Firecracker Monday

We got a little bit of snow in the mountains to our east.  Go figure.  I'm grinning ear to ear that I'm not still in Nevada this winter.  It was 5 below zero today with plenty of white stuff in my old town.  They've been getting hit with snowstorm after snowstorm since October.  The only place I want to see white is on my horses.

The sun came out long enough this afternoon for me to take

A Little Bit of Something Each Day

It seems there's always something getting in the way of me being able to work with the horses, but now instead of just saying, "Oh well, the sun has set and I didn't get in any horse time today again," I am keeping a horse training journal and pushing myself to do something -- anything -- with at least one horse each day, and just feeding them or encouraging them to poop in the manure wagon

Happy Puppies

Midge mongering the stuffed bunny we got the dogs for Christmas.  We won't let the dogs eat the real bunnies outside, so now they have the next best thing.  Note the bare feet in Arizona in December.  Thankfully, the scorpions are in hibernation along with the rattlesnakes.



Scrappy begging for a chicken tender.  He rarely plays with toys, so I knew he'd appreciate some food.



I got an

A Little Bit of History

My plans to share more pictures and stories about my visit to the cattle ranch with Mikey's family got thwarted by my illnesses, my horse's hoof abscess and the holidays, so now I will return to my regularly scheduled programming.




The Fourr Ranch is located in the northwest corner of the Dragoon Mountains at the entrance to Fourr Canyon just outside of Benson, Arizona. It was established by

On the 4th Day of Abscess, My True Love...

This is what I saw when I looked out the window after the horses had eaten their breakfast and had their blankets removed.  Gabbrielle started laying down when she got her abscess, and I guess the other two horses decided that the warm sand was pretty comfortable too.

On the 4th day of abscess, my true love gave to me a horse that actually cantered.  Shhhhhh.  Don't tell the vet.  I'm

Oh, Mercy Me!

I had promised to share some pictures I took of Mikey's daughter Mercy from our weekend at the ranch.  The camera just loves that girl.  Mikey gave me permission to post pics of her family, in case you're wondering.  So, here goes...



These puppies were skittish when we first arrived, but Mercy was able to charm them and pick them up.  Once she did, Mikey started examining the pups and picking

Gabbrielle Update

Gabbrielle has been wearing a poultice for nearly two days now and still no improvement in her limp.  I bought a bag of Epsom salts for soaking in, and then came to the realization that there was no way I would get this horse's hoof into a bucket of warm water and salts.  She's afraid of buckets, even though I occasionally feed grain out of them.  I set a bucket of water beside her and she

Minor Progress

The vet's assistant called me in the morning and set up an appointment for mid-afternoon to come take a look at Gabbrielle.  She called again in mid-afternoon to say they would be an hour and 15 minutes late.  I forewarned her that I have no light inside my barn, so hopefully they can get here before dark.  I do have a couple of floodlights that point at the barn, but it's not enough light to do

My Poor Baby

I've been slow to post pictures and stories of my ranching experience, because I got walloped with some kind of virus that has been attacking my face and body in new ways each day. I keep thinking, "Surely, this too will come to an end," but so far recovery just hasn't been in the cards for me.

My husband had scheduled a boat trip as an anniversary gift this past weekend, and I was determined

How Ferdinand was Caught

Gathering cattle at the Fourr Ranch was an interesting process. Bob and Donna, the owners, were short on staff the weekend I was there. The only people they had on horseback were themselves, Rodney, Wade, Mikey, and Mercy. Derik handled the cattle on foot in the pens. Janis and I did our own thing racing around in the Purple People Eater taking pictures. Throughout the weekend Janis, Derik

In a New-To-Me, Yet Very Old Land

This past weekend I met up with Mikey's family and followed them in my truck down to the Fourr Ranch just outside Dragoon, Arizona to photograph the cowboy/cowgirl lifestyle of gathering cows.  Up until this point, my experiences of the ranching lifestyle were limited to memories of nearly being gored by a bull on a relative's South Dakota farm when I was 4-years-old and having my brother grab my

The Jackalope Has Struck Again

I took an extra long walk out in the desert this morning, and had multiple jackalope sightings.  Of course, it blazed past so fast that I couldn't lift my camera to my eye before it was gone.  But I'd swear that thing is bigger than my Corgi Midge, and it was stalking me.  It ran in front of me several times as I walked in a large loop covering three miles.  Here are some pictures I did get:

Serious Work

First off, I apologize.  I had to turn comment verification back on because some annoying anonymous user, probably a bot, keeps leaving comments loaded with links advertising crap.  It's been hitting one of my posts over and over, so I block comments from that post, and then it finds another post to pick on.  I'm hoping that if I leave comment verification on for a while, it will go away all

Guess Who Came to Visit?

Mikey and Monte from A Horseshoeing Housewife / Postcards from Arizona blog!  She hasn't blogged since her wedding, so I know you all would be excited to see her.  We've been trying to get together for a while, but don't live that close to each other, so I really appreciated her traveling the distance to come ride with me and Bombay.

Monte is an awesome horse.  Mikey told me that Monte is

Are You My Mother?

A couple of ravens have joined the herd.  I was cleaning stalls this morning and one of them sat on the fence cawing right beside Bombay.  Bombay gave it a little nudge with his nose and it didn't move.  A short time later he was drinking out of the water trough and the raven swooped over his head missing him by just a couple of feet.  It's wings went whoosh whoosh whoosh, and he didn't even