We have noticed Russell's eyes started to change again lately, going from cloudy to now they are a dark color with red marbled in them and about the time this all started to happen, he started bonking into things :( Poor kid.. he doesnt seem to be blind 100% of the time, he has phases of blindness right now I think, almost like it comes and goes. He definately has issues even on his good days but I wouldnt call him blind yet. Andrea said we would need to take him to a specific eye specialist vet to diagnose what is really going on. He doesnt seem to be in pain but she did think his eyes were very unusual. Probably not what you want a vet to say when they cant help you to fix it.. We are running blood work on him, just to see if that gives us any answers
Ellie & her friend Patch playing.. not sure what happened to Ellie's legs!! 
I took my friend Rachel riding about 10 days ago, I always like when she goes because I get to ride Edgar! She LOVES Red, so I'm happy to let her ride my horse so I can work with Edgar a little. My friend Tricia drove down from Bellingham with her new mare, we had a great ride, not counting the part where Edgar went lame on me halfway through the ride! :( It was a very slight limp, he wasn't going up any big hills, nothing major it just happened. I was pretty dissappointed, over the next couple days he limped real bad. The shoers came out a few days later and indicated it possibly could be in the hoof and gave me the # for a vet who does x-rays fairly cheap. Well cheap would consist of $250 apparently (after calling the vet to get prices). That price includes the farm call and full set of xrays on his hoof, but now he is back to sound, so will wait for him to go lame again and have the vet out possibly to rule out any navicular type issues that the shoers think could be the culprit for his on/off again lameness problems.
Tricia's new mare is pretty nice, big stout horse who has decided the horse trailer is no longer her friend. It took the 3 of us over 2 hours to get the horse in the trailer after our ride.. I felt bad for Tricia, she lost her best friend horse earlier this year to a broken leg, his femur! Found him in the pasture that way. She told me on our ride how/why he broke his leg, which I had not been previously told. Her horse was very similar to Edgar, draft cross, big bodied, solid good 'ole boy. Well the shoer had filed down his size 3 hoof into a size 1 shoe! The pressure over the months finally caused his leg to just break. I was stunned really at the ignorance of someone you put your trust and faith into that they know what they are doing! So she has struggled with finding a new horse and now has a good horse with a bad loading problem, one of the most frustrating issues one can have! If she lived closer I would be helping her out, but Bellingham is just too far away to be there for her.
I moved the horses to my parents pastures for a while, giving some relief to my paddocks and letting the boys be horses and just free to graze as they want! I left Dexter at home though, he sure misses his friends! He is eager to come see me, but when he realizes it's just me in the barn, he's almost just as eager to leave me... I'm hoping over a few weeks, maybe he'll learn to count on me and trust that I am his best friend since he will have no other distractions. I was SOOO happy, when the shoers were out, John was able to pick up and trim each hoof with NO fight, NO pinning him against the trailer, I didnt have to have him tied up, he just did really great.. that is some good progress!! He's still pretty jumpy, but we are workin on that as much as I can anyways.
We got a dissappointing progress report with Cooper a week ago. Apparently Cooper is NOT loving the water and was refusing to go in. :( and was missing some of his marks lately with retrieving. We are HOPING he is just hitting a wall in his training and will push through it. Derek is hopefully going to get an update this week as the trainer was going to spend a week straight just on water. He LOVED water at our house, well I'm not sure if you can count the bathtub water as pond water, apparently Cooper thinks there is a difference. It is frustrating to get a bad report card, we want Cooper to excel at his training, we want to get A++++++ reports because we have the BEST dog EVER! We are not too worried, we can expose him to more water when we get him home, take him swimming with my brothers dogs who LOVE to run in the water, maybe if he sees that he will change his mind and realize it is fun and not just work work work. He might be craving the personal attention of just being a dog right now too that we are not sure he gets being in training.
This past weekend our horse club was part of a big fundraiser ride at Harry O out of Sedro Woolley, the NW Regional Prize/Challenge Ride. This year the theme was the 60's. I actually was not real excited about the theme, heck I wasnt even alive in the 60's, but a few of us got together at our place and made some tie-dyed shirts.
I bought a couple tie-dye kits and we spent a Saturday afternoon creating some really awesome shirts! When we started doing the dying, I started to get into it a little more.. We had a lot of fun actually, I was glad to have the other ladies there as we all laughed and explored our dying options! Everyone left their shirts with me since there is this process of sitting for up to 24 hours after dying before being able to see the results. I had a GREAT time opening all those shirts and seeing just how cool they turned out, I was really amazed. But then I opened my shirt.. I hated it! See I thought I would be cool and try my own method and not follow the suggested methods and I got an ugly spotted mostly white shirt! Well there was still dye left over, so I just redid my shirt with a swirl pattern and added a LOT of color, then realized maybe I added too much.. maybe I was going to get a big blah shirt all of one deep ugly blurred together color. I was upset and went to bed worried about it, so at about 3 am I woke up and although it was only about 6 hours since I had colored the shirt, I opened it up anyways and WhaLa! I loved my 2nd try!! :) I then went back to bed and slept in peace..
Here are all the shirts we made that day
I got into the theme as much as I could, made some hippy pants, flowers in my hair.. we had a great time at our station on the trail, the weather was perfect and the turnout was good.. some money was made!
Derek & I at our station.. I think we look pretty cute!
Barbara Sue & I at our station, watiting for the first riders to show up
This is Rob (who helped at our station) riding his horse through one of the obstacles at our station.. Not many horses would go through this!!
Our 4th of July was fairly uneventful really, decided to stay home to ensure all our children were safe and happy, I think we made it to 10pm watching movies, not fireworks. Earlier in the day we did go over to Adam's place for some pistol shooting and a BBQ. Derek has been wanting me to shoot his 9mm handgun for a while, but I've been pretty apprehensive about it. The last time I shot a handgun was probably close to 15 years ago and I didnt like it at all.. had a lot of kick, I felt like it was unsafe and unpredictable. Derek assured me it was a crappy gun I shot before (it belonged to a friend) and his would be a better experience. Put a shot gun in my hands and I am pretty comfortable, the smaller it is the more I am afraid of it. 
So I was dreading it a little (okay maybe a lot), but he stood with me and instructed me on how to load, unload, prepare to fire, turn safety off and shoot! Derek kept telling me to breathe, I was a little uptight and tense.. but I didnt mind it so bad and more importantly, I was within inches of the bullseye!! After firing off a few rounds, I sat back down and watch the others for a while, then asked if I could shoot some more.. then they started shooting a tin can and well I just couldnt resist and asked to shoot more again! I actually enjoyed it.. It is a pretty big gun, but the kick was not bad, I felt fairly safe and secure with what I was doing. We will have to get back up to shoot again soon so I can test my knowledge on handling it properly without instruction this next time. I cant imagine shooting it w/o ear protection though, hopefully I'll never have to wonder what that feels/sounds like!
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