A new month—and a time change. I am still getting used to the “shorter days”— it seems my head is thinking about my pillow a lot earlier in the day now. Supposedly, we gained an hour- but it seems with dark coming earlier, the days are shorter. Gain an hour, lose an hour-- I am always out of time anyway.

The weather turned warm so I was able to spread lime on one of my lease pastures on Friday. They bring the spreader wagons, 5 tons of lime at a time. I hook on with my trusty Kubota and go for it. Let me tell you- when you hook onto 5 tons—you know you have a load behind you ! We got a night and day of gentle rains after I was done.. so I am pretty happy about that. Can’t wait to see the difference in the growth in the spring. I like to care for my pastures as well as I can.. looking forward to the increased lushness and also the horses will benefit greatly from the higher nutrition levels in the grazing. With pony babies coming in the future.. I am planning ahead !

We brought up a few of the youngsters for new photo’s and some reminders in their training. They all got a trim and a stick measurement for our records.

OYY Hendrix will be turning 1 on the 15th. He is scheduled for his gelding on Tuesday. What a nice young man- he resembles his Dam, Zoe’s Day Dream. She is making super progress in her training and if Hendrix is anything like his Mom—he’s going to make a fabulous mount when he’s older. He’s one of Cherokee Storm’s tallest foals. He is built like his Mom.

OYY Jockomo also had a photo session and some basic training reminders. He was born in February of this year. My trainer, Lisa, was working with Jockomo and she commented that he was a lot like OYY Buster Brown to work with. That makes sense—as I reminded her—they are paternal brothers and their dams are maternal sisters. Once again, I will say—why change bloodlines if what you have is working so well ? Jockomo’s dam is OYY Tippateena. Jockomo is exactly what I had in mind when I bred Tippy to Chip. We’ve had enough “Chip babies” to know what he throws… and Tippy’s family tree is just as predictable. Before the foals are even born, you know their potential when you have trained/ ridden/driven sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles—well you get the idea. When a buyer chooses a youngster, I can give them lots of information on the background and abilities for every “family” and bloodline.

Since we were fooling with Jockomo- I made a short video of his Dam, Tippy, driving in 2006. She is an awesome driving mare and she loves it so much I am not sure if we will ever get around to getting her under saddle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2ZW-oGM3r0

I love it that she is wearing her Mom's harness now. She passed her old harness onto her maternal sister- OYY Fiona- who is also a wonderful driving mare with an outstanding disposition.

You can also hear the song after which she was named (Tipitina)-- we just changed the spelling a bit to honor Teena, her dam. And she is absolutely a "tip" of the old gal- Teena.

Since Ahmet has been in the paddock alone, getting her anti-biotic twice a day—due her being too nosey with a prickly porky.. we have been working with her as well. She’s been a broodmare most of her life, but she may as well be a riding horse too ! She’s a beautiful mover- a nice full bodied 15.2 hands. Her foals are all nice quality- OYY Elektra is the only one trained under saddle a the moment- but OYY Little “Z” will start this winter with her ground training. I’d love to see Ahmet under saddle before I breed her again, which I think will be this spring to OYY The Doctor of Dreams. She's a very smart responsive old gal and getting her under saddle will dispel any myths of training an older broodmare. So far Zoe's Day Dream (Reverie) is the oldest broodmare we've trained, at 11 years old. Ahmet is 12 years old. We did get Mead's Chocolate Chip under saddle this year at 14 years of age, so he qualifies as the oldest horse we've started.

Enjoy your day ~