How to make a mini unicorn

So this is Ollie, my younger mini. He is very sweet and into kids and loves everybody. Excepting maybe me currently since I dressed him up as a unicorn last weekend! Oh well he will get over it! So this is him all fussy, as usual. I didn't want to have him be a fussy unicorn so I insisted on clipping him. Big mistake! I ended up spending almost $90 on a pair of clippers (which is cheap!) and used some clipper guides from a pair of people clippers on them. They worked wonderfully!

See how much hair came off? It went very quick!

The end product! Although he has clipper lines I still think he looks better now!

Everything that came off of him.

Ah yes, so this was the saddle (which I didnt' end up using) I used two pieces of foam, one I left normal and the other I cut the ends off of to make a pommel and cantle. I used foam and fabric adhisive to glue them together.

His halter, I spray painted with fabric paint and his horn.

His horn started out as a cone that I used a knife to get the main bulk off then sanded so it was smooth (ish). You can see where I broke the tip sanding it and had to glue it back together.

The saddle almost done. I spent a lot of time on this, its too bad I didn't like it in the end. Oh and I got some help at this point. Can't see who?

Yep! That is John Tom, my horse/dog/cat. He runs around to the mission impossible theme song!

Right, actaul horse pictures now, almost unicorn. We have now sufficently glittered him, and he is starting to look pathetic. I think he knows that everyone thinks he looks like a girl, and so the glitter doesn't help.

All ready and on our way (we walked from my sisters house to the party at the church). I am suppost to be a fairy, but in the end I just threw some stuff together that looked warm. My sister wanted to be a princess so she worn an old prom dress.

I look more like a peasent then a fairy. Maybe I am a peasent fairy. Whatever I was it worked with Ollie.

Loren got some great shots of the kids, but I wasn't sure it would do to put them here, so I will just put this picture of my and Ollie on (ok and barely one kid).

We did a photo shoot back at the house.

Yep, twinkly toes works!

Please someone save me!!!

Being a great little mower and enjoying his after torture treat!

This was him later that day at home. We didn't get any good shots of the stars, but he had two pink glitter stars on his butt. The kids all wanted to touch it and kept showing us that they had glitter on them, like they didn't know where it had come from! But apperently even if all the glitter is gone the glue is still there!

And that is how to make a unicorn! (and torture your horse in the meantime!)

The great unicorn post!

Yes, we really did dress Ollie up as a unicorn! Although the day did not go as smoothly as I would have liked.
1. It was overcast! So the glitter that I spent $60 on wasn't as pretty as it could have been, and the gold dust sparkle didn't show up at all.
2. I didn't put the saddle on. The saddle I worked several hours on and stressed over quite a bit. Emily talked me into the gold faberic and I thought it ended up looking tacky.
3. Ollie it turns out does not like to have children on his back bareback. The birthday girl barely got a ride in before he bucked (luckly mini bucks are not much of anything and my sister was there holding on) It was embarassing because Ollie is usually so good with children and I didnt' want everyone to think I had brough an unsafe horse.

But other then that things went well, Ollie did look very cute, and the kids were very excited and the parents were pretty into it too. Espeshally since I cliped him, after spending $80 on clippers. Really for how much money I spent on the whole thing it would have been nicer if there hadn't been so many problems.

So I am going to post pictures on the next post of the whole process. Start to finish.

Some pictures of Kezi!

Classic muddy Kezi, she got caked with mud over the winter and I was unable to get her clean, I had to wait for her to shed out to get the mud all off!

Kinda pudgy here!!

Very pretty in the morning!

This is from the week I brought her home.

So my one year post for Kezi, a week late!

So I have had Keziah a year now. Feels wierd since I have only riden her a handful of times. And only bareback and not very far, so it almost doesn't count. She has been a source of great vexation and stress over the last year, but somehow she feels worth it.

So for this anniversery post I am going to talk about why I got her, give a brief (I promise!) overview of the past year and my future plans for her, at least for this summer.


