Weekend Coffee Share; End Of March Fun!

Welcome to my weekend coffee share!

I can’t believe it is the end of March! Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea? I have had a busy March as my sister was here visiting from Idaho. One of her son’s lives here near me so it is nice when she comes to visit him, she also spends time with me and Murphy. This is my riding sister (she is one of four sister’s and one brother) and her and I have ridden together all our lives. Since I have recently moved Murphy to a new stables, it was great that she happened to visit this month so she could see his new digs. She also could see the change in Murphy and how happy he is now. We are all happy campers! 😀

My Sister And Murphy!

My sister and I have so much fun together. Where I now keep Murphy, the arena is amazing and really big. Since I am mostly doing arena riding with him, it is nice I happen to find a place not only with a nice big paddock for Murphy, but I huge arena for him to run free in and for us to ride. A win, win!! I am so happy at the new stables and I know Murphy is happy too! I have lot’s of photos to share since I haven’t posted much this month.

Murphy in the wash stall. They have hot water too!

Me and Murphy after a rinse!

Murphy after a nice warm wash! He is so handsome, but then I’m prejudice!

It’s been nice weather this March, not too hot nor too cold. Just PERFECT! As I speak however, there’s a big storm here for the whole weekend. SO MUCH RAIN! and more rain coming! Lucky, we dry out fast but it has been a wet year for us here in Southern, CA. I can’t complain except that I won’t be riding until next week some time when things dry out. My sister timed her trip perfectly. It was dry and sunny most days, and much warmer than Idaho. She went home to a little bit of snow on the ground and we headed into stormy weather. I wonder if we will have those super blooms that happen here with wild California Poppy’s? It is so crazy, as they bloom all over the hills and mountains after a lot of rain. It’s a sight to see and I’ll get some photos if it happens this year!

My sister riding Murphy at the new stables!

My first upload of my youtube channel I created. I hope this link will work. I am still learning all the techy stuff and my son helps me when I get stuck. How FUN! Let’s see if this works!

Murphy after a nice run!

Me and my selfies! Haha!

I haven’t made a selfie in a long while! Haha, it’s hard with Murphy being so big. I almost got his whole head in the shot! 😀 I didn’t take too much time trying to get a better photo and am just sharing what I got yesterday. It was such a gorgeous day! And now it’s cold and rainy. My how the weather can change!

Can I get you a refill? How has this last month gone for you, anything fun happening? I am so grateful and thankful for the healing of our sweet dog BZ. If you missed my earlier blog posts, our sweet dog was attacked by 2 lose dogs that entered our secured yard. We think they dug under the fence. She is all healed up and doing GREAT! She has so much energy and is such a joy in our lives. Here are a couple of photos I took earlier today! ❤

Her pretty coat is slowly growing back in and she is another happy camper! ❤ It makes me happy that all the animals, our furry family are doing well and are happy. I have had dogs, cats and horses all my life and can’t imagine life without them. I have many up in heaven now, but they are worth every penny and every hour we are able to spend with them. Do you have any animals in your life? I know they can bring much comfort, joy and tons of smiles!

Murphy needed this room to run and stretch his legs! He is so happy!

I’ll end with this video of Murphy lose in the arena when I first moved in at the new barn. Since it looks like my YouTube link worked, I will share more in the future! Thank you to Beaton, a fellow blogger who shared this great way to share videos. I’ve seen many others share from YouTube, I just was too lazy to create a YouTube account. I am glad I finally did. I may enter Murphy and I in a virtual horse show soon. I have a friend at the new barn who is doing this and so she is encouraging me to video and enter the horse show. These virtual horse shows were created during Covid, and are still very popular today. It is a great way to enter with people entering from all over the world, without traveling a foot outside your property! I needed a YouTube channel in order to go forward and enter these virtual horse shows! Haha, another win, win! Since I can share them here too.

Happy Easter Weekend, and Thank You Natalie for hosting the #weekendcoffeeshare. I’ll add the link here and please visit others if you have time.

Crazy horse gal and animal lover,

~Diana ❤

Weekend Coffee Share; Welcome March!

Welcome to my weekend coffee share, can I get you a cup of coffee or tea? I’m having coffee with my favorite Sweet Italian Cream. I can’t believe the weather this year. It is a copy of last year with cool temps and lots of rain. Here in Southern California we don’t usually get this much rain which of course is needed to fill up the reservoir’s, but can cause landslides and floods. I thankfully live in a safe area, not on the side of a mountain! We are looking at some warmer temps in the coming weeks. I am so looking forward to Spring!

I have been hiding out a bit, mustering through some tough times which I shared in my last post. It’s hard to share tough times but it can be cathartic too. If you missed it or would like to read I’ll share a link here. I can honestly say that things are going in the right direction as we are all healing, my furry family members and all of us humans too. It is life’s journeys and so I am looking forward and will not dwell in the past. Just know that I always try and stay as positive as I can and so here I am sharing coffee with some fun photo’s I wanted to share! 😀

Our sweet BZ girl!

