A Winter Day

The day started with Rosy and I heading down to the barn at 6 a.m. It was 18 degrees at the barn! I fed everyone and turned them out, then started chores. Cleaned 3 stalls (rebedded one of them), cleaned dirty buckets, got the feed barrels cleaned out for new grain and made a list of what grain I needed to get. By then it was 7:20 so we headed back to the house.

I fed the dogs, and the parrots - they got grapes and unsalted, in the shell peanuts and fresh water (they have a complete pelleted feed available to them 24/7). That's Sierra on the left and Theodore on the right. Then I had breakfast and got cleaned up, answered some emails, and got ready to head out.
Rosy and I got in the truck about 8:45 and headed to Westminster, VT and the feed store (I usually go there twice a month). There I got 14 bags of feed, at 50 lbs. each that's 700 lbs. of grain! That's actually a very small order, next time it will be more like 24 bags. We ran a couple of other errands and headed home. Drove right to the barn to unload and put away the grain. It had warmed up to 19 degrees! There was also a very cold north wind blowing. Then back to the house to thaw out!
Rosy and I went back to the barn about 1:15. It was still 19 and windy. I cleaned the rest of the stalls and Carla came as I was finishing. I went to the hay loft and threw down 16 bales to stack in the hall. Carla got out the hose and filled the water buckets for me. Then she brought in Dolly and started grooming her and Esther arrived to work with Josey. We took some photos of Dolly to show her slimmer new body and Carla turned her back out (after giving her treats of course!).

I helped Esther get Josey in and took pics of her working with Josey. Josey was a very good girl! She let Esther pick up all 4 feet without protesting too much, and worked on standing still on the crossties and moving over when asked. After turning Josey back out (she got a treat too), Esther and Carla played with Rosy for a while which Rosy loved! Then they left and I started getting dinner ready for the horses. Everyone gets something different, either in type of grain, amount, or supplements. I also put hay in the stalls for the night. I fed the goats and while they were eating I trimmed their feet (not an easy job!). Just as I started to bring in Sundance Amy arrived, and she helped me bring in all the horses. Then she cleaned her 2 stalls while we chatted. When she finished we closed everything up and headed to the house. Amy left, I came inside and fed the dogs their dinner and sat down to relax, it was about 4:15.

Tomorrow at 6 a.m. it starts all over again........

Uninvited Visitors

Let me start by saying that uninvited does not always mean unwelcome. Most of the time I love to see wildlife around - though I could have lived without the bear who almost gave me a heart attack when she chased the dogs right up to the back porch and would have followed them into the kitchen except I slammed the door in her face! Before you ask, NO I DID NOT GET A PHOTO OF THE BEAR!!! I was a little too busy to go get a camera!
Though there are a lot of deer around,I have not got any good photos of them. They tend to come around dusk or dawn and my camera doesn't take good pics in that light.

There are lots of birds around the farm, great blue herons, owls, hawks, geese, ducks, wild turkeys (in the pic), and many varieties of songbird. I even saw a fully mature bald eagle once. It flew up the fence line toward the barn at only about 10 feet off the ground, then up over the barn and away - amazing!

There is a fox den or 2 on the property. I see the foxes all the time and love to see the babies in the spring. I like the foxes because they eat rodents. (The one in the pic is hunting.) They have also been very good about leaving my cats alone. The same can not be said for the fisher. It makes a circuit through here each August and I have lost 2 cats to it. I keep Tootsie inside at night during August!

I have several small ponds in the fields. These attract all kinds of critters - fish, turtles (that's a turtle sunning on the rock in the photo), salamanders, frogs, and many others. There is also a beaver pond at the end of the field. The beaver and I have had a few run-ins. I have tried to tell them that they are welcome to stay down at the end of the field but they invariably get greedy and try to flood my pastures. Then I have to make them go away...
There are raccoons, woodchucks, skunks - I've been lucky with skunks, there was one hiding in the barn once but it didn't spray and left on it's own! Occasionally I'll see or hear a coyote, but I think they stay away because of the dogs. Of course there are also all the unwelcome rodents, but at least they do keep the foxes fed!

Other Residents of the Farm

As I said before, in addition to the 10 horses there are other animal residents. Puck and Petrucchio are twin goats, wethers (neutered boys). They are 12 years old and are wonderful pets who love hanging out with the horses. This is them running with Deja and Sundance.

In the house I have 2 parrots, Sierra and Theodore. They are amazon parrots and have been here since the mid 1990's. They are both somewhere between 10 and 15 years old and since they should live until they are around 50 (assuming they stay healthy) they'll be here a long time to come.

Tootsie is the only current feline resident on the farm. She is a tiny - 6.5 lb - tortoise-shell colored cat with double paws behind and triple paws in front. Tootsie is about 18 years old and still catching mice! She doesn't put up with any baloney from the dogs either!

