Howdy!

Oh my goodness, it's been entirely too long since I blogged last! So many blog-worthy things have happened in the last month and a half, but I just have not had the time or the motivation to blog about any of them. Very sad! I'll get caught up on all of it one of these days. I hope!

One of the more note worthy things that has happened was this impulse buy...

We have talked about getting another dog off and on for a while, but never really pursued it. Then one day we were just finishing up a bunch of errands and on our way home we just happened to pass a "Puppies for sale" sign. The boyfriend saw it, said the puppies looked pretty cute and suggested we go look. I kept right on driving. For a little bit. I did eventually turn around. After all, what does just looking hurt? lol

Obviously, the "just looking" didn't work out so well. And we came home with this little guy...

Born January 1st

Border Collie and Australian Cattle Dog (Heeler) mix

Absolutely freaking adorable

We have finally decided on the name Cletus for him. His full name is Cletus D. Pooper, but don't tell the boyfriend that. He hates that I all him Pooper. And the D stands for Dude, my other nickname for him.

The parents weren't onsite, but we were told that both mom and dad were small-ish for their breeds. We figured he'd probably be about Cheyanne's height, but probably a little bulkier. But do you see the size of his legs and paws? I'm having my doubts on that!

I finally got inspired to get my camera out today and got all of these pics of him. He was quite the sport, posing pretty for the camera! :-)

I just love his eyes. When we got him they were this really cool almost purpleish gray. Now they are a really rich chocolate brown.

And he has the cutest little bum!

And I wish so, so much that the darn wheel barrow wasn't in the background of this shot! I love him peeking out from behind the tree, but that blue kinda ruins it. Bummer!

Hope you all are having a wonderful spring!

Puppy play day!

Yesterday we ended up having an impromptu puppy play day at our house. It turned out to be a beautiful day after the fog burned off and the dogs all had a blast playing together.

My parents came over with their two new Corgi puppies, Yogi Bear and Bella. Yogi is on the left and Bella on the right. They are so freakin adorable! Yogi is a little chunk! His legs are huge and he has floppy puppy skin. His ears have just recently started standing up so when he runs they still flop.

And of course they have the cutest little Corgi puppy bums! See how much bigger Yogi (on the left) is then Bella? Total chunk!

And my sister came over with her brand new to her puppy Vega. She is a Schipperke mix. She was pretty darn cute too! Love those ears and that face!

Cheyanne had so much fun playing with all the puppies! She was so gentle with them, seemed to know they were babies and played accordingly.

I just love Vega in the picture below. Cracks me up!


Yogi seemed pretty fascinated with Chey, he kept trying to catch her and play. She was too fast for his chunky little legs though. That girl can run!

I think Chey had just as much fun running circles around them as they played amongst themselves.

After a couple hours they were some seriously tuckered out puppies! They all crashed out in their kennels while we had some lunch. Below is Yogi trying to sleep, but the annoying girl with the camera kept distracting him.

Chey still wanted to go-go-go, but she crashed eventually a little while after everyone left. She was fast asleep on her bed on the deck. Never seen such a thing!

It was a very fun day! Makes me want to get another dog so Chey can have some company and they can tucker themselves out! :o)

Frisbee dog!

Chey got a new toy for Christmas from her Aunty and I think it is her new fave toy!

She looooves chasing it down and is even starting to try to catch it in the air, though she has yet to succeed at that.

She is hilarious to watch when she is bringing it back. Most of the time she has it flipped up over her face so I have to wonder how the heck she can see where she's going. It's great.

I love good entertainment for the puppy dog! Anything that keeps her from digging up my tulip bulbs!

She's lucky she's cute!

My dog is nuts. My dog drives me nuts sometimes. But, she's cute enough to get away with just about anything. The brat.

We finally broke down and decided to give her an actual dog bed in her pen during the day, not just the old saddle blankets that she had been sleeping on. She was good for a couple days. Then she slaughtered the thing. I got it all stuffed back in the case, figuring it shouldn't be too hard to sew up since it was just the zipper she killed to get into it. I set it aside in our sunroom to deal with later.

The "sunroom" is a nice little room with tile floors and lots of windows that we have made Cheyanne's room. It's definately come in handy since the weather has turned. It's a nice place to put her while she dries off from being outside, usually playing in the mud, before she comes in to the carpeted part of the house.

I was gone for the evening and the boyfriend forgot about the ripped open bed sitting in the corner and put her in the sunroom. This is the mess I came home to. She had completely gutted the thing and spread it every where! Man, she must have been having a blast!

I had to laugh at it. Really, what else can you do?!? And then I had to take pictures of it. It was just too funny! I was amazed at the piles and piles of stuffing and shavings that came out of that bed!

Cheyanne

The last of our furry four legged herd is our new-ish puppy Cheyanne. The look you see to the left is something along the lines of the look that landed her here with us. We had just moved and had a busy summer of unpacking, clearing land, fixing up the house, drill competitions, fencing and stall making ahead of us and had no intention of adding a puppy to that. For some reason one day we got it in our heads that we could do a grown up dog though. No clue why. We got to checking out local pounds and various ads for dogs available for adoption and came across a local ad for a lady that had an adult Australian Shepherd as well as a litter of 8 puppies. We figured we could atleast go check out the adult, see what Aussies were all about. We have both always been interested in them, but were a little worried about their energy level and having problems with a herding dog wanting to chase the horses every where.



