Another bitter cold day

After enjoying an almost warm week (highs in the 20's), we're back to single digits and less. It's currently bright, sunny, and 2 degrees with a wind chill of -12. Needless to day, Sparky stayed in with Gem for company. I hope to find a turnout sheet/lightweight blanket for her so she can go outside without getting too chilled and thus lose more weight. I wish I could afford a chiropractor for her, to align her hips, but all I can really do at this point is to keep her comfortable until Spring.

I've been doing some training this week, mostly with standing quietly and picking up feet. Alex was so good that Ken was actually able to trim his front hooves! We're still working on the hind feet, but he's getting better. He's a bit of a 'cookie monster' at the moment, but I'm going to cut back as he does better.

Ken was able to trim Willow's front hooves today. Her near front hoof has a long toe crack that fortunately is starting to grow out. She stood pretty well while Ken trimmed and rasped it, but she got antsy with the far front hoof and barely let him finish trimming.

Never is going to take more work. He picks up his near front hoof pretty well, but he won't relax and let Ken hold it for trimming. He's worse with his far front, he keeps pulling it out of Ken's hands. As for his hinds, right now we're just getting him used to being touched on his hips, legs and hooves. He's very sensitive and nervous about anyone doing anything back there, but with time I think he'll get better. I'm really hoping to get some more ground work done with him this Spring so I can take him in some halter/in hand classes this summer. I'm also hoping to introduce him to a saddle before Autumn.

Since it's so cold out, and there's nothing on TV this evening, I think I'm going to update my website for (shameless plug) Duchess Hill Photography, work on a blog to go with it (I know, yet another photo blog...), and maybe I'll finally get at least the home page for the farm site up and running. I should also get some more stuff on my Cafe Press site (another shameless plug!), but I'm going to need to find some more pics suitable for cards and such. Snow shots would be nice, but it's so freaking cold out and I don't have a back up camera if something goes wrong. I've also been thinking about possible quotes, phrases and logos for more marketable t-shirts and such, but I've been having the darnedest case of 'writers block'. If anyone has ideas or suggestions... *S*