Dance Moms

Good morning all! 

We don't have much time to watch television, so it amazes me the caliber or shows that are on that thing.  I have a few shows that I follow religiously--Fringe, Law and Order: SVU, Dancing With The Stars, and Parenthood are pretty much it.  And those aren't "I'm gonna die if I don't know what happened" shows, just ones I enjoy when I'm home.  So last night I was doing laundry and cruising the channels for something to watch, when I came across "Dance Moms".  Oh my, this show is dramatic to say the least!  What is with those people?  WOW!  I think that Abby knows what she is doing as far as teaching the kids to dance, but those mothers on there....they are a whole different bunch of people.  I cannot honestly say that I would associate with any of them, and they are a bunch of whiny, cry-baby, drama queens!  Give me a break!  I watched a couple of episodes and was floored by the petty things that these women had to say.  They all have a problem with Abby, the dance instructor, for one reason or another.  One doesn't want her daughter doing "ethnic" dances, because it's stereotyping her.  Um, NO, it's teaching her to be able to do ethnic dances for auditions!  Good grief!  Another was griping because her daughters never have costumes.  Well, seems to me if you were concerned about it you would approach the instructor more than 15 minutes before you kid goes on stage.  DUH!  Another mom was complaining because one of the girls gets special attention all of the time and her daughter is mistreated.  Well, okay, I don't know what she means by special treatment, but from what I can tell she treated them all the same.  These women are so jealous of their kids and think the world revolves around them to the point that they seriously need to grow up.  If they are soooooo unhappy with Abby Lee's then why the hell don't they find someone else to teach their kids dance?  Or better yet, let Abby do her job, encourage their kids to listen to her and correct problems that they have and quit being so jealous of your kids!

That's just my honest opinion, but the show did it's job, it kept me watching to see what ridiculousness those petty moms could come up with next!

Happy Hump Day!

Happy hump day!  The middle of the week always seems like it takes forever to get here, but when it does the rest of the week just flies by.  Today it's rainy and chilly out, giving me the fall fever.  I love this time of the year, the leaves changing, the cooler air, and the fall holidays!  Love, LOVE, LOOOOVE Halloween, and I'm excited for it to come this year. 

I got back on Dakota to ride on Monday, and it went well.  She's was seemingly unsure of herself, but after watching the videos back, I believe it was because the ground is so muddy.  She did much better yesterday.  I hope she comes out of this insecurity completely, I would like to go more than 10 steps without stopping.  LOL!  But, with teaching her comes much patience, and I know that just like 2 years ago, when she was a wild child that I thought I would never be able to ride, she'll come into her own.  She has grown into the most gentle, respectful, attentive horse I could have asked for.  She listens very well and is always eager to work.  I am hoping that once she realizes that when I'm riding her she's going to get to go out and see everything, she'll be excited for that too.

Cheyenne has grown so much in the past few months, I have a lot of ground work to do with her, and she's trying my patience at every turn of the hand.  Today she came running at me with her ears pinned back when I came to her field with her grain.  My exact words were, "OH NO YOU DON'T!"  LOL, she thought she was gonna get away with it and got a rude awakening.  I'm not an abusive person, but when she did this, she got a firm smack on the neck.  I then got a grasp on her halter and walked her around until the ears came up and she was more pleasant.  I know they have bad days just like we do, but that is absolutely unacceptable behavior!  She is also pushing into my "personal space" often now, so I have a lot of work to do there.  I am a firm believer in groundwork and manners on horses, I mean who wants to be pushed around by a 1000 lb animal?  NOT ME!  I earned every ounce of respect that Dakota gives me, and I have a funny feeling that I'm going to have to work twice as hard to get the same level of respect out of Cheyenne.  I call her my red-headed step child, LOL, she's so ornery and has the temper of a redhead.  I'm definately working on it, and will continue to do so for eternity.  Dakota will occasionally try me too, so it's an ongoing lesson for them both.  I am currently reading a book by Clinton Anderson, someone who I have just recently learned about.  His Downunder Horsemanship seems to have very good training techniques, so I'm going to work on his program with Cheyenne and see how she reacts.  I sure wish I could afford those DVDs of his, but that is waaaaay out of my price range! 

