Category: Horses

Newly Married

2/26/2011

{Isaac and Lydi}

*happy sigh* Ahh, they're so adorable.

So! My brother commissioned me to render a photo of him and his wife on their wedding day into a drawing, and here are the fruits of my labor after about 3 days of work. (Okay, it was kinda spread out. But still.)

This was the first time I tried to draw using graphite and Prismacolor pencils. In the past the graphite base sketch would blend with the color and turn it a muddy color, but through carefully erasing the base sketch before filling in with the color I managed to avoid any muddiness this time around. XD

Hence, I am pleased with this picture.

On to other subjects...I'm sure you people have noticed my comment about being busy and distracted on my front page.

Simply put, this week and part of the last I have been working for the farrier again. This usually involves being out all day in the cold and alternately shivering and sweating while pulling shoes/rasping hooves/'finishing' shoes/etc. And it's been awesome.

(Today I was thinking while taking a brief break from wrestling a shoe off, and wondered what exactly I found so awesome about quivering from exertion, dripping with sweat, and hanging onto the feet of cantankerous horses. I honestly don't know what I love so much about it yet. So I'll be getting back to you on that. XD)

The only not-awesome part is the fact that my foot got stepped on by a horse today, and while at the time it didn't hurt toooo bad (okay, I lie, it hurt like the very dickens and made me cry >.<) I was at least able to walk/limp on it with a minimum of pain. But after coming home and taking my boots and socks off I found that it was bruised, scraped, and swollen, and yesterday I could hardly walk on it. Sigh. Occupational hazard, I s'pose. (This morning I CAN walk on it, but I'm wearing slippers to work so I don't put it under any more undue stress)

On a more awesome note, I am now able to pull shoes off of a horse. *pumps fist* In the past three days I've pulled 18 shoes, and consequently my forearms and wrists are dying. But it's a satisfactory sort of dying. :p

{tis the season}

Also, yay for shedding. XD This jacket USED to be black...alas for the shedding of winter coats.

So between working for the farrier, at the gym (occasionally--usually when Will is at rehearsals), cleaning houses, and generally being insanely busy I haven't had time to sit down and breathe, much less update here. But the weekend is coming up, and along with it an opportunity to sit and actually relax. Ahh.

But I still love my job. XD

I'm also rather distracted where Mr. G is concerned...we're counting down the days until I go down to Florida. (46 days to go! 8D) To say that I'm looking forward to going is the understatement of the year...I'm going to be there for two weeks, and already we've got so much planned and potentially planned that I have no idea how we're going to get it all done.

So far I've heard plans for going to the beach, attending Barberville (two days, complete with dancing and an insane amount of music), watching movies, going to a county fair, being there for Mr. G's 21st birthday (he sounds so young! *sobs*), going out to eat, visiting a Le Crueset outlet, Easter, ice skating, and more beach.

It's going to be awesome trying to get everything done. *happeh sigh*

Your blissfully happeh hostess,

The Fox

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Old Pictures

2/2/2011

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Well...not really. They just look old and awesome. XD

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I call it...."Rebels in the North"

We took the horse for a ride one of the afternoons--I have pictures in color, but I think they look more like Confederate rebels in sepia. :P

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Colletta was very good, I might add--she was very polite and didn't give any problems aside from the occasional trotting when she shouldn't have.

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She was supposed to trot here. XD

And within 20 minutes we were all frozen and went inside to huddle around the stove and talk about how fun it was to freeze our tails off. The end.

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My laconic-ness is due to the fact that yesterday/last night we had a blizzard and there's is several feet of snow drifted around the house. I'm getting ready to go out and take pictures, and my mind is completely not on the trip.

(Well....in a way it is. But I'll explain that later. ;D)

Your hostess,

The Fox

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The Past Week...

12/24/2010

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...has been really stinkin' busy. O.o

But good as well.

So. For the past four days I've been working for the farrier. The days have been long, kinda hard, rather cold, and sore-muscle-inducing, but it's great too. I don't have a whole lot to say here, but I'll try to explain the pictures here, at least.

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This here is Ladybug...she rides with us EVERYWHERE. And she is very happy and generally an awesome dog. (Joe calls her 'Killer Dog', which cracks me up.)