So last May, ah just coming off the whole horrible ordeal with Lucy (which was hard not only because she is my baby but because she got sick almost exactly a year after my mom did) I was desperate to ride. We had finished the chelation therapy with her and it was oviouse that she was going to recover most if not all of what was compromised. At that time I wasn't sure if she would recover completly or not but felt confident that she would never be the endurance horse I would want, so what better time to get an endurance mount, right?
Even though I wanted to spend the year training an endurance mount I didn't entend on buying another horse, but after talking with my endurance friend, who didn't think I would be able to find someone who would lease me a horse for the year (I believe that was bad advice) I tenatively looked on BayEquest. I didn't really mean to find Kezi, I was planning on just browseing to see what was on the market. But fate intervined and brought me Kezi. As soon as I saw the picture of her I knew she was mine. I had one of those "this horse was ment to come to me" kind of moments. After talking with the owner I almost didn't get her since my boyfriend didn't think it was a good idea. But again, fate intervined and I decided that I wanted to do what would make me happiest.
I went to see Kezi before I brought her home, but it didn't really matter, I knew I wanted her.

So the day I brought her home started it all. After spending three hours trying to get her in the trailer (owners: oh yeah she loads great!! HA!) we went on our merry way. Not 200 feet down the road I saw what made my heart stop; the escape door on my trailer was open and a head was sticking out. Now I don't tie in trailers, well I do Kezi now, but my other horses are never tied, and since it was a long ride I didn't tie her so she could put her head down. Well that was a big mistake.
So I could see that she was ready to jump out, my heart stoped and all I could say was "oh shit" over and over again.
Loren couldn't see what was happening but figured it had to do with her, so at the same time I brought the truck to a stop he jumped out, but she ended up jumping out and running around the front of the truck. On a side note, this has also happened to Lucy, but Lucy plastered herself against the trailer partition until I came to save her (I think she thought she was going to fall out!) Oviously I have now put lockes on the escape doors, but at the time I didn't remember that that door did that because I never open it to load my horses.

Anyway, we cought Kezi and got her back into the trailer in about a half an hour and went home. Over the next several days I got the horses acquainted, Lucy tried to attack Kezi and therefore that is how Ollie came to live with Kezi, I didn't trust the mares together and I didnt' think Huck would get along with Kezi (which I was very right).
I got to spend a week playing with her and lunging her (oh boy is she a brat with a lot of energy!) then she went lame. Very lame, and thats sort of what its been like ever since.

The first vet I took her too thought for sure that she had a shoulder injury of some sort, so I took her to Davis to be x-rayed. They did not agree and blocked her leg and said it was her knee. Oh and she also choked while she was there, not a fun trip, unless you consider Lucy's lung x-rays comeing out fun.
So she came back to being sound in the initial weeks following and was sound for about 6 to 7 weeks (she had been lame for about 6). I rode her a couple times but never anything much, then after a trimming where I trailered her and she was rearing a lot, she went lame again.

This time I had my chiro out who couldn't figure out anything with the shoulder but did find something going on with the neck that she thought was entirely different (thanks Nancy what did me a world of good!!). So off to Stinebeck (it was recomend by my new vet) to get neck x-rays. They took the neck x-rays, thought they saw something that they later changed their minds about, and said that they too thought her lameness was in the knee and probably a ligament tear so lets scoped it! For only 2k!! Ha! yeah, not fun! But then they got the EPM results back (because apperntly if it isn't colic, then everything can be diagnosed as EPM) and were then convinced that she had EPM. They based this off some facts that were about viable as horse poo! Really they were just elaborting on things I had said that were just her personality so they could get me to believe them. I almost did the EPM treatment. But then got smart.
Over winter she had a hard time with the mud, it was horrible and I started considering putting her down. I took her to see Dr. Peterson at Pennisula Equine at my chiros recomendation. Really liked him a lot. He was a lot more practicle then any of the previous vets and he restored some of my faith in vets, not all, but some.
He thought that a bone scan would be the only way to see what was really going on but that costs about $1100 plus her overnight expenses. We decided for now to try putting her on a low dosage of anti-inflamitories to see if that would help. She has gotten lame twice while on it (once was a very intertaining day where she just up and decided to visit Lucy, by jumping over her fence, well you can imagin what that did to her leg!) but it went away very quickly.