I have a few ideas for holiday gifts this year, I just wish I could find the time and inspiration to get started.  I actually have had the ideas for a few years and just never accomplished them.  I'm going to really try and sit down tonight and work out a few plans on how to do them and maybe get started.  I need to hold myself accountable to this.  DO IT, dang it!    I will keep you all posted on my progress.  Heck if one of the ideas work out well, I may even try to sell them!  :)  We'll see!

Okay, so I need to get to bed, I have a mountain of laundry to move today and horses who need work too.  Hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday.

Happy Birthday Hubby and Horse Pictures

Good afternoon! I'm up and at 'em early today, lots going on. First off, our cable and internet have been acting stupid for the past few months, and we finally broke down and called Comcast out to fix it. After the guy spent 1 1/2 hours trying to "pin" it on us because we replaced our wiring under the house, it boiled down to the main line isn't set up for digital. Well, now why wasn't that changed BEFORE we were forced to go to all digital? Yeah, I'm not a very happy camper. Especially since I went to bed at 11:30am and was back up at 1:45pm, for this.

The other thing going on--HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY HUBBY, ROBERT! He's officially 30! Time to grow up now, Honey.... :) To celebrate, I thought I'd post a picture of the first time he rode Dakota. I'm so proud of my baby girl, you have no idea! Here it is:

If you look closely, you can see her wound on her right hind leg. Picture was purposely taken from this direction so it's not so gory. We have grown accustomed to it, but it still grosses the majority of people out.

This is a pic of my second ride on her, as I'm not happy with the pics of the first ride. I know, it's silly....

And next are pictures of our new baby, Cheyenne. The first is the day we bought her, she was still wooly with her winter hair and so small. I can't believe how much she has changed in a few months. The second two were taken about a month ago, right before her first bath. Yeah...that was an experience! :)

I have thought to myself several times, "Why in the world did I get two young horses that need so much conditioning??!!!" But after spending the evening with them and having such a great time, I remember why, because I wanted to learn. Oh boy, they are sure teaching me! I love them both very much, I wouldn't trade this experience for the world! I have many, many years to come with both of them and that thrills me to my very core!

Well, I must go corral the dust bunnies now, company is coming at 6!

Hugs & Love,

Gone, But Not Forgotten

Well, Hello! I haven't blogged in over a year, and I doubt very seriously if I have anyone to even read it, but here goes!

I'm going to start with an update on the horses. (Since they have become my life!) We lost Cherokee, the old pony, back in March. He had a twisted gut and there was nothing that could be done for him. I was totally heartbroken, in shock and mad at myself for letting it happen. I couldn't have been more devastated, and spent the better part of a week sitting in his barn balling my eyes out. I miss him so much, he was my big brother and such a huge part of my life. Dakota is doing really well! She still has her injury, though I am happy to report it is only about 1/3 of the size and FINALLY, (Yes, FINALLY!!! After 18 months), starting to heal well. She has complete use of her leg, even without the tendons, and has adapted well. Most people don't even notice that she's got a problem! I got down to business with her in early April, started back into her conditioning after we got the A-OK from the vet to do so. And I'm happy to report that she is doing fantastic with it and WE ARE RIDING HER! Yep, you read that right. The vet seems to think that she will be just fine, I mean she's not going to win the Triple Crown or anything, but just around the farm, she is doing AH-MA-ZING! I'm so proud of her! We also have a new addition to the farm family, Cheyenne, a 13 month old paint horse. She's become the baby and knows how to use it. (On everybody but Mommy, that is!) She had never been handled until we got her 4 months ago. She's doing fantastic too, lots of groundwork put in on her and she's coming around nicely. I'm one proud Mom to 2 amazing paint horses! (And 13 barn cats and all of the critters at the house.)