BZ And Drew who is up in heaven ❤

I thought I would share some photos of BZ which are from a few years ago. Drew was an adoption from our daughter-in-law. He wasn’t really good around children and so he ended up living out the rest of his life with us and BZ. They loved each other and were great friends. BZ here has house friends, our two cats which funny thing, are from my son and daughter-in-law. They kept getting kittens and had four cats which wasn’t a good mix. After my last kitty past, I told them I could take whatever kitties they thought would do best with us. They gave us the sister’s, Duchess and Dinah!

Duchess the tabby and her sister Dinah! Such LOVES!

They all get along great! Dinah, the grey is a snuggle bunny curling up in our laps. Duchess would rather sit next to you and purr. We are so thankful for the animals in our lives. What furry friends do you have? it is so fun to share with everyone as they bring us love and smiles! 😀

How are you doing, can I get you a refill? I am learning so much about all our animals in my life. I’ve learned about my sweet dog and her will to live and her amazing stamina. I am also learning that horses can communicate in ways you have to really slow down, watch and listen. They have a language all their own and I have been reading some really good books about horses. I’ve finished a great book by Mark Rashid called “Horses Never Lie” his newest addition. I put it on my wish list for Christmas and it was an excellent read! Another wish list book I am currently reading “Horse Brain, Human Brain” by Janet L Jones PhD. It’s about the Neuroscience of horsemanship. I love the science behind the horse and human connections, so fascinating! I’m always learning, any way I can!

He loves his hay bag!

what Mom? I’m calling his name!

You called? here I come! So friendly, we have such a great bond!

I was standing there admiring Murphy, how happy he is now in his huge paddock. He is so friendly as I kept saying his name because I just wanted him to look at me for a photo! He melts my heart as he stopped eating to come and see what I wanted as I petted him and kissed his nose. He then turned and went back to his hay bag. ❤

I shared in my last post about Murphy and our move but will touch upon here. I have a friend who I messaged about this ranch and was able to move Murphy to a new boarding facility in town. It’s just a mile and street over from where I was boarding him and it is bigger and has a huge paddock for him to live in. I also can turn him out in a big arena where he can run, buck and stretch his legs. He needed this and is so happy now. He was getting to be a handful where I was boarding with no room to run and his living paddock was too small for his size. Happy horse = happy human! 😀 I feel like I should have known he needs more room, but I wanted to be with my best friend and her horse and thought the big round pen would be enough room. It wasn’t and the fact he was living 24 hours in a much smaller paddock wore on him. I’m so thankful I was able to find a solution quickly and everything fell into place seamlessly! We are both so HAPPY! ❤

His other side! I Love him so much!

You may notice in the photo where Murphy is walking towards me, he has some silver spray on a wound on his left front leg just at the hoof line called the coronet band. He cut it, an ugly gash at the last stables (another good reason to move to a bigger place). He cut the skin pretty bad, it was a flap of skin which needed a vet call. The vet had to cut the skin off as there was no sewing it back together. He also cut part of the hoof so praying it grows out with no issues. I will keep it sprayed and hope it heals without another vet call. Thankfully, he doesn’t limp and it’s not swollen or infected. But it was another, oh dear, what else can happen type of thing! We are looking forward to healing! Haha, my mantra for this month – HEALING!

Thank you for sharing coffee or tea with me this morning! I have been missing you all and have been trying to visit even though I was a bit withdrawn. I hope you all are doing well, and things are going in the right direction for you. I don’t have much advice other than the positivity I always try and share. Thank you for reading and for visiting! Here’s Murphy saying “Howdy” to you all!

Sorry for the huge photo! Haha, I tried to resize it without much luck. I’m going to share it anyways! Have a wonderful weekend and week ahead!

Animal Loving, Horse Crazy Gal,

-Diana ❤

Let’s Skip February, Looking Forward To March!

Looking forward to Spring! A photo from last year!

Welcome to my stories! I wanted to start with, I’ve been missing blogging. I also wanted to apologize for all the ads that now show up on my blog because I am back to a free account. I had paid for years and with rising prices I decided to stop paying which means everyone visiting has to scroll past ads. Sorry about that. Maybe some day I’ll go back to paying. It’s a big question I have, am I really getting a better blog by paying? Maybe, in the sense I get rid of the ads, but other than that I am going to just stick with the free for now.