So as to my plans for the summer. For now keep her on her meds, but I am getting tired of inaction, thats all I have been doing with her and it oviously doesn't work! So from now on we are going for more, longer walks. I may even start taking her for Lucy and I's moring runs (at a walk only) and let them get used to being out together and then pony her off Lucy. I will have to see what Kezi does, Lu I am not worried aout at all, she will behave herself, but Kezi is hard to tell.

I may try and get the money together this fall to do the bone scan, or turn her out up at carolyns. I don't really want her going through another winter at my house lame in a paddock. So either she has to be sound so she can be turned out with Lu or up at Carolyns.

Well I think that is it!


Next: Unicorns!!

Ah the farrier has spoken!

And now stressed out horsey princess is no longer over reacting! No I don't call myselt horsey princess, my dad does! He has blue tooth in his truck (the cool kind that works through the rear veiw mirror) and for whatever reason it cannot disinguish my name, so he put me in as horsey princess. For some reason that always makes me feel closer to him.

Anyway, Luke called this afternoon and made me feel a lot better about Lucy. He said that it sounded like a lot of little things. Mostly that her hooves haven't toughend up yet from the winter and her year off, and that she might have gotten a bad stone bruise as well.

He did say not to ride her on any hard trails with a lot of rocks for a while as that could make her worse. But that as the ground drys out her feet will harden up again, and if I wanted to speed the process up I could put iodine or terpentine on her hooves.

So I will go back to riding her just at home for a while and then see about walking her up Gazos to ride on Johannson as it is a fairly soft trail.

Interesting weekend

So I put off posting about my weekend because it SUCKED! For the most part anyway. Lets start if the really sucky parts:

So on friday I determined that I was not going to find the charger to my trimmers and decided that I would have to buy some new ones when I went over the hill for my perscription. We went all over the place and finally determined that I was going to have to buy some new ones. We didn't end up doing it that day and when I got home I kept looking for the charger and came across my mom's old trimmers (ment for people) and my dad suggested that I try them. So on Sunday I did and found out that they don't really work on horses, perticulary fussy little mini's! I Tryed again on Moday night to no avail. So now I am either going to have to buy brand new ones (and be out $80 to $100) or find someone I can borrow some off of. I wish I had gotten around to clipping Ollie a while ago so I wouldn't be so pressed for time. The birthday is Saturday and I still have to put his saddle together and make the alterations to my dress! EEKK!

So sucky part of my weekend number 2:

Lucy is off. I wouldn't say lame exactly, but deffinatly off. I took up a trail we go on all the time and right away she was tripping over rocks and wanting to walk on the side of the trail. I pushed her a little bit at the trot to see if it was still there. Not only was it still there but way worse at the trot. We didn't go very far and I walked her back not wanting to take any chances. I notices coming back that she seemed kinda off on her right front more then her left front, espeshally on the pavement. When we got home I trotted her out on the road but she didn't show any signs of lameness there. If this were a stand alone thing I might not be so concerned about it, but since she was also having similar issues a couple weeks back before she was trimmed, but is not very much so worse, I feel it needs to be adressed right away. I would deffinatly like this to just be her hooves being imbalanced. Several people on HGS suggested laminitis, both from the way she is moving and from her diet change over the winter.

Sucky part of the weekend number 3:

IT WAS HOT!!!!!! Horribly hot! Like "don't even get out of beds its not worth it" hot! It was 103 in San Jose when we went to get the hay on Sunday. It was like steping out into a oven.

Ok now for the one good thing over the weekend:

I added two new additions to our animal kingdom! Two new parakeets. I think I am going to name them Africa and Fiji. I think they might both be boys, a welcome relife from Gisele and Yavain! I will post pictures of them as soon as my phone feels like behaving (its stuck on the favorits page and I can't get it back to the home page! grrr!) Africa is sort of teal (Loren picked him out) and Fiji is mostly white with some blue. I saw them on Friday when we were looking for clippers.