Speaking of all of the critters at the house, everyone is doing great here, no passages in the past year, which is a blessing! Everyone is fat and happy as usual.

As I type this, my hubby is getting ready to turn the big 3-0! Yep, he's gonna be 30 on Monday, and doesn't seem to give a hoot about it. I think it'll hit him eventually, but so far no reaction whatsoever. I guess that's okay, but I can remember how I felt when I turned 30, in fact I believe there's a blog about it on here..... I'm excited because there's cake. :) HA!

Not a whole lot new going on with Mom and Dad, Dad is the same, and getting a little worse. Mom is having a lot of problems now too, she just recently had 3 teeth pulled and found out that she has pyrhia (sp?) and will have to have the rest of her teeth pulled soon. I can't imagine how she is feeling, but I'm doing my best to support her and help with everything I can.

I haven't sewn anything in quite some time which depresses me deeply. I just can't find the time to do it with taking care of Mom and Dad, the horses and the farm work and the housework. I miss it SO much, you have no idea. It was my creative outlet and now it's getting all backed up itching to get out. But since money is SO tight this year, I am going to attempt to make some handmade gifts. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how that goes. It may blow up in my face and be a total disaster. Especially since I haven't picked up a needle in almost a year!

So, long story short, I'm trying to get some sort of normalcy back into my life and attempting to get back in touch with some long lost friends that I miss so dearly. I hope that they don't all hate me for good, and will understand that my life has been so busy that something had to give and unfortunately, a lot of my friendships suffered. So if you are reading this and care to get back in touch with me, please do! I try to keep up with Facebook...not very well most of the time, but I do my best to check in at least once a day. I'm Christy Heaston-Thornburg on Facebook, look me up! I'm also going to be blogging as much as I can. I look forward to hearing from you all!

Love and Hugs~

Long Time, No Blog.

Hello my Friends! I doubt if I have any readers now, but for anyone who happens by, I thought I'd give an update on things. Life has been a constant rollercoaster since I blogged last, and believe me, when I say rollercoaster, it has been mostly down hill.


The main issues have been with the horses, so I'll talk about them for now. Early in the spring, Cherokee, (the old pony), stopped eating, lost a bunch of weight, and we had to find a mobile vet to come see him. The weight we attributed to his age, as he is 42 this year, and I figured that this was the begining of his demise. So, the vet came and checked him over, and said that he's overall healthy, except for an over-grown tooth, and being too thin. Horse teeth never stop growing, and he lost one of his bottom teeth, so the top one in the same place grew out too long. Thus keeping him from chewing properly, so he was literally starving and we had no idea! He was eating, but because he wasn't chewing it up, he wasn't digesting it and therefore disposing of all of it, instead of utilizing it. So, we now have him on a healthy diet of Dumor Senior Complete feed, soaked in water to make a mash, along with Alfalfa pellets and beet pulp soaked. He's picking up some weight now, which thrills me! Although, we're worried about this winter, because he's just not packing it on as quickly as we'd like, so I think we're gonna get a nice warm winter blanket for him. He's also loaded with energy now, which is good, but bad, as he's burning a lot of calories, while we're trying to put them on him.

Cherokee right after his bath, about 5 weeks ago.

