Monday I woke up to a million puppy kisses. My husband was home from work today so he brought them into the bedroom to wake me up, they were sure rambunctious. We did chores and I went to Stonewall to drop off a paper I need Dr. Neil to sign and picked up three Christmas trees that were donated to us for the goats. When I was at Equitech, I met a gentleman who might be looking for a pony, every time I go in there I get asked about the ranch, it’s pretty great that our name is getting out there and that we have a good reputation. For the most part anyway, we have a few naysayers but that’s pretty normal for the horse world, unfortunately, we can’t please them all. I know we do right by these beautiful animals. I stopped in at Brake auto to see Shelley and at Tracey’s place to pick up some cat stuff, always nice to see those ladies. I got word about a new pony that will be coming in on Wednesday, word is his hooves are very bad so I queued up Robyn to come in and give him a trim on Thursday. I came in and did all the income tax receipts for December and got them ready to mail out and made an order at VistaPrint as it looks like I’m running out of stationary. Now I work on the volunteers aspect of Salesforce, making great progress on this set up. If you wonder why I am using Salesforce, it’s because we had it donated to us and it’s an incredibly powerful tool that will be a game changer for the record keeping aspect of the ranch.
Tuesday morning I was up with the rooster, our water was off. When the power goes out in the pump house, the heater stops working, which causes the water to freeze up. I was unable to get the breaker flipped on and had to call Interlake Electric, they had me fixed up in no time, but then I had to wait over an hour for the water to come back on. Once it was on I went out to do chores and all the hoses were frozen except one. I got the troughs filled and chores done and headed out to run some errands. I had to go to Equitech to pick up a form that Dr. Neil was filling out for us, then I picked up a prescription, the mail and feed at Feed Rite. Then I went to visit our hay guy to give him a payment. He showed me the feed he mills there and it looks pretty good. As long as it’s sufficient to keep the critters happy, it will cut our weekly feed bill in half, which will be amazing for us, obviously. Once that was all done it was back in the house to work on our records some more. Pretty soon I am going to be a Salesforce guru lol. Plans seem to be coming along nicely for our pony round up on Saturday and tickets are selling for our Wine & Dine 4 Equine event on April 13th.
Wednesday I felt pretty scattered all day, not too sure why. I got the chores done and sorted out the hoses as we had one that was still pretty frozen from yesterday but I was able to reconfigure them all so all the troughs were able to get filled. It has been snowing non-stop all day but it feels pretty mild out, so the animals do not seem to mind too much. I found no less than 40 duck eggs in a smallish cat/dog house we have. They were all frozen so the pigs ate pretty well today. I found Peter our giant bunny in distress, he had his head against the cage wall and although I could see him moving, it appeared like something was wrong with him. I opened up the cage and pulled him out of there, his ears and back had been chewed and there was an injury to his eye. It’s like the other rabbits just randomly decided to chew on him. He is a fixed male and they are all female. So he is now in my house being treated with Tobrex, MTG and Duplocillin and I am hopeful for a complete recovery. Karen, Chris and Leah came today to install the cat door into the warm room in the garage so we can set up a little cat paradise in there once the puppies are gone. Then of course my evening was spent in the house becoming a professional Salesforce administrator.
Thursday Jake came out to help me with chores since it was a snow day at school, we got them done in about an hour between the two of us. I took him home right afterward and came home to get everything ready for our exec meeting this evening. We had our meeting to get everyone trained up on Salesforce and talk about our Wine & Dine for Equine event coming up in April. We also talked about different grants we are working on and will hopefully get some of them as that would be amazing. I put together the financials for 2023 and was super happy to report to them that we only operated at a $1,500 deficit in 2023, that’s pretty awesome and thanks to all of our supporters. I got an estimate from Interlake Electric to upgrade our electrical panel and it looks like it will be around $1,000 to end our flipping breaker and frozen trough issues. I am going to start a fundraiser for that within the next couple days.
Friday was a busy one, I got up and did chores. When I was halfway through the waters, the hay guy came to put out our bales. I fed the puppies, they are super hyped up today. I had to go into the city to pick up our loop items, it was a small load this week. Joy, Anne and Tracey met me at Superstore to help me load up. I went to Petsmart to pick up some puppy food for the little food hounds and then stopped in at Dollarama to pick up some bins for sorting loop. I came home and Leah and Karen were here to work on sorting Loop. I left them to that and went into the warm room to clear a space for all the food bins to keep it from freezing and so it can be easily fed out each day. I didn’t get done all that until after dark and then came in to do some admin tasks. I also gave Peter his second dose of Duplocillin and put put some Tobrex in his eyes, both of them look pussy today, but the one that was really bad looks better. His breathing appears laboured but he looks a heck of a lot better than he did the day I found him.
Saturday we had a bunch of volunteers out, Tracey, Jake, Shelly and Karen were all here. They had chores almost done before I even got out of the house. I just did the waters basically. We caught a couple horses that didn’t have blankets on and don’t have the best winter coats and put blankets on them. Karen spent the majority of the day sorting loop. We had a couple stop in to see the puppies and they made a decision about which one they want, so I think we have four of the six adopted out. They have their vet appointment on Tuesday and will be ready to go after that. The rest of the day and evening were inside doing computer stuff, the temperature is -26 Celsius out there, we don’t want to be out there if we don’t have to be. Casanova got separated from Tango today when Tango left the corral for a minute, holy smokes Casanova got worked up. Funny these two boys have only known each other three weeks I think.
Sunday was a busy day, I got up and did the chores, Jake joined me and we headed out for the day. We stopped at Canvasback to pick up a blanket for Amber and headed to Cook’s Creek to pick up a pony that was being surrendered. We stopped in at Erika’s to see our little Shadow and Jack, they are doing great in her care for the winter and it was nice visiting with Erika too. We then went to Cook’s Creek Equestrian to see Max, Honey and Amber, they are also doing amazing. We tried the new blanket on Amber and she was swimming in it, so we will have to find her a smaller size. We went to visit Stormy and PJs former owner to pick up their winter blankets and she gave us a TON or used blankets and fly sheets. That’s so awesome! We also ended up taking a beautiful Rocky Mountain Horse home with us. When we got back, we put Beauty and Brie in their pen and did a blanket switcheroo. Flash got the new blanket we just bought and it fit him really well. We changed Opal’s blanket out because she ripped off one of the buckles. We took the pony blankets off of Stormy and PJ and put their old blankets on them. We then took the pony blankets and put them on Charity and Chino. That blanket does not fit Charity at all, so I will have to get her a bigger one. I ended up freezing my well pump twice today trying to get the waters done, ugh! Now it’s back in the house to do some more Salesforce set up.