Also, Kezi is lame again. Quite lame too. Limping even at the walk. I am going to e-mail Russ nd see what he has to say. I'm not sure what to do at this point, I am still not ready to give up on her. I may turn her out for the summer and fall and just see what happens. I guess it also depends on Lucy. I may spend my summer hand walking two lame horses! Great just want I so wanting after doing that all last summmer!

Hey maybe I will have better news next post, one can only hope. Oh and as if to add injury to insult, the Santa Cruz Horsesmans association is having an endurance clinic in June. Julie Surh and other top riders will be there and they will go over what to expect at an endurance ride.

I never talk about business here, but sufice to say, my life sucks right now, both with the horses and at my job. And I have finals next week.

So now what?

This moring I took Lucy on her second ride after having two weeks off becuase of her hooves. She was again good, didn't trip, wasn't slow, seemed eager to be out on the ride. But both times she coughed. I haven't had her cough out on a ride in several months, now she does it on two rides in three days? On this morings ride I did some walk trot tranisions at first but then at the last downward tranisition she sort of stoped on her own with a groan. That coupled with the coughing is concerning me.


I think it is time to have her scoped again. But the questions is, where? Idealy I would like the origonal vet to do it, but I think she moved pretty far away. I know I can contact her through Davis but then they might expect me to bring Lu up there when I would perfer to take her to Peneq, for both easy of distance and because I really like Dr. Peterson. But in something like this I think having a vet who knows her history is really importaint and I know that there is at least one vet there that was involved before, but I am not sure if she was present for the scopings.

I think one way or another she needs to be scoped before I start asking her for very much trotting out on the trail, even if I were to give her another couple months off. Which I don't really feel is necissary. Probably what I will do is keep her on the same schedule of easy rides with increasing distance until after I have paid Alicia's care credit for Kezi's stuff, which I can really do as soon I can pay myself back from the money I transfered into my dads account. Then take her to Davis or Peneq. The other option would be to have Kaci come out and do my spring vaccinations and teeth floating and see if she can scope her, although I would vastly perfer it was done in stocks, Kaci may not have that capability anyway. In that case that would put off scoping her for another month or more.

I have to pay that money off on the care credit by June.
I should have Kaci out in June for yearly checkup.
So that would leave July, although scoping her probably won't cost that much, but Kaci's vist should.

Well, I guess I can only wait and see what happens as far as money goes. Oh and I will be having Luke out again in June as well so that is another expense!

I better go, I have a very mad ducky in my office who will not shut up!!

Fun, random pictures, becuase I cannot figure out how to work my blog!

Pics of Lu's feet after her trim. I just relized that none of these seem to be her fronts! Which are the worse ones! But although her hooves are still not quite the right angle, they are a lot better.

John Tom loves to sit and play on hay! But once Kezi came over he was outa there! He knows Kezi isn't as tolerant as Lucy is, but he still does stuff around her most cats wouldn't dream of doing! Like sitting on her food!

Miss Kezi looking pretty in the morning, and Ollie who would not move when I fed!

Widdle baby duckys!

Eli! My pretty boy!

Sunday afternoon!

Yipppy! I got to Sunday! We had a mothers day breakfast in the barn after going up to see mom and give her flowers. Loren stayed with us through breakfast. We then talked about the barn and what it need to get it going to be able to rent it out. My dad would like to rent it out for events as well as overnights.

But the really great thing is..... you haven't guessed it yet? Really though, I mean come on! What else could get me this excited!? Well ok, what else could get me this excited that I am putting in my blog!?

Riding of course!!! Now don't you feel silly! Yep I got to ride again on Sunday. It felt like so much longer then two weeks. To Lucy too!
At first it felt like she was sucking back and not wanting to move out on the road, which may be the case, she may need shoes or boots for on the road. But once we got on the trail I started asking her to move out a little bit more. Up until the Y her speed was rather sporatic. Slow then fast and so on. Although she wasn't trying to turn around a whole bunch. After the Y she really sped up and was practicly running down the trail! But in a controled kind of way, not like before when it felt like she was just trying to get down the hill as soon as possible. This was more like she just wanted to move out more quickly. Going back up the hill she broke into the trot several times, which I allowed since I like to encurage her trot. Although we were headed towards home that is rather unuall for her at any time. Her pace was good on the way back but not rushing. She didn't trip at all, and seemed to enjoy our ride. All in all I was VERY pleased!
I ment to get up and ride this morning but couldnt' pull myself out of bed, so I will ride on Wednesday as usual and try to get back to our old shedule.