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This horse should be given a medal, because she stood very quietly and calmly with nary a flinch while I spent ten minutes wrestling a shoe off. Pulling shoes takes a lot of leverage, let me tell you...

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Oh yes...one of the places we went on Monday had two little donkeys (not sure if they were minis or not...they were roughly the same size of the miniature pony). I have officially fallen in love with them and want a little donkey now.

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The miniature pony...she was a bit of a pain to trim, but when they're that tiny it's easy to subdue 'em. XD

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This was my favorite... *squeezes* He acted kinda like a dog, by coming over and leaning on my leg until I would scratch his head or pull on his ears, and when I knelt down to watch Joe trim the full-sized pony he would rest his head on my neck and back. XD

(I'm know that that's not good ground manners...but he was still stinkin' adorable.)

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Ahh, cute pony...but I still like the donkeys better. XD

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Ye olde rig. I've driven this baby a few times over the week, and according to Joe I'm getting the hang of it. Just don't let the clutch out too quickly...be smoooooooth. :P

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This is the knife-sharpening-station...it's attached to the inside of the trailer door and has a whet-stone type thingy and a buff brush. I'd say that the knives get sharpened every other day or so...dull knives are NOT fun to use. :/

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I sharpened these...aren't they purty? In a glittery sort of way. XD

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This is a very nice stud that Joe trimmed...I got several videos of the process just for the heck of it. I maaaay post it, if I ever get around to it. XD

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Ah yes, I gets to wear an apron. I can't do a whole lot yet (not strong enough/don't have the right technique for pulling or nailing shoes), but I do get to rasp their hooves. The apron keeps my jeans kinda clean and if the rasp slips and hits my leg it won't tear my jeans.

So that's been a brief glimpse in the past week...most of the times we've been working in barns, which REALLY helps (it may not be extremely cold temperature-wise, but after standing around for a couple of hours in a cold breeze certain parts go numb and it's not pleasant). I'm really enjoying this job...it's long hours and hard work, but very interesting and I get to meet a lot of really neat people.

Your hostess,

The Fox

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'Nother Drawing

10/27/2010

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I've had images of Pegasus-style horses floating around in my head for about three days now (the inspiration struck at 11:30 Monday night O.o), so I finally brought up a picture of Violet and drew her with wings. :P

Pegasus-Violet

Nothing really special...it was more or less a reason to draw a horse AND wings in the same picture in a short amount of time. And an excuse to draw with a Bic pen. XD This is up in the Doodle-art section!

More involved post coming up later!

~The Fox

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Sunday Morning

10/24/2010

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This morning I woke up to the phone ringing.

While trying to struggle out from under my warm blankets I somehow managed to get the 12-foot scarf that I fell asleep in tangled up in something, and while stumbling out of my room it caught me in mid-stride around my neck and prevented me from leaving my room until I got it untangled.

I think it's out to kill me.

When I finally got up to see who had called Mom and Dad already answered the phone...it was my brother Isaac, who is now down in Florida with his soon-to-be-in-laws.

To say that I am excited to meet these people is the understatement of the YEAR. I've been Facebooking back and forth with her brothers and several friends in the same Floridian area, and every comment gets me more hyped up for the trip. Yee. :D

I got to talk to Isaac this morning, but everyone else was out of the room so I didn't get to talk with the others at all. :/ But Skype has been mentioned, so... SOON!!

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And then I had to go outside and put the horses out on their pasture, so I took the camera and got some pictures of the horses. Yay.

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Getting Violet to stand for a close-up picture of her eye has been a goal of mine for a while...and it has finally been realized. XD

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It's been raining for the past couple of days, so Colletta is (of course) caked in mud. Siiiigh.

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SUN FLARE!!