As I write this I realize I did lose a lot of storage space since going back to free. I also lost sharing video’s. I know many clean up their blog and so in order to download new photos I had to delete old ones to make room. I have been meaning to do this anyways and probably deleted a ton I didn’t need too, but I have freed up a ton of space. I also deleted a lot of old blog posts now that the photos have been removed from them. It’s almost like I have a new blog, haha! Not really, I feel like I am learning all the time what it is to blog and what’s the purpose of keeping a bunch of old blog posts. I doubt they will ever get read and I had blog posts that went back 5 years! YIKES! I like to keep things moving forward so making room for new posts is the way to go forward! 😀

What a month we’ve had. And although there has been some things throughout last year I wish I could change, it’s been quite a year also. I shared on another social media page how I tend to withdraw and not want to share when things are bad, sad or extremely emotional. I need to live through it first and then reflect back as life gets back to a steady state. February was brutal for us and my family.

Our beautiful, sweet dog BZ was brutally attacked on Feb. 14th. It was a nice sunny day and we had her out in our enclosed front yard and she was sleeping in her dog house we have out there when 2 Pitbull’s dug under our fence where there was some erosion and squeezed under and viscously attacked her. They literally pulled her out of her dog house, they ripped the lid off (it’s a plastic two piece dog house) and then proceeded to try and kill her. My son heard the noise and got my husband who was in the garage and they were able to get the dogs to let go and leave the property. (The dogs were eventually located and animal control was involved from the minute the dogs left and our dog was rushed to the Veterinary hospital. The dogs through animal control were surrendered and euthanized due to the viciousness of the attack and they were deemed dangerous to the public and town. The owners are liable and this is an ongoing process for us. This is incredibly sad for all as I’m actually sad they were euthanized but the owners did not contain them in their yard and the laws in our city is what animal control enforces.)

Her new look post surgery with an ear up!

This is after her last surgery, she’s had two and she’s healing!

BZ girl is 14 years old this year. My husband named her BZ and I asked him why this name and he says, I don’t know, I just like BZ. He picked her out of a litter of puppies at a yard sale for free just down the street. She is a cattle dog mix breed and she’s a big girl weighing in at 72lb’s. The vet said that what saved her life was all the lose skin around her neck and shoulders. It tore so badly but no vital organs were injured and no broken bones. She is so strong and the will to live is AMAZING! She is a true miracle in my book and its so sad this has happened to her in her golden years. She is on a second type of antibiotics after a culture came back that the infection brewing was resistant to the other antibiotics she was on. She is so LOVED. ❤

February was a struggle with my sweet horse Murphy too. I had moved him last October to a new barn which has smaller paddocks than where he was and I thought he would be okay in the smaller stall, but unfortunately he became really unhappy. The place also did not allow us to turn out the horses to run in the arena. The arena was only for riding. This left a round pen which isn’t very big so poor Murphy had no place to run and buck when he needed to release energy when he feels good. I believe all horses should have a paddock, pasture or big arena to run. Murphy’s pent up energy was worse with the cold, rainy weather. He became harder to handle and I started losing sleep thinking I need to find him a bigger place to live.

His small stall. I moved him 5 day’s ago!

His new giant paddock! He is so much happier now!

He now has a neighbor, an old mustang which is important for his mental health!

He is so happy now!

My hubby helped me put up that black shade cloth. Murphy has so much room now! YAY!

I reached out to a friend who I knew was boarding at a place that had huge pasture type paddocks. Everything fell into place as there was one paddock open. Within one day I had secured this nice huge paddock for him and planned on moving him in a week at the end of February. I also asked the owner where he was if he could live out in a bigger paddock that they use for turn outs only. They don’t rent them but for one week he was able to live outside and this helped him so much! I had him trailered to the new place and he loaded into the trailer like a champ. Some horses do not like horse trailers or have little experience with them. I was a bit worried because he hasn’t trailered in the 3 years I’ve owned him. He is such a great horse, remembering his trailing with his racing days moving from Kentucky to Ohio, then to Oklahoma. Oh and then to California! I knew he had trailing experience and all good experience. LOVE YOU MURPHY!! He’s back to his sweet, kind self. I’m excited for our new adventures at his new home!

The arena is huge and he can run and play!

Such a handsome guy! So Happy!!

I actually started a weekend coffee share last weekend, only to find out I couldn’t upload any photos because I had used up all my space! Darn it all! So I had to scrap that post and work on cleaning up my blog so that I could share these new photos. I’m happy to be sharing again and I am hoping better days are ahead. I am hoping for fun days again with my family and all my furry family too! It’s been a journey, and journey’s sometimes are sad or hard but I know this all makes us stronger. I sometimes think I can’t be any stronger, and I come out the other side fine. I want to share smiles again, Spring is on it’s way. I hope you all are doing well and have lots to smile about too!

I’ll end with this photo I just took in our front yard! I wanted to see if I could see a rainbow, no rainbow but I love how the sun is shining but the storm is coming! We had a ton of rain yesterday and more this evening as you can see the clouds coming our way. I’m smiling as I am at peace and I don’t have to worry about Murphy. He has plenty of room and stays nice and dry under his shelter in the rain! ❤

Smiling, Grateful, Animal Loving Gal,

-Diana ❤