But yeah! I am riding again!

Friday and Saturday

Soooo, I finally got luke out on Friday. He brought his girlfirend with him. Or I at least assume she was his girlfirend since I know he has one and can't imagine he would bring a girl along that he wasn't dating.
She came because she wanted to see the minis, which she thought were cute, but lost interest in them when the mommy duck brought her ducklings down to eat. Loren gave her some bread to feed to them and she just adored them!

Everyone behaved themselfs for trimming, except Huck. Lucy was normal as was Ollie, Kezi I think actaully fell asleep! Luke was happy that she is doing better with him! Although I did notice that after standing on her bad leg for a while while he was working on the other one, she did rest it a bit afterwards.

Luke felt that Lucy's toes were a bit long, and that her feet were growing in a bit unbalanced but wasn't too horribly bad. We did decide to schedule their next trimming soon then normal. So we will be going seven weeks inbetween. I think as long as Luke can actaully make it to this appointment then that will be perfect. If I could figure out how to post pictures in the middle of a post then I would put the pictures of Lucy's hooves here, but alas, I suck at those kinds of things!

Right, so after Luke left Loren and I got ready to go to his sisters for the night. I was supprised at how willing I was to leave the horses. My dad agreed to feed them in the morning but it ment that they would miss getting grain and suppliments and meds, but thats not the end of the world.

I won't put much down about our night at his sisters, mostly becuase there wasn't much to tell. I have never gotten along with Lorens sister that well, it probably doesn't help that my sister doesn't like her much now even though they were friends when they were younger. I didn't have too much horse withdrawl, but then we stayed up too late for me to feel much of anything! Then they gave me coffee in the morning, wow was that a bad idea! The most I will drink in the morning is tea, since I wake up just by going out to feed and such! But by the time we got in the car to leave I was sort of over my mocha high!

Although all in all my weekend wasn't that great until Sunday afternoon. I won't go into the details because I really don't want to think about it much.

I do so solomly swear....

.... to spend more time doing my hobbies that don't suck the life and money out of me (um yes Lucy and Kezi I am talking about you here!) Although I don't consider my horses my hobby, they are more like a way of life.

But enough about the horses! I actaully ment to post this last week when it was all new and everything but I had a horrible week and didn't feel like it.

So it all started with Alicia wanting to know if I wanted to go to some reenactments this summer. We haven't gone for two or three years. Our group got a little too flightly, we never knew what our group was going to be or even what side they were going to be on! Plus, there are not many younger people in that group. So Alicia thinks we need to branch off with Gail or join a new group. But one way or another we would all (Alicia, Stacy and I, and maybe Heather) like to go back to reenacting again. I mean we all have a good supply of dresses, and a very nice tent, and well we miss it! Although with training for endurance that could get my life a bit hectic. But I guess we will see how that works out.

So from their we started into talking about sewing and everything we needed to sew for Cambria's birthday, which make me remember all the unfinished sewing projects I had. Which of course made me want to get me sewing room set up again and finish them! So I haven't done it yet but I really, really want to! So I made a pact with myself that I would, even if it ment spending a little bit less time with the horses. Although I think it more means giving up relaxing at night after work. Grrrr!

Hopefully I will have updates on the progress of my new pact! Haha!

Let the horse torture begin!!

Ok so dressing Ollie up as a unicorn isn't really torture, espeshally since we decided that spray painting him white was deffinatly a bad idea!! Haha! So instead the poor guy is going to be super glittery! The more glitter the better seems to be the idea!

So here is the plan so far:

Gold twinkle toes on his hooves
Gold twinkle gel in his mane and tail
Little braids in his mane
French braid his tail
All over gold sparkle dust
Purple twinkle stars on his butt
Gold halter and rope reins
Gold saddle cloth over the top of my square pad, with foam for the pommel and cantel and a flat strap going around his middle to keep it in place
Gold horn attached to his halter (that will needs some craftiness!)

