blah blah

Well, the horse situation is certainly not without some drama. Last night I put Shylah in with Dusty, hoping they'd buddy up. He walked straight up to her hind end (she doesn't tend to appreciate other horses doing that!) so she kicked him in the chest. Nice. By morning he was giving her a very wide berth and she took every opportunity to put her ears back and throw dirty looks at him. What is wrong with my horses? Unfortunately, I think Shylah learned her social skills from Auntie Gwen. *sigh* Shylah does mellow out over time though, and I think will potentially be nicer.

Gwen, although she's not out for blood QUITE as much as she was with Patrick, has definitely gone into her weird defensive mode again. Ugh!!! I really had thought she might not do that. Dusty does not act the slightest bit "studdish" whereas Patrick did. So, though not to quite the same extent, she keeps herself between them and repeatedly chases him off, ears pinned back, teeth bared, fangs dripping blood... ok maybe not that last part.

So the bad horse in this situation is my own. Great. I want this to work out with Dusty, I want to be able to work with him and return a fully-rideable well-mannered horse to J.J. But that's going to be tough, it's a bit like being in a war zone out there. There are certainly alternatives. There are three pastures and three corrals, so there are numerous ways to separate three horses, but the point is I don't want to have to do that. For one thing it's a pain, I'll end up using more hay that way, somebody will miss the social aspect of life, etc. It's tempting to try it for a while though. But I still think when I let loose whatever horse is penned up, it's just going to go back to how it is now. Darn that Gwen! Why must she be so weird about this. I really don't understand why she's so cranky now and she really wasn't like that with Sampson. Hopefully everyone will chill out a bit by next week, because I really want to make this work..

Dusty's first lessons will definitely be getting him OUT of my personal space. I've had very little interaction with him so far, just letting the horses do their thing for now. But he's definitely a bit lacking in boundaries. No offense J... I'm sure you knew this already! :-)

I'm seriously tempted to cut his mane off. It's anywhere from about 1-12 inches long, in about 47 different segments that point different directions (either rubbed off or chewed off, most of it's really short). I get very distracted by how a horse's mane looks!

Anyway...

I never said anything more about the Blue Silkies. They turned out fine, but I wouldn't do the watercolor thing again, it wasn't worth the hassle. So now I'm drawing... MORE Blue Silkies (Bearded, the first pair was Non Bearded). That's cruel and unusual punishment.

I think when I can move on to non-Standard artwork, I'll start posting pics of work in progress on here... might be neat for people to see how it looks along the way (I'm not as bothered by that as I used to be).

I guess it's time to start advertising again, gotta get some stuff going for after December. Ugh, advertising sucks. I'll see what I can conjure up that won't cost me an arm and a leg!

I miss my camera.