We just got him back to eating and feeling better, and Dakota got her leg caught in her stall door. It was a bad, bad injury. She skinned her back leg, between her hock and fetlock, about 6 inches, clear to the bone. She severed the Common Digital Extensor tendon, and just made hamburger out of everything. She had horizontal cuts in her Cannon bone as well. The tendon that she cut is the one which holds up the toe of her hoof, and there was no way to reattach it. She has learned to walk okay without it, but has been trying to play and romp around, and she has a little trouble with that. Hubs and I spent hours on end for 8 weeks, cleaning and wrapping her leg from the bottom of her hoof all the way past her hock to keep it nice and clean and dry, until the bone was covered. Plus pain medicine and antibiotics every 12 hours. The vet originally gave her Banamine for her pain, and she was having a bad reaction to it, so now she's on Bute. She was also grounded to the barn for the first 8 weeks, so we were picking her a ton of grass twice a day to keep her happy. After that 8 weeks, we were still wrapping, but not as far. She's doing well, although we have a lot of proud flesh growing that we are battling with now. I had no idea what I was doing, but you cannot expose bone to air, so we would have to take quick swipes at cleaning it up, and keep saline against it to be sure it didn't dry out. Normal Saline is the same pH as a horses body and it will not harm the bones. We are 13 weeks out now, and are able to leave it uncovered for several hours a day, and she's allowed out on her own again now, but we have to keep her wrapped up when she's in the stall. So, we're still putting countless hours in, but at least it's a various times instead of all lumped into one visit. We're using a product called Granulex V to deal with the proud flesh, and for now, it appears to be working. I hope we can get it under control and not have to have it removed. I hear it's a really messy procedure, and honestly, I don't know if I can handle it. But I'll do what I have to do. I love my horsey, and she just keeps changing my course of action. I had planned to be on her back by the end of this month...and now we aren't sure if we'll even be able to ride her. I have been working her a little at a walk, and she's doing well, but it's going to be a long haul to get her healed.

Dakota with her leg all bandaged up.

In the meantime, I lost another one of my guinea pigs, little Cocoa. She did the same thing Holly did, starting drinking tons of water, eating like a horse and still losing weight. Eventually she had a stroke and passed on. I miss her and so does her lonely sister, Noel. But Noel and I are becoming best buds, which is something I could never get with her. She's always been pretty wild, but she's coming around to Mommy....and getting very spoiled!

I also adopted another baby Robin. I found him sitting in the middle of the road on my route one night, and no sign of where he came from. He wasn't old enough to make it on his own, so I brought the little hitchhiker home, fed him out and now he's spoiled rotten too! We named him Hitch, since he hitchhiked clear home from Randolph County. :)

Hitch

Past that, all the other kids are doing well, and hubs and I are surviving all of this drama, but we are so far behind in our work for taking care of Dakota that I think we'll never get caught up. We're working on it, we have spent the past 2 weeks trimming trees at Mom's, mowing at the farm and we're getting ready to bale hay. Not looking forward to the latter! My yard has gone to hell, and honestly I have given up on it for this year. I pull a few weeds when I get a chance, but that's not too often. My house is a complete disaster area, and I honestly don't even care. Stop by at your own risk!

I hope this finds everyone doing well, and I miss keeping up with my online friends! Hugs to all!

Happy Thursday!

Good morning!

I haven't been blogging like I planned to this year, but of course, when I have time, I never have anything to talk about. When I'm crazy busy, I have a million things I want to blog, and never do. Ah well...

So, I'm working on the January FLRR block, which is themed "Bridge To Terabithia", and this thing had me puzzled. I have been searching online for ideas, when lo and behold, I was looking through our DVD's to find something to watch, and discovered that we actually have the movie! And I have no idea why I had not watched this movie before now, as this is "my" kind of movie! It was fantastic, I loved it! I have a ton of ideas now, thankfully as I will not kid you, I was stumped! So, when I get it all finished up, I'll post pics of what I have done. I'm also back to working on Ing's heart...and I'm almost there, I promise Ing! I'll be winging it home to you real soon!

So, we had fantastic weather over the past weekend, temperatures up in the 40's and 50's, which is amazing for us in January! We got to put the horses out and leave them for the first time this winter. This sounds silly to horse-folk, but Cherokee is so old that we don't like to leave him out in the extreme cold, so Dakota doesn't get out either. It's a jealousy thing...and he DOES get jealous. I put the new pet-eye camera on her, and dingaling me forgot to turn it on. I was all excited about having some pics from it, and when I hooked it up to upload pics, there was nothing there. Yep, I forgot to turn it on. So...the next time it warms up a little, I'll put it BACK on her and try again. We also managed to get our outside Christmas decor taken down, which has to be a world record for us! We normally just wait until it warms up a little to do it, usually around the middle of February or even March. It feels good to have it already down! Things are back to normal in the weather department, cold and snowy. It's currently 13*. Brrrrr!