Anyway. Leaving you with that tidbit of randomosity,

Your hostess,

The Fox

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Equine Reflections

9/15/2010

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People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are. ~Marya Mannes

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Riding: The art of keeping a horse between you and the ground. ~Author Unknown

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A horse which stops dead just before a jump and thus propels its rider into a graceful arc provides a splendid excuse for general merriment. ~Duke of Endinburgh

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The daughter who won't lift a finger in the house is the same child who cycles madly off in the pouring rain to spend all morning mucking out a stable. ~Samantha Armstrong

(...I was this kid when I was younger. XD)

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There is something about riding down the street on a prancing horse that makes you feel like something, even when you ain't a thing. ~ Will Rogers

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Trust in God, but tie your horse. ~ Anonymous

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He who said he made a small fortune in the horse business probably started out with a large fortune! ~ Anonymous

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A good horse should be seldom spurred. ~Thomas Fuller

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I would travel only by horse, if I had the choice. ~Linda McCartney

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19“Do you give the horse his strength
or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?
20Do you make him leap like a locust,
striking terror with his proud snorting?
21He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength,
and charges into the fray.
22He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;
he does not shy away from the sword.
23The quiver rattles against his side,
along with the flashing spear and lance.
24In frenzied excitement he eats up the ground;
he cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.
25At the blast of the trumpet he snorts, ‘Aha!’
He catches the scent of battle from afar,
the shout of commanders and the battle cry.

~Isaiah 39:19-25

Your hostess,

The Fox

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The Texas Invasion 2010, Pt. 6: Parks and Horses

8/13/2010

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On the last day we took the horses for a ride and walked around town. I hadn't ridden either of them for almost a week...I was beginning to suffer withdrawals. XD

(Thanks, 'Shlee, for taking pictures!)

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Violet: "That's trippy, man..."

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It looks like we were stopping to regroup here, but in actuality Will was trying to kill a horsefly.

Said horseflies have been TERRIBLE this year...both the horses have had bloody marks where they've been bitten. >.<

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Why do I have such cute friends? XD

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Thus ends the Illinois side of the Texan invasion. The NEXT week I went down to visit them...and there's a ton of pictures to go through there as well. XD

Your hostess,

The Fox

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Some Random Doodles

7/20/2010

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So after an interminable time of not drawing anything (except for figure sketches and random things like that) I finally churned out two pictures. AND they've been inked using my Wacom tablet! I think that I'm finally getting the hang of that darned thing!

The Pajama Game

The Joy of Riding

Both are in my Doodle-art category with full descriptions...so go check it out! 8D

On a slightly related note I've been inspired to draw random comics by the webcomic Today Nothing Happened. It's a journal-comic, based on things that happen in this girl's life, but it's very cute and addicting to read. So yeah. If you're bored and/or have time see if you can read it, because it's a lot of fun.

I took a TON of pictures of the play last week, and hopefully I can start uploading pictures in the next few days. Thursday Will and I are going to see 'Despicable Me' with some friends from the play, and by Friday I ought to be back in the swing of things (I'm under orders to stay quiet for a few days so my mouth-wounds won't start bleeding from exertion). So yeah...and now I have to go pick Will up from the gym (his brake line went out in his car, so he has no way to get home other than walking).

Enjoy the pics...hopefully I can doodle some more random things that have happened lately and use my Wacom to ink them, yes?

Your rambly hostess,

The Fox

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Today's Subject: Violet

7/7/2010

1 Comment

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Yesterday, during a thunderstorm, I noticed that Violet was freaking out and galloping around like a nutjob. So of course I immediately went outside, calmed her down, petted her, let her know that things were all right....

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*cough* Er. Uh, actually, I had a camera, and I spent most of my time trying to make her run again. ^^;

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Eventually she wasn't quite so freaked out, and kept stopping to give me a look like 'what are you doing?'

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Isn't she prettyful? ^-^

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Your hostess,

The Fox

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The 4th: A Rundown

7/6/2010

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July 4th, 2010: A day that will go down in infamy.

Things exploded.

People screamed.

Vehicles blared.

Horses ran willy-nilly, heedless of innocent passers-by.

The insanity was contagious.

People grouped and milled about in confusion, looking for purpose in the endless seas of faces....

.....

Okay, fine, it was a somewhat normal parade day. But everything I said was true. Mwahahaha...

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Even though it looked like rain in the early part of the morning I went ahead and braved the prospect of precipitation, taking an Aussie drover-style coat just in case it DID decide to let loose and rain on our parade, as it were.

(There's a song by that name. Hee hee. Now if only I knew what musical that was from... *ponders*)

Fortunately there was no letting loose of rain until I got home. But that's another story.

