Vaccination Day

Today was vaccination day for the horses. My sister Pony Girl and I always try to schedule the vet to come out when we both can be here, yep, tryin' to save us some money on the farm call! Today was the day my horses were going to get their yearly vaccinations. This day can always be interesting here on the Painted Creek Farm.

The first thing I have to do is move the 4 goats into the large paddock. I only have 2 pastures, one pasture is where we keep Pony Girl's boy and the other pasture is for my 2 horses and they have to share their space with our 4 goats. In the middle of the 2 pastures we have a very long space that has gates at both ends that we use for separating animals when needed and it has also come in handy for when our horses got their hoof abcesses last year. So this is where I have to put the goats. I decided to feed them their grain, that should make it much easier for me to get them all into the paddock. I wasn't in the mood to be wrestling goats today, or any other day for that matter!

The goats ate their grain than did a little playin'. They were bucking, rearing, headbutting.....I didn't get to see it. I was in the barn with my horses. My sis was able to get the action shots. Leave it to Pony Girl to always have her camera at the ready!

I go out to the mud pit to catch my 2 girls. Here is Brandy, needing a hair cut in a really bad way! I have been lazy this year and let her bridle path grow out. It is time to get the clippers out!

Than it was time to get the Fritz.

My other half (OH) just installed 4 tie rings in my run in shed, I am very excited about this. I am excited that I will have tie rings and that I will have many options on where to tie, I could even put in cross ties someday. It will make it so much easier to to have a place to tie them under cover for when it rains, it does rain here most of the year! The tie rings worked out great.

When my vet got here it was a bit of a challenge. We usually take the horses down by the house so the vet has easy access to her vehicle. Well since Pony Girl was having her boys teeth floated we needed to have access to the ring thats up in the beam of my barn for the head sling. So that meant my vet had to climb a gate, walk through 4 goats, attempt to get all her equipment through all those goats and into my barn. Since my pasture is so muddy right now she couldn't go the easy way. My goats also weren't cooperating today, they usually enjoy getting turned out in the large paddock but today, uh, well lets just say they weren't liking it so much. Every time we needed to go through the gate this is what we would encounter.

They wanted back into the pasture so bad, I mean to the point they almost trampled me many times just trying to get through the gate! Seriously!

I do not know what was going on in their little heads. The only thing we could think of that it was nap time and they like to lay outside the barn and soak up the heat, which we finally had our first 70 degree day since last August! I am in heaven!

Brandy and Fritzy got their shots, they get the 5-way and WNV. I also give them Strangles. Brandy is the perfect little angel when it comes to all her shots and even Strangles, alot of horses don't like the intra-nasal injection! Like Fritzy! We have not had to twitch her in previous years but she has always thrown a fit, today after she threw her temper tantrum, we had to try the lip chain than had to switch to the twitch. There was just no way she was going to let my vet inject anything up her nose!

After all was said and done I turned my horses out in the paddock with the annoying goats. I thought this might occupy those darned goats for awhile.

Boy, was I ever wrong! They just kept coming back to annoy me! This is when I put them back into the pasture, you can see PG's boy in the background, he was sedated and wasn't moving anywhere. PG's boy does not get turned out with my horses, they were still in the paddock while her boy was recovering in my barn.

After paying the vet bill, Pony Girl and I came back to the house for lunch then sat on the deck in the sun we haven't seen in 8 months. It was so warm! This is the first time I have had a short sleeve T-shirt on since August! I am not kidding!

Even the dogs got to run and play for hours! Sadie got so hot that we had to set up her pool today, she loves water and even though we have a creek and pond here they eventually dry up, so last year we bought a kiddie pool, you know those blue plastic kind? Yeah, we put one up in our backyard in the summer for Sadie. She just absolutely loves water. This dog can't live without it! And here I thought she was a herding dog......... What was I thinking?

Bailey had fun rolling around in the grass, he is not a water dog. He prefers dry land, like myself.

After we got done feeding all the animals, I noticed the ducks in our pond. Aren't they beautiful?
They got a little scared of me so they decided to get out of the water. Check out their reflection in the pond. I wish I would have gotten the whole reflection! Oh well.