Tuesday, June 5, 2012

House decorating, yet more hooves

Over the weekend we found homes for some of our art.

The dragon:
dragon

The unrealistically clean Dixie:
Dixie

A birdhouse:
birdhouse

Etc.

Then today, the photos of me and Dixie from that photoshoot back in March arrived. Wait, that sounds wrong - we actually ordered them over the weekend, and they arrived very promptly - not that we've been waiting since March.
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It's printed museum wrapped on canvas, so framing is optional.
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We got the "I can ride!" picture printed too, as a paper print.
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I finally came up with a plan for framing my fish ... uh... appliques? Quilted cutout things? I've never seen anything like them and I'm not sure how to describe them - the person I got them from said they were from some village in Central America.
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I stretched the white background fabric on foamcore board, then tacked the fish piece on top - that way it stays 3D, and the edges are still visible.
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Anyway, I've had them for almost 10 years, and I'm glad I'm finally doing something other than pushpinning them to the wall.


Here's Banders, as a visual palate cleanser. He is snoozing in one of those crinkly collapsible cat Slinky tunnels.
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Monday I went out to see my horse. I wanted to ride my horse, but it was not to be. It was raining, and she'd been rolling.
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She was quite serious about grinding the mud in to her right side.
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"What are you looking at?"
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Alas, I had to switch to my backup plan of staring at her feet.

Here's the front left - the thick false sole has pretty much shed out, but somehow over the weekend she sliced off the tip of her frog, too. She wasn't tender at all!
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And here's the front right, which hadn't exfoliated ANY of the sole.
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Somehow, with my amazingly dull knives and my quite sharp nippers, I managed to unjam the bars a bit.

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With any kind of luck, the sole will be cleaner tomorrow...

As you can no doubt guess from the last two pictures, by then Dixie was having none of this stupid photograph-her-feet game. We had a big fight in the wash rack, then I did some ground work for about 45 minutes - getting her to lead nicely on the inside and the outside of circles. Once I finally got a nice inside turn at the walk, we called it quits. I let her graze, and took her over to stare at the Farm Animals. Between Dixie's pasture and the rest of the ranch, there's a paddock with two short, hairy, horned goats, and a paddock with a creepy looking alpaca and the world's most obese steer. Dixie's led past them pretty well for several weeks, but I hadn't let her really gawk at them before. She seemed to enjoy snorting at them.

17 comments:

  1. Okay, mud: it's okay to wash the mud off, then ride the horse. You didn't know that?

    Sole: are you feeding a biotin supplement? We found that Hana grows *enormous* amount of false sole when she gets biotin...the vet was alarmed! Took her off the biotin, and her foot growth returned to normal. The supplement didn't affect any of the other (12) horses in the barn that way. At my farrier's request, we took Fiddle off the supplement as well: her feet had grown so sturdy on the supplement that he was afraid of injuring her leg when he tried to remove the shoes. Her feet (without biotin) are still capable of breaking his nippers--not something I ever considered when I rode Arabians!

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    1. She started shivering pretty badly before I got nearly enough of the mud rinsed off and I took pity on her. That's why we were in the wash rack to begin with, actually!

      Hmm, Dixie's been on the same supplement since 2010 - it's got biotin in it. I'll keep it in mind while I see how manageable her feet are out here!

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    1. Thanks. :D I'm still pretty proud of it.

      http://www.flickr.com/photos/funderspix/4185084/

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  3. Your cute fish fabric piece is called a mola. It is Panamanian.

    I have the same opinion as you of humidity. It sucks. Wait until it gets hot this summer!

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  4. Those are such great ride photos! I'm jealous. I've never had a professional photographer handy when I was riding through dramatic scenery. I would LOVE to have a photo like the one over your fireplace.

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  5. HOOOORAY! Another horse who gets as dirty as Cash! I feel so much better now. ;)

    Your decorating looks lovely, especially that fantastic dragon. So cool!

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  6. Your cat is quite bizarre.. but cute as pie!! Dixie was very serious about the mud... holy crap.. that's the kind of professional work that Maggie is capable of..once things dry out for you... just take a hose to that.. don't even try to brush it out...!
    Love the dragon piece... looks Celtic...

    Looks like your busy making your home a home.. so happy for you..

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  7. Your house is looking good and the ride picture looks amazing! I think Banders is the cutest cat I've ever seen... so much personality!

    Dixie worked hard to get that dirty, and her plan worked just as she had planned!!

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  8. Banders outdoes herself every picture. She's wacky - in an awesome way! Dixie also outdoes herself with the "mare-ish" faces.

    When you mentioned inside and outside circles referring to groundwork, did you mean where you were leading her from?

    House is looking good. The spectacular ride picture is excellent over the mantle. And I super ♡ that dragon. Did you embroider it yourself? Holy crap - beautiful work! Dragon is my chinese sign, and it is the year of the dragon as we speak. So I covet your dragon. ;)

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  9. Just got caught up on your blog. Glad to see you made it here safe and sound, good luck at HC, and yes, SJ is smoggy and sucky. And yeah, the whole "not motivated to blog" thing sucks. Just keep posting away....I'll keep reading even if the posts aren't up to your regular "standards" LOL --> heaven knows I've done it to you on my blog plenty of times......

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  10. Wow - never again will I complain about how muddy my dogs are. Dixie puts them to shame.
    Love Banders snoozing in the crinkle tunnel - funny cat!!! :)

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  11. I love that picture of you and Dixie on wrapped canvas- gorgeous! I'm tempted to get a good picture of Rocky and I to do something similar! http://punkskidrock.blogspot.com/

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  12. dude! where can I get one of those collapsible cat Slinky tunnels????
    - The Equestrian Vagabond

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  13. Putting up your art really makes a place feel like home. I've been busy doing that this weekend.

    I like the canvas print of the pic of you and Dixie from the ride - very neat!

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  14. Oh good, we're still on the subject of feet. What do you think of this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Igfb7FNNWc The point she brings up about the hoof matching the bone inside is a good point, but you have a bit more experience than I with trimming hooves so I wondered what you thought.

    Also, my day job is a picture framer, and I've encountered those fabric pieces before. Another option you have is to buy a piece of mat board in whatever color you like, and sew the piece down to it (punching holes through the mat board with a leather working needle). How you did it is correct too. We usually put glass over it though to keep dust out.

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  15. The art work looks way nice! I'm envious! As to Dixie??? Looks to me like you ruined her good time! :-)

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