Mustang Saga

The time that I love best is the unstructured time with the horses. No agenda, no goal, just itchy bellies, scratching fingers, sharing breath, tickly whiskers in my ear, bright eyes and perky ears.

This is all the work Tonka got today. I'm not supposed to give him a day off but I did.

Grace is making progress. John is brushing her in the picture. Soon we'll move her into the round pen and she can have some company if they behave themselves.

This face! It's the pencil necked geek I adopted 5 years ago, with a more muscular body.

Scout the Inquisitive:

Aren't these clouds spectacular?

Tonka, bless his goofy soul.

Mister Inquisitive again, with his ragged ear:

Scout's flank is whiter this year I think:

He has a cute whorl under his belly.

And a big belly spot! I didn't know that was there.

This picture seemed to need some touching words in neat script. The best I could come up with were some lyrics from a song I like.
Bella's sexy legs:

And a Bella Belly shot:(Everyone hangs out in the pasture taking pictures of their horses' bellies, right? You can't tell me I'm the only one...)

Here you can see all 5 butts if you look for Grace in the shadows of the mustang pen. Soxy's butt is right under the camera. (That's not my motorhome or building, in case you were wondering. We're not quite that well-off. It's my mom and Henry's. They just got back from a relaxing trip to Canada.)

Bella loves to scratch her butt here.

Here's Soxy enjoying a good belly scratch. Poor horses are all bit up by the flies.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to find time to bathe and groom Soxy and spray her really well with fly spray. She seems to get bit a lot more, especially on her underside.

Has anyone else noted that fly spray is much more expensive this year? Or is it just my local store? What I used to pay $18-19 for is now $25 (Endure). Holy cow! I bought Tri-Tec instead, and it was about $21. And it certainly does not last as long as they say it does. I'd like to get fly predators but I don't know if they'd cover the whole property very well, and they wouldn't do me any good on trail rides. Interesting note - about 4 years back when Soxy got pigeon fever so did a horse next door. So it's not MY flies I worry about. I'd like to keep all biting flies off of them if I could. But it doesn't seem safe to feed them stuff to keep the flies off. What do you think?

The people who bought Cisco were busy today so I'll get him tomorrow afternoon. I am kind of excited to see him again, I have to admit. Hopefully he'll be the same as always and no worse for wear.

I got all my aspens planted today. Liam and I decided to plant them in a circle so we can set up a tent in the middle, or maybe build a pavillion or gazebo there later. I told him about how wonderful aspens are because of the sound they make in the wind, and sent him to stand under our more mature aspen tree. He's so contrary I expected him to contradict me and say that's not so great, but he was totally excited about it! It made me really happy to share that with him and have him appreciate it. Now I just really hope these trees make it.