Speaking of dogs, there are 3. Sadie is my beagle, she's about 13 now and a bit crotchety. I got her when she was 3 months old. Echo is a rescue from the local shelter. She is a medium sized dog, about 45 lbs., with long black hair, some kind of mix, who knows??? She is very sweet and a real love bug but she is also very nervous and shy with strangers (though she is better than she used to be). She was badly abused, including being shot. She needed lung x-rays a few years ago and we discovered she is full of birdshot, all over her body - both sides! Poor baby!!!! I got Echo when she was just 1 year old (a lot of abuse in a short time) and she is now about 7. Last but certainly not least is Rosy. Rosy is a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog and she will turn 2 in February. Unfortunately she has some health issues - hips, allergies - but I love her to pieces! She goes almost everywhere with me and stays right near me (Sadie and Echo are not so well behaved!). Rosy weighs just over 100 lbs and she has a big, fierce bark which scares people. She is a great watchdog, but not such a good guard dog - if they get too close she runs and hides behind me! I like that she makes a lot of noise but isn't aggressive. I'm sure I will be adding pics of everyone eventually, for now this is Rosy on the left, and Rosy and Echo on the right, taking a break at a walk-a-thon we do for the Humane Society.

Boarders

There are currently 6 horses boarding at DHF. Over the years there have been many that have come and gone - but we'll get to them another time (maybe).

The boarder who has been here the longest is Deja Vu. She is an Arabian, in her early 20's. This is a pic of her doing one of her favorite things - EATING!That's her owner Carla behind her with Sundance on the other side of Carla. Deja has been here (with different owners) since 2001. Before coming here she was an endurance horse, and then she had 5 babies! Since she's been here she has been a trail horse. Very sure-footed, very forward. She is now "semi-retired", sort of...

Carla also owns another horse she boards here. Dolly is a Clydesdale and she came here in August this year. Dolly is 16 hands tall and when she arrived she weighed well over 1900 lbs!!! We immediately put her on a diet and she is now a svelte 250+ lbs lighter and is working on toning her muscles. Come summer we want her to be ripped, not rippled!

The pic on the left is before losing weight (obviously!) the pic to the right is part way through her diet!

Ceres has been here since fall of 2003. She's an 18 year old warmblood, Hanoverian/Thoroughbred cross. She was being trained for eventing when she broke her leg. Her owners then decided to breed her but after trying twice and it not taking (she was only 3) they gave up and gave her away to be a companion horse. Her owner now - Chris - has known and worked with Ceres since 1992, and has owned her since spring, 2003. Ceres is a hard keeper and a VERY picky eater, not a good combination! We have tried a lot of different food/supplement combinations to find what works and what she'll eat. Having a warm, dry stall for nights and bad weather has also helped her keep some weight on. Though in this photo she looks light, she is really a gorgeous dappled dark bay!

Abby is a boarder who was here, then moved, and now she's back again. Amy S. and I bought her in fall, 2004. She had been Amish trained, and was pregnant. She gave birth in May, 2005 to a colt we named Roo. When Roo was old enough to wean, I sold my share of Abby to Amy and she moved her to make weaning easier. I kept Roo. Amy has had lots of fun with Abby since then, trail riding, driving, even showing. Abby came back to DHF this fall (just

after Roo left). She has grown since she was here, she's now over 16.3h! She will turn 6 years old in 2007. She is a beautiful dapple grey Percheron.

Roo was sold in October to a wonderful woman in PA and he has a great new home. For more info on him go to rooandme.blogspot.com

Amy's husband Jeremy owns Josey. Josey is a 1 year old paint/appaloosa cross. She is very cute and has a lot of personality. She moved here shortly after Abby returned. She's growing and discovering every day! My friend Esther is going to be working with her over Christmas break to introduce her to a lot of new things. Esther worked a lot with Roo before he was sold too.

Pepper is the last boarder! He belongs to my friend Jean, and he is for sale. He's a gorgeous little (13.2h) hunter/jumper pony. He's 13 years old, and is a sweet pony (often a contradiction in terms!). Pepper has been here since October this year and is great buddies with Ziegy. They play all day!

Ziegy

The newest DHF horse is Ziegy. I bought him this summer from Pond Hill Ranch. He had come from out west and is trained western. Ziegy is 6 years old and a VERY sweet boy. He is a Quarter Horse. When he arrived he was quite sick with an upper respiratory infection and had to be quarantined from the others for 3 weeks! As you can see, he was also quite thin! He had a swollen hock, and bite and kick marks all over him. He had apparently been with a group of horses who didn't like him! He is very healthy now, has gained well over 100 pounds, and all his boo-boo's have healed. He has a wonderful, playful and gentle personality.

My friend Esther rode Ziegy to the top of Mt. Ephriam once he was healthy (I went along on Tapper). This is a shot of them on the mountain! As you can see, he was looking and feeling a LOT better!

