Oh wow what a 24-hrs. Just a rant/rave post, nothing serious (unless someone's interested in adopting a kitten)

So I'm in town yesterday online doing homework *cough* when I realize it's almost dark and I need to go home so I don't have to feed Prince in the dark (again). I get almost out of town when my friend Erica calls, frantic because her cousin just brought her two baby kittens. (Kelly (the cousin) had hit the mother cat, and stopped to get the babies. She said it was either hit another car, the mother, or the babies. she chose the mother.)  And I mean baby; I guesstimated them to be about 3 weeks, my other friend Kat, who just finished hand-raising four other kittens from one week old (see pics), said closer to a week and a half. My family had a bunch of kittens when I was young, but the last time I saw kittens this little was about four years ago, when an adopted stray had babies in our bathroom closet. Nuff said. Erica doesn't have the faintest idea what to do with them, so I told her to hang on and I'd be there. I got to her house and almost fell over; these babies can stand literally in my hand. They're that tiny. And so adorable!! The little tabby female's paw can fit neatly on the tip of my index finger. So I call Kat to see if she's got any of the stuff she used left over. She told me she had taken it all back to the clinic. (She was fostering them for the vet clinic on Fort Gordon) She told me what to get, and Erica and I took a trip to Wal-mart and got the formula and a tiny bottle. We went by Kelly's and somehow I ended up bringing them home with me. My mom freaked at first, but when I held up the little gray boy she melted.

So I got them fed and bedded down for the night. They woke me up at a quarter to six (no big deal) so I went ahead and fed them. I was hoping they would wake me up at night closer to a four-to-six hour interval to feed them, but no such luck. They attacked that little bottle though, so I just made sure they didn't want it anymore before I put them back in their box and left for school.

Or tried to. I go outside, feed Prince, and go to crank up my car. It cranked fine, but when I looked at the dashboard the low oil light was flashing at me. "Oh, lord." I thought "What now?" I checked the oil level via the dipstick. The oil level wasn't even registering on the stick. By then I was getting angry because my sister had been driving it all weekend and those kind of things don't just pop up out of nowhere when you just turn the car on. GRRRRR!! So I go into the garage to see if there's any oil. Luckily there was a quart of 5W-30 sitting on my dad's workbench. I found a funnel and went back to the car, thanking my lucky stars that my father is a mechanic and I know how to do this kind of stuff.

One quart got it on the dipstick but I needed more, so I got to the local convienience store and buy another 2 quarts. Luckily, I just needed one to get it where it was supposed to be because when I got in the car I realized I had bought one quart of 5W-30 (which is the one I put in the car) and one quart of 30 weight. BIG difference. I call dad to tell him about it and ask him if he can use it and he was like "Sure, I'll just put it in the lawn mower or something." Disaster averted.

So now I'm at school, bored and feeling like I'm coming down with a cold or something, waiting for this class to be OVER.

Hope ya'll are having better days.

Ok, so it's been a while but here it is: Prince has an appointment with the good Dr. Wester to be gelded on...(drumroll please) Nov 14th!!  I originally was going to wait until after Christmas to have it done but when I realized how much easier it would be to go ahead and do it I went ahead and scheduled it for next week. I could have it done earlier but that would mean missing class at ASU (Augusta State, not Arizona) so Friday was the earliest I could do it and still be in class.

I am doubly glad I went ahead and scheduled it because: he tried to kick his babysitter when she was feeding him, he nipped me on my leg two days later (leaving a bruise right above my knee), and yesterday he tried to take a chunk (literally!) out of my shin. Thank GOD for cowboy boots. (He caught a hunk of leather instead of flesh.) I think it might have been because (guys: stop reading) I was getting over my period and he smelled me, but I have always handled him no matter what's going on and he's NEVER done this before. Needless to say I tore him a new one, and he acted fine afterward. So hopefully come next spring I will have a nice big calm gelding to start on the trails.

Other than that his training is coming along. I have successfully taught him to lay down on cue (something his babysitter found out when she tried to pick up his right front foot; he's a little trigger happy) in fact he was laying down when he tried to take the chunk out of my leg, which was actually fortunate because had he been standing he would have successfully bitten my thigh. As it was he jumped up and ran with me chasing him smacking his butt with a very thin dressage whip as hard as I could. I got several good whacks in before he got out of range.

At his appointment my plan is to get them to give him the sedative and immediately lay him down so he doesn't have to fall down like I've seen them do. Then Dr Wester can do the snip snip and he'll wake up and everything will be hunky-dory. *snort* yeah, right. If everything actually goes as planned I'll be very very surprised.

I'm going to try to get a video of him laying down posted. More on that later.

See yall

Hi everyone.

So I'm really just going on off a post I did a month or so ago (entitled "Stud Colt Problem--please help!") that elaborated on the problems I was having with my young stud colt Prince. He was acting up in a normal studlike way, nipping and constantly vying for leadership position. Since he's an only horse I'm the only one he has to contend with, and I was getting frustrated because nothing I did seemed to do anything to faze him. I got a lot of really good advice (along with some flames for a variety of reasons) that I thank everyone involved for.

Here's the update: Prince will be 2 next Saturday (Oct. 11). He has an appointment with the vet come cold weather (not actually scheduled yet but it will probably be shortly after Christmas) to remove him from his testosterone source. He has had many lessons in manners and while he still challenges me it has been greatly reduced in frequency and severity. I have successfully taught him to lay down and he took to it very well. I have a strong feeling he will be very much like his half-brother Paint (belonging to my neighbor) who is the type of horse you can light firecrackers under and he just step sideways and sigh.

His under-saddle work is coming along. He has stopped bucking against the saddle as long as I warm him up first, and he is learning to drive. I have ridden him a little around the round pen for no more than a few minutes at a time. His only real problem is that he's still unsure of the whole thing and tries to sling his head around and bite my leg when I'm on his back. Not sure how I want to correct this because I don't want him getting head-shy under saddle (if that's possible) or associating riding with pain.

I'm going to start teaching him to pony off another horse. I want to be able to take him to some smaller rides and other horsey gatherings without having to walk him around the whole time. He's still not quite big enough for me to ride yet so I don't want to take him to ride but I am thinking that exposing him to this stuff before I do ride him at these types of gatherings will be beneficial in the long run.

Will keep the updates coming.