Spring Riding Photos

Some pictures from one of my rides last week on "boiling point" hill off the old Cabbage Hill road.  The wildflowers on the hillside knolls are really pretty right now!

Our two little beagles love ripping through the fields of purple.  (Would've been a great shot without Ox's ear photo-bombing it.)

I don't know what these flowers are, but every once in awhile there would be a white one in the middle of all the vast purple.

A snapshot alongside I-84 coming down Cabbage Hill, going west.  The canyons are good for conditioning rides, gives the horses a good workout.

Rock out-cropping.  I love rocks...

In the bottom of the big canyon there is a little creek that flows this time of year from the snow running off the mountains.  It makes a neat little rocky waterfall.  

Our older beagle loves the water.  It's hard to get her out of it most of the time. 

And there are some really interesting relic "treasures" if you look hard enough for them.  I was riding along a narrow little deer trail in the bottom of the big canyon and found this old Buick half buried in the creek.  It was a neat old car with suicide doors from the 1930's.

And just downstream from the Buick was another old vintage 1930's vehicle that was also half buried at the bottom of the creek bed.  I don't know what this one was - as there weren't any identifying marks on it.  My husband says that it was a high end car in it's day, due to the style of the back end.  It also has suicide doors.  (A bit of a rarity to see cars with those unusual style of doors nowadays.)  

Luxmere Jizette

Holy S**t!  The most beautiful Arabian mare that I've ever seen!  Luxmere Jizette won unanimous Grand Champion mare this year at the Scottsdale show.  Pure perfection!  She has been purchased by a new owner from Kuwait - who also purchased the unanimous Grand Champion stallion Baahir Al Marwan. 

Wowza, is this mare ever a sexy beast!  http://vimeo.com/72017505

And also, Baahir's video:  http://vimeo.com/84769958

A traditional scale artist resin "Justin Tyme" sculpted by Kristina Lucas-Francis, recently completed in the studio. This is a big jumping resin that I painted to a soft transitional mulberry dapple grey. (Photos don't do him much justice, he's a "biggun" that you have to see in person to appreciate.) Owned by Betty Hook of Pennsylvania.

Thwarting of a Thief

Warning: slightly graphic photos in this post...

Imposter ewe was up to her old tricks again.  (She does have a "real" registered name, I just generally can't remember it.  So Imposter has to do.)  This is the second lamb that she has tried to steal this season.  The first time happened last month, when I had to take a newborn baby lamb out of the pasture and pen it up with the mother - who wanted to take care of it just as much as the Imposter did. 

Well this time it backfired on her!  Fooey on Imposter's plans.

I watched Imposter saunter over to the pasture corner where Skylonda Priscilla just had her newborn little chocolate ram lamb.  Priscilla was intent on taking care of her new little lambie, but Imposter had her eye on him.  She wanted him - so she muscled her way over into her space to take him away from her...

But low and behold, just as Imposter ewe was attempting to confuse Priscilla's little ram lamb into believing he belonged to her - Imposter got a great surprise!  Something that was sure to divert her attention away from thievery... 

Her own little lamb was soon the center stage, and she promptly forgot all about stealing Priscilla's little lambie away.  Both ewes drifted to different corners of the pasture and became content on taking care of their own little lambies.  The Imposter ewe is now quite content, and her thieving days are over - until next year....

More Lambies



"Mayfields Jakalina" had a beautiful little ewe lamb with a white blaze and small white tip on her tail.

This young two year old crossbred red and white spotted ewe had a very cute little spotted ram lamb this year.  The ewe is part of my painted desert experiment, and I used a younger painted desert ram to produce this lamb.  This little guy has a "double dose" of spotted genes, which will make him good as a future flock sire for my continued experiment.  If these were horses - it would be a palomino pinto with a buckskin pinto colt... 

"Mayfields Lucrezia" had a ram lamb with a white star on his head.

"Mayfields Andromeda" had a really flashy nice brown and white spotted ram lamb.  He's nice!  Mostly white on the upper body, and his legs are brown.  He is half Soay and half painted desert.

Our senior ewe "Peony Creek Brooke" had a nice pair of twin lambs.  Each of them have a white star on their heads.  The darker one is a ram lamb and the lighter one is a ewe lamb. 

This is another two year old ewe that is part of my painted desert experiment.  She is half Soay and half painted desert.  Her lamb is by the same young ram that I used with the other painted desert ewe shown in the second photo above.  The little lamb is another good "double dose" spotted gene carrier.

The freckled queen - a custom Superlumina resin recently completed in the studio. 


This model was interesting.  What do you do when all the other colors have been done already?  This was the dilemma that I had.  This resin has been released on the market for quite awhile, and everybody has done many shades of bays, dapple greys, chestnuts, blacks, sabinos, pintos, buckskins, palominos, ect.  (Pretty much the whole gammit of arabian and 1/2 arab colors.)  Which meant I was a bit stumped for awhile.  I sat there looking at her in the studio and asked, "what color do you want to be?"  Whenever I'd get a brilliant idea on a color, I would look at MHSP and the Equine Resin Directory - only to find that someone had done it already.  So, she lingered in limbo for awhile. 


It just happened that one day I was looking through some photos on facebook and found the most interesting picture of a heavily fleabitten grey egyptian arabian stallion.  I really liked how his big fleabites were peppering his entire body, and a lightbulb went off - there it is!  The perfect color.  And alas, a heavily fleabitten bloody-shouldered "war mare" came to be.  There are bedouin legends behind the bloody shouldered horses, and she has the look and pose as if she is in battle mode...


"MM Khemystery" is owned by Carole Ingram. 

March Battle In The Saddle Show

Today (March 1st), was the last show of the "Battle In The Saddle" series in Pendleton.  It was a fun show, but super cold!  Craig and I woke up to a bit of snow on the ground at our place, and I promptly put my long undies on to try and stay warm.  Brrrrrrrrhhhhh.......!!!!!!!

The truck took awhile to warm up and defrost this morning.  By the time that we got into town the ground was clear, yay!

This is a great picture that Craig took, but unfortunately it turned out a bit blurry...



We had some good conversations this morning.  Most of the time they were nice "good boy" conversations, but every once in awhile we'd have a "behave yourself, I don't care how chilly it is" conversation.  (He feels pretty saucy when the temp drops below 30.)

Mugging for the camera.  I love my black buggar-head boy.

We won Reserve Champion in the Open Novice division of the show.  Ox got a lovely turquoise neck sash and I got a new teal blinged-up cowgirl cap.  Hooray!

Strawberry Daquiri

I found this photo on facebook of an older paintjob that I did a few years ago. This is still one of my most favorite paintjobs that I've ever done. She's a loud sabino paint mare that I named "Strawberry Daquiri", and she is shown here winning at a live show in Ocala, Florida. Thank you to Mindy Berg for the picture!