even attempted to do this yet. I have looked up this issue and the best thing to do is resize your photos but it’s too late for that as I’m already at 91% full and to resize I would have to download an app to resize photos and then upload from there ~ oh I’m already exhausted thinking about all the work I would have to do just to save space. I was paying which I gained more space but its dwindling away. I wish I could just delete old blog posts and photos to get the numbers down or to open up space but it doesn’t seem to work that way. I’ll keep researching, but I may need to start a new blog – and I will somehow link it to this one or let everyone know when that time comes.
I am looking forward to Spring and Summer this year and may try and work in the garden. I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend. Since I am going to link up with the #weekendcoffeeshare I want to thank Natalie for hosting! Thank you for following along in my journey, ya’ll mean a lot to me and I always love to share my adventures. Have a wonderful week ahead! ❤
Crazy Horse Loving Gal,
~Diana ❤
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