Well, I hope everyone is having a fantastic year, so far 2010 hasn't brought any major catastophies for us, so that is always a plus!

Happy Thursday!

Looking For A Good Blacksmith

Hello all!

So, our blacksmith has dissappeared off the face of the earth. Really, really strange since he has been soooo faithful in taking care of Cherokee for the past 3 years. I'm a little worried, as not only has his number been disconnected, so has his son's.

Anyone know a good blacksmith in the Muncie, Indiana area that wuold be willing to work on an old pony and a young paint horse?

I'm fairly sure I can take care of Cherokee myself, however, Dakota needs a blacksmith to keep her in working order.

Thanks for any info!

3 Very Good Reasons...

...to NEVER let a salesman in your house!

Last week, we were visited by a Kirby vacuum sales team. Had I answered the door, I would never had let them in the house. However, I was busy, hubs answered the door, and the next thing I knew, I had a Kirby sales person in my house. She fumbled, wasn't very knowledgable, and quite honestly was just kind of a twit. So, I understand how this stuff works...she does the presentation, she makes money. Fine...I'll deal with it. I know how hard money is to come by.

Reason #1: They actually said, "We'd like to ask a few questions of an honest homeowner." A few questions turned into 2 hours taken from my life that I will never get back. Just think of the things I could have done in those 2 hours!!! And the questions were merely attacks on how dirty my house was and how horrible a job our vacuum does. Ah well...I'll get to that in a minute...

Reason #2: The jack-ass sale closer that appeared after 2 hours of listening to this twit drone on about how great the Kirby is, and all of it's spectacular features. BTW, She never got to the carpet cleaner part...so hard telling how much MORE of my time she would have taken up. So this guy comes in, cocky as all get out...and starts pitching me the sales shtick. After 5 or so minutes of talking about the vacuum, he lays it on me. $2,500.00. Are you serious? I knew it was going to be high, but I'll tell ya, I just about fell off of the couch! This guy has no idea what we're dealing with, and I know that...however, all he really had to do was take a look around and he would have KNOWN there was no way in HELL I'd ever pay $2,500 for a vacuum. I mean really...I only paid $200 for my CAR! I told him no...politely. He asked if I had a credit card, and then INFORMED me to slap in on the card. When I said no more forcefully, he started dropping the price! It went from $2,500, to $1,999, to $1,500, and finally to a (as he put it) desperate $999. Again, are you serious????? I basically grabbed him by the ear and tossed him to the curb.

Reason #3: Fleas. Yes, you read that right, FLEAS. DOG fleas....and I don't have a dog! We are now infested with dog fleas, and the only reasonable explaination I have, is that they dragged them in here in that $2,500 vacuum that they were pushing down our throats. I'm mad...madder than a bulldog with a toothache!

Now the part that I said I'd get back to....

We have a Eureka Capture vacuum. It's lime green...and MEAN! This girl quickly ran my vaccum over the area that she planned to demonstrate how great the Kirby was, and then proceeded to put filter disk after filter disk into the Kirby and get dirt out of my carpet. Not that much dirt either...and she really had to work at it. She then proceeded to do the same routine on one of my chairs. Now, I haven't really cleaned my furniture in a couple of months, so I wasn't surprised at all when she started pulling dirt from the depths of hell out of my chair. Anyone who has ever had a bird and a cat will know what I mean. They shed...constantly! The part that I was amused by...was when the Kirby failed to get anymore dirt...I got out my Eureka Capture a couple of days later and sucked a TON of dirt out of that thing! And I didn't work half as hard at it as she did. So, now....why did I want a $2,500 vacuum? When my $160 vacuum done twice the job, with half the work? Of course, with any vacuum, you have to keep them up...clean filters and a tight belt. So, I honestly wouldn't have traded my Eureka for that Kirby even if he had offered an even trade!!!