And....


Actaull that might be it! For now anyway!

This weekend I am going to give him a good bath and see if I can't get some more coat off of him. Then I might clip him if I can find or pick up clipper heads. That way if I make any mistakes they might have time to grow out and be fixed. We will see. This will be my first time doing a body clipping, or any clipping other then bridal path!

Then for my own costume, because Alicia says that I have to dress up as a fairy, I am looking to buy a cute flowery dress that I can modify and add wings to. I want to be able to wear the dress other places afterwards. If it werent' for a kids party I would just use one of my monet dresses, but those won't work for a kids party nor for being around the horses!! Too bad!

Will update as things come along and get some pictures too! I think I might pay Loren to come along with us and take pictures.

Well a quick update on my non horse weekend

It was pretty boring actually! Loren and I pretty much just slept in, read and watched movies!

But there were a couple things of note:

WE HAVE BABY DUCKS!

Ducklings are absolutly the cutest of all babies! Thsese are not the first ducklings I have had around and I still wanted to follow them all over and watch how cute they are!

Since it was raing off and on Lucy decided to be an idiot to keep warm. I had not put her blanket on since the tempature was so warm despite the rain. But for whatever reason she felt it necissary to run around and buck and reat and jump over bushes. At one point she almost ran Eli over when I shooed her away from me. Even though I get pretty annoyed at her I still have to marvel at not only her dexterity but beauty when she run around. She looks more like a TB when she is running around and wet! She is also very good at knowing where to put on the brakes coming down the hill so that she slides just up to the fence or tree but not into it!

Kezi on the other hand could hardly move without sliping since her paddock gets slipery with any little amount of rain, and was very grateful to be moved back into the other paddock where it was dryer. I didnt' take her out for a walk at all over the weekend which I feel guity about now. Kezi is a mess and needs to be cleaned up as well since she full heartedly believes in rolling in the mud!

Hopefully I will get Luke out sometime this week so I can ride!!!!!!!!!!!

A Miss Kezi post!

I feel like bloging about Kezi today! Maybe its because I have been having so much fun taking her out for walks lately and that has been my only horse contact this week. Its funny that right when I started thinking about putting her down because she was so bad during the winter is right when I started bonding with her more! Not that I didn't like her before, she just never really felt like "my" horse like my other horses do! Even though I have spent more money on her then the two mini's combined! But Lucy still managed to rack up bigger vet bills last year.

I have been obsesivly watching Kezi move for any sign of lameness and gotta say that whatever is wrong with her, its entirely pain related! Maybe once a week at the most I see her do something that is lameness related, and at this point some of it, like her resting her hoove on her toe, could just be habit. Espeshally since I have seen her do it with the other hoove a couple times now. Also, ever since she has been on the anti-inflamitories she has been laying down with her leg underneither her, rather then stuck out in front of her.
I love seeing her trot up to the fence in the morning, she has such an amazing trot! I know she shouldn't be trotting right now, but unless I allow her the space to do so she will start rearing to get her energy out and that is really bad for her!
Part of me wants to keep her on the pain meds all summer just so she can feel good and be happy! But hopefully she will stay sound while on continued paddock rest through the summer.
I also wish I could take her on longer walks. I'm sure she more then enjoys our little jaunts out to eat grass, but a longer walk would be nice. I don't think it would be a problem if it weren't for the steep hill! But eventually we will have to go down it to go for any decent langth walks. But that is a ways away right now.

She is starting to shed out and loose her winter weight, I have always thought Lucy was a beautiful horse, and still do, but I defy anyone to not admit that Kezi is drop dead gorgeous! She is the kind of horse you see on those horse calenders. Like the one that I have in my office right now! HAah! None of those horses are as pretty as Kezi though!

Well lets hope I have a good weekend and start feeling better, I dont' mind being really sick becuase I get to rest and get better, but when I am just a little bit sick then I still go to work and then it takes longer to recover! Grrr!

Oh and its raining, but really warm, its wierd!