Wow it’s been a long time since I posted, a very long time!!
The last couple of weeks have been very busy. Let’s begin on Dec 30th when we headed over to one of our favorite trails, Miller Peninsula State Park. Dad took the lead while leading my littlest sister on Sundance. Mom followed on Echo and Marissa road Abu( the old man at 25 yrs young) while I took up the rear on Iroquois the paint, desperately trying to video tape the whole time. Let’s just say going down hill was a little tricky, but luckily the phone didn’t drop. There was a little puddle that posed a problem with Echo’s beautifully manicured nails so Mom did some water training with her. Echo didn’t want to step in the puddle(she is an Arab after all …think desert creature), so she jumped over the puddle and tried to go round the puddle but with some work she accepted the wet Northwest habitat we live in and Mom got her walking calmly through the puddle. It was a beautiful sunny day and the perfect easy trail to trot down on a Sunday afternoon. After unloading the horses at home and changing out of our muddy riding clothes, we headed over to Papa and Caribou’s house for dinner. What a great day the Lord has BLESSED us with, on the Lord’s Day!
Meefy has been training a 14 yr old miniature horse named Bluebell to cart for a client on and off for a little over a year. She has been doing an awesome job and this week she was able to hook up Bluebell to a new wagon the owners bought for Bluebell. Go Meefy!!
On New Years Day, Dad, Mom, Meefy and I headed up to one of Dad’s hay fields that has an access to a trail. A friend was able to meet us up there, so all five of us headed out on the trail. We had to ride down the road to get to the trail head. This was Echo’s first time riding on the road and she didn’t even flinch when the cars passed her! She is kind of a dramatic Arab and we are so proud she kept her emotions under control. Once we were on the trail, we cantered up a hill to a lookout, were we could see Canada. What a beautiful place God made! After we did a tack check, our friend sadly had to turn back towards home, but my family and I were able to keep on riding. On the trail, we encountered huge puddles, logs and motorcycles. Amazingly, Echo took everything in stride. She was ecstatic but completely under control even when we let the horses gallop down an old logging road! She has turned into such a good girl. Mom and Echo make a great team! The only trouble we had on the trail was when Iroquois lost an easy boot. Apparently someone (me) wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice it came off. Now the question was how far back did down the trail did it fall off. So all four of us reversed directions and slowly made out way back down the trail trying to find the boot. Luckily, it didn’t take long to find. Iroquois had thrown it perfectly in the middle of the trail.
Then that night I got a 101 degree fever. Ugh, now for the next seven days I am stuck on the couch while Meefy and Dad get to go on a trail ride with Lisa and a 4-H friend. So unfair!!!
When I was finally all better it was time to get back to work. Alaska enjoyed her week off but was happy to start training again. Alaska has learned many new things in the past couple of weeks including loading into the trailer, ponying behind a horse and round penning. She did so much better loading into the trailer than I thought she would. I expected a long training session, but after just a couple minutes she hopped into the trailer! We then turned around and came back out quietly. We repeated it 8 times and she did great each time, although by the 8th time she looked at me like, “again?”
Ponying took a little longer for her to figure out. Ponying is were you are riding one horse and leading an other horse. At first, she wanted to stay right behind Iroquois instead of up by my knee where she was supposed to be. But she eventually got it and by the end of our training session we were able to trot! What a smart filly!
While I was sick, I read John Lyons book about raising baby horses and it had a section about round penning. So I decided to try out my new knowledge. I asked Mom to help me and we headed out to the round pen. I asked her to do it first while I watched and then I tried my hand at it. I have round penned quite a bit with horses that have been round penned before but this was the first time I had round penned a baby. She did so well. She joined up really quick and we were able to walk across the round pen with out her running away! Every time we practice, she gets better! I also put my little sister’s saddle on her and she did great. Alaska has picked up so much in such a short time and is so eager to learn new things! Thank you, KT Ranch in Connell, Washington! She is such an outstanding quality filly.
Here is a picture I found of Alaska from when she was younger. She was adorable!
On January 13th, we were blessed with 10 baby piglets. 3 of them were less than half the size of the other 8, so we had to bring them inside the house to raise and bottle feed. A couple days later another pig had 7 more piglets but she didn’t take care of them and four of them didn’t make it. So now we have six cute and demanding baby pigs in our kitchen. My poor mother had to feed them every 2 hours even through the night. I can sleep through any alarm, so I was no help for night feedings. Luckily, now they can go longer and she is getting a little more sleep. She is not referring to them as blessings anymore. But sleep deprivation does cloud the judgement.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget to follow!
January 28, 2019
Steffen Stampede 
My cousin has a horse names Sundance!
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