So in closing...beware of the Kirby sales team...they are on the prowl, and the only thing they'll leave behind is a wasted night and a lot of fleas.

Have a fabulous weekend!

That Is One Cool Gift!

Happy Monday!

I had the greatest idea this morning! And I really thought long and hard about it, then I realized it won't work. Are you ready?

We went to the farm last night despite the really cold temperatures, (17* was the HIGH yesterday!), to let the horses out. With all of the hub-bub over the holidays they got a little neglected in the getting-out-to-play department. After watching Dakota run herself silly for about 10 minutes, and getting Cherokee to play for a little while, we got into a little snowball fight. We are such big kids when it comes to the snow! We don't get much free time to do "nothing", so we really had a good time, and the farm provides great cover and tons of space to get away from each other. So...this led to the idea this morning...

What if someone really DID sell snowballs!??? I mean, really, sell snowballs? What a great idea! Especially for the snowball-making challenged! And YES, there are plenty of snowball-making challenged people out there. You could set up a stand in the park, we have one in particular that has a big hill that we all sled on. Wouldn't that be great??? Sell snowballs and have a huge snowball fight going on all the time! How cool would it be to make a little money off this white stuff, and have fun at the same time! Of course, they wouldn't be expensive...like 10 cents each. And then it hit me, that wouldn't be such a good idea at all.... Especially when we've had snow on top of snow lately, and we have yet to see one single kid out playing in it. Can it be that the art of snowman building and snowball fights have gone to the days of old, like letter writing? Yet, I logged into my facebook account, and had a snowball fight request. So, I guess now instead of going out and playing in the snow, people have virtual snowball fights too. Another good idea that's past it's prime....

Anyway, my real reason for this post is to brag about the gift the my bestie got me for Christmas! We just had our Christmas with them on Saturday night, and they got me the coolest gift! They got me (and Dakota!), a "Pet's Eye View" camera. It's this little camera that you clip on your dog and cat to see what they do when you aren't with them. They thought it would be fun to put it on Dakota and see what she's up to when I'm busy with other things! It takes pictures at set intervals, 1, 5, or 15 minutes apart. How cool is that???? I'm so excited to try it out on her...so be ready for some really strange pictures coming from her point of view. Hubs was teasing me about it, he said all we'd ever see is grass, water, grass, water.... We'll see!

So thanks so much to Lisa and EJ, I'm sure we're gonna have a ball with it as soon as I get it all charged up and ready to go!

Have a super day,

Hello 2010, Will You Be My Friend?

Hello Friends! And a hearty welcome to 2010!

We had a very quiet evening as the New Year came in, partaking in a couple of movies and some finger foods with Mom and Dad. At Midnight, we were able to see the fireworks that were set off downtown from Mom and Dad's driveway, so that was a nice end to the evening. We don't normally get all jazzed up about the new year, but this year, I think we were even more quiet than usual. Things have been so messed up for the past few years, especially the last few months of 2009, that I spent most of the night trying to decide whether to be happy to see '09 go or sad because of everything that had happened. Eventually, by the time 2010 arrived, I realized that there is no point in being sad, only to look forward to better times. And better times will not come easy for us, so we're going to have to make our own happy memories as the new year rolls on. So, 2010, whaddaya say, wanna be friends?

I was asked a few minutes ago if I had made any resolutions, and sadly, I hadn't even thought about it yet. So, no, for now, no resolutions for me. I plan to work on myself consistently throughout the whole year, so I guess that's one. I guess I could go with the old standby, lose weight...but I have all but given up on that all the way around. Ah well, if I happen to think of any, I'll let you know.

To all of my friends, may the new year find you happy in the smallest of ways, as I realize that happiness means more than anything else in life. The rest is just...shall I say, "fluff". :)

Take care and Happy New Year!