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When Colletta is thinking about grass, it is nigh impossible to get her to look at a camera with anything resembling a 'good' face. *sigh* Oh well, it was worth a shot.

So I left home around 11:20, having been told that the parade started at 1 PM. I rode all the way to the other end of town, past all the floats and vehicles (something around 3/4 to 1 mile one way), got my number for my place in the parade, and had to ride about a third of a mile back the way I came to get to my 'slot', as it were. By this point it was only about ten minutes to 12, so I took Colletta's bridle off and let her graze. This is the third time she's been in the parade, so even when cars backfire and the marching band was warming up with their flags she ignored it all.

(If I had ridden Violet, on the other hand...well, the likelihood that I would be writing this from a hospital bed would have increased dramatically. XD)

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Around 12:30 or so the other riders showed up, a couple I'd not met before. This was the first time they'd been in this particular parade, but the reason for that is because they only moved here a few years ago from northern Michigan--the man used to mark trails in Michigan, and he did it all by horseback.

The woman's name was Anita, and her horse is a 16.2 hand (i.e. almost 65 inches at the withers) Standardbred named Captain. He originally was a racing horse, the pacing kind.

An interesting tidbit, for the non-horse readers: a Standardbred pacing is faster than a normal horse galloping. And if you have ever seen a Standardbred racing outfit, you can see why it'd be a terrifying prospect.

(Sulkies are frightening in their flimsiness. That is all.)

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Anita's husband Gary had an Appaloosa that they had bought from the Bureau of Land Management. He's maybe 11 or 12--they aren't sure because he was bought as an adult, and his age had to be guessed by his teeth. XD

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I got Anita to take a picture of Colletta and me in our 'costume'--the fringy vest thing is Mom's from her days of performing and singing.

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(The Standardbred's ears in the bottom of the picture make me laugh. XD)

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I didn't have this picture on my camera...a friend of mine was in the crowd watching the parade, and I'm...uh...borrowing said picture from her Facebook account. (Thanks, Dani! XD)

The parade itself was a lot of fun--there were a lot of people who recognized me (mostly kids XD), which I always think is kind of funny. I'm not sure why, but it IS funny to have people yell "HI!" when you're obliviously going along. I dunno.

So Colletta was insanely calm for the entire parade, even when the car two feet in front of her nose revved his engine annoyingly. I am SO glad she's such a good horse...

After the parade we went home, I gave her some much-earned grain, and then I took an hour-long nap. XD I guess after that I was on a 'low' or something and really depressed...I'm not bipolar or anything, but yesterday was a day of mood swings.

*shakes head* Emotions. Gotta love 'em.

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So yeah...after parading and emotion-swinging (would that be related to cat-swinging? I wonder...) I tagged along with Mom and Dad to church, where there was a party of sorts while we waited for the fireworks to start.

Said fireworks are usually set off next to the high school, which is right across the street from church. I munched a bit on the assorted junk food (mm, hot dogs and chips XD) before Will and his various friends decided to go walking around town. I actually got several pictures of them, but...I dunno, I don't like posting pictures of people because I usually don't get very GOOD pictures of people. Sigh. Oh well, they're on Facebook where my friends can see them and that's all that matters. XD

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When the fireworks finally started, I got to experiment with the slow-shutter-speed on my camera...and I got some pretty awesome pictures. ^-^

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Presumably due to financial difficulties (it's Illinois...we're bankrupt...need I say any more?) the fireworks only lasted about 20 minutes, as opposed to 45 minutes. But I got some pretty sweet pictures while it lasted.

Then I went home and talked with Will about funny/mean texts to send to a person who shall not be named, and while I didn't send any it felt good to imagine his reactions to said texts. (They were quite mean...along the lines of doing something unspeakable to a vehicle or the like. And quite liberating, too.) Then I went to bed and my internal alarm clock woke me up at 6:30 and I was not amused. XD

Your run-on hostess,

The Fox

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Newly Married

Old Pictures

The Past Week...

'Nother Drawing

Sunday Morning

Equine Reflections

The Texas Invasion 2010, Pt. 6: Parks and Horses

Some Random Doodles

Today's Subject: Violet

The 4th: A Rundown

Molly Rose

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