Year: 2010

This is completely random but now that I have my work station standing up with my writing desk to my back, Picollo and Zita find it completely necessary every morning to play, quite literally, at my ankles or ON my feet. When Picollo has had enough playing yet Zita still doesn’t realize it, he hides under the writing desk. Just too cute!

What else could someone who’s planning a massive arena project need but the time it takes to prep peeps and ducklings in a cage. I drove down to the local feed store to pick up some feed for the horses and came back with these! Ex mentioned wanting ducks but probably not in the middle of preparation for our biggest project on the farm this past year! LOL!

It was too sweet this little rooster falling asleep standing up!



They are still a bit nervous but quickly eating and drinking so definitely settling in.



This is my favorite. I’m hoping she’s a Peking and we’re calling her Dooney. The other one is maybe an Indian Runner and is named Burke. The peeps don’t/won’t have names.

Coming out to the East Coast this whole turning out during the summer over night was very new to me but after my first hot and humid days of late spring I quickly grasp the necessity of nightly turnout with the days inside under a fan!

Last summer the horses were out in pastures in the evening just roaming around. I thought this summer it would be nice to setup a series of smaller paddocks already for dry lot that they could overnight in saving the larger pastures for a few hours of daily grazing. The result thus far is a couple 2 rail (like Anky’s!) paddocks with packed stone dust set a bit off the creek.



The dogs were very diligent about helping out!



They are getting closer to being complete and ready for the hot summer days and kinda hot nights.

This little guy walked up the drive, under the gate and sat down near the tree and daffodils for a good half hour. I thought it was sweet for the Easter Bunny to stop by personally and visit us! Now that’s service! Happy Easter HorseGirlTV® fans!

It was a morning of education and fun with Geoff and Melissa as they came out to shoot an interview with HorseGirlTV®. They were both terrific people and I learned a great deal about horsey dentistry. Not that Carrara isn’t always a complete rockstar but it was amazing/impressive to see little Melissa walk into her stall (her domain) and with no drugs, no tricks, “no drama” float her teeth. The little guy I was equally impressed with as I don’t know him amazingly well yet but again, he was awesome just standing there for her letting her float his teeth!

I’m definitely planning to put together a list of interested people for 6 months from now when we need Dr. Geoff to come back out and float the horses! It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before and I’m so thankful for the opportunity to meet them, interview Geoff and learn a little insight into what they do.

Capturing B Roll.



Working on Carrara. No drugs. No powertools. Just little Melissa, a hand tool and quite a bit of finesse/talent.



Post dental work. She seems so relaxed and when Melissa left the stall, she did a full body shake!



Photos are courtesy Geoff Tucker of http://www.theequinepractice.com/ where their moto is “Equine Dentistry Without The Drama™” so check them out and see if you’re lucky enough that they can come to your town and work on your horses!

It’s still exciting to see HorseGirlTV® as #1 for our genre in iTunes. That never gets old! I also never gets old seeing HorseGirlTV® sit alongside the top 15 including golf, hockey, snowboarding for ALL the iTunes Outdoor Sport & Rec. What an honor for the series to be that popular on iTunes! Thanks so much to our fans!

It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie here when a massive flock of birds decented upon the farm!







Craziness!

What a beautiful birthday present to me! I looked out my office window (like I do every morning to check the arena conditions) and it was so beautifully drug by Ex with the very welcome spring sun stretching across it! Now I do know in a couple months I’ll be begging for fall weather but for now I’ve been saying I’m just so excited to be given the opportunity soon to complain about the humidity and heat. Haha!



Now even though the trees are still bare the bulbs have come out and are opening! It still is touching on freezing at night but it’s so nice to begin to see color coming out and this place really does get amazingly green and so lush in the spring summer. It’s fabulous! Next year we’ll do the covered arena and riding will be brilliant ALL YEAR ROUND! Yah! These are some of the bulbs by the front entry.

Our new footing additive for the dressage court arrived and I’m just sooooo excited to unwrap it, get the arena base dialed in, find the proper sand and get the footing mixed, spread, laser leveled and then just get to ride, ride, ride no matter how many buckets of water these North Carolina skies dump on us!

The product we’re going with is pictured to the left and is by German Geo Textile Footing (specificially we’re using their GGT Jump Blend) and the picture below shows about 3700 pounds of product which is standard for sand blending with our 20×60 court. It works with outdoor and indoor courts and it’s intent it to reduce dust, retain water, provide impact resistance, help prevent packing and should extend the arena surface lifetime by about 10 years plus none of their products contain ANY glass fibers and in working with them to learn about the product they seem like a great company with lots of experience. It’s been used since 1992 in Europe but is pretty new to the states still so I’m really looking forward to using it!

More specifics will follow when we start working with the installation (we’re doing a series of webisodes on footing in the coming weeks!) and of course much more as we start to train on it as well. It looks REALLY similar to the product that was in with Anky’s arenas so I’m going to ask her or Sjef about that just out of curiosity!

Yes I’m quite excited to share a picture of my new custom cut Petrie Anky Elegance Dress Boots. I loved the fit on my Petrie Anky Polo Boots so much that riding in my stock Petries felt more like riding in paddock boots and half chaps. While the stock Petries are über comfy, I don’t know much that’s better than a solid quality crafted pair of riding boots specifically cut to the exact measurements of your feet (especially if you have narrow feet and tiny calf muscles like I do).

As you’ll see from the picture, they are beautiful and they are custom to my feet so all I’ve done so far (that I don’t have so much spare time right now) is stand while working on HorseGirlTV at my laptop and stretch/bend a bit while wearing them to help break them in. I’m waiting til the weather warms and is more consistently dry to actually ride in them but if they boast anything like my Petrie Polos then it’ll be a matter of riding in them twice in slight discomfort and then on ride 3 feeling like they are a second (albeit stiff) skin!

Many thanks to Ellen at The Tack Factory for her mastery of custom boot measurements and all her well educated advice on Petries, specifically the Anky line! All the folks at The Tack Factory in The Netherlands are AWESOME and I simply love looking at and riding in my new boots!