By the time we arrived we were both pretty well convinced we were just going to look. We didn't really want an adult, atleast not this one, he apparently had some issues. So we arrived and all the puppies ran to the gate to greet us. Going to look at puppies without planning to buy is like going to a decent horse auction with a trailer and saying you don't HAVE to get anything. Should have known better! This little girl immediately caught my attention. I've always had a soft spot for black tri's. She was also the runt of the litter and me and runts have a pretty good history. She was the only one who's white collar didn't go all the way around her neck and the lady called it her lucky horse shoe. How cute is that?!? But really, her personality is absolutely what made me melt! She was having fun playing with her siblings, but was the first one to come when you talked to them or knelt down. She was also independent and at one point wandered off a ways and crawled thru or under the horse fence. The seller saw that and called her name and she immediately came running back and sat down when asked. At 8 weeks old. Cutest thing you ever saw! She was the happiest and sweetest puppy of the bunch, but definately had a different air about her. We just sat and watched them all for a while, just to get a feel for them and we kept catching ourselves watching her. By the time we were getting ready to leave, she had plopped herself on their big doggie bed and was out like a light. She didn't care when her brothers ended up wrestling practically on top of her, she loved her bed and was completely comfortable there. Until we knelt down to say goodbye to them. She came right over and got her share of lovins!





All the way home we were torn. She had completely stolen our hearts, but we hadn't planned on a puppy. They are high maintenance. Did we want that? Were we ready for that? Could we give her the attention she deserved over the summer while we had so many other things to do? We slept on it and woke up the next morning knowing we had to have her. She just fit us. We went and picked her up a couple days later. She has been a fabulous addition to our little family! She is always happy to see us and more then happy to keep us company while we're working outside. She is very smart and learns very quickly, which so far hasn't been a bad thing. She has gotten in trouble for chasing horses a couple times, but I think Sugar started it. I can't tell if Sugar is playing with her or wanting to run her over, but she sure knows how to antagonize the poor dog when she's trying to be good!

Cheyanne was hilarious to watch play in the dirt while we were clearing the property! She would find a clump of grass or clod of dirt and run around with it like it was the most fun thing in the entire world. Or she'd hear a mole or something in the ground and sit and listen and dig and listen and sniff and dig. She also did awesome at the drill competitions she had to come to with me while dad ran the dozer at home. She had a blast playing with all the little kids I was able to pawn her off on when I had a class. She was great when she had to stay in her kennel in the trailer by herself at night. She became more comfortable with a couple of the other team dogs that were there and by the end of the weekend was even wanting to play a little bit.

It has been really fun watching her grow and become more social. The first time I took her to the vet she hid between my legs as much as she possibly could or tried to climb in my lap or right up around my neck when she was on the table. The last time we were there, she walked in confidently and tried walking right up to a HUGE Husky that was waiting there to say hi. I had to say no-no on that one. Mom wasn't quite comfortable with that. He looked nice enough but he could have practically swallowed her whole!

I also love it that she lets me take tons and tons of pictures of her and never complains. She is a very entertaining subject!

So even though we absolutely had not planned on having her, I'm SO glad we do!

Introducing...

Well, here I am. I finally did it. I have created a blog. Yikes! I've been completely addicted to reading various blogs over the past few months and kept thinking I should start one up myself. But what would I write about? Certainly nothing that anyone would really be interested in reading. Still pretty darn sure no one is going to be looking at it on any sort of regular basis, but that's just fine by me. It might be nice to be able to vent my frustrations, brag about my furry four legged kids, tell the tales of my adventures in horse showing and home owning and just get things down on "paper" so I can mull them over some more. And if it ends up being entertaining for someone else, then I guess I get some bonus points!

So a little bit about me...I've recently purchased my first home with my boyfriend. We found an amazing house that had 4.3 wooded acres, way, WAY out in the boonies, but it means we get to keep our horses with us and it was liveable at the time of the sale, which was huge compared to the other sh**holes we had been looking at. Soon after we moved in we ended up buying a puppy, who is the cutest darn thing ever. We have 3 horses, my 6 yo QH mare, Midori, a 4 yo QH gelding Mister and a 3 yo QH mare Sugar. We both enjoy riding and have just begun showing together. I have been on a drill team for a few years now, but this summer we decided to give cutting a try and went to a couple very small weekend cutting shows. It was a lot of fun and I think we're both hooked. This winter we plan to give reining a shot. Of course this is all in the green/beginner, "we don't really know what the heck we're doing, but we want to pretend" classes. It's still fun. Especially when you can actually be a little competitive in them!

We love all of our critters and having a home that we can enjoy them at. Lately it has been hitting home that I'm really an adult now. I have a mortgage, I have animals that I'm responsible for, I work full time and have a house to take care of and fix up. I'm generally always broke because I'm both a home owner and own and show horses. Don't get me wrong, I do love my life and I wouldn't want it any other way (well, except for the money part, I could always use some more money!) but I miss the good ol' days when I could just take off and ride all day or curl up in bed and read a good book all weekend and didn't have to worry about feeding everybody or doing the dishes or laundry or heading to work so I still have a vehicle to drive and a house to live in next month.

Oh well, I guess growing up is inevitable. Must be my quarter life crisis or something. So sit back, relax, grab a nice big margarita and enjoy reading my blog.

ps - I highly recomment the 'rita...might make my ramblings more bearable!