Scooby

This is Scooby. Scooby is a rescued Percheron gelding. He was brought to Dancing Horse Farm in August of 2004 by Amy S. She found him at a farm which had many horses, several of whom starved to death. The state had stepped in and the owner was told to sell or find homes for all the horses within a given amount of time or the state would take them. Scooby was one of the last 4 left. His Percheron partner had to be put down because he was in such bad shape. Scooby was several hundred pounds underweight and had a severe injury to his left front hoof where the shoe had been ripped off and had taken most of the hoof wall with it. Scooby was actually walking on the sole of his foot. We were not sure he would be able to recover but I felt he was worth the effort so with help from a lot of people I took him on. Scooby is doing very well! He quickly gained the weight and we got the abcess on his foot to heal (a long process), then we found an excellent farrier who was willing to travel here to work on Scooby! Our vet thinks he is in his late teens/early twenties, and she also found he has EPSM so I put him on a special diet. It's been over 2 years now, and Scooby's foot is better all the time. The hoof wall is actually growing again! This is what his foot looked like about 10 months after he came here. Still pretty bad, but lots better than it was! I will try to get a photo of his hoof now and will post it soon. As you can see from the photo, my farrier (Bruce Matthews) put the shoe on backwards here so it would support the heel. Bruce had to get very creative with Scooby and he tried a lot of things at different stages of Scooby's healing. We are lucky we found Bruce!!!

Scooby will never work again. He used to be a logging horse. At some point we may hitch him to a cart and go for short rides but for now he is enjoying his retirement and loving any and all attention he gets.

Tapper

The next dancing horse is Tapper (short for tapdancer of course!). I bought Tapper and her mom Rocky (the rockette!) when Tapper was just 3 months old.

They had to be boarded elsewhere for the first 2 months because my barn was under construction, so Tapper has lived here since she was 5 months old! She is a registered American Quarter Horse and she is now 13 years old. She is the horse I ride and she's turned into a great trail horse! She has her few things that bother her (motorcycles, bicycles, school buses), but otherwise is very steady and solid. Like me, Tapper hates ring work, so we get along just fine. She does not like to be the leader on a trail ride - though she has been better about it this year - she prefers to be middle or last horse. She loves to poke along and let the others get far ahead and then she jogs or lopes to catch up! This photo is Tapper at the top of Mt. Ephriam in Springfield, VT. It's a rare photo because usually when we are up there her head is down grazing and I can't get her to pick it up for a photo! She definitely loves her food!

Tapper did three local shows (not with me!) quite a few years back and did very well in them - she got reserve champion twice! She was ridden english in the shows but since then has become my western girl.

Sundance

This is Sundance, the original dancing horse and the first horse I ever owned. He will be 35 years old next month!!! He retired when he turned 30 because his eyesight was not great and he started spooking at shadows. Though his health has definitely given me some scares the past few years, he is doing quite well this year, has a great winter coat and actually has some weight on going into winter.

I got Sundance in 1990 when he was 18. He was a VERY forward horse who loved trail riding. He didn't have a lot of patience (still doesn't) and hated to stand still! Why I got him is a very long story, but let's just say he helped me keep my sanity during some difficult years!

I don't know Sundance's origins, I bought him from a woman in Chester, VT who had owned him a few years. A friend of hers had rescued him from auction. He was one step from starving to death. She showed me a photo of him when they first got him and you could literally see every bone in his body. They got his weight back up and built his muscle and strength. By the time I bought him he was in great shape and had been in parades and even television commercials for the Chamber of Commerce in Chester! He has always been a very hard keeper though, my guess is because of the starvation.

Sundance used to be a very golden palomino color, especially with his summer coat, but his color has faded as he has aged. He is still a handsome guy and seems to be enjoying his life of retirement! He was the inspiration for Dancing Horse Farm...

The Farm

Tucked into a valley between 2 hills, Dancing Horse Farm (DHF) was built in 1993. It started off with just a 4 stall barn, and has grown to 10 stalls (and will NOT grow bigger!). There is a round pen, riding ring, fields, pastures and paddocks, and easy access to miles of trails.

In upcoming posts, I will be introducing the current residents of the farm. Right now there are 10 horses, 2 goats, 1 cat, 2 parrots, and 3 dogs (with many more occasional doggy visitors). Right now they are all looking forward to Christmas. Each horse has their own stocking on their stall door, just waiting for Santa to fill it. The goats share a stocking of their own...

We had some ground work done this fall as you can see. We made new pasture and dried up some of the pasture we already had. The horses seem to be enjoying it! We also put dutch doors in some of the stalls so the horses can go in and out in good weather. That is working out really well! You can see a photo of the doors in the previous post.

The crazy thing is - no snow yet! Not that I'm complaining, I really hate having to plow, but it is odd and everyone is getting tired of the rain and mud... I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Mother Nature hits us! The nice weather has been great for some things. Yesterday the hay guys brought 320 bales to top off the loft. We shouldn't need more until summer! We also were able to ride a lot this fall which was fantastic!

Anyway, watch for the next post, I will tell you about the horse who started Dancing Horse Farm with me...

welcome!

This is the new Dancing Horse Farm blog page! Please be patient while we figure out how this all works. We will be posting photos and stories about the people and animals at the farm...